Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/carolineparkhousOOfras Caroline Park House and RoYSTouN Castle Caroline Park House and RoYSTOUN Castle a descriptive and historical account. by david eraser HARRIS, B.Sc. (Lond.), M.B., CM., F.R.S.E., E.S.A.Scot. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULAIION PRINTED BY NEILL AND COMPANY, OLD FISIIMARKET CLOSE, EDINBURGH . ♦$» WITH A. B. FLEMING AND CO.'S NO. 387X BLACK ON PAPER MANUFACTURED BY ALEXAN- DER COWAN AND SONS, LIMITED, EDIN- BURGH THE VIEWS OF CAROLINE PARK TAKEN BY R. S. WEBSTER, PHOTOGRAPHER, EDIN- BURGH THE ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED ON COPPER (IVES' PROCESS) BY WM. H. WARD AND CO., LIMITED, LONDON List of Illustrations PAGE Caroline Park, South Front ....... 10 Inscription on Stone Tablet above Entrance North Front op House . . 11 Caroline Park House, View op . . . . . . . 12, 13 Caroline Park House, North Front ...... 14 Centre Panel in Roop op Drawing Room — " Aurora " . . . .15 Ancient Well . . . . . . . . . .16 Ceiling op Ante-Drawing Room. (A combination op nine distinct Photographs, A WORK OF great DIFFICULTY, BY WeBSTER, PrINCES StREET, EdINBURGh) . 17 Entrance Doorway to Secret Passage . . . . . .18 Fireplace in Lady Tarbat's Boudoir . . . . . .19 Paintings on Boudoir Walls ....... 20 Panel Painting of Edinburgh in 1696 . . . . . .23 North (and Principal) Gateway to Caroline Park House . . .24 Gate op above, now at Gogar House . . . . .25 Sib George Mackenzie — Viscount Tarbat— First Earl of Cromarty . . 29 John, Second Duke op Argyll and Greenwich . . . . .31 Queen Caroline ......... 32 Clerks' Offices ......... 34 Directors' Room . . . . . . . . .35 Summer House .......... 36 Roystoun Garden . . . , . . . . .37 Granton Castle ......... 39 Sundial . . . . . . . . . . .40 Finis — Old Father Time , , . , . , . • .42 Caroline Park House and RoYSTOuN Castle (AROLINE PARK HOUSE, now occupied by the offices of Messrs A. B. Fleming & Company, Limited, is situated in the parish of Cramond, Midlothian, in a wooded park about three-quarters of a mile to the west of Granton Harbour, and about three miles north-west from Princes Street, Edinburgh. The house appears to have been built in 1685 by George, Viscount Tarbat, of whose career and family something will be said later on. It is cjuadrangular in form, and measures 117 feet from north to south by 90 feet from east to west, the open courtyard being 45 feet by 38. The present south front was added eleven years after the house was built — that is, in 1696, which is the date carved above the dormer window in the centre of the very steep-pitched south roof. The original house is described by Messrs M'Gibbon & Ross, in their splendid work " The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland," as having been built in the " homely Scottish style," but Viscount Tarbat, desiring a more pretentious country mansion, added the east and west towers, and re-faced the entire south wall between them with a fine, smooth sandstone ; this restoration or renaissance being proved by our finding that the south entrance is double — that is to say, we can distinguish the older or original door (resembling that still existing on the north side) behind the later and more showy porch and lintel. This re-facing of the south side necessitated raising the level of all the windows by about half a foot — an alteration still visible. Architects have conjectured that Sir William Bruce of Balcaskie and Kin- ross, the architect of the more modern part of Holyrood, was responsible for the restoration of Caroline Park, on account of the fact that Viscount Tarbat was livino- at the Palace at the time Caroline Park was being altered, and because hoth B places resemble each other in not a few particulars — courtyard and towers amongst others. The house, for the most part, is only one room thick, although in places where the rooms are small there are two between the outer wall and the wall of the court- yard, and all these rooms communicate with one another, or are what we should call " en suite " — an inconvenient arrangement, according to our modern ideas, but one constantly found in palaces and large houses of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Access is gained to the apartments by two wide stone staircases, that from the North Hall, the chief one, leading to the drawing-rooms ; the other from the South Hall, leading to the suite of rooms on the south side, as well as by one very broad " wheel- stair " in the south-east angle, and a second but very narrow wheel-stair in the south- west corner. These spiral staircases were intended for domestic use, while the straight ones were for ceremonious occasions. Tlie north front, as it now stands, gives us the original width and height of the house. The roof is fiat, and is guarded by an open, stone balustrade, in what is sometimes called the " Queen Ann" style. Just below this, in the centre of the wall above the north door, is a stone tablet, upon which is cut the following inscription in Latin : — 10 GAZ^E CONGBST/F. NIHILI IMPBNS.K USUI SUNT CUM GLEBIS AUGBNTUR ET LABORES IN NOSTRUM ERGO ET AMICORUM SOLATIUM TUaURIOLUM HOC QiDIPICARE CURARUNT GBORGIUS BT ANNA VICBCOMITES A TARBAT ANNO MUM CHRIST : 1685 INTRA TUM HOSPBS NAM HOSPITIUM EST NUNC NOSTRUM TUNC ALTBRIUS POSTBA VBRO NBC SCIO NBC CURO CUJUS NAM NULLI CBRTA DOMUS VIVBNDUM BRGO, DUM LICET ESSE Just Ijelow these lines is seen very indistinctly a deer's head — the Mackenzie crest. The following translation, by Sir William Fraser, in his monograph on the " Cromarty Family," is that of Lord Tarbat's original draft for the inscription, still existing among the " Cromarty Papers " : — " Riches unemployed are of no use, but made to circulate they are productive of much good. Increase of property is accom- panied by a corresponding increase of care, wherefore, for their own comfort and that of their friends, George and Anna — Viscount and Viscountess Tarbat — have caused this small cottage to be built in the year of the Christian era 1685. Enter then, 0 Guest, for this is the house of entertainment. Now it is ours, soon it will be another's ; but whose afterwards we neither know nor care, for none hath a certain dwelling : there- fore let us live well while we may." Continuing the description of the exterior of the house, let us 23ass to the south front, where we have the high east and west towers before noted. Upon the frieze of the western tower we have the epigraph " Anne, Viscountess Tarbat," inscribed over the window of the room which was most probably her ladyship's dressing-room or boudoir ; while, on the corresponding frieze of the eastern tower, we have the epigraph " George, Viscount Tarbat," over the window of his lordship's dressing-room. This room communicates, by a concealed wheel-stair, with a room directly below on the ground floor of the tower, most likely the so-called " speak-a-word " room, to which his lordship would be able to descend from the dressing-room to see people in connection with the estate — factors, servants, and others — without the trouble of bringing them through the house, seeing that this