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,
