Traditions of Edinburgh

[Gabriel’s Road

Previous to 1767 the eye of a person perched in a favourable situation in the Old Town surveyed the whole ground on which the New Town was afterwards built. Immediately beyond the North Loch was a range of grass fields called Bearford’s Parks, from the name of the proprietor, Hepburn of Bearford in East Lothian. Bounding these on the north, in the line of the subsequent Princes Street, was a road enclosed by two dry-stone walls, thence called the Lang Dykes; it was the line by which the Viscount Dundee rode with his small troop of adherents when he had ascertained that the Convention was determined to settle the crown upon the Prince of Orange, and he saw that the only duty that remained for him was to raise the Highland clans for King James.273 The main mass of ground, originally rough with whins and broom, but latterly forming what was called Wood’s Farm, was crossed obliquely by a road extending between Silvermills, a rural hamlet on the mill-course of the Leith, and the passage into the Old Town obtained by the dam of the North Loch at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd. There are still some traces of this road. You see it leave Silvermills behind West Cumberland Street. Behind Duke Street, on the west side, the boundary-wall of the Queen Street Garden is oblique in consequence of its having passed that way. Finally it terminates in a short, oblique passage behind the Register House, wherein stood till lately a tall building containing a famous house of resort, Ambrose’s Tavern. This short passage bore the name of Gabriel’s Road, and it was supposed to do so in connection with a remarkable murder, of which it was the scene.

The murderer in the case was in truth a man named Robert Irvine. He was tutor to two boys, sons of Mr Gordon of Ellon. In consequence of the children having reported some liberties they saw him take with their mother’s maid, he conceived the horrible design of murdering them, and did so one day as he was leading them for a walk along the rough ground where the New Town is now situated. The frightful transaction was beheld from the Castle-hill; he was pursued, taken, and next day but one hanged by the baron of Broughton, after having his hands hacked off by the knife with which he had committed the deed. The date of this off-hand execution was 30th April 1717. Both the date and the murderer’s name have several times been misstated.274

Adjacent to this road, about the spot now occupied by the Royal Bank, stood a small group of houses called Mutrie’s Hill, some of which professed to furnish curds and cream and fruits in their seasons, and were on these accounts resorted to by citizens and their families on summer evenings. One in particular bore the name of ‘Peace and Plenty.’

The village of Silvermills, for the sake of which, as an access to the city, Gabriel’s Road existed, still maintains its place amidst the streets and crescents of the New Town. It contains a few houses of a superior cast; but it is a place sadly in want of the sacer vates. No notice has ever been taken of it in any of the books regarding Edinburgh, nor has any attempt ever been made to account for its somewhat piquant name. I shall endeavour to do so.

In 1607 silver was found in considerable abundance at Hilderstone, in Linlithgowshire, on the property of the gentleman who figures in another part of this volume as Tam o’ the Cowgate. Thirty-eight barrels of ore were sent to the Mint in the Tower of London to be tried, and were found to give about twenty-four ounces of silver for every hundredweight. Expert persons were placed upon the mine, and mills were erected on the Water of Leith for the melting and fining of the ore. The sagacious owner gave the mine the name of God’s Blessing. By-and-by the king heard of it, and thinking it improper that any such fountain of wealth should belong to a private person, purchased God’s Blessing for £5000, that it might be worked upon a larger scale for the benefit of the public. But somehow, from the time it left the hands of the original owner, God’s Blessing ceased to be anything like so fertile as it had been, and in time the king withdrew from the enterprise a great loser. The Silvermills I conceive to have been a part of the abandoned plant.275]

Footnotes

1 Mr W. B. Blaikie (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.) gives a list of the occupants of a first-class tenement some years subsequent to the ’45 Rebellion: ‘First-floor, Mrs Stirling, fishmonger; second, Mrs Urquhart, lodging-house keeper; third-floor, the Countess Dowager of Balcarres; fourth, Mrs Buchan of Kelloe; fifth, the Misses Elliot, milliners and mantua-makers; garrets, a variety of tailors and other tradesmen.’

2 Pamphlet circa 1700, Wodrow Collection, Adv. Lib.

3 Brown Square finally disappeared with the making of Chambers Street.

4 Mr William Cowan, in vol. i. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, says this exemption applied to the three eastmost tenements in Princes Street.

5 The late Bruce J. Home drew up in 1908 ‘A Provisional List of Old Houses Remaining in High Street and Canongate,’ which was printed, with accompanying map, in the first volume of The Old Edinburgh Club Book. The statement is therein made ‘that since 1860 two-thirds of the ancient buildings in the Old Town of Edinburgh have been demolished.’ The map showed, coloured in red, the remaining buildings of the Old Town which had survived until the beginning of the twentieth century.

6 This jest was doubtless based on Swift’s famous poem on Vanbrugh’s house (1704). The peculiar architectural features of Allan’s ‘goose pie’ have been almost entirely obliterated by recent alterations. Only the two circular upper stories remain in their original form.

7 ‘My mother was told by those who had enjoyed his plays, that he had a child’s puppet stage and a set of dressed dolls for actors, which were in great favour with old and young.’—C. K. Sharpe’s note in Wilson’s Reminiscences.

8 King’s Bridge crosses King’s Stables Road, and the access from it is Johnston Terrace.

9 When Mrs Cockburn, author of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ entered on occupation of the house in 1756, it was described in the Baird titles as ‘my lodging in the castle-hill of Edinburgh, formerly possessed by the Duchess of Gordon.’

10 A Board-school now occupies the site of the mansion. The doorway referred to is rebuilt into the school-house.

11 George, sixth Earl of Huntly, took his last illness, June 1636, in ‘his house in the Canongate.’ George, the first duke, who had held out the Castle at the Revolution, died December 1716, at his house in the Citadel of Leith, where he appears to have occasionally resided for some years. I should suppose the house on the Castle-hill to have been inhabited by the family in the interval.
The Citadel seems to have been a little nest of aristocracy, of the Cavalier party. In 1745 one of its inhabitants was Dame Magdalen Bruce of Kinross, widow of the baronet who had assisted in the Restoration. Here lived with her the Rev. Robert Forbes, Episcopal minister of Leith [afterwards Bishop of Orkney], from whose collections regarding Charles Edward and his adventures a volume of extracts was published by me in 1834. [The Lyon in Mourning is here referred to, from which Dr Chambers published a number of the narratives in his Jacobite Memoirs (1834), and from which he also utilised some information of the Rebellion of 1745 in the preparation of his History of the Rebellion. At his death he bequeathed the work to the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, where it now remains. It consists of eight small octavo volumes of manuscript of about two hundred pages, each bound in black leather, with blackened edges, and around the title-page of each volume a deep black border. The collection was the work of the Rev. Robert Forbes, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who became in 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness. It was treasured by his widow for thirty years, and then bought by Sir Henry Stewart of Allanton in 1806. Dr Robert Chambers unearthed it for historical purposes, and later purchased it from Sir Henry Stewart. Some relics which Forbes succeeded in obtaining from his correspondents—such as a piece of the Prince’s garter, a piece of the gown he wore as Betty Burke, and of the string of the apron he then had on, a fragment of a waistcoat worn by the Prince, and other things—were preserved on the inside of some of the boards of the volumes. The Lyon in Mourning was edited by Mr Henry Paton from the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, and published in three volumes by the Scottish History Society (1895).] Throughout those troublous days, a little Episcopal congregation was kept together in Leith; their place of worship being the first floor of an old, dull-looking house in Queen Street (dated 1615), the lower floor of which was, in my recollection, a police-office.

