343 - George Square.] LORD DUNCAN.
of the Scots Brigade, I have the honour to present
these colours to you, and I am very happy in
having this opportunity of expressing my wishes
that the brigade may continue by good conduct
to merit the approbation of our gracious sovereign,
and to ?maintain that high reputation which all
Europe knows that ancient and respectable corps
has most deservedly enjoyed.?
His address was received with great applause, - and many of the veterans who had served since
their boyhood in Holland were visibly affected.
We have already referred to the tragic results of
the Dundas riots in this square during 1792, when
the mob broke the windows of the Lord Advocate?s
house, and those of Lady Arniston and Admiral
Duncan, who, with a Colonel Dundas, came forth
and assailed the rabble with their sticks, but
were pelted with stones, and compelled to fly for
she1 t er.
The admiral?s house was KO. 5, on the north
side of the square, and it was there his family
resided while he hoisted his flag on board his ship
the Yenwable, and blockaded the Texel, till the
mutiny at the Nore and elsewhere compelled him
to bear up for the Yarmouth Roads; and in the
October of that year (1797) he won the great battle
of Camperdown, and with it a British peerage. The
great ensign and sword of the Dutch admiral he
brought home with him, and instead of presenting
them to Government, retained them in his own
house in George Square j and there, if we rernember
rightly, they were shown by him to Sir James
Hall of Dunglass, and his son, the future Captain
Basil Hall, then an aspirant for the navy, to
whom the admiral said, with honest pride, as he
led him into the room where the Dutch ensign
hung-
?Come, my lad, and 1?11 show you something
worth looking at.?
The great admiral died at Kelso in 1804, but
for inany years after that period Lady Duncan
resided in No. 5.
It was while the Lord Advocate Dundas was
resident in the square that, at the trial of Muir
and the other ?political martyrs,?? he spoke of
the leaders of the United Irishmen as ?? wretches
who had fled from punishment.? On this, Dr.
Drennan, as president, and Archibald Hamilton
Rowan of Killileagh, demanded, in 1793, a recantation
of this and other injurious epithets. No
reply was accorded, and as Mr. Rowan threatened
a hostile visit to Edinburgh, measures for his apprehension
were taken by the Procurator Fiscal.
Accompanied by the Hon. Simon Butler, Mr.
Rowan .arrived at Dumbreck?s Hotel, St. Andrew
Square, when the former, as second, lost no time
in visiting the Lord Advocate in George Square,
where he was politely received by his lordship,
who said that, ?although not bound to give any
explanation of what he might consider proper tu
state in his official capacity, yet he would answer
Mr. Rowan?s note without delay.? But Mr. Butler
had barely returned to Mr. Rowan when they were
both arrested on a sheriff?s warrant, but were liberated
on Colonel Norman Macleod, M.P., becoming
surety for them, and they left Edinburgh, after
being entertained at a public dinner by a select
number of the Friends of the People in Hunter?s
Tavern, Royal Exchange.
In No. 30 dwelt Lord Balgray for about thirty
years, during the whole time he was on the bench,
me of the last specimens of the old race of Scottish
judges ; and there he died in 1837.
In No. 32 lived for many years Francis Grant of
Kilgraston, whose fourth son, also Francis, became
President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted
[or great skill as an artist, and whose fifth son,
General Sir James Hope Grant, G.C.B., served
with such distinction under Lord Saltoun in China,
and subsequently in India, where he led the 9th
Lancers at Sobraon, and who further fought with
such distinction in the Punjaub war, and throughout
the subsequent mutiny, under Lord Clyde, and
whose grave in the adjacent Grange Cemeteryis
now so near the scenes of his boyhood.
In No. 36 lived Admiral Maitland of Dundrennan,
and in No. 53 Lady Don, who is said to have
been the last to use a private sedan chair.
No. 57 was the residence of the Lord Chief
Baron Dundas, and therein, on the 29th of May,
181 I, died, very unexpectedly, his uncle, the celebrated
Lord Melville, who had come to Edinburgh
to attend the funeral of his old friend the Lord
President Blair, who had died a few days before,
and was at that time lying dead in No. 56, the
house adjoining that in which Melville expired.
No. 58 was the house of Dr, Charles Stuart 01
Duneam in the first years of the present century.
His father, James Stuart of Dunearn, was a greatgrandson
of the Earl of Moray, and was Lord
Provost of the city in 1764 and 1768. The
doctor?s eldest son, James Stuart of Dunearn, W.S.,
a well-known citizen of Edinburgh, died in 1849.
The private sedan, so long a common feature
in the areas or lobbies of George Square, is no
longer to be seen there now. In the Edinburgh of
the eighteenth century there were fir more sedans
than coaches in use. The sedan was better suited
for the narrow wynds and narrower closes of the
city, and better fitted, under all the circmtances,