convenient room has a separate door to the outside of the house, quite distinct from the main entrance. The similar room on the ground BENE. 11 floor of the western tower, though it has a door to the outside, has no communication with the room above it — Lady Tarbat's, the master of the house only being supposed to need a private means of entering or leaving it. An identical arrangement may be seen in Linlithgow Palace in connection with the bedroom of James V. Looking now at the centre of the south front, and commencing with the porch, we see that this carries a balcony supported by two pillars of rather inferior workmanship, but sur- rounded by a handsome wrought-iron railing. In the centre of the railing, below the Viscount's coronet, is the monogram of Viscount Tarbat and his second wife, the Dowager Countess of Wemyss ; to the right of which we see the Swan, the crest of the Wemyss family ; and on the left of it the Deer's Head, part of the arms of the Mackenzies of Seaforth, formerly existed. In addition, it presents the symbol of the rose and thistle in hammered iron, devices which we shall find in many other situa- tions in the house, indicating what Lord Tarbat had so much at heart — the union of the two kingdoms, England and Scotland. Above the centre window on the second floor, there is carved " the sun in his splendour," the crest of Tarbat of Cromarty ; 12 while above the solitary dormer window in the roof, we have " the rock in flames," for Macleod of Lewis, whose motto is rather an interesting one, " Fulgeo non uro," " I shine bnt I do not burn." Before commencing the description of the interior, we might notice the curious quasi-geometrical ornaments cut on the lowest projecting part of the south walls, the whole forming a kind of stone girdle round the base just above the ground. Let us now enter the house by the north hall, and pass up the grand staircase. the iron balustrade of which is a very fine piece of hand-hammered iron-work, supposed to have been executed at Augsburg in German 3^ Here, again, the rose is very prominent, while the whole device is floral and extremely rich, yet without any sacrifice of strength. The iron was originally gilded, but is now painted a dark green. This staircase leads to a short Landing, which opens on the left into the dining-room of the house — a long room lit by windows on the north and east ; while the other end of the landing communicates with an ante- drawing-room, passing through which we find ourselves in the grand drawing-room, now the public oflice. This noble room, lit by 13 windows let into deep embrasures in the thick west and north walls, has one very large fireplace at the south end. The room is chiefly interesting on account of its ceiling, in the centre of which is a rectangular oil painting upon the plaster panel, representing (according to Miss Warrender, in her interesting little book " Walks near Edinburgh ") a mythological scene, " Aurora," or " Morning," signed " N. Hevde, Inventoe." The entire ceiling is covered with very rich and very massive plaster-work, partly pre-formed and fixed there, partl}^ worked up with finger and thumb upon the ceiling in situ ; neither it nor the painting has ever been renewed, but merely cleaned from time to time. All the parts of the ceiling are not equally fine in finish : the large many-lobed leaf in the corners, and the foliage curling over the ogee moulding, are much poorer than the rest, and are probably native work. Considering that it is more than two hundred years since this painting and plaster-w^ork w^ere executed, w^e may w^ell admire the perfection and permanence of them both : the colouring of the painting is still particularly brilliant. The cornice of the room is of the same ornately -decorated character ; in the centre of each of the sides w^e have the richly worked monogram " G. A. T. " (standing for George, Anna, 14 and Tarbat), surmounted by the Viscount's coronet, the whole being surrounded by a wreath which has on its upper and lower extremities a grinning human face — a device repeated several times throughout these ceilings. The plaster-work, in which grapes and vine-leaves are conspicuous, is believed to have been executed l:)y a party of Italians who were also engaged upon similar work in Holyrood Palace in the present royal apartments on the east side, and there is great similarity between the ceilings in the Palace and those in Caroline Park House. Work of the same character of detail may be seen in the Royal Hotel at Bideford, England, that house being one built about the same time as Caroline Park, by John Davy, a merchant prince, as well as in the Scottish mansions of Hatton, Pinkie, and Binns. Before leaving the drawing-room, we must allude to a strange story " connected with it. Accordino- to Miss Warrender this is the haunted room, on account of what might be called an apparition, which was seen here while her aunt. Lady John Scott, was living in the house. The untoward circumstance was that a window at the end of the room was burst open, and that a cannon ball, or what could only be described as some such heavy body, bounded in, falling heavily on the floor three times ; it approached a screen half-way up the room, and then rolled backwards ; but the servants, on being rung up, could see nothing, the window w^as shut, and no one was injured. Miss Warrender distinctly states, in her book above mentioned, that 15 noises were continually heard in tlie house when, as a child, she lived in it — noises at night that terrified the servants, and could not apparently be accounted for as made by birds finding their way down the chimne37's and flying about the empty rooms. There is a tradition, at any rate, about Caroline Park, that out of the ancient, moss-covered well in the park to the north-east of the house, " ye Greene Ladye " occasionally rises at midnight and rings the alarm-bell in the courtyard. Some of us, however, who have lived and slept at Caroline Park on many occasions, and at all seasons of the year, have never yet heard or seen anything of an " uncanny " nature, and we are very much disposed to think that the agitation of the bell in question was indeed by unseen agency, but by nothing more mysterious than the familiar wind of heaven. Passing through the drawing-room, we find ourselves in the smaller, or ladies' drawing-room, ver}^ similar, in point of decoration, to the apartment we have just left. The ceiling here, of exactly the same character as that in the larger room, yields to it 16 neither in richness nor in excellence of workmanship. Indeed, taken as a whole, this small drawing-room is finer than the large room, for the walls, besides having four finely executed monochromes on the wooden panels above the doors and mantelpiece, are adorned with several purely decorative panels, having foliage in light green on a pale pink ground. On each side of the large landscape, above the mantelpiece, hangs, to use the architects' term, an ornamental " swag," consisting of fruit, etc., carved out of the solid wood. In the centre of the ceiling is a circular oil-painting on the plaster, the subject being supposed to be "Diana