Currie?s, and Dewar?s Closes on the north side of
the market, were all doomed to destruction by the
late City Improvement Act.
In the vicinity of the first-named alley, whose
distinctive title implied its former respectability as a
paved close, was a tenement, dated 1634, with a
fine antique window of oak and ornamental leaden
tracery, and an adjacent turnpike stair has the
THE CORN EXCHANGE, GRASSMARKET.
of December, 1793, so many members of the
memorable British Convention were seized and
made prisoners, with several English delegates,
when holding a political meeting for revolutionary
purposes and correspondence with the
French Republic.
In these transactions and meetings, Robert
Watt, a wine merchant, and David Downie, became
God . for , all . his . Giftis,? and the initials,
?L B. G. EL? .
In Currie?s Close was an ancient door, only two
feet nine inches broad, with the halfdefaced
legend :
GOD . GIVES THE . . . . RES . . . .
and the initials, ? G. B.? and ?? B. F,? and a shield
charged with a chevron and something like a boar?s
head in base.
In 1763 such a diversion as cockfighting was
utterly unknown in Edinburgh, but in twenty years
after, regular matches or maim, as they were technically
termed, were held, and a regular cockpit for
this school of gambling and cruelty was built in
the Grassmarket, and there it was that, on the 12th
death for high treason. After the dispersion of
the British Convention in the Grassmarket, they
became active members of a ? Committee of
Union,? to collect the sense of the nation, and of
another body styled the Committee of Ways and
Means,? of which Downie, who was a goldsmith in
the Parliament Close, and an office-bearer of his
corporation, was appointed treasurer. In unison
With the London Convention, the ?? Friends of the
People ? in Edinburgh had lost all hope of redress
for their alleged .political wrongs by constitutional
means, and designs of a dangerous nature were
considered-wild schemes, of which Watt was the
active promoter.
Their first attempt was to suborn the Hopetoun
Fencibles, then at Dalkeith, and under orders for
