246 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
OF the house of Provost Nicol Edward (or Udward,
to which we have referred) a very elaborate
description is given in the work entitled ? Minor
Alexander Clark?s house, at the same wynd head.?
In after years the lintel of this house was built in to
Ross?s Tower, at the Dean. It bore this legend :-
?THE LORD IS MY PROTECTOR,
ALEXANDRUS CLARK.?
Nicol Edward was Provost of Edinburgh in 1591,
and his house was a large and substantial building
of quadrangular form and elegant proportions.
The Chancellor at this time was Sir John Maitland
of Lethington, Lord Thirlestane.
Moyses next tells us that on the 7th of February,
George Earl of Huntly (the same fiery peer who
fought the battle of Glenlivat), ? with his friends,
to the number of five or six score horse, passed
from his Majesty?s said house in Edinburgh, as intending
to pass to a horse-race in Leith ; but after
they came, they passed forward to the Queensferry,
where they caused to stop the passing of all
boats over the water,? and &ossing to Fife, attacked
the Castle of Donnibristle, and slew ?? the bonnie
Earl of Murray.?
From this passage it would seem that if Huntly?s
six score horse were not lodged in Nicol Edward?s
house, they were probably billeted over all the
adjacent wynd, which six years after was the scene
of a homicide, that affords a remarkable illustration
of the exclusive rule of master over man which
then prevailed.
On the first day of the sitting of Parliament, the
7th December, 1597, Archibald Jardine, niasterstabler
and servitor to the Earl of Angus, was slain,
through some negligence, by Andrew Stalker, a
,goldsmith at Niddry?s Wynd head, for which he was
put in prison.
Then the cry of ??Armour !? went through the
streets, and all the young men of Edinburgh rose in
arms, under James Williamson, their captain, ?? and
desirit grace,? as Birrel records, ?for the young
man who had done ane reckless deed. The
King?s majesty desirit them to go to my Lord
of Angus, the man?s master, and satisfy and
carved his arms, with an anagram upon his name
thus :- ?* VA @UN VOL h CHRIST ?-
pacify his wrath, and he should be contentit to
save his life.?
James Williamson thereupon went to the Earl of
Angus, and offered, in the name of the young men
of the city, ? their manreid,? or bond of man-rent,
to be ready to serve him in war and feud, upon
which he pardoned the said Andrew Stalker, who
was immediately released from prison.
In December, 1665, Nicoll mentions that a
doctor of physic named Joanna Baptista, acting
under a warrant from his Majesty Charles II.,
erected a stage between the head of Niddry?s Wynd
and Blackfriars? Wynd, whereon ?he vended his
drugs, powder, and medicaments, for the whilk he
received a great abundance of money.?
In May, 1692, we read that William Livingstone,
brother of the Viscount Kilsyth, a cavalier, and
husband of the widow of Viscount Dundee, had
been a prisoner in the Tolbooth from June, 1689,
to November, 1690-seventeen months ; thereafter,
that he had lived in a chamber in the city
under a guard for a year, and that he was permitted
to go forth for a walk daily, but still under the eye
of a guard. In consequence of his being thus
treated, and his rents being sequestrated by the
Revolutionary Government, his fortune was entirely
ruined. On his petition, the Privy Council now
permitted him ? to go abroad under a sentinel each
day.from morning to evening furth of the house of
Andrew Smith, periwig-maker, at the head of
Niddry?s Wynd,? he finding caution under A;1,500
sterling to remain a prisoner.
Under an escort of dragoons he was permitted
to leave the periwig-maker?s, and visit Kilsyth, after
which he was confined in two royal castles and the
Tolbooth till 1693, ?so that, as a writer remarks,
?in the course of the first five years of British
liberty, Mr. Livingstone must have acquired a
tolerably extensive acquaintance with the various
forms and modes of imprisonment, so far as these
existed in the northern section of the island.?
High Street.] ST. MARY?S CHA4PEL. 247
made out by Latinising his name into Nz?choZaus
Ea?wfirtus. It occupied the western side of Lockhart?s
Court, and was accessible only by a deep
archway.
In an Act passed in 158r, ?<Anent the Cuinzie,?