visiting Endymion," signed "N. Hevde, I," In the opinion of Mr Thomas Bonnar, the well-known Edinburgh decorative art-designer, this painting, unlike its beautiful neighbour, has been restored, and by a less skilful hand than that of the master who conceived it. Nicholas Hevde appears to have been a French artist, for some time assistant to, or pupil of, Antonio Yerrio, an Italian artist whom Charles II. invited to England to paint similar ceilings at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, where he also decorated the grand staircase, and of whom Pope writes : — " On painted ceilings you devoutly stare Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre." Vide "Moral Essays," Epistle IV., to Pdchard Boyle, Earl of Burlington. Laguerre 17 C painted ceilings at Blenheim Palace. Pope mentions Verrio again in line 307 of his poem Windsor-forest." Hevde was born at Le Mans in North France, before the middle of the 17th century, and died in London. In 1673 he was expelled from the French Academy for having established himself in England without the permission of his sovereign. His chief work was in portraits, of which the Versailles Gallery possesses one example — the Prince of Conde as Hercules. On leaving this room, we reach a small landing, where the wheel-stair from the south corridor and kitchen to the second floor is continued upward to the third storey in the south front. In the hiffhest room of the western tower to which this stair leads, there is the commencement, so it was alleged, of a " secret passage," which passed through the walls of the house and ran underneath the lawn towards the sea, the external opening of it being situated on the right bank of the small stream called Roystoun Burn, near the sea-gate. At this point one can only see an arched stone erection resembling an ancient sewer, but until quite lately this was believed to be the outer end of the secret passage communicating with the interior of the house. I have, however, been enabled to clear up this matter of secret passages in Caroline Park. The stone- vaulted structure below the north lawn is but a drain to prevent the waters of the Roystoun Burn from overflowing the ground-floor of the house in a time of heavy rain, for the burn passes close to the front of the house, before running in the direction of the wall of the old garden. Several workmen have passed up from one end of this drain to the other. The opening in the wall of the attic of the west tower merely enters into a passage which runs round the sides of the room, at a height of about six or seven feet from the floor. The walls, in short, are hollow, and contain this secret hiding-place. The passage is so narrow, I could only move sideways through it, the floor is of stone let in from the eaves, the sides are the coarse wooden beams of the arched ceiling of the room, or " cove," as the architects call it, and of the roof of the tower itself, so that, as you walk round in the passage, your head is in the space between the upper surface of the ceiling of the room and the inner surface of the slated roof of the house. Quite recently, I made the further discovery that the corresponding room in the south-east tower also contained, hidden behind a large wooden panel which we removed, a secret passage in the hollow walls. The passage was evidently used as a way of 18 escape as well as of hiding, for on one side it communicated with an opening into the corridor leading to the room itself Thus a person who knew of this concealed entrance or exit could either enter or leave the room while the door was locked all the time. This passage, similar in construction to that in the south-west tower, is, unlike the latter, a means of communication between the inside and outside of the room. The ceiling of this room is decorated with a painting — the third of a like kind in Caroline Park. We had the greatest difficulty in seeing it clearly, owing to the masses of ivy that overhung the one small dormer window in the east wall. The whole surroundings, on the day we viewed it, were gloomy in the extreme. The feeble light of a Scottish afternoon of rain scarcely struggled through the growth of decades of ivy undisturbed ; the glass of the window broken ; the clamp, chill air filling a room the most removed from the inhabited part of the house ; the black hole behind the panel burst open for the first time for a hundred years, and leading, as we now knew, to that mysterious passage within these so solid-looking walls ; the curious old-fashioned grate, mantelpiece, and corner-cupboard ; the once handsome and high wainscot, now worm- eaten and time-stained ; with the oaken beams of the floor far gone in decay, all conspired towards producing a most solemn eff'ect, as two of us held up a lamp to throw its uncer- tain light upon the faces of cherubs and dragon peering down upon us from the dark- ness of the roof above. By degrees, our eyes got accustomed to the light, and we could follow the figures in the painting — a woman with sword and shield, clad in a vermilion robe, is guarding a boy from a dragon — hideous with tusk, claw, and flashing green eye — while two cherubs look down complacently from their place of safety in the clouds. From an artistic point of view, this is not equal to the fine paintings downstairs : it is apparently unsigned, the details are not so careful, the colouring is not so rich, and in two places the picture has suflered severely from neglect. Considering that nothing seems to have been done to preserve it, it is fresher than one would expect. The picture, which is rectangular, is evidently not by the same artist who did the other ceiling work. Descending again the wheel-stair, to the next floor, and passing through a 19 chamber adjacent to Lord Tarbat's dressing-room, we find ourselves in a very pleasant apartment lit by three windows in the south wall, the centre of which is, at the same time, a glass door leading on to the balcony. This makes a charming breakfast and morning-room ; my recollections of it, as such, after a lapse of twenty-one years, are most distinct, for from here you look out, as I did then, upon the stately old park, with its avenues of noble trees, and the bright, sweet sunlight glinting through quivering myriads of leaves of freshest green. Before leaving this part of the house, the boudoir and bedroom in the west tower are worthy of a visit, on account of the series of interesting oil-paintings in brown, green, and gold, upon the plaster. The former room is square, with a cove-roof and a clam-shell worked in the stucco in each of the angles, and has, on the wooden panels over the two doors, paintings similar to the imaginary landscapes in corresponding positions all over the house ; but the north and east wall are here covered with three large, oval paintings (fully 4 feet by 3) representing scenes in some imaginary land of rui]ied castles and stately groves. Each has a very broad, rich border, consisting of banners, trumpets, cannon, swords, helmets, and other military emblems, grouped with considerable taste and skill. Entering through a deep, embrasured door in the partition wall, we find