High Street.] BISHOP KENNEDY. 241
counsellor of James 11. and James 111. The
building indicated as having been his residence is
a large stone tenement of great antiquity on the
east side, having thereon a coat of arms and a
mitre, which were removed a few years ago ; and
our best antiquary asserts that ?? the whole appearance
of the building is perfectly consistent with
the supposition? that it had been Bishop Kennedy?s
abode. ? The form and decorations of the
doorways all prove an early date ; while the large
?A large and convenient house, entering by a
close mostly paved with flagstones, on the north
side of the street near the Nether Bow, consisting
of eight rooms, painted last year, or papered, some
with Chinese paper ; a marble chimney-piece from
the ceiling in one, concaves and slabes (sic) two
other of the rooms ; the drawing-room elegantly
fitted up, painted, gilded, and carved in the newest
style, with light closets to all the bed-rooms and
other conveniences to the dining-room and parlour ;
HOUSE IN HIGH STREET WITH MEMORIAL WINDOW, I? HEAVE AWA, LADS, I?M NO DEID YET !?
and elegant mouldings of the windows, and the
massive appearance of the whole building, indicate
such magnificence as would well consort with the
dignity of the primacy at that early period.?
Bishop Kennedy, author of a history of his
own times, now lost, died in 1466, and was interred
at St. Andrews.
. Baron Grant?s and Bailie Grant?s Closes were
among the last alleys on this side, adjoining the
Nether Bow Port. An advertisement in the Edinburgh
Cvurani for 1761, in describing the house of
Mr. Grant (who was a Baron of the Exchequer
Court) as offered for sale, gives us a pretty accurate
idea of what a mansion in the Old Town was in
those days :-
31
wine cellar and large kitchen, a coal-fauld, fire-room
for servants, and larder; a hen-house and cribbs,
for feeding all sorts of fowls ; a house for a sedanchair;
a rack to contain 10 gross of bottles, all
built and slated; a garden extending down the
greatest part of Leith Wynd, planted with flowering
shrubs, and servitude for a separate entry to it,
passing by the gate of Lord Edgefield?s house.?
The garden referred to must have been bounded
by the massive portion of the eastern wall of the
city, which fell down about twenty years ago ; and
the Lord Edgefield, whose neighbour the Baron
had been, was Mr. Robert Pringle, who was raised
to the Bench in 1754, and, dying ten years after,
was succeeded by the well-known Lord Pitfour.