12 Webster’s Close became Brown’s Close when the property changed hands, and two brothers of that name occupied the house. To Brown’s Close the recently formed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland removed in 1794 from Gosford’s Close, because the latter was too narrow to admit of the members being carried to the place of meeting in sedan-chairs.

13 Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the widow’s allowance from this fund nearly equalled them. Such was the case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him, Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.

14 ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our lady in the void spaces.’—Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume, 1844.

15 Keith’s History.

16 The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.

17 Fellows.

18 Busy.

19 Not improbably this was done in a spirit of literal obedience to the injunction (Matthew vi. 6): ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.’ Commentators on this passage mention that every Jewish house had a place of secret devotion built over the porch.

20 When Colonel Gardiner occupied it the house was known as Olive Bank. It was later changed to Bankton House by Andrew Macdowall, who, when raised to the Bench in 1755, took the title of Lord Bankton.

21 Bankton House has been burned down and rebuilt since this was written.

22 History of Edinburgh, p. 205, note.

23 Before Major Weir took up house in the West Bow he is said to have lodged in the Cowgate, where he had as a fellow-lodger the fanatic Mitchell (Ravaillac redivivus), who attempted to shoot Archbishop Sharpe.

24 Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till 1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662-73. It was he who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of London.

25 The Rev. Mr Frazer, minister of Wardlaw, in his Divine Providences (MS. Adv. Lib.), dated 1670.

26 Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.

27 The causeway. A skirmish fought between the Hamiltons and Douglases, upon the High Street of Edinburgh, in the year 1515, was popularly termed Cleanse the Causeway.

28 Cane.

29 Hamstringed.

30 Memorie of the Somervilles, vol. ii. p. 271.

31 This house was demolished in 1836.

32 Jackson’s History of the Stage, p. 418.

33 See Notes from the Records of the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 1842. In the eighteenth century a lady’s ‘night-gown’ was a special kind of evening-dress, often of silk brocade, &c., other than full dress; and a gentleman’s night-gown was a dressing-gown, not a bed-garment.

34 It was a ball in the room of the Old Assembly Close building which Goldsmith describes in the letter quoted, and in which public assemblies were revived in 1746. The new rooms in Bell’s Wynd were opened in 1756.

35 Called the ‘Ovir Bow Port.’ It stood about the line of the present Victoria Terrace.

36 This house was demolished in 1835, to make way for a passage towards George IV. Bridge.

37 Taken down in 1839.

38 Demolished in 1833.

39 The narrow, crooked West Bow, descending very steeply from the Lawnmarket to the Grassmarket, has been almost wholly obliterated by Victoria Street, a comparatively wide and gradually sloping street which crosses the line of the old West Bow from George IV. Bridge. Victoria Street was built in 1835-40; and only a few houses on one side of the head of the Bow still stand, and these have been rebuilt.

40 From whom it got its name—James’s Court.

41 A ‘land’ still standing (1912) as it was when Hume lived there. It was also the residence of the Countess of Eglinton when she left the Stamp Office Close in the High Street. See p. 192.

42 Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 173.

43 Formerly called Blair’s Close (p. 19). The name was altered to Baird’s Close when the Gordon property passed into the possession of Baird of Newbyth.

44 Mrs Cockburn, writing to Miss Cumming at Balcarres, describes ‘a ball’ she gave in this house. ‘On Wednesday I gave a ball. How do ye think I contrived to stretch out this house to hold twenty-two people, and had nine couples always dancing? Yet this is true; it is also true that we had a table covered with divers eatables all the time, and that everybody ate when they were hungry and drank when they were dry, but nobody ever sat down.... Our fiddler sat where the cupboard is, and they danced in both rooms. The table was stuffed into the window and we had plenty of room. It made the bairns all very happy.’—Mrs Cockburn’s Letters, edited by T. Craig Brown.

45 His lordship died September 20, 1722 (Brunton and Haig’s Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice).

46 A stuff brought, I believe, from Spain, and which was at one time much in fashion in Scotland.

47 Lady Stair’s Close was originally a cul de sac. When the Mound was begun a thoroughfare was cut through the garden, making the close the principal communication between the Lawnmarket and Hanover Street, then the western extremity of the New Town. The name it first bore was ‘Lady Gray’s Close,’ after the wife of the builder of the house, and that of Lady Stair’s Close was given to it (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii.) early in the eighteenth century, when the house passed into the possession of the first Lady Stair, a granddaughter of Sir William Gray of Pittendrum. Lord Rosebery, who represents a branch of the Primroses (other than that to which the second viscount, mentioned below, belonged), restored the house and presented it to the city in 1907.

48 ‘Grace, Countess of Aboyne and Moray, in her early youth, had the weakness to consult a celebrated fortune-teller, inhabiting an obscure close in Edinburgh. The sibyl predicted that she would become the wife of two earls, and how many children she was to bear; but withal assured her that when she should see a new coach of a certain colour driven up to her door as belonging to herself, her hearse must speedily follow. Many years afterwards, Lord Moray, who was not aware of this prediction, resolved to surprise his wife with the present of a new equipage; but when Lady Moray beheld from a window a carriage of the ominous colour arrive at the door of Darnaway, and heard that it was to be her own property, she sank down, exclaiming that she was a dead woman, and actually expired in a short time after, November 17, 1738.’—Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xcii.

49 Lady Primrose’s story forms the groundwork of one of Sir Walter Scott’s best short stories, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.

50 This story loses its point by the discovery made in St Peter’s upon Cornhill, London, of the marriage register of the second Earl of Stair with Lady Primrose, 27th March 1708. Thus they were married persons several years before the presumed date of this story. Miss Rosaline Masson announced the discovery in an article in Chambers’s Journal for 1912, entitled, ‘The Secret Marriage of Lady Primrose and John, Second Earl of Stair.’ She makes this comment: ‘The testimony of John Waugh, Parson, has lain buried for over two hundred years in the old Register in the city; but the tale, whispered one day, some time about the year 1714, in the High Street of Edinburgh, first among the strutting gallants and loungers at the Cross at noon, and later on, over the delicate tea-cups, in the gossipy gatherings of the fair sex—that tale was nowise buried. It has never died. Did not Kirkpatrick Sharpe repeat it, sixty years after Lady Stair’s death, to young Robert Chambers, at that time collecting material for his inimitable book, Traditions of Edinburgh?’ The article further tries to answer the question why the Earl of Stair and the young widow made this clandestine marriage, which gave opportunity for the story.

51 Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls ‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In Lady Marie Stuart’s Household Book, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a dark skin.

52 Raised to the Bench with the title of Lord Kerse.

53 The lintel bearing this legend is preserved in a doorway at the top of the staircase of the Free Library, George IV. Bridge. The Cowgate portion of the Library building (1887-89) occupies the site of Sir Thomas Hope’s house.

54 While King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope had the unique experience of pleading at the Bar before two of his sons who were judges—Lord Craighall and Lord Kerse. There is a tradition that when addressing the Court he remained covered, and that from this circumstance the Lord Advocates still have this privilege, although they do not exercise it. Probably the custom introduced by Sir Thomas Hope originated in his being an officer of state, which entitled him to sit in parliament wearing his hat, and he claimed the same privilege when appearing before the judges.

55 See a Memoir by Sir Archibald Steuart Denham in the publications of the Maitland Club.

56 The site of Chiesly’s house is that occupied by the Episcopal Church Training College in Orwell Place.

57 In The Domestic Annals of Scotland the place of his execution is given as Drumsheugh, and Sir Walter Scott says he was hanged near his own house of Dalry.

58 This was the first High School, built in 1578 in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, of which David Malloch, or Mallet, was janitor in 1717. The building faced the Canongate. In 1777 it was replaced by the building now facing Infirmary Street and used in connection with the university. It is this later building that is associated with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, and other eminent men of the last quarter of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth century.

