242 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cowgate.
mentioned as residents in it in 1501. He was
Provost in 1425, and was succeeded in 1434 by
Sir Henry Preston of Craigmillar.
Other alleys are mentioned as having existed
in the sixteenth century : Swift?s Wynd, Aikman?s
Close, and ?the Eirle of Irgyllis Close,? in the
Dean of Guild?s Accounts in 1554, and Blacklock?s
Close, where the unfortunate Earl of Northumberland
was lodged in the house of Alexander Clarke,
when he was betrayed into the hands of the
Regent Moray in December, 1569. ,In a list of
citizens, adherents of Queen Mary, in ?1571, are two
glassier-wnghts, one of them named Steven Loch,
probably the person commemorated in Stevenlaw?s
Close, in the High Street.
From Palfrey?s bustling inrrj at the Cowgate-head,
the Dunse fly was wont to take its departure
twice weekly at 8 a.m in the beginning of the
century; and in 1780 some thirty carriers? wains
arrived there and departed weekly. Wilson says
that ?Palfrey?s, or the King?s Head Inn, is a fine
antique stone land of the time of Charles I. An
inner court is enclosed by the buildings behind,
and it long remained one of the best frequented
inns in old Edinburgh, being situated at the junktion
of two of the principal approaches to the town
from the south and west.?
In this quarter MacLellan?s Land, No. 8, a lofty
tenement which forms the last in the range of
houses on the north side of the street, has peculiar
interest from its several associations. Towards the
middle of the last century this edifice-the windows
of which look straight up the Candlemaker-rowhad
as the occupant of its third floor Mrs. Syme, a
clergyman?s widow, with whom the father of Lord
Brougham came to lodge, and whose daughter became
his wife and the lady of Brougham Hall.
He died in 1810, and is buried in Restalrig churchyard.
Mrs. Broughain?s maiden aunt continued to
reside in this house at the Cowgate-head till a
period subsequent to 1794.
In his father?s house, one of the flats in Mac-
Lellan?s Land, Henry Mackenzie, ?the Man of
Feeling,? resided at one time with his Wife and
family.
In the flat immediately below Mrs. Syme dwelt
Bailie John Kyd, a wealthy wine merchant, who
made no small noise in the city, and who figures
among Kay?s etchings. He was a Bailie of 1769,
and Dean of Guild in 1774.
So lately as 1824 the principal apartments in
No. 8 were occupied by an aged journeyman
printer, the father of John Nimmo, who became
conspicuous as the nominal editor of the Beacon,
as his name appeared to many of the obnoxious
articles therein. This paper soon made itself
notorious by its unscrupulous and scurrilous nature,
and its attacks on the private character of the
leading Whig nobles and gentlemen in Scotland,
which ended in Stuart of Dunearn horsewhipping
Mr. Stevenson in the Parliament Square. The
paper was eventually suppressed, and John Nimmo,
hearing of the issue of a Speaker?s warrant against
him, after appearing openly at the printing office
near the old back stairs to the Parliament House,
fled the same day from Leith in a smack, and did
not revisit Edinburgh for thirty-one years. He
worked long as a journeyman printer in the service
of the great Parisian house of M. Didot, and for
forty years he formed one of the staff of Ga&-
nanr?s Messenger, from which he retired with a
pension to Asni?eres, where he died in his eightysixth
year in February, 1879.
In this quarter of the Cowgate was born, in 1745,
Dr. James Graham (the son of a saddler), who was
a man of some note in his time as a lecturer and
writer on medical subjects, and whose brother
William married Catharine Macaulay, authoress of
a ?? History of England? and other works forgotten
now. In London Dr. Graham started an extraordinary
establishment, known as the Temple of
Health, in Pall Mall, where he delivered what were
termed Hyineneal Lectures, which in 1783 he redelivered
in st. Andrew?s Chapel, in Carrubber?s
Close. In his latter years he became seized with a
species of religious frenzy, and died suddenly in his
house, opposite the Archer?s Hall, in 1794.
In Bailie?s Court, in this quarter, lived Robert
Bruce, Lord Kennet, 4th July, 1764, successor on
the bench to Lord Prestongrange, and who died
in 1786. This court-latterly a broker?s yard for
burning bones-and Allison?s Close, which adjoins
it-a damp and inconveniently filthy place, though
but a few years ago one of the most picturesque
alleys in the Cowgate-are decorated at their
entrances with passages from the Psalms, a custom
that superseded the Latin and older legends towards
the end of the seventeenth century.
In Allison?s Close a door-head bears, but sorely
defaced, in Roman letters, the lines from the 120th
Psalm :-?? In my distress I cried unto the Lord,
and he heard me. Deliver my soul, 0 Lord, from
lying lips and from a deceitful tongue.?
In Fisher?s Close, which led directly up to the
Lawnmarket, there is a well of considerable
antiquity, more than seventy feet deep, in which a
man was nearly drowned in 1823 by the flagstone
that covered it suddenly giving way.
