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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V

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ST. MARGARET?S CONVENT. 45 White House Loan. rare and valuable portraits, including some of the Stuart family, and one of Cardinal Beaton, on the Vhite House, was returned as heir to his father, James Chrystie, of that place, in the parish of St. Cuthbert?s. But in the early part of the last century it had passed to a family named Davidson, as shown by the Valuation Roll in 1726. In 1767 it was the residence of MacLeod of MacLeod, when his daughter was married to Colonel Pringle of Stitchell, M.P.; and in this mansion it has been said Principal Robertson wrote his ?History of Charles the Fifth.? Here also, April, 1820, John Home wrote his Dr. Blair his ?? Lectures.? ?? We give this interesting information,? says the editor, ?on the authority of a very near relation of Dr. Blair, to whom these particulars were often related by the Doctor with great interest.? .the first Catholic convents erected in Scotland since the Reformation-a house of Ursulines of Jesus, and dedicated to St. Margaret, Queen of Scots, having a very fine Saxon chapel, the chef dEuvre of Gillespie Graham. It was opened in Jme that year, according to the Edinburgh Ohme-, a now extinct journal, and the inaugural Douglas,? and I On this edifice was engrafted, in 1835, one of? et Regent du Royaume a?Ecosse, CaPlIilld et Legat a iaterc, fut massacri pour la foy en 1546.? It is believed to be a copy by Chambers from the original at St. Mary?s College, Blairs. The most of the nuns were at first French, under a Madame St. Hilaire. On the same side of the Loan are the gates to the old mansion of the Warrenders of Lochend, called Bruntsfield or Warrender House, the an- I cestral seat of a family which got it as a free gift from the magistrates, and which has been long connected with the civil history and municipal affairs of the city-a massive, ancient, and dark edifice, with small windows and crowstepped THE GRANGE CEMETERY.
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46 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. nvarrender Pam. gables, covered with masses of luxuriant ivy, surrounded by fine old timber, and near which lies an interesting memorial of the statutes first made in 1567, the days of the plague, of the bailies of the muir-the toinb of some pest-stricken creature," forbidden the rites of sepulture with his kindred. '' Here:" says Wilson, '' amid the pasturage of the meadow, and within sight of the busy capital, a large flat tombstone may be seen, time-worn and grey with the moss of age ; it bears on it a skull, surmounted by a winged sandglass and a scroll, inscribed morspace . . , hora cadi, and below this is a shield bearing a saltier, with the initials M. I. R., and the date of the fatal year, 1645.' The M. surmounts the shield, and in all probability indicates that the deceased had taken his degree of Master of Arts, A scholar, perhaps, and one of noble birth, has won the sad pre-eminence of slumbering in unconsecrated ground, and apart from the dust of his fathers, to tell the terrors of the plague to other generations." In that year the muir must have been open and desolate, so the house of Bruntsfield must have been built at a later date. Bailie George Warrender of Lochend, an eminent merchant in Edinburgh, having filled the office of Lord Provost of that city in the reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and George I., was by the latter cr:ated a baronet of Great Britain in 17 15, from which period he represented the city in Parliament tili his death ; but it is during the reign of William that his name first comes prominently before us, as connected with a judicial sale of some property in the Parliament Close in 1698, when he was one of the bailies, and George Home (afterwards Sir George) was Lord Provost. In 1703 Lord Fountainhall reports a case : James Fairholme against Bailie Warrender. The former and other managers of '' the manufactory at Edinburgh " had acquainted the latter that some prohibited goods were hidden in two houses in the city, and sought permission to search for and seize the same, l h e bailie delayed till night, when every man's house ought to be his sanctuary; and for this a fine was urged of 500 marks, for which the lords-accepting his excuses-" assoilzied the bailie." In another case, reported by the same lord in 1710, he appears as Dean of Guild in a case against certain burgesses of Leith, that savours of the old oppression that the magistrates and deans of guild of Edinburgh could then exercise over the indwellers in Leith, as part of the royalty of the city. Sir John Warrender, the bailie's successor, was also a merchant and magistrate of Edinburgh ; and his * As will be Seen from the engraving. Wilson would Seem not to have deciphered the tombstone correctly. These lines are inscribed on the tomb :- THIS SAINT WHOS CORPS LYES BU RlED HEIR LET ALL POSTERITIE ADIMEIR FOR VPRIGHT LIP IN GODLY PElR WHElR JUDGMENTS DID THIS LAND SURROUND HE WITH GOD WAS WALKING FOUND IOR WHICH PROM MIDST OF PElRS (1) HE'S CROUND HEIR TO BE INTERD BOTH HE AND FRIENDS BY PROVIDENCE AGRlE NO AGE SHAL LOS HIS IIIEMORIE H E AGE 53 DIED 1645. OLD TOMB AT WARREKDER PARK. great-grandson, Sir Patrick, was a cavalry officer of rank at the famous battle of Minden, and died in I 799, when King's Remembrancer in the Scottish Court of Exchequer. Within the last few years the parks around old Bruntsfield House have-save a small space in its immediate vicinity-been intersected, east, west, north, and south, by stately streets and lines of villas, among the chief of which are Warrender Park Crescent, with its noble line of ancient trees ; Warrender Park Road, running from the links to Carlung Place ; Spottiswood and Thirlstane Roads ; and Alvanley Street, so called from the sister of Lord Alvanley, the wife, in 1838, of Captain John Warrender of the Foot Guards. The old mansion is still the Edinburgh residence of Sir George Warrender, Bart. Eastward of the White House Loan, and lying between it and the Burghmuir, is the estate of
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