59 The Mechanics’ Library was discontinued when the Free Library was opened. Bailie Macmoran’s house is now used as a university settlement.

60 After being the residence for a time of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and other notable citizens, it was latterly occupied by the widow (the seventh wife) of the Rev. David Williamson—‘Dainty Davie’—minister of St Cuthbert’s Church at the time of the Revolution.

61 The house is marked No. 21. Its back windows enjoy a fine view of the Firth of Forth and the Fife hills. The registration of his lordship’s birth appears as follows: ‘Wednesday, 30th September 1778, Henry Brougham, Esq., parish of St Gilles (sic), and Eleonora Syme, his spouse, a son born the 19th current, named Henry Peter. Witnesses, Mr Archibald Hope, Royal Bank, and Principal Robertson.’ The parts of the New Town then built belonged to St Giles’s parish.

62 These verses are to be found in a curious volume, which appeared in London in 1618, under the title of Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by Geffray Mynshul, of Grayes Inn, Gent. Reprinted, 1821, by W. & C. Tait, Edinburgh. The lines were applied specially to the King’s Bench Prison.

63 A large white house near the Castle, on the north side of the street, and now (1868) no more.

64 Katherine Nairne was the niece of Sir William Nairne, later a judge under the title of Lord Dunsinnane, and it was currently reported that her escape from the Tolbooth was effected through his connivance. Sir William’s clerk accompanied the lady to Dover, and had great difficulty in preventing her recognition and arrest through her levity on the journey.

65 Up to the year 1830, when George IV. Bridge gave easy access to Parliament House, this quaint custom was followed by Lord Glenlee, who walked from his house in Brown Square, down Crombie’s Close, across the Cowgate, and up the Back Stairs.

66 Napier of Merchiston.

67 This projection is still a notable architectural feature in the open space at the back of the tenement referred to. The original windows have been built up. One of the lettered stones bearing the words, ‘Blessit be God for all his giftis’—a favourite motto with old Edinburgh builders—was removed to Easter Coates house, where it may still be seen in that now old building adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral.

68 From this tradition it was known as ‘The Cromwell Bartizan.’ Dunbar’s Close did not get its name from its supposed association with Cromwell’s soldiers, but from a family that lived in it. At an earlier period it was known as Ireland’s Close.

69 Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved. For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation, requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.

70 ‘To recreat hir hie renoun,
Of curious things thair wes all sort,
The stairs and houses of the toun
With tapestries were spread athort:
Quhair histories men micht behould,
With images and anticks auld.

The description of the qveen’s maiesties
maist honorable entry into the town of
edinbvrgh, vpon the 19. day of maii, 1590.
By john bvrel.’—Watson’s Collection of Scots
Poems (1709).

71 In the early times these privileged beggars were called ‘Bedesmen,’ from telling their beads as they walked from Holyrood to St Giles’. From the erection of the Canongate Church in 1690 the ceremony took place there, until it was discontinued in the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign. A well-known worthy of this community was reputed in 1837 to possess property which yielded an annual income of £120.

72 We learn from Crawford’s History of the University (MS. Adv. Lib.) that the service was read that day in the Old Kirk on account of the more dignified place of worship towards the east being then under the process of alteration for the erection of the altar, ‘and other pendicles of that idolatrous worship.’

73 Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral Letter, by S. Johnson, 1694.

74 Wodrow, in his Diary, makes a statement apparently at issue with that in the text, both in respect of locality and person:
‘It is the constantly believed tradition that it was Mrs Mean, wife to John Mean, merchant in Edinburgh, who threw the first stool when the service-book was read in the New Kirk, Edinburgh, 1637, and that many of the lasses that carried on the fray were preachers in disguise, for they threw stools to a great length.’

75 A newspaper commenced after the Restoration, and continued through eleven numbers.

76 Small stools.

77 See St Giles’, Edinburgh: Church, College, and Cathedral, by the Rev. Sir J. Cameron Lees, D.D.; also Historical Sketch of St Giles’ Cathedral, by William Chambers, by whom the cathedral was restored in 1872-83. Regarding the reinterment of Montrose, there is a narrative, with some fresh light on the subject, in the paper, ‘The Embalming of Montrose,’ in the first volume of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. The monuments to Knox, the Earl of Murray, and the Marquises of Argyll and Montrose are quite modern.

78 St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832 when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’ Library.

79 Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.

80 Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.

81 The Wemysses’ footman was one of the few arrested on suspicion of being a ringleader in the Porteous riot.

82 John’s Coffee-house was then situated in the north-east corner of Parliament Close.

83 Baijen-hole, see note, p. 155.

84 In the early times above referred to, £100 was accounted a sufficient capital for a young goldsmith—being just so much as purchased his furnace, tools, &c., served to fit up his shop, and enabled him to enter the Incorporation, which alone required £40 out of the £100. The stock with which George Heriot commenced business at a much earlier period (1580)—said to have been about £200—must therefore be considered a proof of the wealth of that celebrated person’s family.

85 Peter had, in early life, been kidnapped and sold to the plantations. After spending some time among the North American Indians, he came back to Scotland, and began business in Edinburgh as a vintner. Robert Fergusson, in his poem entitled The Rising of the Session, thus alludes to a little tavern he kept within the Parliament House:
‘This vacance is a heavy doom
On Indian Peter’s coffee-room,
For a’ his china pigs are toom;
      Nor do we see
In wine the soukar biskets soom
      As light’s a flee.’

Peter afterwards established a penny-post in Edinburgh, which became so profitable in his hands that the General Post-office gave him a handsome compensation for it. He was also the first to print a street directory in Edinburgh. He died January 19, 1799.

86 Provost Creech was the first who had the good taste to abandon the practice.

87 See Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, vol. ii. 137 (1762).

88 An Edinburgh term applied to a class of rogues. Probably a corrupt pronunciation of the English word cully—to fool, to cheat.

89 Where the North Bridge now stands.

90 A full description of the old Parliament Hall, with a plan showing the divisions and the arrangements of the ‘booths,’ is given in Reekiana; or, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh. It is not now called the Outer House.

91 Several of the illustrations in the present section are immediately derived from a curious volume, full of entertainment for a denizen of the Parliament House—The Court of Session Garland. Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson. 1839.

92 A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest. By David Abercromby, M.D. London, 1691. P. 60.

93 John Sinclair of Murkle, appointed a Lord of Session in 1733.

94 Alexander Leslie, advocate, succeeded his nephew as fifth Earl of Leven, and fourth Earl of Melville, in 1729. He was named a Lord of Session, and took his seat on the bench on the 11th of July 1734. He died 2nd February 1754.

95 Sir Walter Pringle of Newhall, raised to the bench in 1718.

96 Andrew Fletcher of Milton was appointed, on the resignation of James Erskine of Grange, Lord Justice-clerk, and took his seat on the bench 21st June 1735.

97 Probably Gibson of Pentland.

98 Hew Dalrymple of Drummore, appointed a Lord of Session in 1726.

99 Afterwards Lord Dreghorn.

100 Author of a Treatise on Election Laws, and Solicitor-general during the Coalition Ministry in 1783.

101 Afterwards Lord Polkemmet.

102 Afterwards Lord Eskgrove and Lord Justice-clerk.

103 Alexander Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, the author’s father—appointed to the bench in 1754; died 1782. This gentleman was a precise old Presbyterian, and therefore the most opposite creature in the world to his son, who was a cavalier in politics and an Episcopalian.

104 Afterwards Lord Braxfield—appointed 1776; died 1800, while holding the office of Lord Justice-clerk. Lord Braxfield is the prototype of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston.

