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.
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
