274 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
THE mansion of the Earls of Iiyndford immediately
adjoined that of the Earls of Selkirk, and the
two edifices were thrown into one to form a
Catholic chopel house, but the former gave its name
to Hyndford's Close. " This was a Scottish peergallant
Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell, of the
Black Watch, whose memorable defence of Mangalore
from May, 1783, to January, 1784, arrested
the terrible career of Tippoo Sahib, and shed a
glory over the British campaign in Mysore. The
colonel died of exhaustion at Bombay soon after.
Upon leaving Elphinstone Court, his father resided
latterly in George Square, where he died in
June, 1801.
Midway up South Gray's Close, a tall turreted
mansion, with a tolerably good garden long attached
to it, and having an entrance from Hyndford's Close,
was the town residence of the Earls of Selkirkthere,
at least in 1742, resided Dunbar, fourth
Earl (eldest son of Basil Hamilton, of Baldoon),
who resumed the name of Douglas on his succeeding
to the honours of Selkirk. He married a
grand-daughter of Thomas, Earl of Haddington,
and had ten children, one of whom, Lord Daer, on
attaining manhood, became, at the commencement
of the French Revolution, an adherent of that
movement and a "Friend of the People;" and
deeming the article of the Union with England, on
which was founded the exclusion of the eldest sons
of Scottish peers from representing their native
country in Parlianient, and from voting at elections
there, injurious, insulting, and incorrectly
interpreted, he determined to try the question;
but decisions were given against him in the Court
of Session and House of Lords. He pre-deceased
his father, who died in 1799.
The next occupant of that old house was Dr.
Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany, and said
to be the first discoverer or inventor of gas. For
his thesis, on taking his degreesf M.D. at the
university of Edinburgh in 1772, he 'chose a
chemical subject, De Aere Mihifim, which, from
the originality of its views, obtained the highest
encomiums from Dr. Black. In this dissertation he
demonstrated, though without explaining its properties,
" the existence of a peculiar air, or new
age:" says Robert Chambers, " not without its
glories-witness particularly the third earl, who
acted as ambassador in succession to Prussia, to
Russia, and to Vienna. It is now extinct ; its
byoutme, its pictures, including portraits of Maria
gaseous fluid, to wliich some eminent modern
philosophers have given the name of azote, and
others of nitrogen."
That Dr. Rutherford first discovered this gas is
now generally admitted; ahd, as Bower remarks
in his " History of the University of Edinburgh,"
the reputation of his discovery being speedily
spread through Europe, his character as a chemist
of the first eminence was firmly established. He
died suddenly. on the 15th of December, 1819,
in his seventy-first year, and it was soniewhat remarkable
that one of his sisters died two days after
him, on the 17th, and another, the excellent mother
of Sir Walter Scott, within seven days of the latter,
viz., on the 24th of the same month, and that none
of the three knew of the death of the other, so
cumbrous were the postal arrangements of those
days. " Sir Walter Scott, who," says Robert Chambers,
'*being a nephew of that gentleman, was often
in the house in his young days, communicated to
me a curious circumstance connected with it. It
appears that the house immediately adjacent was
not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow ot
a coffin being camed down in decent fashion. It
had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a servitude
upon Dr. Rutherford's house, conferring the
perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates
through a passage into that house, and down ifs
stair into the lane," thus affording another curious
example of how confined and narrow were the
abodes of the ancient citizens. It was latterly the
priest's house of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic
church, and was beautifully restored by the late
Dr. Marshall, but is now demolished.
In Edgar's 'map of Edinburgh in 1765 the
whole space between the Earl of Selkirk's house
on the west and St. hfary's Wynd on the east, and
between the Marquis of Tweeddale's house on the
north,'nearly to the Cowgate Port on the south, is
shown as a fine open space, pleasantly 'planted
with rows of trees and shrubbery.
High Street.] THE MAXWELLS OF MONREITH. 275
Theresa, and other royal and imperial personages,
which had been presented as friendly memorials to
the ambassador, have all been dispersed by the
salesman?s hammer, and Hyndford?s Close, on my
trying to get into it lately in 186P, was inaccessible
(literally) from filth.? Another writer, in 1856, says
in his report to the magistrates, ?that, with proper
drainage, causeway, and cleanliness, it might be
made quite respectable.?