105 Alexander Lockhart, Esq., decidedly the greatest lawyer at the Scottish bar in his day—appointed to the bench in 1774; died in 1782.

106 Andrew Pringle, Esq.—appointed a judge in 1759; died 1776. This gentleman was remarkable for his fine oratory, which was praised highly by Sheridan the lecturer (father of R. B. Sheridan) in his Discourses on English Oratory.

107 Henry Home, Esq.—raised to the bench 1752; died 1783. This great man, so remarkable for his metaphysical subtlety and literary abilities, was strangely addicted to the use of the coarse word in the text.

108 Sir David Dalrymple—appointed a judge in 1766; died 1792. A story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, and, in consequence, to the whole suit to which it belonged, on account of the word justice being spelt in the manner mentioned in the text. Perhaps no author ever affected so much critical accuracy as Lord Hailes, and yet there never was a book published with so large an array of corrigenda et addenda as the first edition of the Annals of Scotland.

109 George Brown, Esq., of Coalstoun—appointed 1756; died 1776.

110 Alexander Fraser of Strichen—appointed 1730; died 1774.

111 James Erskine, Esq., subsequently titled Lord Alva—appointed 1761; died 1796. He was of exceedingly small stature, and upon that account denominated ‘Lordie.’

112 James Veitch, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1793.

113 Francis Garden, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1793—author of several respectable literary productions.

114 Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston—appointed 1760; died 1787.

115 The bench being semicircular, and the President sitting in the centre, the seven judges on his right hand formed the east wing, those on his left formed the west. The decisions were generally announced by the words ‘Adhere’ and ‘Alter’—the former meaning an affirmance, the latter a reversal, of the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.

116 The term of the summer session was then from the 12th of June to the 12th of August.

117 Henry, first Viscount Melville, then coming forward as an advocate at the Scottish bar. When this great man passed advocate, he was so low in cash that, after going through the necessary forms, he had only one guinea left in his pocket. Upon coming home, he gave this to his sister (who lived with him), in order that she might purchase him a gown; after which he had not a penny. However, his talents soon filled his coffers. The gown is yet preserved by the family.

118 ‘To See’ is to appoint the petition against the judgment pronounced to be answered.

119 John Erskine of Carnock, author of the Institute of the Law of Scotland.

120 Thomas Miller, Esq., of Glenlee—appointed to this office in 1766, upon the death of Lord Minto. He filled this situation till the death of Robert Dundas, in 1787, when (January 1788) he was made President of the Court of Session, and created a baronet, in requital for his long service as a judge. Being then far advanced in life, he did not live long to enjoy his new accession of honours, but died in September 1789.

121 John Campbell, Esq., of Stonefield.

122 James Burnet, Esq.—appointed 1767; died 1799.

123 James Fergusson, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1777. He always wore his hat on the bench, on account of sore eyes.

124 Robert Bruce, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1785.

125 Alexander Tait, Clerk of Session.

126 He was the grandson of Lord President Lockhart, who was shot by Chiesly of Dalry (see p. 75).

127 Within the memory of an old citizen, who was living in 1833, the Post-office was in the first floor of a house near the Cross, above an alley which still bears the name of the Post-office Close. Thence it was removed to a floor in the south side of the Parliament Square, which was fitted up like a shop, and the letters were dealt across an ordinary counter, like other goods. At this time all the out-of-door business of delivery was managed by one letter-carrier. About 1745 the London bag brought on one occasion no more than a single letter, addressed to the British Linen Company. From the Parliament Square the office was removed to Lord Covington’s house, above described; thence, after some years, to a house in North Bridge Street; thence to Waterloo Place; and finally, to a new and handsome structure on the North Bridge.

128 Lord Gardenstone erected the building (in the form of a Grecian temple) which encloses St Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith, between the Dean Bridge and Stockbridge. He also founded the town of Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, which he hoped to make a manufacturing centre.

129 Notes to Redgauntlet.

130 Lord Grange, whose Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice was published in 1833.

131 Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being tried before them.

132 This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench as Lord Eldin.

133 It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair wearers.
We are told, in a curious paper in the Edinburgh Magazine for August 1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in good company.’

134 The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the [South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:
‘When big as burns the gutters rin,
If ye ha’e catched a droukit skin,
To Luckie Middlemist’s loup in,
      And sit fu’ snug,
Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
      Or haddock lug.’

At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of the worst character. This went under the convenient name of frolic.

135 The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the overwhelmed passenger.’

136 This highly appropriate popular sobriquet cannot be traced beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now, bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’

137 This gentleman, the ‘revered defender of beauteous Stuart,’ and the surviving friend of Allan Ramsay, had an unaccountable aversion to cheese, and not only forbade the appearance of that article upon his table, but also its introduction into his house. His family, who did not partake in this antipathy, sometimes smuggled a small quantity of cheese into the house, and ate it in secret; but he almost always discovered it by the smell, which was the sense it chiefly offended. Upon scenting the object of his disgust, he would start up and run distractedly through the house in search of it, and not compose himself again to his studies till it was thrown out of doors. Some of his ingenious children, by way of a joke, once got into their possession the coat with which he usually went to the court, and ripping up the sutures of one of its wide, old-fashioned skirts, sewed up therein a considerable slice of double Gloster. Mr Tytler was next day surprised when, sitting near the bar, he perceived the smell of cheese rising around him. ‘Cheese here too!’ cried the querulous old gentleman; ‘nay, then, the whole world must be conspiring against me!’ So saying, he rose, and ran home to tell his piteous case to Mrs Tytler and the children, who became convinced from this that he really possessed the singular delicacy and fastidiousness in respect of the effluvia arising from cheese which they formerly thought to be fanciful.

138 The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution, and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.

139 One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The tavern is now out of existence.]

140 Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard and affection—the Baijen Hole—situated immediately to the east of Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the college. Bajan or bejan is the French bejaune, ‘bec jaune,’ ‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’

141 The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation of the club was very different.

142 The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:
The Poker Club originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s Life, and also in Carlyle’s Autobiography, where he says: ‘Dinner was on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the University Library.
The Mirror Club, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’ ‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.
The Easy Club, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.
The Capillaire Club was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty and joyous.’
The Facer Club, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.
The Griskin Club also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those who took part with him in the production of Home’s Douglas at the Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.
The Ruffian Club, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’
The Wagering Club, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account of this club is given in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.
Others may be mentioned by name only: The Diversorium, The Haveral, The Whin Bush, The Skull, The Six Foot, The Assembly of Birds, The Card, The Borached, The Humdrum, The Apician, The Blast and Quaff, The Ocean, The Pipe, The Knights of the Cap and Feather, The Revolutionary, The Stoic, and The Club, referred to in Lockhart’s Life of Scott.
Of a later period than those mentioned above were The Gowks Club; The Right and Wrong, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and The Friday Club, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.

143 The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by dining at Fortune’s Tavern.

144 See note, p. 157.

145 ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s Memorials of Old Edinburgh.

146 Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).

147 The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in The Abbot—it was the scene of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.

148 The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’

149 Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth century.

150 A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of styling elderly landladies by the term Lucky, said: ‘Why not?—Felix qui pot——’

151 The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in the Canongate, appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for July 1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon one of the leaders, with a whip:
‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,
Hosea Eastgate.
‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’

152 The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the original pillar was replaced in its old position.

153 Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s conversation:
‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince, hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned) I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”
‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words: “If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in her greatest need.”’

154 ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone; and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded, whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th day of March.’—Calderwood’s Church History.

