250 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cowgate.
CHAPTER XXXII.
C0WGATE
The South Side of the Street--The High School Wynd-? Claudero?-Robertson?s Close-House of the Bishops of Dnnkeld-Tomb of Gavin
Douglas-Kuk-of-Field and College Wynd-House of the Earls of Queensberq-Robcrt Monteith-Oliver Goldsmith-Dr. Joseph Black
-House in which Sir Walter Swtt was born-St. Petu?s Pad-House of Andro Symmi, the Printer, 1@7-The Horse Wynd-
Galloway House-Guthrie Stract-Tailors? Hall-French Ambassador?s Chapel and John Dickison?s House-Tam 0? the Cowgate and Jam-
VI.-The Hammermen?s Land and Hall-Magdalenc Chapel-John Craig-A Glance at the Ancient Corporations-The Hammumen-
Their Charter--Seal and Pmgress-The Cardin-First Strike in the Trade-Skinners and Furriers-Websters-Hat and Bonnetm
a L e r s - F l e s h e r s - C w ~ o p e r s T a i l o r s C o n d k - m n L .
PROCEEDING westward from the point we have
left, the mutilated range of buildings on the south
side, between George Heriot?s School (the site of
the old Cowgate Port) and the foot of what was
the High School Wynd, show fragments of what
were, in their day, exceedingly picturesque old
timber-fronted tenements, of a very early date, but
which were far inferior in magnificence to the Mint
which stood opposite to them This Wynd was
originally a narrow and rather lonely road or path,
that led towards the Dominican monastery, and
westward to the house of the Kirk-of-Field. A
finely-carved lintel, which surmounted the doorway
of an antique range of tenements, is described
by Wilson, as having been replaced over the
entrance of a modem building erected on the same
site in 1801. The inscription, he shows, cut in
very unusual character, having in the centre a
shield charged with a barrel, the device of its more
recent occupant, a brewer, substituted for the
armorial bearings of his predecessors :-
AL. MY. TRIST . I - S. IN. YE. LORD.
?? We have found,? he adds, U on examining ancient
charters and title-deeds refemng to property in the
Cowgate, much greater difficulty in assigning the
exact tenements referred to, from the absence of
such marked and easily recognisable features as
serve for a guide in the High Street and Canongate.
All such evidence, however, tends to prove that
the chief occupants of this ancient thoroughfare
were eminent for rank and station, and their dwellings
appear to have been chiefly in the front street,
showing that, with patrician exclusiveness, traders
were forbid to open their booths within its dignified
precincts.?
Latterly the High School Wynd was chiefly remarkable
for the residence, in an old tenement at
its foot, of an obscure local poet, whose real name
was Tames Wilson, but whose num de plume was
Claudero,? and who by his poetic effusions upon
local subjects continued to eke out a precarious
subsistence, frequently by furnishing sharp lampoons
on his less gifted fellow-citizens. He latterly added
to his income by keeping a little school, and by
performing (? AaCf-merk marriages, an occupation
which, no doubt, afforded him additional satisfaction,
as he was thereby taking their legitimate
duties out of the hands of his old enemies the
clergy,? for Claudero, who was a cripple, is said to
have been rendered so, in youth, by a merciless
beating he received from ? the pastoral staff ? of
the minister of his native parish, Cumbernauld, in
Dumbartonshire. A satirist by profession, Claudero
made himself a source of terror by his pungent
wit, for in the Edinburgh of the eighteenth century
there lived a number of wealthy old men who had
realised large fortunes in questionable manners
abroad, and whose characters, as they laboured
under strange suspicions of the slave trade-even
buccaneering perhaps-? were wonderfully suscep
tible of Claudero?s satire ; and these, the wag,? we
are told, ? used to bleed profusely and frequently,
by working upon their fears of public notice.?
In 1766 appeared his ?Miscellanies in Prose
and Verse, by Claudero, son of Nimrod the mighty
Hunter,? dedicated to the renowned Peter Williamson,
?from the other world.? In this volume are
?The Echo of the Royal Porch of Holyrood,?
demolished in 1753 ; ?The last Speech and Dying
Words of the Cross,I) executed, &c., ?for the
horrid crime of being an encumbrance to the
street ;? ? Scotland?s Tears over the Horrid Treatment
of her Kings? Sepulchres ; ? ? A Sermon on
the Condemnation of the Netherbow ; ? and other
kindred subjects. With all his eccentricity, Claudero
seems to have felt genuine disgust at the wanton
destruction of many beautiful and historical
edifices and monuments in Edinburgh, under the
reckless fiat of a magistracy of the most tasteless
age in British history-the epoch of George
111. In the year 1755 he was wandering about
London, but returned to Edinburgh, where he
lived for thirty years consecutively, and died in
The wynd led straight up the slope to the old
High School, which with its tower and spire stood
on the east side of it Robertson?s Close adjoined
it on the west-in 1647, a long and straight street,
with lofty houses on both sides, and spacious
1789-