Prior to the Carmichaels of Hyndford it had
been, for a time, the residence of the Earls of
Stirling, the first of whom ruined himself in tEx
colonisation of Nova Scotia, for which place he
set sail with fourteen ships filled with emigrants
and cattle in 1630. Here then, in this now
humble but once most picturesque locality-for
the house was singularly so, with its overhanging
timber gables, its small court and garden sloping
to the south-lived John third Earl of Hyndford,
the living representative of a long line of warlike
ancestors, including Sir John Carmichael of that
ilk, who broke a spear with the Duke of Clarence
at the battle of Bauge-en-Anjou, when the Scots
routed the English, the Duke was slain, and Carmichael
had added to his paternal arms a dexter
hand and arm, holding a broken spear,
In 1732 he was Lieutenant-Colonel of a company
in the Scots Foot Guards, and was twice
Commissioner to the General Assembly before
1740, and was Lord of Police in Scotland. In the
following year, when Frederick the Great invaded
Silesia, he was sent as plenipotentiary extraordinary
to adjust the differences that occasioned the
war, and at the conclusion of the Treaty of Breslau
had the Order of the Thistle conferred upon him
by George II., receiving at the same time a grant
from Frederick, dated at Berlin, 30th September,
1742, for adding the eagle of Silesia to his paternal
arms of Xyndford, with the motto Ex bene merifo.
He was six years an ambassador at the Russian
Court, and it wasbyhis able negociations that 30,000
Muscovite troops contributed to accelerate the
peace which was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle.
These stimng events over, the year 1752 saw
him leave his old abode in that narrow close off
the High Street, to undertake a mission of the
greatest importance to the Court of Vienna. On
the death of Andrew Earl of Hyndford and Viscount
Inglisberry, in r817, the title became extinct,
but is claimed by a baronet of the name 01
Carmichael.
The entry and stair on the west side of Hyndford?s
Close was always a favourite residence, in
consequence of the ready access to it from the
High Street.
In the beginning of the reign of George 111. here
lived Lady Maxwell of Monreith, d e Magdalene
Blair of that ilk, and there she educated and
reared her three beautiful daughters-Catharine,
Jane, and Eglantine (or Eglintoun, so named after
the stately Countess Susanna who !ived in the Old
Stamp Office Close), the first of whom became the
wife of Fordyce of Aytoune, the second in 1767,
Duchess of Gordon, and the third, Lady Wallace
of Craigie.
Their house had a dark passage, and in going
to the dining-room the kitchen door was passed,
according to an architectural custom, common in
old Scottish and French houses; and such was
the thrift and so cramped the accommodation
in those times, that in this passage the laces
and fineries of the three young beauties were
hung to dry, while coarser garments were displayed
from a window pole, in the fashion
common to this day in the same localities for the
convenience of the poor. ? So easy and familiar
were the manners of the great, fabled to be so
stiff and decorous,? says the author of ?Traditions
of Edinburgh,? who must vouch for the story,
? that Mis,s Eglantine, afterwards Lady Wallace,
used to be sent across the street to the Fountain
Well for water to make tea. Lady Maxwell?s
daughters were the wildest romps imaginable. An
old gentleman who was their relation, told me that
the first time he saw these beautiful girls was in
the High Street, where Miss Jane, afterwards
Duchess of Gordon, was riding upon a sow, which
Miss Eglantine thumped lustily behind with a
stick. It must be understood that in the middle
of the eighteenth century vagrant swine went as
commonly about the streets of Edinburgh a?s dogs
do in our own day, and were more generally followed
as pets by the children of the last generation.
It may, however, be remarked, that the sows upon
which the Duchess of Gordon and her witty sister
rode when children, were not the common va,mnts
of the High Street, but belonged to Peter Ramsay,
of the inn in St. Mary?s Wynd, and were among
the last that were permitted to roam abroad. The
romps used to watch the animals as they were let
loose in the forenoon in the stable yard (where they
lived among the horse litter) and got upon their
backs the moment they issued from the close.?
Their eldest brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell,
of the 74th Highlanders, commanded the
grenadier companies of the army under Cornwallis
in the war against Tippoo, and died in India in
1800.
In the same stair with Lady Maxwell lived Anne
Dalrymple, Countess of James firth Earl of Bal
