».\..^^.*- v,/ f )r£ BOOK 01 'i 3B CdlieVRBHl p-> / w r ' ill 1^1 V^JA » » »»^ » » » »» Please handle this volume with care. The University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs DA 890.E3D85 Book of old Edinburgh, 3 T1S3 DDS3TM5b ^.^laf Z o S3 5 J- o Q "1 00 VO o w 00 VIEW IN • OT.D EDINBURGH STREET. THE BOOK OF 1j> OLD EDINBURGH And Hand-Book to the OLD EDINBURGH STREET Designed by SYDNEY MITCHELL, Architect For the International Exhibition of Industry, Science, and Art EDINBURGH, 1886 With Historical Accounts of the Buildings therein reproduced and Anecdotes of Edinburgh I,ife in the Olden Time By JOHN CHARLES DUNLOP and ALISON HAY DUNLOr Illustrated by WILLIAM HOLE, A.R.S.A. Piinted by T. 6^ A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the LNTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION EDINBURGH, 1886 Cl)e Book of €)ID CDinburQ:!j IS DEDICATED TO THE MOST HON. THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN, K.T. PresideJit TO THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS CLARK Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh Acting Vice-President TO JAMES GOWANS, Esq. Lord Dean of Guild Chairman of the Executive Council and to the •Old Edinburgh' CoiMmittee of THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF INDUSTRY, SCIENCE, AND ART EDINBURGH 1886. 'OLD EDINBURGH' COMMITTEE (As Elected) Robert Somerville. William M'Ewan. Peter ^riLLER. Robert Shillinglaw. WiLLiAAi Adamsox. Dr. James Sidey. J. A. Butti. Richard Cameron. William INIorrisox. Captain Henderson. Cumberland Hill. William Cook. David Cuthbert, s.s.c, and John Charles Dunlop, Convetiej-s. LIST OF GIFTS TO 'OLD EDINBURGH." By the City, Ancient Oak Door. By James Ballantine & Son, Edinburgh, Ancient Stained Glass. By Aberfoyle Slate Co., Glasgow, Old Slates from Aberfoyle. By Andrew Slater, Canongate, Ancient Oak Door. By J. Ritchie & Son, Edinburgh, Turret Clock, with Chimes of four Bells, for the Spire of Nether-Bow Port. CONTRACTORS FOR 'OLD EDINBURGH.' George Gilroy & Co., Builders, Edinburgh. Macfarl.\ne & Wallace, Painters, Edinburgh. William Anderson & Sons, Military Tailors, Edinburgh. (/or Dress of the Old Tcnvn Gziard). Iptefatorp jQote. WHEN requested by the Executive Council of the first Scottish International Exhibition to write a Descriptive Catalogue of the Old Edinburgh Street of the Exhibition, the honour and trust so unanimously accorded were frankly accepted. Labour was involved, but — the labour was con- genial. A Descriptive Catalogue was partly written when the idea — always latent — gathered strength, that a purely antiquarian and technical description of the buildings was suited only to a special and limited class of readers. The desire awoke to give each house its own place in Edinburgh history; to people each, so far as possible, with its old inhabitants ; or, at least, to note some of the side-lights which are thrown on great events in Scottish history by anecdote, and by observation of the viii Prefatory Note. habits and customs, the thought and speech, the dress and demeanour, of those who trod the streets of our native city long ago, and called them theirs with as much pride and affection as we do now. In the writing of this extended plan of the book my sister associated herself with me. The necessity for compression was great, and the time for the ceaseless verification necessary was short. No one can be more conscious of the failings and shortcomings of the 'Book of Old Edinburgh' than its authors, but they have done — what in honour and kindliness they were bound to do — their best. Acknowledgement of thanks is due to Robert Adam, Esq., City Chamberlain, and to the Rev. J. Mercer Dunlop of Pollokshaws, for willing aid given in antiquarian literary research. JOHN CHARLES DUNLOP, Convene^-. Old Edinhnrgk Comviittec. 32 Clarence Street, ^/r;7 18, 18S6. Contents. PAGE Dedication, v List of Illustrations. xi Introduction, ......... I Nether-Bow Port, 6 The Twelve Apostles' House, and the French Ambassador's Chapel, .14 House in Dickson's Close, . . . . . . .19 Bow-head Corner House — I. In Sunshine, 23 II. In Shadow, 30 Major Weir's House, 33 Earl of Hyndford's House, 38 The Nameless House (in Cowgate), 41 Laus Deo House, ........ 43 The Cunzie- House, ........ 49 Paul's Wark, 52 Symson the Printer's House, 55 The Oratory of Mary of Guise, . . . . • .62 The Royal Porch, Holyrood, 74 TheTolbooth, 77 Robert Gourlay's House, loi X Contents. PAGE Cardinal Beaton's House, . . . . . . .109 The Parliament Stairs and South Gable of the Old Parlia- ment Hall, 116 The Assembly Rooms in the Bow, 120 The Black Turnpike, 132 The Cowgate House foment the Mint Close, . . .140 The Town-Guard, 143 The Blue Blanket and the Trades Incorporations, . . 