ourselves in a slightly smaller room to the south, whose walls are covered with no less than seven large rectangular paintings. These are quite 5 feet by 4, and 20 consist of scenes similar to those in the neighbouring room : two of them are particularly interesting in that above one we have the coat-of-arms of the Campbells of Argyll, with the " ship of Lorne " clearly represented, surmounted by a ducal coronet, sur- rounded by " Honi soit qui mal y pense," and guarded by two lions, while underneath is plainly scrolled the family motto " Ne obliviscaris " ; while the neighbouring panel has above it the Argyll arms — a boar's head, below it the motto " Vix ea nostra voco," and, like its neighbour, the coronet and legend of the garter. These armorial bearings, which have been executed with much care, must be amongst the latest mural decorations, for the Argyll family did not come into possession of the house until fifty- eight years after it was built. Passing now to the east side of the house, there is only one more room of particular interest on the second floor, viz., one situated behind the dining-room, and supposed to have been one of the ladies' bedrooms. On three of the panes of glass in the window there are scratched with a diamond the following lines of verse (with spelling modernised) : — " My stomach swells with secret spite, To see my faithless faultless knight, AVith upright gesture, goodly mien, Face of olive, coat of green. That pleased the ladies long ago So little his own worth to know On a mere girl his thoughts to place With dimpled cheeks and baby face, A chit, a chat, that was not born When I did town and court adorn. The trees are withered all since thou art gone. As if for thee, they put their mourning on, But with thy presence cheered they cease to mourn, And walks wear fresher green at thy return. No boasting swain such truths from me shall hear. Such words shall never reach Selvander's ear." below which is written very indistinctly : — "I have done it, April 15th, 1774." The first ten lines of this lament are an almost exact quotation from a play of Addison's, entitled " Rosamond," and are spoken by " Grideline," wife of " Sir Trusty," the keeper of Fair Rosamond's " bower," for the scene is laid in Woodstock Park, and Rosamond is no other than the beautiful mistress of Henry II. With these words Grideline opens Act II. Scene II., in conversation with a page, who replies to her : — " Can any man prefer fifteen to venerable Grideline ? " — which shows how inexperienced the page must have been both in the matter of male predilections and the use of adjectives descriptive of a lady's age. The last six lines do not occur anywhere in the play ; indeed, they are of longer 21 ^^'/jo If 1^^^/ /'^^ ^''^^^ (k metre than is there used, so that it is probable the Lady who quoted the ode added these as giving appropriate local colouring to her emotions. Addison died in 1719, Tine f/UM- m.0/v^ and in an edition of his collected works, dated 1777, as well as in Bohn's (6 vols., 1856), etc., we find several variations from the Caroline Park version. At line two it reads : — " To see my fickle, faithless knight," and line five has " charmed " instead of 22 " pleased," while " a child," " a chit " (naturally enough followed by marks of exclama- tion) occur instead of " a chit," " a chat." The Caroline Park lady's memory was not faultless, if her knight was, but it is very noteworthy that she regards " chat " as synonymous with " girl." Orlando's " lines on every tree " in the forest of Arden were not so permanent a testimony to his love as this Scottish Rosalind's glass - scratchings have been to her jealousy. It is certainly remarkable that these panes of glass have not yet been broken ; might I suggest their being in some wa}'' specially guarded ? One of the most interesting features of the old house is a number of oil-paintings on wooden panels, or, as in the case of two rooms, on the plaster of the walls, for the most part imaginary landscapes, to be found over very many of the mantelpieces and of the doors leading from one room to another. These are monochromes — oil- paintings in several tints of one colour — usually olive-green or slate-brown, and some of them are executed with considerable spirit. Not one of them is signed, but, from a consideration of the time when they must have been done, and from their characteristic style, they are in all probability the work, if not of De la Cour then of his school. De la Cour is known to have done mural landscapes of an identical character in the drawing-room of hord Glenlee's old town house in Brown Square, now 31 Chambers Street, Edinburgh. Only one of them, on the panel of the north door of the room communicating with Lady Tarbat's boudoir, is believed to represent an actual locality, namely " Inveraray Castle," with the long avenue leading to it, as it appeared 23 at the time the second Duke of Argyll acquired Caroline Park, about the middle of last century. In the front or balcony -room there was formerly a panel picture representing the old town of Edinburgh, painted before the Nor' Loch was drained, and while as yet the New Town did not exist. This was removed to Dalkeith Palace by the late Duke of Buccleuch, in 1872. It was the removal, indeed, by his Grace, of another painting, which led to the discovery in the east tower of the internal apening of the secret passage, the picture having been nailed up over the opening in the wall, behind which is the door concealing the entrance to the passage. One might, even now, easily imagine there was nothing here but a cupboard, so inconspicuous is the entrance to this secret hiding- place. The marks of nails are yet very clearly visible all round the edges of the entrance to the passage in the west tower, inclining us to believe that a picture at one time was here also innocently placed over the secret panel. Only one other treasure was at this time taken to Dalkeith, a beautiful mirror, the frame of which is gilded wood richly carved, with the Argyll arms boldly worked above it. 24 We shall now leave the house by the staircase leading to the South Hall. This has an iron balustrade of similar workmanship to that on the balcony, exhibiting again the rose and the thistle ; but the character of the moulding is less elaborate than on the orrancl staircase. To architects, (.'aroline Park House is interesting, because it shows the commence- ment of the modern corridor system, at any rate on the ground floor, where there is a corridor, with rooms opening off, running the whole length of the west and south sides, these passages being lit from the quadrangle. On the west side are the stone- 25 vaulted kitchen and other rooms for domestic purposes ; but on the second floor there are no corridors, and consequently the majority of the rooms can only be entered through one another. Further, Messrs M'Gibbon & Ross say that : — " Caroline Park, like Drumlanrig Castle, shows a tendency towards symmetry, classic mouldings, cornices, ornaments, unbroken horizontal classic cornices on the eaves, the absence of dormer windows breaking the roof line, and the absence of angle -turrets." :As