155 See Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 436.

156 Waverley Annotations, i. 435.

157 What is said to be the original Blue Blanket is still preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.

158 Scots Magazine, June 1767.

159 The skeleton of this singular being exists entire in the class-room of the professor of anatomy in the College.

160 Notes to Waverley.

161 Waverley Annotations, i. 70.

162 The buildings in this alley are now demolished.

163 He is said to have been a nobleman of considerable talent, and a great underhand supporter of the exiled family; see the Lockhart Papers. George Lockhart had married his daughter Euphemia, or Lady Effie, as she was commonly called. In the Edinburgh Annual Register there is preserved a letter from Lord Eglintoune to his son, replete with good sense as well as paternal affection.

164 The earl was forty-nine and Miss Kennedy twenty.

165 The anecdote which follows is chiefly taken from The Tell-tale, a rare collection, published in 1762.

166 Notes by C. K. Sharpe in Stenhouse’s edition of the Scots Musical Museum, ii. 200.

167 As a specimen of the complimentary intercourse of the poet with Lady Eglintoune, an anecdote is told of her having once sent him a basket of fine fruit; to which he returned this stanza:
‘Now, Priam’s son, ye may be mute,
  For I can bauldly brag wi’ thee;
Thou to the fairest gave the fruit—
  The fairest gave the fruit to me.’

The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon after received from the English wit:

‘As Juno fair, as Venus kind,
  She may have been who gave the fruit;
But had she had Minerva’s mind,
  She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.’

168 An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold.

169 Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’ time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one of the monthly numbers of the Scots Magazine for the year 1745 there is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.

170 A gown then required ten yards of stuff.

171 This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name, however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.

172 James Erskine on ascending the bench first took the title of Lord Tinwald, from his estate in Dumfriesshire. That of Lord Alva he assumed when he purchased the family estate of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, from his eldest brother, Sir Charles Erskine.

173 The site of Mylne Square is now occupied by the block of buildings directly opposite the north front of the Tron Church.

174 The first of this name was made ‘master-mason’ to the king in 1481, and the position descended in regular succession in the family till 1710, when they adopted the style of architect.

175 Lady Glenorchy built a chapel, which was named after her, on the low ground to the south of the Calton Hill. The chapel was swept away, along with that of the fine Gothic building Trinity College Church, for the convenience of the North British Railway. The lady’s name is still preserved in Lady Glenorchy’s Established Church in Roxburgh Place and Lady Glenorchy’s United Free Church in Greenside.

176 The Canongate seems to have been paved about the same time. In 1535 the king granted to the Abbot of Holyrood a duty of one penny upon every loaded cart, and a halfpenny upon every empty one, to repair and maintain the causeway.

177 George Lockhart of Carnwath lived here in 1753. Afterwards he resided in Ross House, a suburban mansion, which afterwards was used as a lying-in hospital. The park connected with this house is now occupied by George Square. While in Mr Lockhart’s possession Ross House was the scene of many gay routs and balls.
The Lords Ross, the original proprietors of this mansion, died out in 1754. One of the last persons in Scotland supposed to be possessed by an evil spirit was a daughter of George, the second last lord. A correspondent says: ‘A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a child, he saw her clamber up to the top of an old-fashioned four-post bed like a cat. In her fits it was almost impossible to hold her. About the same time, a daughter of Lord Kinnaird was supposed to have the second-sight. One day, during divine worship in the High Church, she fainted away; on her recovery, she declared that when Lady Janet Dundas (a daughter of Lord Lauderdale) entered the pew with Miss Dundas, who was a beautiful young girl, she saw the latter as it were in a shroud gathered round her neck, and upon her head. Miss Dundas died a short time after.’

178 Both facts from Moyses’s Memoirs.

179 In the house to the north of this was a shop kept by an eccentric personage, who exhibited a sign bearing this singular inscription:
ORRA THINGS BOUGHT AND SOLD—
which signified that he dealt in odd articles, such as a single shoe-buckle, one of a pair of skates, a teapot wanting a lid, or perhaps, as often, a lid minus a teapot; in short, any unpaired article which was not to be got in the shops where only new things were sold, and which, nevertheless, was now and then as indispensably wanted by householders as anything else.

180 The present article is almost wholly from original sources, a fact probably unknown to a contemporary novelist, who has made it the groundwork of a fiction without any acknowledgment. Some additional particulars may be found in Tales of the Century, by John Sobieski Stuart (Edinburgh, 1846). In the Spalding Miscellany, vol. iii., are several letters of Lord Grange, containing allusions to his wife; and a production of his, which has been printed under the title of Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice (Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1833), is worthy of perusal.

181 Here and elsewhere a paper in Lord Grange’s own hand is quoted.

182 ‘Then, and some time before and after, there was a stage-coach from hence to England.’ So says his lordship; implying that in 1751, when he was writing, there was no such public conveniency! It had been tried, and had failed.

183 If we could believe Lord Lovat, however, he personally was innocent, and regretted he was innocent, of any association with the abduction of Lady Grange. ‘They said it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that took her away; but I defyed them then, as I do now, and do declare to you upon honour, that I do not know what has become of that woman, where she is or who takes care of her, but if I had contrived and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil, who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not think shame of it before God or man.’—Letter of Lord Lovat’s quoted in Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale.

184 About four gallons.

185 Named after John Cant, a pious citizen of the sixteenth century, who, with his wife, Agnes Kerkettle, was a contributor to the foundation of the Convent of St Catherine of Siena on the south side of the Meadows. The district is now known as Sciennes—pronounced Sheens.

186 Only fragments of the ancient buildings remain in Cant’s and Dickson’s Closes.

187 At the head of the Old Bank Close, to the westward; burned down in 1771.

188 Only a small portion of this building now remains.

189 The Advocates’ Library.

190 In the parish of Borthwick.

191 This anecdote was related to me by the first Lord Wharncliffe, grandson’s grandson to Sir George, about 1828.

192 Cromarty, at seventy, contrived to marry ‘a young and beautiful countess in her own right, a widow, wealthy, and in universal estimation. The following distich was composed on the occasion:
Thou sonsie auld carl, the world has not thy like,
For ladies fa’ in love with thee, though thou be ane auld tyke.’

C. K. Sharpe, Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xlvii.

193 This historic building was demolished many years ago. Its main front faced the Cowgate, and to the north and east were extensive gardens.

194 In this house, too, Queen Mary was entertained at a banquet given by the citizens. ‘Upon the nynt day of Februar at evin the Queen’s grace come up in ane honourable manner fra the palice of Holyrudhouse to the Cardinal’s ludging in Blackfriars Wynd,... and efter supper the honest young men in the town come with ane convoy to her,’ and escorted her back to Holyrood.—Diurnal of Occurrents.
Before the opening of the original High School in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery the pupils were temporarily accommodated in Beaton’s palace.

195 The title ‘Ambassador Keith’ is usually applied to Sir Robert’s father, who, after several minor diplomatic appointments on the Continent, was the representative of Great Britain at the court of St Petersburg. An interesting sketch of him, under the title of ‘Felix,’ by Mrs Cockburn, is appended to the volume of that lady’s Letters, edited by Mr T. Craig Brown. Miss Keith, known to Edinburgh society as ‘Sister Anne,’ was Scott’s ‘Mrs Bethune Balliol’ of the Chronicles of the Canongate. This gentleman was absent from Edinburgh about twenty-two years, and returned at a time when it was supposed that manners were beginning to exhibit symptoms of great improvement. He, however, complained that they were degenerated. In his early time, he said, every Scottish gentleman of £300 a year travelled abroad when young, and brought home to the bosom of domestic life, and to the profession in which it might be his fate to engage, a vast fund of literary information, knowledge of the world, and genuine good manners, which dignified his character through life. But towards the year 1770 this practice had been entirely given up, and in consequence a sensible change was discoverable upon the face of good society. (See the Life of John Home, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq.).