147 The Cross, 151 31llu0tration0, View in ' Old Edinburgh ' Street, Arms of the City of Edinburgh, . Tailpiece, ...... Ground-Plan of ' Old Edinburgh ' Street, View in ' Old Edinburgh ' Street, Nether-Bow Port, .... With your Majesty's leave, to get my Beagles ready, Taken by the Plighlanders, Gates in bad order, .... Pie gazes up at that awful head, . The Twelve Apostles' House, He fought for his life, Dignified Matronhood and Bright Beauty, Civilities in Dickson's Close, Feared ? no' me, .... Bow-head Corner House, . I'AGE Frontispiece Title-page X XV XV i 9 lO 13 15 17 21 22 24 25 Xll Illustrations. Presentation of the City Keys, . Up the Bow rode Cromwell and his Ironsides, Glorified God in the Grassmarket, Major Weir, Major Weir's House, .... Satan's Invisible World Discovered, . Tailpiece, Earl of Hyndford's House, To School she went, .... House in Cowgate, .... Initial Letters on the house, Laus Deo House, .... Thought they were Coiners, These young artisans made exact representations of the ceiling The Cunzie-House, .... Coin of Francis ii. and Queen Mary. . Paul's Wark, Jock Dalgleish, Inscriptions, ..... Symson the Printer's House, There came a Ghost to Margaret's door, Mary of Guise's Oratory, . PAGE 27 29 31 33 34 36 37 39 40 41 42 44 45 48 50 51 53 54 55 56 61 6^ Illustrations. Xlll Clear the Causeway, . Prospect from the Guise Palace Gardyloo ! . Royal Porch, Holy rood, Mary of Guise, . The High Street in the Seventeenth Centur Head 'sett up on the Talbuith Gabell,' A Bedesman, .... Following the Toper down-stairs, At Bluidie Mackenzie's Tomb, . After the Fecht, The Tolbooth Door yielded to fire Smell! Smell ! he wasna* blate, Robert Gourlay's House, . It was too late ! . Cardinal Beaton's House, . Through the Nor' Loch for their lives, A Procession, .... An early Printing Office, . Old Parliament House and Stairs, The Assembly Rooms in the Bow, PAGE 64 66 70 75 76 78 81 82 86 87 92 94 96 97 102 108 no III 115 117 118 XIV Illustrations. Rosining the Bow, Minuets with silence, . The Gentlemen in Ramillies Wigs, If the Town-Guard appeared, As their Fathers had done before them A Gleeful Pinch, Lord pity the lad. The Black Turnpike, . Queen Mary and Darnley. . The Citizens were roused, . The far Ride to the Solway Sands, Cowgate House foment the Mint Close Riding the Wooden Horse, The Last Guardsman, The Blue Blanket, Return from Flodden, The Cross, What made you think of such a thing ? PAGE 122 123 124 126 127 128 136 139 141 144 146 148 The Idustrations have been reproduced by Win. Watson^ Alexander Brown^ and John Murray, all oj Edinburgh. VIEW IK • OLD EDINBURGH STREF.T. 3|ntroDuction. IN the first International Exhibition in Scotland it was thought good to have a representation of ' Old Edinburgh.' Competitive designs were sought and sent in. On the 27th October 1885 the Committee of ' Old Edinburgh ' met, and unanimously chose the design marked 'Tolbooth,' and recommended it with con- fidence for the approval of the General Executive ("ouncil. In moving the Report, the Convener of ' Old Edinburgh ' said : 'It is only due to the various architects who have competed, to say that the designs were all beautiful, and to tender to them the thanks of the Committee. I have the hope,' he added, ' that the labours of the unsuccessful may not be in vain, for the designs so display the beauty and the unvarying un- sameness of Scottish Architecture, that I trust one of the early results of this first great Scottish Exhibition will be a return to a style of building at once suited to the varied scenery and the changeful skies of Scotland, and to the character and history of the Scottish people.' A The Book of Old Edinburgh. To pass to the successful design: — ' Tolbooth ' was the competition nom de plume of Mr. Sydney Mitchell, well known in these later days as the architect in the restoration of the ancient Market Cross of Edinburgh, Mr. Gladstone's gift to the capital of Scotland. There is a beautiful verse in the Bible which Dr. John Brown ('Rab') prefixed to one of his exquisite essays: ' I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive.' This is the underlying charm of our architect's design. No one wanted to see the representation of old Scottish Architecture where the reaUty still exists, or to see a semblance of John Knox's house, or of Allan Ramsay's house, when the veritable buildings can still be seen by taking a walk down the High Street. The buildings chosen to form the ' Old Edinburgh Street ' in the Exhibition, and of which the erections there are a faithful reproduction, have all passed away. There are certain old titles in the Union Peerage Roll of Scotland that are extinct — honoured and once- powerful families that have dwindled out and died, or that vanished in the hideous ruin that followed upon the Stewart rebellions. The buildings now represented in the Old Edinburgh of the Exhibition are like these extinct peerages. Other historical