a matter of fact, there are several dormer windows, one looks into the quadrangle ; those on the east roof being picturesquely covered by the thickest of ivy. There is, however, one portion of the house (the south-east angle of the courtyard) where the old-fashioned, much- loved corbelling of Scottish baronial architecture still lingers. In the park to the south of the house, we have a very fine double avenue of stately old trees : this is not the ap]3roach from the Edinburgh roacl, which is a later structure carried over the railway by a bridge, but an avenue parallel to it. The grand approach to the house was apparently on the north side near the sea, where there still exists a very handsome gateway of fine sandstone, constructed after the same fashion as that adopted in the remodelling of the south front of the house. The gate pillars are surmounted by graceful finials ; the gate itself, which was removed early in this century to the lodge of Gogar House by Lord Cockburn's father, was a very beautiful example of iron filigree work — by some, indeed, held to be the finest in Scotland. The carriage approach from the shore road must have been across the space now occupied by a quarry-hole half full of water. The entrance gates from the Edinburgh road are much plainer than those at the sea-gate, the pillars being simple and surmounted by colossal stone roses. 26 Short Account of Viscount Tarbat THE builder of the house, as has been ah^eady said, was Sir George Mackenzie, second Baronet of Tarbat, Eoss-shire, for some time Prime Minister of Scotland. He was born in 1630 — the eldest son of Sir John Mackenzie of Tarbat — his mother being Margaret, daughter of Sir George Erskine of Innerteil, a Senator of the Court of Justice. Educated at St Andrews University and King's College, Aberdeen, he succeeded his father in the Baronetcy in 1654, and in early life acted in a military capacity against Cromwell. In 1678 he was made, upon the downfall of the Duke of Lauderdale — an old enemy of his — Justice-General for Scotland ; and in 1681 a Lord of Session and Lord Register. In 1685, on the accession of James II., he was created Viscount Tarbat and Lord Macleod and Castlehaven. In 1692, having in the interval resigned the office of Lord Register through his being accused of falsifying the Minutes of Parliament for private reasons, he was restored to that post by William III., and in 1702, on the accession of Queen Anne, was made Secretary of State for Scotland, which post he resigned on account of old age in 1704. He sat on the Scottish Privy Council as Lord Clerk Register and " Clerk to His Majesty's Parliament," and is thus known in Scottish history as " Register Tarbat " ; hence it was in this latter office that in 1707 he saw the " end of" that " auld sang," as the Earl of Seafield, Lord High Chancellor, vulgarly characterised the dropping of the curtain upon " The last Scots Parliament." In 1703 he was created, by Queen Anne, Earl of Cromarty, and in 1710 he resigned the Justice-Generalship. Tarbat was for a time Captain -General of the Royal Company of Archers (Body Guard for Scotland), and it was he who obtained from Queen Anne, in 1704, a Royal Charter granting them, amongst other privileges, the right of taking precedence of all Royal Guards and troops of the line when the Sovereign is in Scotland. He died, aged 84, on the 17th August, 1714 — ^the same year in which occurred the death of Queen Anne. He was twice married : the first time to Anna, daughter of Sir James Sinclair of Mey, Baronet, in 1654 ; and, secondly, to Margaret, Dowager 27 Countess of Wemyss, in 1699, who is described as having been both young and beau- tiful. The following doggerel lines show what the people thought of this union : — " Thou sousie auld carl, the world has not thy like, For ladies fa' in love with tliee, though thou be an auld tyke." By his first wife he had three sons, of whom John, the eldest, became the second Earl of Cromarty, and succeeded to the Tarbat estates ; and James, the third son, who afterwards became Lord Roystoun (a Lord of Session), and married Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, the " Bloody Mackenzie " of Scottish history. It was on account of his connection with this family that Lord Roystoun came to be buried (November, 1774) in the tomb of the Mackenzies in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh. Lord Roystoun's daughter Anne, known in the traditions of Edinburgh as " the gay Anne Mackenzie," from her fondness for practical jokes and adventures of every descri23tion, became the wife of Sir William Dick of Prestonfield (Duddingston), Baronet, the very rich Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who was one of the ancestors of the Dick-Lauders of Grange and Fountainhall. Anne Mackenzie anticipated in almost all particulars the doings of the " New Woman." Dressed in male attire, she used to go out into the High Street of Edin- burgh in search of adventures, and on one occasion found herself locked up in the City Guard House. Some of her poems, which are decidedly lively, are to be found in not very reputable company in "a ballad book" published by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the antiquary, and friend of Sir Walter Scott. Lord Tarbat bought the Barony of Roystoun in 1683 for £2111, and as the residence took two years to build — being completed in 1685 — if there was a house previously on the estate it must have been quite a small one. Li 1705, Lord Cromarty, desiring to sell Roystoun, offered it to the Earl of Mar, as an official residence for the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, for a little more than £6000. The Earl of Cromarty was an unstable but very wily statesman, as he seems to have held his high positions under no less than four monarchs. Claverhouse, in a letter from Lochaber, June 27th, 1689, when summing up the attitude of the Scottish Peers towards the party of James 11., writes: — "Tarbat is a great villain .... he has endeavoured to seduce Lochiel by offers of money." He was a man of considerable learning and literar}?' attainments, for he is known to have written a number of papers and historical tracts on a variety of sul)jects — amongst them being an account of Logan of Restalrig's part in the " Gowrie Conspirac}^ " against James VL, a letter to the Earl of Wemyss, on the subject of the Union, and a tract, entitled " Synopsis Apocalyptica," a dissertation upon the prophecy of Daniel and the Revelation of St John. It seems it was a correspondence with Napier the Laird of Merchiston (the 28 inventor of logarithms) upon tlie subject of prophecy that gave rise to this tract, wliicli is to be fouud in the Advocates' Lil)rary, Edinburgh. Lord Cromarty was one of the members of The Koyal Society, several of his papers — one on the origin of peat-moss — being amongst its " Transactions." It may be interesting to members of the medical profession to know that " The Charter of Eatification in Favour of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh," June 16th, 1685, is signed " Tarbat " ; and, further, that the eaiTs medical attendant was the famous Dr Archibald Pitcairn, physician and anti-Presbyterian satirist, whose tomb may be seen near the North Walk, Greyfriars Churchyard. The original Latin inscription restored by the Edinburgh ^sculapian Club, in 1800, is to this effect, — " Behold this little urn contains the great Pitcairn, a mathematician, poet, physician and sage ; Farewell then, light of Scotland and prince of Physicians ! 