38 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [canomgate.
IN the map of the city engraved in 1787 for the
quarto edition of ? Arnot?s History ? there is shown,
.on the west side of the Horse Wynd, adjoining the
Abbey Close, an edifice called Lothian Hut, surbordered
on madness, and, indeed, prior to her
niarriage she had been confined in a strait-waistcoat.
Her beauty has been celebrated coarsely
by Pope, and her irrepressible temper by Prior :-
? Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untarncd,
Bespoke the fair from whom she sprung,
By little rage inflamed:
Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
Which wise mamma ordained ;
And sorely vexed to play the saint
Whilst wit and beauty reigned.?
After the duke and duchess had embroiled themselves
with the Court in 1729, in consequence of
patronising the poet Gay, they came to Queensberry
House, and brought himwith them. Tradition used
to indicate an attic in an old mansion opposite,
as the place where-appropriate abode of a poet-
Gay wrote the ? Beggar?s Opera ?-? an entirely gratuitous
assumption,? says Mr. Chambers. I? In the
history of his writings nothing of consequence
occurs at this time. He had finished the second
part of the opera some time before, and after his
return to the south he is found engaged in new
writing a damned play, which he wrote several years
before, called ? The Wife of Bath,? a task which he
accomplished while living with the Duke of Queensberry
in Oxfordshire, during the ensuing months of
August, September, and October.?
The Duchess Catharine disliked the Scots and
their manners, particularly the use of a knife in
lieu of a fork, on which she would scream out and
beseech them not to cut their throats. ?To the
lady I live with,? wrote Gay to Swift in 1729, ?I
o ve my life and fortune. Think of her with respect,
value and esteem her as I do, and never more
despise a fork with three prongs.? When in Scotland
she always dressed herself as a peasant-girl,
to ridicule the stately dresses and demeanour of the
Scottish dames who visited Queensberry House or
Drumlanrig, and this freak of costume led to her
being roughly repelled at a review. Her eldest
rounded by trees. This was the small but magnificently
finished town mansion of the Lothian
family, and was built by William, the third Marquis,
about the year 1750, when Lord Clerk Register Qf
son, the Earl of Drurnlanrig, was altogether mad,
and contracted himself to one lady while he married
another, a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun.
He served two campaigns under the Earl of Stair,
and commanded two battalions of Scots in the
Dutch service. But in 1754 the family malady
proved so strong for him, that during a journey
to London he rode on before the coach in which
the duchess travelled, and shot himself with one of
his pistols. It was given out that it had gone off
by accident His brother Charles, after narrowly
escaping the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, died
in the following year.
On the death of their father, in 1778, the titp
and estates devolved on his cousin, the Earl of
March, an old debauchee, better known as ? Old
Q.? In his time, and before it, Queensberry
House had other occupants than the Douglases.
In 1747 the famous Marshal Earl of Stair died
there; and in 1784 it was the residence of the
Right Hon. James Montgomery of Stanhop, Lord
Chief Baron of Exchequer-the first Scotsman who
held that office after the establishment of the Court
at the Union. Prior to his removal to Queensberry
House (of which the duke gave him gratuitous use)
he had occupied the third flat of the Bishop?s Land,
formerly occupied by the Lord President Dundas.
In 1801 the blast! ?? Old Q. ? ordered Queensberry
House to be stripped of its decorations, and
sold. With fifty-eight fire rooms, and a noble
gallery seventy feet long, besides a spacious garden,
it was offered at the singularly low upset price of
A900, and was bought by Government as a barrack.
It is now, and has been since 1853, a House of
Refuge for the Destitute, in which upwards of
12,000 persons are relieved every year, or an
average of thirty-three nightly for the twelvemonth,
while during the same period nearly 40,000 meals
of broth and bread are issued from the soup kitchen.
A very handsome building, in baronial style, called
Queensberry Lodge, adjoins it, for the reception
and treatment of inebriates-but ladies only.
Canongate.] THE TENNIS COURT. ? 39
Scotland, and who for some years had been Commissioner
to the General Assembly. In this house
he died, 28th July, 1767, as recorded in the Scots
Magazine, and was succeeded by his son, Major-
General the Earl of Ancrum, Colonel of the 11th
Light Dragoons (now Hussars). His second son,
Lord Robert, had been killed at Culloden.
