Bomington] THE LAIRDS OF PILRIG. 91
His History of the Church and State of Scotland,?
though coloured by High Church prejudices,
is deemed a useful narration and very candid record
of the most controverted part of our national
annals, while the State documents used in its compilation
have proved of the greatest value to every
subsequent writer on the same subject. Very
curious is the list of subscribers, as being, says
Chambers, a complete muster-roll of the whole
Jacobite nobility and gentry of the period, including
among others the famous Rob Roy, the outlaw !
The bishop performed the marriage ceremony of
that ill-starred pair, Sir George Stewart of Grandtully
and Lady Jane Douglas, on the 4th of August, I 746.
In I 7 5 5 he published his well-known ? Catalogue
of Scottish Bishops,? a mine of valuable knowledge
to future writers.
The latter years of his useful and blameless life,
during which he was in frequent correspondence
with the gallant Marshal Keith, were all spent at
the secluded villa of Bonnyhaugh, which belonged
to himself. There he died on the 27th of January,
1757, in his seventy-sixth year, and was borne,
amid the tears of the Episcopai communion, to his
last home in the Canongate churchyard. There he
lies, a few feet from the western wall, where a plain
stone bearing his name was only erected recently.
In 1766 Alexander Le Grand was entailed in the
lands and estates of Bonnington.
In 1796 the bridge of Bonnington, which was of
timber, having been swept away by a flood, a
boat was substituted till 1798, when another wooden
bridge was erected at the expense of A30.
Here in Breadalbane Street, northward of some
steam mills and iron-works, stands the Bonnington
Sugar-refining Company?s premises, formed by a few
merchants of Edinburgh andLeith about 1865, where
they carry on an extensive and thriving business.
The property and manor house of Stewartfield
in this quarter, is westward of Bonnington, a square
edifice with one enormous chimney rising through a
pavilion-shaped roof. We have referred to the entail
of Alexander Le Grand, of Bonnington, in 1766.
The Scots Magazine for 1770 records an alliance
between the two proprietors here thus :-?At Edinburgh,
Richard Le Grand, Esq., of Bonnington
(son of the preceding?), to Miss May Stewart,
daughter of James Stewart of Stewartfield, Esq.?
On the north side of the Bonnington Road, and
not far from Bonnington House, stands that of
Pilrig, an old rough-cast and gable-ended mansion
among aged trees, that no doubt occupies the site
of a much older edifice, probably a fortalice.
In 1584 Henry Nisbett, burgess of Edinburgh,
became caution before the Lords of the Privy
Council, for Patrick Monypenny of Pilrig, John
Kincaid of Warriston, Clement Kincaid of the
Coates, Stephen Kincaid, John Matheson, and
James Crawford, feuars of a part of the Barony
of Broughton, that they shall pay to Adam Bishop
of Orkney, commendator of Holyrood House,
?what they ow-e him for his relief of the last
taxation of _f;zo,ooo, over and above the sum of
?15, already consigned in the hands of the col-
Lector of the said collection.?
In 1601 we find the same Laird of Pilrig engaged
in a brawl, ?forming a specimen of the
second class of outrages.? He (Patrick Monypenny)
stated to the Lords of Council that he had
a wish to let a part of his lands of Pilrig, called the
Round Haugh, to Harry Robertson and Andrew
Alis, for his own utility and profit. But on a certain
day, not satisfied, David UuA; a doughty indweller in
Leith, came to these per?sons, and uttering ferocious
menaces against them in the event of their occupying
these lands, effectually prevented them from
doing so.
Duff next, accompanied by two men named
Matheson, on the 2nd of March, 1601, attacked
the servants of the Laird of Pilrig, as they were
at labour on the lands in question, with similar
speeches, threatening them with death if they persisted
in working there; and in the night they,
or other persons instigated by them, had come
and broken their plough, and cast it into the
Water of Leith. ?John Matheson,? continues the
indictment, ?? after breaking the complenar?s plew,
came to John Porteous?s house, and bade him gang
now betwix the Flew stilts and see how she wald go
till the morning:? adding that he would have his
head broken if he ever divulged who had broken
the plough,
The furious Duff, not contentwith all this,trampled
and destroyed the tilled land. In this case the
accused were dismissed from the bar, but only, it
would appear, through hard swearing in their own
cause.
There died at Pilrig, according to the Scots
Magazine for 1767, Margaret, daughter of the late
Sir Johnstone Elphinstone of Logie, in the month of
January ; and in the subsequent June, Lady Elphinstone,
his widow. The Elphinstones of Logie were
baronets of 1701.
These ladies were probably visitors, as the then
proprietor and occupant of the mansion was James
Balfour of Pilng, who was born in 1703, and became
a member of the Faculty of Advocates on
the 14th of November, 1730, Three years later
on the death of Mr. Bayne, Professor of Scottish
Law in the University of Edinburgh, he and Mr.
-
John Erskine of Carnock, were presented by the
Faculty to the patrons of the vacant chair, who
elected the latter, and he was afterwards well known
as the author of the ? Institutes of the Law of Scotland.?
John Balfour was subsequently appointed
sheriff-substitute of the county of Edinburgh, and
having a turn for philosophy, he became early
adverse to the speculative reasoning of David
Hume, and openly opposed them in two treatises ;
one was entitled ?A Delineation of the Nature
PILRIG HOUSE
In the spring of 1779 he resigned his professorship,
and lived a retired life at Pilrig, where he
died on the 6th of March, 1795, in his ninetysecond
year, and was succeeded by his son, John
Balfour of Pilrig.
The estate is now becoming covered with streets.
There is a body called the ? Pilrig Model Buildings
Association,? formed in 1849, for erecting houses
for the working-classes, and the success of this
scheme has been such that there has scarcely been
and Obligation of Morality,- with Reflections on
Mr. Hume?s Inquiry concerning the Principles of
Morals.? A second edition of this appeared in
1763. The other, ?? Philosophical Dissertations,?
appeared also at Edinburgh in 1782.
Hurne was much pleased with these treatises,
though opposed to his own theories, and on the
appearance of the first, wrote the author a letter,
requesting his friendship, as he was obliged by his
politeness.
In August, 1754, Balfour was appointed to the
chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of
Edinburgh, and ten years afterwards was transferred
to the chair of Public Law. He published his
?Philosophical Essays? a short time after.
an arrear of rent among its tenants since the
year named.
This was the earliest of the many schemes started
in Edinburgh for improving the dwellings of the
labouring classes, and it has been followed up in
many directions, though all it; features have not
been copied.
Inverleith, or Innerleith, as it was often called of
old, was the only baronial estate of any extent
that lay immediately north-east of Stockbridge.
The most influential heritor in the once? vast
parish of St Cuthbert was Touris the Baron or
Laird of Inverleith, whose possessions included,
directly south-west from North Leith, the lands of
Coates,. Dalry, Pocketsleve, the High Riggs, or all