0, pillar and darling of the Muses, farewell!" Lord Cromarty had two town houses — one in Parliament Close, which he acquired 29 in 1686, and one better known as " Bailie M'Morran's house," in Kiddel's Court, Lawnmarket, which he acquired in 1701. Here his widow resided for some time, and also his son Lord Roystoun, whose daughter Anne was born here. This house had undoubtedly some specimens of " old Norie's " panel-painting, but they have all perished, for when the High Street lodger makes a fire of wainscots and balustrades, it is not long before he reaches pictures on panels, especially when age and dirt have rendered them almost invisible. As to the title : the Earldom of Cromarty having become extinct, Her Majesty the Queen in 1861 created the late Duchess of Sutherland (Miss Anne Hay -Mackenzie) Countess of Cromarty in her own right, Viscountess Tarbat of Tarbat, Baroness Macleod of Macleod, and Baroness Castlehaven, thus reviving in her person all the titles origin- ally borne by the wife of the builder of Caroline Park. These titles having again become extinct, Her Majesty revived them for the second time, on 25th February, 1895, in the person of Lady Sibell Lilian Mackenzie, elder daughter of Francis, late Earl of Cromarty, son of Anne, Duchess of Sutherland. There is a portrait of the Earl of Cromarty, after " Sir F. Baptist Medina, Knight," in the National Portrait Gallery Queen Street, while one by Dahl hangs in the Parliament Hall, Edinburgh. It is number 41 of the catalogue. He was buried at New^ Tarbat, Ross-shire, and there is an obelisk to him near Dingwall. John, Second Duke of Argyll and Greenwich TN 1739, Lord Roystoun, obtaining an Act of Parliament to sell the Barony of -L Roystoun, on the plea of fictitious debts, disposed of it to John, Second Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, for £7000. In 1740, the Duke acquired the adjacent property of the Barony of Granton, with " Granton House," or, as it is now called, Roystoun Castle. He combined the two estates under the name of Caroline Park — so naming them in honour of Caroline of Anspach, the wife of George H., to whom his Duchess had been a Maid of Honour when the Queen was Princess of Wales. It was for this Princess that the great musician Handel wrote some pieces of chamber music, and in one of these duets there occurs the air which he afterwards used in " The Messiah," in con- nection with the words " Unto us a child is born." Thus the original name of Caroline Park was Roystoun House, because the estate attached to it, extending as far as the " Golden Acres," was the Barony of Roystoun. The Islands of Inchkeith and 30 Inchmickery, in the Firth of Forth, along with the oyster fisheries in the estuary, went with the property. The Duke made Caroline Park one of his chief residences, and added that mass of buildings to the north-west for kitchen and servants' offices, stables, etc., which have been lately remodelled by Mr Robert Irvine, F.R.S.E., for his residence, and named " Roystoun." This is the Duke of Argjdl who is mentioiied in the " Heart of Midlothian," where he appears, in chapter xxxviii., in conversation with Jeannie Deans, who has been offering to get a cousin of hers in the Lammermuirs to make a cheese for his Grace, he having said : " Cakes and cheese are a dinner for an Emperor, let alone a Highland- man." The Duke then says : " Quite unnecessary ; the Dunlop is the very cheese of which I am so fond, and I will take it as the greatest favour you can do me to send one to Caroline Parh." This John Campbell, Second Duke of Argyll and First of Greenwich, was born 31 10th October. 1678, and died 4tli October, 1743, aged 65. He, like the builder of the liouse, had advocated the union of Scotland with England : the rose and thistle everv- where would therefore be very much to his mind. In 1703, he was Captain of the Scottish Horse Guards, and later one of the Extraordinary Lords of Session. He also held the office of High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament, and, on the accession of George I., was made Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Scotland, in which capacity he acted at Sheritfmuir. In 1720 he was made Duke of Greenwich, having previously been made Earl of Greenwich for his services in promoting the Union, and in the House of Lords he showed his patriotism by defending the action of the city of Edinburgh in the matter of the " Porteous Mob " in 1736. He was at one time Governor of the Island of Minorca, and serving under Marlborough, was present at the l)attle of Oudenarde. He wrote the Scottish Song, " Bannocks of Barley Meal." 32 It was this Duke of Argyll of whom Pope said (Dialogue II., lines 86 and 87, of " Epilogue to the Satires ") ; — " Argyll, the state's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field." The poets Thomson and Gay have both eulogised the Duke. He was buried, not at Kilmun — where is the family vault of the Campbells of Inveraray — but in Westminster Abbey, near the splendid monument there by Boubillac. There is a portrait of him by Kneller in the Scottish Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, Edinburgh, and also one in the Parliament Hall (number 64, east wall). His second wife was a daughter of Thomas Warburton of Winnington, in the county of Cheshire, and it was she who had been one of the Maids of Honour to Queen Anne, and also to Caroline of Anspach. He had five daughters, his eldest, Lady Caroline Campbell, created Baroness Greenwich in 1767, married in 1742, Francis, Earl of Dalkeith (eldest son of the Duke of Buccleuch), who died in his father's life- time. The estate of Caroline Park was thus left to this Dowager Countess of Dalkeith, and it passed, on her death in 1793, to her only surviving son Henry, Third Duke of Buccleuch, great-grandfather of the present Duke. Thus, Caroline Park, built by a Cromarty and enlarged by an Argyll, is now in the hands of the Buccleuchs, from whom Messrs A, B. Fleming & Company, Limited, rent it on a long lease. Let us make a short resume of the different families who have owned the estate of Roystoun. The original estate of Easter Granton was first possessed by a branch of the once powerful family of the Logans of Restalrig. They were in possession of it in 1580, and in 1601 sold it to a Walter Henryson, W.S., whose son sold it to a certain David Johnkin, in 1641, for £1333, 6s. 8d. This family sold it in 1659 to Patrick Nicoll, who in 1676 had the Barony of Easter Granton erected into that of Roystoun. His only daughter, Margaret, in 1665 married George Graham, younger, of Inchbraco, and upon them he settled the estate of Roystoun : then, as we have already seen, in 1683 the Grahams sold it to Viscount Tarbat, whose third son sold it in 1739 to the Duke