Alexander Clark of Balbirnie, Provost of Edinburgh,
and Nicol Edward, whose houses were both
in this wynd, are mentioned with others. The
latter appears in 1585 in the Parliament as Commissary
for Edinburgh, together with Michael Gilbert;
and in 1587 he appears again in an Act of
Parliament in favour of the Flemish craftsmen,
whom James VI. was desirous of encouraging ; but,
!est they should produce inferior work at Scottish
prices, his Majesty, with the advice of Council,
hes appointit, constitute, and ordainit, ane honest
and discreit man, Nicolas Uduart, burgess of Edinburgh,
to be visitor and overseer of the said craftsmen?s
hail warks, steiks, and pieces . . . the said
Nicolas sal have sic dueties as is contenit within
the buke, as is commonly usit to be payit therfore
in Flanderis, Holland, or Ingland ; I? in virtue
of all of which Nicholas was freed froin all watching,
warding, and all charges and impositions.
In that court dwelt, in 17534761, George Lockhart
of Carnwath One of the thirteen roonis in his
house contained a mantelpiece of singular magnificence,
that reached the lofty ceiling; but the
house had a peculiar accessory, in the shape of (? a
profound dungeon, which was only accessible by a
secret trapdoor, opening through the floor of a
small closet, the most remote of a suite of rooms
extending along the south and west sides of the
court. Perhaps at a time when to be rich was
neither so common nor so safe as now, Provost
Edward might conceal his hoards in this massy
more.?
The north side of Lockhart?s Court was long
occupied by the family of Bruce of Kinnaird, the
celebrated traveller.
In Niddry?s Wynd, a little below Provost Edward?s
house on the opposite side, stood St.
Mary?s Chapel, dedicated to God and the Blessed
Virgin Mary, according to Arnot, in 1505. Its
foundress was Elizabeth, daughter of James, Lord
Livingstone, Great Chamberlain of Scotland, and
Countess of Ross-then widow of John Earl of
Ross and Lord of the Isles, who, undeterred by
the miserable fate of his father, drew on him, by
his treasonable practices, the just vengeance of
James III., and died in 1498.
Colville of Easter U?emyss, and afterwards
Richardson of Smeaton, became proprietors and
patrons of this religious foundation ; and about
the year 1600, James Chaliners, a macer before the
Court of Session, acquired a right to the chapel,
and in 1618 the Corporations of Wrights and
Masons, known by the name of the United Incorporations
of Mary?s Chapel, purchased this subject,
?where they still possess, and where they hold
meetings,? says Arnot, writing in 1779.
In the CaZedonian Mercury for 1736 we read
that on St. Andrew?s Day the masters and wardens
of forty masonic lodges met in St. Mary?s Chapel,
and unanimously elected as their grand-master
William Sinclair of Roslin, the representative of
an ancient though reduced family, connected for
several generations with Scottish freemasonry.
For this ancient chapel a modern edifice was
substituted, long before the demolition of Niddry?s
Wynd; but the masonic lodge of Mary?s Chapel
still exists, and we believe holds its meetings
there.
Religious services were last conducted in the
new edifice when Viscountess Glenorchy hired it.
She was zealous in the cause of religion, and conceived
a plan of having a place of worship in
which ministers of every orthodox denomination
might preach; and for this purpose she had St.
Mary?s Chapel opened on Wednesday, the 7th
March, 1770, by the Rev. Mr. Middleton, the
minister of a small Episcopal chapel at Dalkeith ;
but she failed to secure the ministrations of any
clergyman of the Established Church, though in
1779 the Rev. William Logan, of South Leith, a
poet of some eminence in his time, gave his course
of lectures on the philosophy of history in the
chapel, prior to offering himself as a candidate for
the chair of civil history in the University.
On the east side of Niddry?s Wynd, nearly opp0-
site to Lockhart?s Court, was a handsome house,
which early in the eighteenth century was inhabited
by the Hon. James Erskine, a senator, better
known by his legal and territorial appellation of
Lord Grange, brother of John Earl of Mar, who
led? the great rising in 1715 on behalf of the
Stuarts. He was born in 1679, and was called to
the Scottish bar in 1705. He took no share in
the Jacobite enterprise which led to the forfeiture
of his brother, and the loss, ultimately of
the last remains of the once great inheritance in
the north from which the ancient family took its
name.
He affected to be a zealous Presbyterian and
adherent of the House of Hanover, and as such he
figures prominently in the ?? Diary? of the indus .
trious \ffodrow, supplying that writer with many
shreds of the Court gossip, which he loved so
dearly ; but Lord Grange is chiefly remembered for
the romantic story of his wife, which has long filled