The fragment of a house, abutting close to the
northern pier of the centre arch of George IV.
.
Cowgate-l CAPTAIN CAYLEY. 243
Bridge, with a boldly moulded doorway, inscribed,
TECUM HABITA, 1616,
(i.e., ? keep at home ? or ? mind your own affairs ?)
indicates the once extensive tenement occupied by
the celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, King?s Advocate
of Charles I. in 1626, and one of the foremost men
.in Scotland, and who organised that resolute opposition
to the king?s unwise interference with the
Scottish Church, which ultimately led to the great
civil war, the ruin of Charles and his English
councillors.
This mansion was one of the finest and most
spacious of its day, and possessed a grand oak
staircase. ?AT HOSPES HUMO? was carved upon
one of the lintels, an anagram on the name of the
sturdy old Scottish statesman. In the Coltness
Collections, published by the Maitland Club, is
the following remark :-?? If the house near Cowgeat-
head, north syde that street, was built by
Sir Thomas Hope, the inscription on one of the
lintall-stones supports this etymologie-(viz., that
the Hopes derive their name from Houblon, the
Hopplant, and not from Zq%rance, the virtue of
the mind), for the anagram is At hs&s humo, and
has all the letters of Thomas Houpe.? But Hope
is a common name, and the termination of many
localities in Scotland.
In the tapestried chambers of this old Cowgate
mansion were held many of the Councils that led
to the formation of the noble army of the Covenant,
the camp of Dunselaw, and the total rout of the
English troops at Newburnford. Hope was held
by the Cavaliers in special abhorrence. ?Had
the d-d old rogue survived the Restohtion
he would certainly have been hanged,? wrote C.
Kirkpatrick Sharpe. ?My grandfather?s grandfather,
Sir Charles Erskine of Alva, disgraced
himself by marrying his daughter, an ugly slut.?
Honours accorded to him by Charles failed to
detach him from the national cause; in 1638 he
was one of the framers of the Covenant, and in
1645 was a Commissioner of Exchequer. Two of
his sons being raised to the bench while he was
yet Lord Advocate, he was allowed to wear his hat
when pleading before them, a privilege which the
Ring?s Advocate has ever since enjoyed.
He died in 1646, but must have quitted his
Cowgate mansion some time before that, as it
became the residence of Mary, Countess of John,
seventh Earl of Mar, guardian of Henry Duke
of Rothesay (afterwards Prince of Wales). She was
the daughter of Esme Stuart, Lord D?Aubigne and
Duke of Lennox, and she died in Hope?s house on
the 11th May, 1644.
These and the adjacent tenements, removed to
make way for the new bridge, were all of varied
character and of high antiquity, displaying in some
instances timber fronts and shot windows.
A little farther eastward were the old Back
Stairs, great flights of stone steps that led through
what was once the Kirkheugh, to the Parliament
Close. Here resided the young English officer,
Captain Cayley, whose death at the hands of the
beautiful Mrs. Macfarlane, on the 2nd October,
1716, made much noise in its time, and was referred
to by Pope in one of his letters to Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu.
Captain John Cayley, Commissioner of Customs,
was a conspicuous member of a little knot of unwelcome
and obnoxious English officials, whom
new arrangements subsequent to the Union had
brought into Edinburgh. He seems to have been
a vain . and handsome fellow, whose irregular
passions left him little prudence or discretion.
Among his new acquaintances in the Scottish
capital was a young married woman of uncommon
beauty, the daughter of Colonel Charles Straitona
well-known adherent of James VII1.-and wife
of John Macfarlane, Writer to the Signet, at one
time agent to Simon Lord Lovat. By her mother?s
side she was the grand-daughter of Sir Andrew
Forester.
One Saturday forenoon Mrs. Macfarlane, then
only in her twentieth year, and some months
enceinte, was exposed by the treachery of Captain
Cayley?s landlady to an insult of the most atrocious
kind on his part, in his house adjacent to the Back
Stairs-one account says opposite to them. On
the Tuesday following he visited Mrs. Macfarlane
at her own house, and was shown into the drawingroom,
anxious-his friends alleged--to apologise
for his recent rudeness. Other accounts say that
he had meanly and revengefully circulated reports
derogatory to her honour, and that she was resolved
to punish him. Entering the room with a brace of
pistols in her hand, she ordered him to leave the
house instantly. .
?What, madam,? said he, ? d?ye design to act a
comedy?? ?If you do not retire instantly you
will find it a tragedy!? she replied, sternly.
As he declined to obey her command, she fired
one of the pistols-cayley?s own pair, borrowed but
a few days before by her husband-and wounded
his left wrist With what object-unless selfpreservation-
it is impossible to say, Cayley drew
his sword, and the moment he did so, she shot him
through the heart So close were they together
that Cayley?s shirt was burned at the left sleeve by
one pistol, and at the breast by the other,