196 It is curious to observe how, in correspondence with the change in our manners and customs, one trade has become extinct, while another succeeded in its place. At the end of the sixteenth century the manufacture of offensive weapons predominated over all other trades in Edinburgh. We had then cutlers, whose essay-piece, on being admitted of the corporation, was ‘ane plain finished quhanzear’ or sword; gaird-makers, whose business consisted in fashioning sword-handles; Dalmascars, who gilded the said weapon; and belt-makers, who wrought the girdles that bound it to the wearer’s body. There were also dag-makers, who made hackbuts (short-guns) and dags (pistols). These various professions all became associated in the general one of armourers, or gunsmiths, when the wearing of weapons went into desuetude—there being then no further necessity for the expedition and expediency of the modern political economist’s boasted ‘division of labour.’ As the above arts gave way, those which tended to provide the comforts and luxuries of civilised life gradually arose. About 1586 we find the first notice of locksmiths in Edinburgh, and there was then only one of the trade, whose essay was simply ‘a kist lock.’ In 1609, however, as the security of property increased, the essay was ‘a kist lock and a hingand bois lock, with an double plate lock;’ and in 1644 ‘a key and sprent band’ were added to the essay. In 1682 ‘a cruik and cruik band’ were further added; and in 1728, for the safety of the lieges, the locksmith’s essay was appointed to be ‘a cruik and cruik band, a pass lock with a round filled bridge, not cut or broke in the backside, with nobs and jamb bound.’ In 1595 we find the first notice of shearsmiths. In 1609 a heckle-maker was admitted into the Corporation of Hammermen. In 1613 a tinkler makes his appearance; Thomas Duncan, the first tinkler, was then admitted. Pewterers are mentioned so far back as 1588. In 1647 we find the first knock-maker (clock-maker), but so limited was his business that he was also a locksmith. In 1664 the first white-iron man was admitted; also the first harness-maker, though lorimers had previously existed. Paul Martin, a distressed French Protestant, in 1691, was the first manufacturer of surgical instruments in Edinburgh. In 1720 we find the first pin-maker; in 1764, the first edge-tool maker and first fish-hook maker.

197 The Highland appellative of Lord Lovat, expressing the son of Simon.

198 Quarterly Review, vol. xiv. p. 326.

199 First door up the stair at the head of the wynd, on the west side. The house was burnt down in 1824, but rebuilt in its former arrangement.

200 [The window-tax was first imposed in 1695, and repealed in 1851.]

201 An old domestic of her ladyship’s preserved one of her shoes as a relic for many years. The heel was three inches deep.

202 [The view of the famous ‘Douglas Cause,’ affirmed in the House of Lords in 1771.]

203 Mrs Grant of Laggan held another opinion of General Simon Fraser. A pleasing exterior covered a large share of the paternal character—‘No heart was ever harder, no hands more rapacious than his.’

204 Myln’s Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld. Edinburgh, 1831.

205 Originally the name was the ‘Wynd of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields,’ as being the approach to the collegiate church so named which stood on the site of the University—the ‘Kirk o’ Field’ of the Darnley tragedy.

206 Now Chambers Street.

207 A small ‘bit’ of College Wynd, ending in a cul de sac, is all that remains of this once leading thoroughfare between the city and the ‘Oure Tounis Colledge.’

208 When it became an unfashionable place of residence it was dubbed by the fops of the town ‘Cavalry Wynd.’ The northern end of Guthrie Street is the site of the old Horse Wynd.

209 Macgill was King’s Advocate to James VI., and is said to have died of grief when his rival, Thomas Hamilton, was preferred for the presidentship.

210 Most of the traditionary anecdotes in this article were communicated by Charles, eighth Earl of Haddington, through conversation with Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were directly imparted to the author.

211 Near by is the Magdalen Chapel, a curious relic of the sixteenth century, belonging to the Corporation of Hammermen. It was erected immediately before the Reformation by a pious citizen, Michael Macquhan, and Jonet Rhynd, his widow, whose tomb is shown in the floor. The windows towards the south were anciently filled with stained glass; and there still remain some specimens of that kind of ornament, which, by some strange chance, had survived the Reformation. In a large department at the top of one window are the arms of Mary of Guise, who was queen-regent at the time the chapel was built. The arms of Macquhan and his wife are also to be seen. In the lower panes, which have been filled with small figures of saints, only one remains—a St Bartholomew—who, by a rare chance, has survived the general massacre. The whole is now very carefully preserved. When the distinguished Reformer, John Craig, returned to Scotland at the Reformation, after an absence of twenty-four years, he preached for some time in this chapel, in the Latin language, to a select congregation of the learned, being unable, by long disuse, to hold forth in his vernacular tongue. This divine subsequently was appointed a colleague to John Knox, and is distinguished in history for having refused to publish the banns between Queen Mary and Bothwell, and also for having written the National Covenant in 1589. Another circumstance in the history of this chapel is worthy of notice. The body of the Earl of Argyll, after his execution, June 30, 1685, was brought down and deposited in this place, to wait till it should be conveyed to the family burying-place at Kilmun.

212 The amateurs who took the lead as choristers were Gilbert Innes, Esq. of Stow; Alexander Wight, Esq., advocate; Mr John Hutton, papermaker; Mr John Russel, W.S.; and Mr George Thomson. As an instrumentalist, we could boast of our countryman the Earl of Kelly, who also composed six overtures for an orchestra, one of which I heard played in the hall, himself leading the band.

213 See a different account of this custom, p. 147.

214 [‘John M. Giornovicki, commonly known in Britain under the name of Jarnowick, was a native of Palermo. About 1770 he went to Paris, where he performed a concerto of his famous master Lolli, but did not succeed. He then played one of his own concertos, that in A major, and became quite the fashion. The style of Giornovicki was highly elegant and finished, his intonation perfect, and his taste pure. The late Domenico Dragonetti, one of the best judges in Europe, told me that Giornovicki was the most elegant and graceful violin-player he had ever heard before Paganini, but that he wanted power. He seems to have been a dissipated and passionate man; a good swordsman too, as was common in those days. One day, in a dispute, he struck the Chevalier St George, then one of the greatest violin-players and best swordsmen in Europe. St George said coolly: “I have too much regard for his musical talent to fight him.” A noble speech, showing St George in all respects the better man. Giornovicki died suddenly at St Petersburg in 1804.’—G. F. G.]

215 G. T., it may now be explained, was George Thomson, the well-known and generally loved editor of the Melodies of Scotland. He might rather have described himself as Nonogenarius, for at his death, in 1851, he had reached the age of ninety-four, his violin, as he believed, having prolonged his life much beyond the usual term.

216 The earl was the leader of the amateur orchestra of St Cecilia’s Hall, which included Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of Pitmedden, General Middleton, Lord Elcho, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mrs Forbes of Newhall, and others of the aristocracy. General Middleton was credited with ‘singing a song with much humour,’ which he sometimes accompanied with a key and tongs. Sir Gilbert Elliot, who played the German flute, was the first to introduce that instrument to a Scottish audience. St Cecilia’s Hall has passed through many vicissitudes since then, and is now a bookbinder’s warehouse, but its fine ceiling and the orchestral balcony at the southern end are still preserved as memorials of its early days.

217 About seventy paces to the east of the site of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, and exactly opposite to the opening of Roxburgh Place, was a projection in the wall, which has been long demolished and the wall altered. Close, however, to the west of the place, and near the ground, are some remains of an arch in the wall, which Malcolm Laing supposes to have been a gun-port connected with the projection at this spot. It certainly has no connection, as Arnot and (after him) Whitaker have supposed, with the story of Darnley’s murder. [This relic of the Flodden wall is now removed, but a portion of the wall itself still stands behind the houses at the north-east junction of Drummond Street and the Pleasance. Another portion was recently discovered at the east end of Lothian Street, between that street and the Royal Scottish Museum. Another part forms the north side of a cul de sac at Lindsay Place, and at the Vennel is the largest part of this old wall, with one of its few towers, forming the western boundary of the grounds of Heriot’s Hospital.]