of Argyll. Between 1763 and 1780, Caroline Park was occupied by Lieutenant-General Sir James Adolphus Oughton, K.B., Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Scotland. He was the Grand Master Mason in Scotland, and in that capacity laid the foundation stone of Old St Paul's, in South Gray's Close, off the Cowgate of Edinburgh, now St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church. He was a great believer in the existence of the much-doubted Gaelic poet Ossian, and expressed his admiration by cutting upon a stone in the bank of the stream near the house an inscription alluding to this " Celt celeber." Sir Adolphus Oughton was one of the guests invited by Boswell to meet Dr Johnson on the evening of August 16th, 1773, while he was lodging in James' 33 E Court, Lawnmarket, previous to his visit to the Hebrides. Before dinner was over, the dogmatic Doctor and Sir Adolphus had very nearly quarrelled over Ossian. Boswell states, in the " Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," that on one of the nine days Dr Johnson spent in Edinburgh in November, on his return journey, he dined at .... " Sir Adolphus Oughton's." From the date, 1773, this must have been at Caroline Park. It is to be regretted that Boswell gives us no account of this occasion, but on his own confession he could never describe places with any degree of interest or freedom. In 1794, it appears to have been occupied by Sir Walter Scott's friend, Sir John Stewart of AUanbank, Berwick ; and I have no doubt it was through Sir Walter's acquaintance with this gentleman that he was reminded of the fact which he so neatly brings into the " Heart of Midlothian," that his hero, the Duke of Argyll, had lived at Caroline Park. From " The Journal of Henry Cockburn " (Vol. II., p. 143), we learn the interest- 34 ing fact that the father of this famous judge lived for thirty -five years in the house, becoming a tenant in 1796 or 1797. I quote the entire passage : — " Caroline Park, where my father's family lived for about thirty -five years, must formerly have been, perhaps, one of the finest places of the kind near Edinburgh. It was the only one that, both in its building and its pleasure-grounds, and its hundred- acred park, had an obvious air of stately nobility. My father did it no good. He was agricultural, and sacrificed all he could to the farm. His friend and landlord — the Duke of Buccleuch — did not prevent him from removing several very architectural walls, a beautiful bowling-green, a great deal of good shrubbery, and an outer gravelled court at the north front bounded by the house on the south, two low ornamented walls on the east and west, and by a curiously-wrought iron gate, flanked by two towers, on the north. Even when we went there, it stood in wood, quiet and alone. The sea and the sea-rocks were its own. Except Lauriston Tower, and the old and admirable gardened house of Muirhouse, there was not then (about 1796 or 1797) a single house between us and Cramond on the west, nothing till we reached 35 Wardie on the east, and, except a smith}^ and a few humble dwellings that then com- posed the village of Stockbridge, nothing between us and Edinburgh on the south. From Wardie to Cramond was all open fields, fringed on the sea-shore with whins. Except along Caroline Park and the bank of wood at Muirhouse, not two miles in all were fenced by walls. The now ruined castle of Roystoun had still its roof and several floors and windows, and was inhabited by our gardener. The abominations of Granton Pier, with its tram-roads, brickwork, and quarry, had not then been conceived. Winter made little impression on a spot rich in evergreens ; the long over-arched alleys were not broken in upon. Every gate had its urns, every bit of wall was dignified by its architectural decoration. The ' Sea-gate,' a composition of strong iron filigree work, was the grandest gate in Scotland. The very flowers knew their Goshen, and, under my mother's care, grew as they grew nowhere else." Lord Cockburn says, in his " Memorials," that he was born in 1779, and that his 36 family spent the next twenty-two or twenty -three years of their life in a house " Hope Park," on the south side of the Meadows, from which we must conclude that, during a part of the very period at which he was said to be living at Caroline Park, he was living in Edinburgh. This would bring their time of leaving Hope Park up to 1801 or 1802. But if the family really entered Caroline Park in 1796 or 1797, then we must simply understand Lord Cockljurn as speaking a little carelessly when he says twenty-two or twenty-three years, meaning thereby seventeen or eighteen. If they stayed thirty-five years, they must have left in 1835 or 1836 — Henry Cockburn being then 52 years of age. Lord John Scott (uncle of the present Duke of Buccleuch) and Lady John Scott were its last inhabitants, only quitting it in 1872, when Messrs Fleming entered on occupancy. Lady John Scott is the authoress of the revised version of the Scottish song "Annie Laurie." She added the verse — "Like dew on the gowans lying," etc. This house is mentioned (1) in Forsyth's " Beauties of Scotland," published in 37 1805, in which it is said : — " The ancient house of Roystoun upon the sea-shore, is one of the Largest buildings in this part of the country." (2) The account of the house in AVood's " Parish of Cramond," published 1794, is fairly complete, although the infor- mation here concerns the people who have lived in the house, rather than the house itself (3) Fraser's " Monograph on the Cromarty Family " contains a brief but excellent account of certain of the internal decorations ; while (4) M'Gibbon & Ross's " Castellated and Domesticated Architecture of Scotland " has a very good account of the structure, with a carefully-drawn plan of the rooms and staircases. It is alluded to by the Earl of Mar in his "Betterment Scheme" (date about 1715), reprinted in a recent number of the "Scots Magazine," in which he says : — " The Chancellor, being the first great and constant officer of state in the Kingdom, should have a country house near the town, to be bought by the public for him. Dalkeith would be a proper place for that, as would be also Pinkie, Newbottle, and Roistori." The name Roystoun is said to be a combination of the French word Roi (King) and the Scottish " Toun," the house having been first named Kingston — which name, according to one account, had to be given up owing to objections raised to it by a nobleman of the day, whose title was Kingston. Granton Castle A LITTLE to the north-west of Caroline Park House we see a picturesque old ruin, with its foundations dovetailed into the rocks overlooking the Firth of Forth. This is the ruin of a house built upon the site of a castle, destroyed, it is believed, in 1544, by the Earl of Hertford, who landed here during his expedition sent to Scotland by Henry YIII., upon Mary of Guise's refusal to allow the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen of Scots, to be married to the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VI. There is little doubt the Castle was burned down at this time by the Earl