His marchioness, Margaret, the daughter of Sir
Thomas Nicholson, Bart., of Kempnay, who survived
him twenty years, resided in Lothian Hut
till her death. It was afterwards occupied by the
dowager of the ? fourth Marquis, Lady Caroline
D?Arcy, who was only daughter of Robert Earl
of Holderness, and great-grand-daughter of Charles
Louis, the Elector Palatine, a lady whose character
is remembered traditionally to have been both
grand and amiable. Latterly the Hut was the
residence of Professor Dugald Stewart, who, about
the end of the last century, entertained there many
English pupils of high rank. Among them, perhaps
the most eminent was Henry Temple, afterwards
Lord Palmerston, whose education, commenced
at Harrow, was continued at the University
of Edinburgh. When he re-visited the latter city in
1865, during his stay he was made aware that an
aged woman, named Peggie Forbes, who had been
a servant with Dugald Stewart at Lothian Hut,
was still alive, and residing at No. I, Rankeillor
Street. There the great statesman visited her, and
expressed the pleasure he felt at renewing the
acquaintance of the old domestic.
Lothian Hut, the scene of Dugald Stewart?s
most important literary labours, was pulled down
ih 1825, to make room for a brewery ; but a house
of the same period, at the south-west corner of the
Horse Wynd, bears still the name of Lothian
Vale.
A little to the eastward of the present White
Horse hostel, and immediately adjoining the Water
Gate, stood the Hospital of St. Thomas, founded
in 154r by George Crichton, Bishop of Dunkeld,
?dedicated to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and
all the saints.? It consisted of an almshouse and
chapel, the bedesmen of which were ?to celebrate
the founder?s anniversary obit. by solemnly singing
in the choir of Holyrood church yearly, on the
day of his death, ?the Placebo and Dinie for the
repose of his soul ? and the soul of the King of
Scotland. ? Special care,? says Amot, ? was taken
in allotting money for providing candles to be
lighted during the anniversary ma.ss of requiem,
and the number and size of the tapers were fixed
with a precision which shows the importance in
which these circumstances were held by the founder.
The number of masses, paternosters, aye-marias,
and credos, to be said by the chaplain and bedesmen
is distinctly ascertained.?
The patronage of the institution was vested by
the founder in himself and a certain series of representatives
named by him.
In 1617, with the consent of David Crichton of
Lugton, the patron, who had retained possession
of the endowments, the magistrates of the Canongate
purchased the chapel and almshouse from the
chaplains and bedesmen, and converted the institution
into a hospital for the poor of the burgh.
Over the entrance they placed the Canongate arms,
supported by a pair of ?cripples, an old man and
woman, with the inscription-
HELP HERE THE POORE, AS ZE WALD GOD DID ZOV.
JUNE 19, 1617.
The magistrates of the Canongate sold the patronage
of the institution in 1634 to the Kirk Session,
by whom its revenues ? were entirely embezzled f
by 1747 the buildings were turned into coachhouses,
and in 1787 were pulled down, and replaced
by modem houses of hideous aspect.
On the opposite side of the Water Gate was the
Royal Tennis Court, the buildings of which are
very distinctly shown in Gordon?s map of 1647.
Maitland says it was anciently called the Catchpel,
from Cache, a game now called Fives, a favourite
amusement in Scotland as early as the reign of
James IV. The house, a long, narrow building,
with a court, after being a weavers? workhouse,
was burned down in 1771, and rebuilt in the
tasteless fashion of that period ; but the locality is
full of interest, as being connected not only with
the game of tennis, as played there by the Duke
of Albany, Law the great financial schemer, and
others, but the early and obscure history of the
stage in Scotland.
In 1554 there was a ??litill farsche and play
maid be William Lauder,? and acted before the
Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, for which he was
rewarded by two silver cups. Where it was acted
is not stated. Neither are we told where was perlormed
another play, ? made by Robert Simple ?
at Edinburgh, before the grim Lord Regent and
others of the nobility in 1567, and for which the
mthor was paid ;E66 13s. 4d.
The next record of .a post-Reformation theatre is
in the time of James VI. when several companies
came from London for the amusement of the court,
including one of which Shakspere was a member,
though his appearance cannot be substantiated.
In 1599 the company of English comedians was
interdicted by the clergy and Kirk Session,
though their performances, says Spottiswoode in