218 Hose in those days covered the whole of the lower part of the person.

219 This indicates pretty nearly the site of the house of Bassendyne, the early printer. It must have been opposite, or nearly opposite, to the Fountain Well.

220 Now removed and the site built over. There was also a Cunyie House in Candlemaker Row, which was used as the Mint during the regency of Mary of Guise.

221 The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank, was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike, the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.

222 It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes: ‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up, hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid, and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger, No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth, rather too liberally and too loudly.’

223 [The right of this house to be called ‘John Knox’s House’ has been strenuously disputed; several other houses in which Knox actually lived have been identified by Robert Miller, F.S.A. Scot., Lord Dean of Guild of Edinburgh, in John Knox and the Town Council of Edinburgh, with a Chapter on the so-called ‘John Knox’s House’ (1898). For the genuineness of the tradition, said not to be older than 1806, see Lord Guthrie’s John Knox and John Knox’s House (1898).]

224 The following advertisement, inserted in the Edinburgh Courant of August 1, 1754, illustrates the above in a striking manner: ‘If any person has lost a large sow, let them call at the house of Robert Fiddes, gardener to Lord Minto, over against the Earl of Galloway’s, in the Horse Wynd, where, upon proving the property, paying expenses and damages done by the said sow, they may have the same restored.’

225 Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 190.

226 ‘During this peaceable time [1668-1675], he [John, Earl of Tweeddale] built the park of Yester of stone and lime, near seven miles about, in seven years’ time, at the expense of 20,000 pound; bought a house in Edinburgh from Sir William Bruce for 1000 pound sterling, and ane other house within the same court, which, being rebuilt from the foundation, the price of it and reparations of both stood him 1000 sterling.’—Father Hay’s Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 32.

227 The notes are thus described in the Hue and Cry: £1300 in twenty-pound notes of Sir W. Forbes and Company; £1000 in twenty-pound notes of the Leith Banking Company; £1400 in twenty, ten, and five pound notes of different banks; 240 guinea and 440 pound notes of different banks—in all, £4392.

228 It was in this part of the High Street also that Robert Lekprevick, the Scottish printer, lived before he removed to St Andrews in 1571.

229 ‘—— deliure a Jacques le tailleur deux chanteaux de damas gris broches dor pour faire vne robbe a vne poupine;’ also ‘trois quartz et demi de toille dargent et de soze blanche pour faire vne cotte et aultre chose a des poupines.’—Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses, Furniture, &c. of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by Joseph Robertson. Edinburgh, 1863, p. 139.

230 A skull represented as Buchanan’s has long been shown in the College of Edinburgh. It is extremely thin, and being long ago shown in company with that of a known idiot, which was, on the contrary, very thick, it seemed to form a commentary upon the popular expression which sets forth density of bone as an invariable accompaniment of paucity of brain. The author of a diatribe called Scotland Characterised, which was published in 1701, and may be found in the Harleian Miscellany, tells us that he had seen the skull in question, and that it bore ‘a very pretty distich upon it [the composition of Principal Adamson, who had caused the skull to be lifted]—the first line I have forgot, but the second was:
“Et decus es tumulo jam, Buchanane, tuo.”’

231 [Dr David Hay Fleming has shown that the contemporary evidence is all in favour of the Covenant’s having been signed in the Greyfriars’ Church, and not in the churchyard; see a chapter by him in Mr Moir Bryce’s Old Greyfriars’ Church, Edinburgh (1912). And in the same book Mr Moir Bryce has proved that the small strip of ground long erroneously believed to be the Covenanters’ prison was not separated off till 1703-4, and that the Covenanters were interned on a much larger area to the east, now built over.]

232 The Back Stairs, built on the site of St Giles’ Churchyard, gave direct communication between the Cowgate and Old Parliament Square. It was by this way that Robertson the smuggler escaped from the Tolbooth Church, where he and his accomplice Wilson had been taken, as was usual with condemned prisoners, the Sunday before their execution. It was Porteous’s behaviour at the execution of Wilson that led to the riot and his own death in the Grassmarket.

233 The pistols belonged to Mr Cayley himself, having been borrowed a few days before by Mr Macfarlane.

234 A little below the church.

235 Subjoined is a list of persons of note who lived in the Canongate in the early days of the late Mr Chalmers Izett, whose memory extended back to 1769:
‘DUKES.
Hamilton.
Queensberry.
EARLS.
Breadalbane.
Hyndford.
Wemyss.
Balcarras.
Moray.
Dalhousie.
Haddington.
Mar.
Srathmore.
Traquair.
Selkirk.
Dundonald.
Kintore.
Dunmore.
Seafield.
Panmure.
COUNTESSES.
Tweeddale.
Lothian.
LORDS.
Haddo.
Colvill.
Blantyre.
Nairn.
Semple.
A. Gordon.
Cranstoun.
L. OF SESSION.
Eskgrove.
Hailes.
Prestongrange.
Kames.
Milton.
Montgomery.
Bannatyne.
BARONETS.
Sir J. Grant.
Sir J. Suttie.
Sir J. Whiteford.
Sir J. Stewart.
Sir J. Stirling.
Sir J. Sinclair, Glorat.
Sir J. Halkett.
Sir James Stirling.
Sir D. Hay.
Sir B. Dunbar.
Sir J. Scott, Ancrum.
Sir R. Anstruther.
Sir J. Sinclair, Ulbster.
COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF.
General Oughton.
General Skene.
Lord A. Gordon.
Lord Moira.
EMINENT MEN.
Adam Smith.
Dr Young.
Dugald Stewart.
Dr Gardner.
Dr Gregory.
BANK.
Douglas, Heron, and Company.
LADIES’ BOARDING-SCHOOL.
Mrs Hamilton, Chessels’s Court.
PRINCIPAL INNS.
Ramsay’s, St Mary’s Wynd.
Boyd’s, Head of Canongate.

‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and one hour in returning.’

236 Removal.

237 ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant (newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,” answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither rug nor rive.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—Tam Tough.”’—[From an Edinburgh Newspaper.]

238 The inscription is now removed.

239 With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of the street.

240 Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross, notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century. Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.

241 Strap in Roderick Random was supposed to represent one Hutchinson, a barber near Dunbar. The man encouraged the idea as much as possible. When Mr [Warren] Hastings (governor of India) and his wife visited Scotland, they sent for this man, and were so pleased with him that Mr Hastings afterwards sent him a couple of razors, mounted in gold, from London.

242 For many years the Practising School for Teachers under the management of the Free Church of Scotland, now the Training College for Teachers under the Provincial Council of Education.

243 The terraces have long since been deprived of their last semblance of the old gardens; but while recent excavations were being made for an extension of the educational buildings, the statue of the boy was discovered underground in the lowest terrace. The statue is preserved, and forms a connecting link between ‘My Lady Murray’s Yards’ and the ‘Yards’ of the modern school.

244 On the north side of the High Street, opposite the Tron Church. The site is now covered by the opening of Cockburn Street.

245 I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (Horæ Subsecivæ, p. 42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck (Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human., tom. vi. p. 60), involving this fine expression. Some one, however, has searched all over the writings of Seneca for it in vain.

246 The close entering by the archway at the east end of the house, now called ‘Bakehouse Close,’ was formerly ‘Hammermen’s Close.’