of Hertford, who also, as we know, destroyed by fire the greater part of Edinburgh, The house is L-shaped, and shows the builder's desire to combine ornament and symmetry with the requirements of a fortified country mansion. From its present condition, one can, with no great difficulty, imagine it to have been a place of the handsome character which Messrs M'Gibbon & Ross in their account of it describe. The most interesting person who resided here was Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall, Baronet, who died in 1646. He was King's Advocate for Charles I., but took sides 38 with the Covenanters against the King. He was one of the ancestors of the noble family of Hopetoun, and the eccentric antiquary, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, was descended from his daughter. Hope was as early as 1606 distinguished at the Bar, soon deriving a large fortune from his extensive legal practice. Being still Lord Advocate while he had two sons on the Bench, he was granted the right to plead before them with his hat on — a privilege of the Lord Advocate's not yet rescinded. Sir Thomas, a very pious man, framed the covenant of 1638, and was the King's Commissioner to the General Assembly, which met in Edinburgh, 2nd August 1643 ; he was the first and last commoner who has held that office. Sir Thomas was an M.A., in the first batch of M.A.'s in the then recently-founded University of Edinburgh. His sou, Sir Alexander, was, in his youth, Cup-bearer to King Charles L Sir Thomas Hope's town house, built in 1616, was Hope House, in the Cowgate, whose lintel with ''Tecum habita " (mind your own business), "1616," may still be seen built into the Free Libi-ary, for which building Hope House was demolished. Sir Thomas acquired in 1637 " Gourlay's House," in the Lawnmarket — a very famous old Edinburgh mansion pulled down to construct Melbourne Place. Sir Thomas Hope kept, between the years 1633 and 1645, a careful diary (published by the Bannatyne Club), many of whose entries throw most interesting side-lights on contemporary Scottish life. 39 Many of the entries are headed " Grantoun " ; from one of them we learn that the worthy Baronet, unable to sleep there one Saturday night from an attack of colic, rose on the Sunday morning and went to partake of the communion at the Parish Church of Cramond, where, he says, the text — " My grace is sufficient for thee " — " greatly com- forted" him. Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall's burial place is a conspicuous tomb on the north-west wall of Greyfriars Churchyard. There is a portrait of Sir Thomas by Jameson in the Parliament House (number 19, east wall). His works include transla- tions of the Psalms and Song of Solomon into Latin verse ; and many writings on legal subjects. To complete the account of the Castle, not very much more can be said. There is a very old garden to the east of it — a sheltered, sunny, mellowed spot, where all kinds of roses and fruit come to perfection. From another page of the diary we learn that " Robert Tait, gardener of Grantoun," was a witness to some legal document of liis master's, so that even the name of a former worker amongst those old fruit-trees is preserved to us. In the north-west angle of the garden a door leads into what has been called the " Opera Box " — a small, square, stone-seated recess, Iniilt in the manner of a miniature fort on the rock, from which a very lovely view of the Firth of Forth may be obtained. You can see far up the river to where the Forth Bridge spans it at Queensferry ; Cramond Island lies to the left, while Inchcolm, with its most ancient 40 hermit's cell, ruined monastery and square-towered church, intervenes between you and the opposite wooded shores of Aberdour and Donibristle. Inchmickery is straight in front, while away to the right you have Burntisland under the clifis, and then stretching- far down to the east with " promontory, creek, and bay," the hilly coast of Fifeshire — beautiful when the afternoon sun strikes full upon its rounded outlines. Guarding the mouth of the Firth stands Inchkeith, with its lighthouse, white \^•alls, and gun batteries ; while only a few yards from your feet there is the gentle, sleepy lap-lap of the tide ao-ainst the seaweed-covered rocks below. o The earliest mention of this " Grantoun House" is that, in 1479, the Barony of Wester Granton belonged to John Melville, of Carnbee, in Fife, which passed to his son John, who was killed at Flodden in 1513 ; but this family of Melvilles had it till 1592, when Sir John Melville, of Granton, sold it to a John Russell, who sold it in 1603 to Sir Alexander Gibson, of Durie, in Fife, by whom again it was sold in 1613 to Sir John Arnot, of Birswick. His grandson, John Arnot, of Woodmiln, sold it in 1619 to Sir Thomas Hope, of Craighall, the famous lawyer. It passed in 1646 to his son. Sir John Hope, and then to his son Thomas, who sold it to his uncle Sir Alexander, He died in 1680, having sold it to John Hope of Hopetoun, who in 1688 sold it to Sir William Paterson, " Regent " of Philosophy (the old term for " Professor ") in the University of Edinburgh. He appears to have been a brother of John Paterson, the last Archbishop of Glasgow, and not unnaturally sided with the King against the Covenanters. It then passed to his son. Sir John Paterson, in 1705, and in 1708, to Dame Mary Hope, Lady Moncrieff, of MoncriefF, who sold it in 1714 to Walter Riddell ; he, dying in 1738, left it to his son John Riddell, who, as we saw before, sold it to the Duke of Argyll in 1740. It was last occupied in 1788, by a certain Richard Norris, who married Miss Crosbie, the niece of the second Duchess of Argyll and Greenwich. We can very easily trace this connection between the two families, seeing that their respective country seats were so near each other. The ladies like to believe the "proposal" took place in the romantic " Opera Box " described above. There is a story in connection with the Castle that a skeleton was discovered built up in a recess of the thick wall of the banqueting-room. Since 1794, the old Castle has been more or less a ruin, but by the aid of a couple of flights of wooden stairs you ma}^ even yet ascend on one side to the loop- holed look-out tower to get that incomparable view of the noble Firth of Forth, and, on the other side, to the flag-turret for a bird's-eye peep of the sweet, old, rose-filled, ivy-clad garden of Roystoun. It was on the former tower that a party of visitors were standing enjoying the scene, when one of the ladies turned coquettishly to the gentleman next her, and said : " What a splendid place this would be for a proposal." " Capital," he retorted, " there are so many loop-holes." 41 As Sir William Fraser remarks, the very letters which Lord Cromarty wrote at Eoystoun are to-day printed there with Roystoun ink, and those magnificent apartments designed as the abode of Lord Chancellors have, in " the whirligig of time," come to be the business-place of chemists. " The times are changed, and we are changed with the times." West Grange, Edinburgh, 1896. " TERRA BS TBRRAM IBIS." NEILL AND COMPANY, PPaNTERS, EDINBURGH. 42