270 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Stmt.
were also struck some very small copper coins
called pennies, worth one-twelfth of the sterling
penny, inscribed, Nemo me imjun.? lamsit; but in
those days the manufacture of coins was not confined
to the capital alone.
Balfour records that, in 1604, ? the Laird of
Merchiston, General of the Cunyie House, went to
London to treat with the English Commissioners
anent the (new) cunyie, who, to the great amaLement
of the English, carried his business with a
great deal of dexterity and skill.?
In the closing days of the Mint as an active
establishment, the coining-house was in the ground
floor of the building on the north side of the
court; in the adjoining house on the east the
coinage was polished and fitted for circulation.
The chief instruments used were a hammer and
steel dies, upon which the various devices were
engraved. The metal being previously prepared of
the proper fineness and thickness, was cut into
longitudinal slips, and a square piece being cut
from the slip, it was afterwards rounded and
adjusted to the weight of the coin to be made.
The blank pieces of metal were then placed
between two dies, and the upper one struck with
a hammer. After the Restoration another method
was introduced at Gray?s Close-that of the mill
and screw, which, modified with many improvements,
is still in use. At the Union, the ceremony
of destroying the dies of the Scottish coinage took
place in the Mint. After being heated red hot in
a furnace: they were defaced by three impressions
of a punch, ?which were of course visible on the
dies as long as they existed; but it must be recorded
that all these implements, which would now
have been great curiosities, are lost, and none of
the machinery remains but the press, which, weighing
about half a ton, was rather too large to be
readily appropriated, otherwise it would have
followed the rest.?
The Scottish currency was, when abolished in
1707, of only one-twelfth the value sterling, and
LIOO Scots equalled &3 6s. 8d. sterling; or LI
Scots equalled IS. 8d. sterling. The merk was
13s. 4d. Scots, and the plack, z bodles, equal to
4d. Scots.
The ancient key of the Mint is preserved, with
some other relics of it, in the Scottish Antiquarian
The goldsmiths connected with the Mint appear
to have had apartments either within the quadrangle
or in its immediate neighbourhood, and
there is no doubt that it was the professional avocations
of the great George Heriot that led to his
obtaining the large tenement that formed the north
d Museum.
side of the Mint court which, during his lifetime,
he conceived to be the most central and suitable
place for the erection of his future hospital, and
which he describes in his will (see the Appendix
to Stevens? biography) as ?theis my tenements of
landes, &c., lyacd on the south side of the King
his High Streit thairof, betwixt the Cloise. or
Venall, callit Gray?s Clois, or Coyne-hous Cloise,
at the east, the Wynd or Venall, callit Todrig?s
Wynd, at the west, and the said Cope-how Cloise
at the south.?
His tenements there were found to be ruinous,
and every way unsuitable for the purpose for which
they were designed by his executors, and the buildings
which afterwards formed the north side of the
quadrangle were those erected in the reign of
Charles 11. in 1674.
On the zznd of February, 1656, during the Protectorate
of Cromwell, a committee was appointed
by the Commissioners of the shire of Edinburgh,
for the equalisation of the assessment, ?and for
the more speedie effectuating thereof, the whole
heritors, liferenters, woodsetters, and other persons
whatsomever, liable in payment of cess,? were
ordered to appear before the said committee, at
the Judge Advocate?s lodging at foot of Gray?s
Close, on certain forenoons in March, according to
a paper in the SrotfisZ Liferary Magazine for
The door to the floors above the coining-house
in the Mint bore the letters ?C. R. II., God save
the King, 1674.? Here was the lodging of Archibald
ninth earl of -4rgyle, during his attendance on
the Parliament, after Charles 11. had most unexpectedly
restored him to his father?s title. Under
date November zznd, 1681, only a few days after
the escape of the Earl from the Castle, disguised as
his stepdaughter?s page, Lord Fountainhall records
that ?Joseph Brown and James Clark, having
poinded the Earl of Argyle?s cabinet forth of the
coin-house at Edinburgh, for a debt owing to them
by the Earl?s bond, the said cabinet having been
rescued from them by violence, they gave in a
complaint to the Privy Council of the riotous deforcement.?
In defeuce it was alleged that the Mint was a
sanctuary, and no poinding could be enforced
there. It was answered that it was unknown
whether it was by law or usurpation that the Mint
was an asylum, and that it could protect only those
in the service of the King j ?? but to extend this to
extraneous persons running in there to avoid captions,
much less to secure goods and plenishing, &c.,
is absurd. They fearing the want of this, alleged
that the wright who made it (the cabinet) retained
1819.
High Street.] DR. CULLEN. 271 -
it jure tan?io hyfotheca till he was paid the price
of it.?