247 ‘The Speaking House’ is now recognised as a town mansion of the Huntly family. It is said to be associated with the first marquis, who killed the ‘Bonnie Earl of Moray’ at Donibristle, and died in 1636 at Dundee on his way north to Aberdeenshire. His son, the second marquis, who was beheaded in 1649, was residing in this house ten years prior to his execution, and in it his daughter Lady Ann was married to Lord Drummond, third Earl of Perth.

248 Which he named Gosford, after the estate in East Lothian, which was acquired by Sir Archibald’s ancestor, a wealthy burgess in the reign of Queen Mary. The Viscounts Gosford take their title from the Irish estate.

249 In his MS. Diaries in the Advocates’ Library.

250 In an advertisement in a Jacobite newspaper, called The Thistle, which rose and sank in 1734, the house is advertised as having lately been occupied by the Duchesses of Gordon and Perth. [1868. It is in the course of being taken down to make way for a railway.]

251 In 1864 this favourite Scottish pastime was resuscitated on Leith Links, and is now enjoyed with a relish as keen as ever.

252 Archæologia Scotica, i.

253 A newspaper, giving an account of Lord Palmerston’s visit to Edinburgh in 1865, mentions that his lordship, during his stay in the city, was made aware that an aged woman of the name of Peggie Forbes, who had been a servant with Dugald Stewart, well remembered his lordship when under the professor’s roof in early days. Interested in the circumstance, Lord Palmerston took occasion to pay her a visit at her dwelling, No. 1 Rankeillor Street, and expressed his pleasure at renewing the acquaintance of the old domestic. Dr John Brown had discovered the existence of this old association, and with it a box of tools which were the property of ‘young Maister Henry’ of those days. The sight of them called up within the breast of the Premier further associations of days long bygone.

254 Robertson, in his Rural Recollections (Irvine, 1829), says: ‘The earliest evidence that I have met with of potatoes in Scotland is an old household book of the Eglintoune family in 1733, in which potatoes appear at different times as a dish at supper.’ They appear earlier than this—namely, in 1701—in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, where the price per peck is intimated at 2s. 6d.—See Arnot’s History of Edinburgh, 4to, p. 201.

255 A noted brewer, much given to preaching. Of him Claudero says:
‘Our souls with gospel he did cheer,
Our bodies, too, with ale and beer;
Gratis he gospel got and gave away;
For ale and beer he only made us pay.’

256 This thriving parliamentary burgh originated in a cottage built, and long inhabited, by a retired seaman of Admiral Vernon’s squadron, who gave it this name in commemoration of the triumph which his commander there gained over the Spaniards in 1739. There must have been various houses at the spot in 1753, when we find one ‘George Hamilton, in Portobello,’ advertising in the Edinburgh Courant that he would give a reward of three pounds to any one who should discover the author of a scandalous report, which represented him as harbouring robbers in his house. The waste upon which Portobello is now partly founded was dreadfully infested at this time with robbers, and resorted to by smugglers; see Courant. [Portobello, while remaining one of the ‘Leith burghs’ for parliamentary purposes, was municipally incorporated with Edinburgh in 1896. Claudero’s ‘Frigate Whins’ are better known as the ‘Figgate Whins.’]

257 Claudero could have little serious expectation that several of these predictions would come to pass before he had been forty years in his grave.

258 A celebrated and much-esteemed fishing-rod maker, who afterwards flourished in the old wooden land at the head of Blackfriars Wynd. He survived to recent times, and was distinguished for his adherence to the cocked hat, wrist ruffles, and buckles of his youth. He was a short, neat man, very well bred, a great angler, intimate with the great, a Jacobite, and lived to near a century. He had fished in almost every trouting stream in the three kingdoms, and was seen skating on Lochend at the age of eighty-five.

259 This seems to bear some reference to the seizure of young Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart at Lesmahagow in 1745.

260 Introduction to Law’s Memorials, p. lxxx.

261 See letters of Gay, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, in Scott’s edition of Swift.

262 In a letter from Gay to Swift, dated February 15, 1727-8, we find the subject illustrated as follows: ‘As to my favours from great men, I am in the same state you left me; but I am a great deal happier, as I have expectations. The Duchess of Queensberry has signalised her friendship to me upon this occasion [the bringing out of the Beggar’s Opera] in such a conspicuous manner, that I hope (for her sake) you will take care to put your fork to all its proper uses, and suffer nobody for the future to put their knives in their mouth.’
In the P.S. to a letter from Gay to Swift, dated Middleton Stoney, November 9, 1729, Gay says: ‘To the lady I live with I owe my life and fortune. Think of her with respect—value and esteem her as I do—and never more despise a fork with three prongs. I wish, too, you would not eat from the point of your knife. She has so much goodness, virtue, and generosity, that if you knew her, you would have a pleasure in obeying her as I do. She often wishes she had known you.’

263 Record of that Society.

264 The date over the exterior gateway of the Tailors’ Hall, towards the Cowgate, is 1644; but it is ascertained that the corporation had its hall at this place at an earlier period. An assembly of between two and three hundred clergymen was held here on Tuesday the 27th of February 1638 in order to consider the National Covenant, which was presented to the public next day in the Greyfriars Church. We are informed by the Earl of Rothes, in his Relations of the transactions of this period, in which he bore so distinguished a part, that some few objected to certain points in it; but being taken aside into the garden attached to this hall, and there lectured on the necessity of mutual concession for the sake of the general cause, they were soon brought to give their entire assent.

265 The announcements of entertainments given at this fashionable place of amusement in the eighteenth century make amusing reading to-day. ‘February 17, 1743. We hear that on Monday 21st instant, at the Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, at the desire of several ladies of distinction, will be performed a concert of vocal and instrumental music. After which will be given gratis Richard the Third, containing several historical passages. To which will be added gratis “The Mock Lawyer.” Tickets for the Concert (on which are [sic] printed a new device called Apology and Evasion) to be had at the Exchange and John’s Coffee-houses, and at Mr Este’s lodgings at Mr Monro’s, musician in the Cowgate, near Tailors’ Hall. As Mrs Este’s present condition will not admit a personal application, she hopes the ladies notwithstanding will grace her concert.’

266 Among the audience on the first night of the performance of Douglas were the two daughters of John and Lady Susan Renton, one of whom, Eleanor, was the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to whom the author in his ‘Introductory Notice’ expresses his indebtedness for assistance on the first appearance of this work. And it was for attending one of the performances that the minister of Liberton Church brought himself under sentence of six weeks’ suspension by the Presbytery of Edinburgh—a sentence modified in consideration of his plea that though he attended the play, ‘he concealed himself as well as he could to avoid giving offence.’

267 Maitland, in his History of Edinburgh, 1753, says that the encouragement given to the diversions at the house ‘is so very great, ’tis to be feared it will terminate in the destruction of the university. Such diversions,’ he adds, ‘are noways becoming a seat of the Muses.’

268 The Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square, where the General Post Office now stands.

269 Letter of Captain Amory, MS.

270 The north and south sides only of this square now remain. The west was removed to make a thoroughfare—Marshall Street, connecting Nicolson Square and Potterrow.

271 The site was midway between Edinburgh and Leith, now represented by Shrub Place.

272 Sir Walter’s brother Thomas was married to a sister of Mr M’Culloch.

273 It was also along this road that the anxious citizens, watching on the Castle esplanade, saw the royalist cavalry retiring at full gallop from Coltbridge on the approach of Prince Charlie and his Highland army.

274 In Mr Lockhart’s clever book, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, the murderer is called Gabriel. A work called Celebrated Trials (6 vols. 1825) gives an erroneous account of the murder, styling the murderer as the Rev. Thomas Hunter.

275 See Domestic Annals of Scotland, i. 407.

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North Esk to Northesk.