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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI

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Colinton.] JUNIPER GREEN. 323 when the village was occupied on the 18th August by ten companies of Monk?s Regiment (now the Coldstream Guards), of which Captain Gough of Berwick was lieutenant-colonel, and Captain Holmes of Newcastle, major, prior to the storming of the fortalices of Redhall and Colinton, before the 24th of the same month. (?Records: Cold. Guards.?) Redhall, in after years, was the patrimony of Captain John Inglis, of H.M.S. Be& pueux, who, at the battle of Camperdown, whq confused by the signals of the admiral, shouted with impatience to his sailing-master, ?? Hang it, Jock ! doon wi? the helm, and gang iicht into the middle o?t ! ? closing his telescope as he spoke. Old Colinton House was, at the period of the Protectorate, occupied by the Foulis family (now represented by that of Woodhall in the same parish) whose name is alleged to be a corruption of the Norman, as their arms are azure, their bay leaves uert, in old Norman called fed&. Be that as it may, the family is older than is stated by Sir Bernard Burke, as there were two senators of the College of Justice, each Lord Colinton respectively-James Foulis in 1532, and John Foulis in 1541; and there was a James. Fodlis of Colinton, who lived in the reigns of Mary and James VI., who married Apes Heriot of Lumphoy, whose tombstone is yet preserved in an aisle of Colinton Church, and bears this inscription :- HERE. LYES. ANE. HONORABIL. WOMAN. A. HERIOT. SPOVS. TO . J. FOULIS . OF . COLLINT3VN. VAS. QUHA . DEID . 8 . AUGUST. 1593. They had four sons-James, who succeeded to the estate; George, progenitor of the house of Ravelston ; David, progenitor of the English family of Ingleby Manor, Yorkshire ; and John, of ?he Leadhills, whose granddaughter became ancestress of the Earls of Hopetoun. Alexander Foulis, of Colinton, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia in 1634, and his son Sir James, whose house was stormed by the troops of Monk, having attended a convention of the estates in Angus, was betrayed into the hands of the English, together with the Earls of Leven, Crawford, Marischal, the Lord Ogilvy, and many others, who were surprised by a party of Cromwell?s cavalry, under Colonel Aldridge, on August, 1651, and taken as prisoners of war to London. He married Barbara Ainslie of Dolphinton, but, by a case reported by Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, in 1667, he would seem to have been in a treaty of marriage with Dame Margaret Erskine, Lady Tarbet, which led to a somewhat involved suit before the Lords of Council and Session. After the Restoration he was raised to the-Bench as Lord Colinton, and was succeeded by his son, also a Lord of Session, and a member of the last Scottish Parliament in 1707, the year of the Union. he joined the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Athol, and many others of the nobility and gentry, in their celebrated protest made by the Earl of Errol, respecting the most constitutional defence of the house of legislature, He also joined in the protest, which declared that an incorpotating union of the two nations was inconsistent with the honour of Scotland.? Further details of this family will be found in the account of Ravelston (p. 106). The mansions and villas of many other families are in this somewhat secluded district ; the principal one is perhaps the modern seat of the late Lord Dunfermline, on a beautifully wooded hill overhanging the village on the south. Colinton House was built by Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Bart. Near it, the remains of the old edifice, of the same name, form a kind of decorative ruin. Dreghorn Castle, a stately modern edifice, with a conspicuous round tower, is situated on the northern slope of the Pentlands, at an elevation of 489 feet above the sea. John Maclaurin, son of Colin Maclaurin, the eminent mathematician, was called to the bench as Lord Dreghorn. A learned correspondence, which took place in 17 go, between him, Lord Monboddo, and M. Le Chevalier, afterwards secretary to Talleyrand, on the site of Troy, will be found in the Scots Magazine for 1810. The name of this locality is very old, as among the missing crown charters of Robert II., is one confirming a lease by Alexander Meygners of Redhall, to Robert, Earl of Fife and Menteith, of the barony of Redhall in the shire of Edinburgh, except Dreghorn and Woodhall; and of the barony of Glendochart in Perthshire, during the said Earl?s life. In the early part of the eighteenth century it was the property of a family named Home. Near Woodhall, in the parish of Colinton, is the little modern village of Juniper Green, chiefly celebrated as being the temporary residence of Thomas Carlyle, some time after his marriage at Comely Bank, Stockbridge, where, as he tells us in his ?? Reminiscences ? (edited by Mr. Froude), ?his first experience in the difficulties of housekeeping began.? Carlyle?s state of health required perfect quiet, if not absolute solitude; but at Juniper Green, as at Comely Bank, their house was much frequented by the literary society of the day; and, among others, by Chalmers, Guthrie, and Lord Jeffrey, whose intimacy with Carlyle .rapidly increased after the first visit he paid him at Comely Bank. ?He was much taken with my little -4fter that
Volume 6 Page 323
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