The same house was, in the succeeding century,
occupied by Dr. William Cullen, the eminent
physician; while Lord Hailes lived in the more
ancient lodging in the south portion of the Mint,
prior to his removal to the modern house which
he built for himself in New Street, Canongate.
William Cullen was born in Lanarkshire, in
1710, and after passing in medicine at Glasgow,
made several voyages as surgeon of a merchantman
between London and the Antilles; but tiring of
thesea, he took a country practice at Hamilton,
and his luckily curing the duke of that name of an
illness, secured him a patronage for the future, and
after various changes, in 1756, on the death of Dr.
Plummer, he took the vacant chair of chemistry
in the University of Edinburgh. On the death
of Dr. Piston he succeeded him as lecturer in
materia medica, and three years afterwards resigned
the chair of chemistry to his own pupil,
Dr. Black, on being appointed professor of the
theory of medicine.
As a lecturer Dr. Cullen exercisedagreat influence
over the state of opinion relative to the science
of medicine, and successfully combated the specious
doctrines of Boerhaave depending on the
humoral pathology ; his own system was founded
on the enlarged view of the principles of Frederick
Hoffnian. The mere enumeration of his works on
medicine would fill a page, but most of them were
translated into nearly every European language.
. He continued his practice as a physician as well as
his medical lectures till a few months before his
death, when the infirmities of age induced him to
resign his professorship, and one of many addresses
he received on that occasion was the following :-
? On the 8th of January, 1790, the Lord Provost,
magistrates, and Council of Edinburgh, voted a
piece of plate of fifty guineas of value to Dr. Cullen,
as a testimony of their respect for his distinguished
merits and abilities and his eminent services to the
university during the period of thirty-four years,
in which he has held an academical chair. On the
plate was engraved an inscription expressive of the
high sense the magistrates, as patrons of the university,
had of the merit of the Professor, and of
their esteem and regard.?
Most honourable to him also were the resolutions
passed on the 27th of January by the entire
Senatus Academicus ; but he did not survive those
honours long, as he died at his house in the Mint,
on the 5th of February, 1790, in his eightieth year.
By his wife-a Miss Johnston, who died there in
1786-he had a numerous family. One of his
sons, Robert, entered at the Scottish Bar in 1764,
and distinguishing himself highly as a lawyer, was
raised to the bench in 1796, as Lord Cullen. He
cultivated elegant literature, and contributed several
papers of acknowledged talent to the Mirror and
Lounger; but it was chiefly in the art of conversation
that he shone. When a young man, and
resident with his father in the Mint Close, he was
famous for his power of mimicry. He was very
intimate with Dr. Robertson, the historian, then
Principal of the university.
?TO show that Robertson was not likely to be
imitated it may be mentioned from the report of a
gentleman who has often heard him making public
orations, that when the students observed him pause
for a word, and would themselves mentally supply
it they invariably found that the word which he did
use was different from that which they had hit upon.
Cullen, however, could imitate him to the life, either
in the more formal speeches, or in his ordinary discourse.
He would often, in entering a house which
the Principal was in the habit of visiting, assume
his voice in the lobby and stair, and when arrived
at the drawing-room door, astonish the family by
turning out to be-Bob Cullen.?
On the west side of the Mint were at one time
the residences of Lord Belhaven, the Countess of
Stair, Douglas of Cavers, and other distinguished
tenants, including Andrew Pnngle, raised to the
bench, as Lord Haining, in I 7 29. The main entrance
to these lodgings, like that on the south, was by a
stately flight of steps and a great doorway, furnished
with an enormous knocker, and a beautiful example
of its ancient predecessor, the nsp, or Scottish
tirling-pin.
The Edinhqh Courant of August 12,1708, has
the following strange announcement :-
?I George Williamson, translator (i.e. cobbler) in
Edinburgh, commonly known by the name of Bowed
Geordie, who swims on face, back, or any posture,
forwards or backwards, and performs all the antics
that any swimmer can do, is willing to attend any
gentlemen and to teach them to swim, or perform
his antics for their divertisement : is to be found at
Luckie Reid?s, at the foot of Gray?s Close, on the
south side of the street, Edinburgh.?
Elphinstone?s Court, in the close adjoining the
Mint, was so namedfrom Sir James Elphinstone, who
built it in 1679, and from whom the loftytenement
therein passed to Sir Francis Scott of Thirlstane.
The latter sold it to Patrick Wedderburn, who
assumed the title of Lord Chesterhall on his elevation
to the bench in 1755. His son, Alexander
Wedderburc, afterwards Lord Loughborough, first
Earl of Rosslyn, and Lord High Chancellor of
