cyloagate.1 HANNAH ROBERTSON. 21
of stone with a
Panmure of Forth, and was the last who possessed
this house, in which he was resident in the middle
of the last century, and was succeeded in it by the
Countess of Aberdeen.
From 1778 till his death, in 1790, it formed the
residence of Adam Smith, author of ? The Wealth
of Nations,? after he came to Edinburgh as Commissioner
of the Customs, an appointment obtained
by the friendship of the Duke of Buccleuch. A few
days before his death, at Panmure House, he gave
orders to destroy all his mandscripts except some
detached essays, which were afterwards published
by his executors, Drs. Joseph Black and Janies
Hutton, and his library, a valuable one, he left to
his nephew, Lord Reston. From that old mansion
the philosopher was borne to his grave in an obscure
nook of the Canongate churchyard. During
the - last years of his blameless life his bachelor
household had been managed by a female cousin,
Miss Jeanie Douglas, who acquired a great control
? had attained her
From her published memoir-which, after its first
appearance in 1792, reached a tenth edition in
1806, and was printed by James Tod in Forrester?s
Wynd-and from other sources, we learn that she
was the widow of Robert Robertson, a merchant
in Perth, and was the daughter of a burgess named
George Swan, son of Charles 11. and Dorothea
Helena, daughter of John Kirkhoven, Dutch baron
of Ruppa, the beautiful Countess of Derby, who had
an intrigue with the king during the protracted
absence of her husband in Holland, Charles, eighth
earl, who died in 1672 without heirs.
According to her narrative, the child was given
to nurse to the wife of Swan, a gunner at Windsor,
a woman whose brother, Bartholomew Gibson, was
the king?s farrier at Edinburgh; and it would
further appear that the latter obtained on trust for
George Swan, from Charles 11. or his brother the
Duke of York, a grant of lands in New Jersey,
where Gibson?s son died about 1750, as would
over him.
At the end of Panmure Close
was the mansion of John
Hunter, a wealthy burgess, who
was Treasurer of the Canongate
in 1568, and who built it in
1565, when Mary was on the
throne. Wilson refers to it as
the earliest private edifice in
the burgh, and says ?it consists,
like other buildings of
the period, of a lower erection
forestair leading to the first floor, and an ornamental
turnpike within, affording access to the
upper chambers. At the top of a very steep
wooden stair, constructed alongside of the latter,
a very rich specimen of carved oak panelling
remains in good preservation, adorned with the
Scottish lion, displayed within a broad wreath and
surrounded by a variety of ornaments. The doorway
of the inner turnpike bears on the sculptured
lintel the initials I. H., a shield charged with a
chevron, and a hunting horn in base, and the
date 1565.? It bore also a comb with six teeth.
It was demolished in August, 1853.
A little lower down are Big and Little Lochend
Closes, which join each other near the bottom and
TU into the north back of the Canongate. In the
former are some good houses, but of no great antiquity.
One of these was occupied by Mr. Gordon
of Carlton in 1784; and in the other, during the
close of the last and first years of the present century,
there resided a remarkable old lady, named
Mrs Hannah Robertson, who was well known in her
time as a reputed grand-daughter of Charles 11.
appear from a notice in the
Lndon ChronicZe for 1771.
Be all this as it may, the old
lady referred to was a great
favourite with all those of
Jacobite proclivities, and at the
dinners of the Jacobite Club
always sat on the right hand of
the president, till her death,
which occurred in Little Lochend
Close in 1808, when she
eighty-fourth year, and a vast - . . .
concourse attended her funeral, which took place
in the Friends? burial-place at the Pleasance.
Unusually tall in stature, and beautiful even in old
age, her figure, with black velvet capuchin and
cane, was long familiar in the streets of Edinburgh.
From a passage in the ?Edinburgh Historical Register?
for 1791-2, she would appear to have been
a futile applicant for a pension to the Lords of the
Treasury, though she had many powerful friends,
including the Duchess of Gordon and the Countess
of Northesk, to whom she dedicated a book named
?? The Lady?s School of Arts.?
One of the most picturesque and interesting
houses in the Canongate is one situated in what
was called Davidson?s Close, the old ?White Horse
Hostel,? on a dormer window of which is the date
1603. It was known as the ?White Horse? a
century and more before the accession of the
House of Hanover, and is traditionally said to
have taken its name from a favourite white palfrey
when the range of stables that form its basement
had been occupied as the royal mews. The adjacent
Water Gate took its name from a great
