Munayfield.] ROSEEURN HOUSE. 103
WHEN YOU
WILL ENTER
AT CHRIST
HIS DOOR
AYE MIND
YOU THE ROOM
TO THE POOR.
frages of the Saints,? and is still used after vespers
in all Roman Catholic churches, is a curious feature
in a Scottish house of post-Reformation times.
Westward of Coltbridge there is pointed out a
spot where Cromwell?s forces occupied the rising
ground in I 650, after his repulse before Edinburgh,
and where he was again out-generalled by the
gallant Sir David Leslie, whose army was posted
by the Water of Leith and the marshy fields along
its banks.
Tradition assigns to R~seburn House the honour
of having given quarters for that night to Oliver
Cromwell, which is probable enough, as it is in
the immediate vicinity of the position assumed by
his army; and with this tradition the history, if
it can be called so, of Roseburn ends.
In levelling some mounds here, some few years
since, ?some stone coffins were found,? says
LINTEL AT ROSEBURN HOUSE.
the portion of a legend, GOD KEIP OURE CROWNE,
AND SEND GUDE SUCCESSION, and the date 1526.
The other lintel is over an inner door, and has a
shield with two coats of arms impaled : in the first
canton are three rose-buds, between a chevron
charged with mullets ; in the second canton are
three fish, fess-wise ; in the panel are the initials
M. R. and K. F. ; and underneath the legend and
date, ? All my hoip is in ye Lord, I j62.?
Why this house-the whole lower storey of which
is strongly vaulted with massive stone-should be
decorated with the royal arms, it is impossible to
learn now, but to that circumstance, and perhaps to
the date 1562, and the initials M. R., evidently those
of the proprietor, may be assigned the unsupported
local tradition, which associates it with the presence
there of Mary and Bothwell j but the house was
evidently in existence when the latter seized the
former on the adjacent highway. According to Mr.
James Thomson, the present occupant of Roseburn
House, whose forefathers have resided in it for
more than a century, tradition names one of the
apartments ?Queen Mary?s room,? being, it is said,
the room in which she slept when she lived there.
The long legend, which is taken from the ? Suf.
Daniel Wilson, ?and a large quantity of human
bones, evidently of a very ancient date, as they
crumbled to pieces on being exposed to the air ;
but the tradition of the neighbouring hamlet is
that they were the remains ot some of Cromwell?s
troopers. Our informant,? he adds, ? the present
intelligent occupant of Roseburn House, mentioned
the curious fact that among the remains
dug up were the bones of a human leg, with fragments
of a wooden coffin, or case of the requisite
dimensions, in which it had evidently been buried
apart.?
North-west of Coltbridge House and Hall lies
Murrayfield, over which the town is spreading fast
in the form ot stately villas. Early in the last
century it was the property of Archibald Murray of
Murrayfield, Advocate, whose son Alexander, a
Senator of the College of Justice, was born, in 1736,
at Edinburgh. Being early designed for the Bar,
he became a member of the Faculty of Advocates
in 1758, and three years after was appointed sheriff
at Peebles.
In 1765 he succeeded his father as one of the
Commissaries of Edinburgh, and a few years after
saw him Solicitor-General for Scotland, in place of