buildings and other historical families remain, but these have gone to dust. In so far, however, as they were pre-eminently the Introduction. scenes where the workers in the building up of the National History lived, and laboured, and died, it is good that their memory be thus honoured ; for the history there wrought out, though not unstained by feud and faction, and not guiltless of blood and sin, had in it from the earliest times a stern straining to the goal of good — to the light and might of civil and religious liberty, and Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won. The visitor must note that no specific date can be given for *01d Edinburgh;' also it goes without saying that the buildings were not contiguous to each other, as now represented; but, though situated in different parts of the ancient city, they had with each other a long con- temporaneous existence. The hand of Time, aided by severe conflagrations, and, what was heavier than either, the inroads of our ' auncient innemys of England,' have removed the earlier Edinburgh of Robert Bruce and the Stewart kings. More particularly was this the case with the series of wars, inaugurated in 1544 by Henry viii., and carried out by his brother-in-law Hertford, to bring about the marriage of the infant Queen Mary of Scots to Edward Prince of Wales. In these inroads Edinburgh suffered severely, and the rebuilding con- sequent on these devastations has given rise to dis- The Book of Old Edinburgh. crepancies. In the first of these wars the chief city gate to the east was blown up. The Nether-Bow Port, which is represented in the Exhibition, and by which the visitor will enter, was the last of the series — built in 1606 and destroyed in 1764. To grasp the ' Old Edinburgh ' period, it is necessary to think of the tide of history that has swept through these successive gates : the earlier Stewart kings, brilliant, brave, fated ; the Reformation Age, with its actors and workers — Mary of Guise, Cardinal Beaton, Mary the Beautiful, Darnley, Bothwell, Rizzio, Murray, Morton, and that one other man who dwarfs all his contemporaries, John Knox — he who disestablished the Church of Rome in Scotland, and died without ever having feared the face of man ; then follow the sage Buchanan, his pupil James vi., and George Heriot, whose 3! distribute cijearfullp has come down all the Edinburgh generations ; then Charles i. ; the last sad entry of Montrose ; Cromwell with his stern but im- partial rule ; the Restoration times of the later Stewarts ; the great Argyll and the unyielding martyrs of the Covenant; then the glorious Revolution; the pioneers of Scottish emigration in the Darien Scheme, so energetic, so hopeful, so doomed ; the times of Queen Anne and the Union; the Georgian era; the Rebelhon of the '15, Sheriffmuir, and the Standard on the Braes of Mar; and the Rebellion of the '45 under Prince Charlie — the last Introduction. 5 of his race who entered the northern capital as a gated and a walled city. This may be held to be the boundary line of the ' Old Edinburgh ' period, for the destruction of the Nether-Bow Port synchronises with the foundation of the New Town on the heathy moor of the Lang Gait in the earlier years of the reign of George iii. The buildings in the ' Old Edinburgh ' of the Exhibi- tion are the buildings of Edinburgh within her gates and walls ; and in that earlier Edinburgh every stone, almost every step, is historical. Besides her dower of beauty, the Capital of the North has ever possessed an individuality more marked than that of any other city in the Empire. Much of this may be owing to the nature of the country and the character of the people; but very much is due to the genius of Sir Walter Scott, 'her chiefest scribe and recorder,' who has revealed the strong lights and the dark shadows of Scottish story, as with a Rembrandt light, to a reading world. To that reading world, from the north to the farthest south, and from the east to the most distant west, we offer some representation of the scenes where that Scottish History was lived and enacted; for in so far as that history was pure and honest, fearlessly God-fearing and true, it has given our country its place among the nations. jI3et})er^TBoto port* IN the extended city wall, called the ' Flodden Wall,' there were six principal gates. The chief of these was the Nether-Bow Port, which separated the city of Edinburgh from the burgh of the Canongate, at the conjunction of Leith Wynd and St. Mary's Wynd. It was the principal entrance to the city from the east, more especially London, and from the seaport Leith by Leith Wynd. The King's highway continued to be by the Canongate and the High Street till the new eastern approach by the Regent Arch was opened in 1817. There were three successive Nether-Bow Ports. There are no representations of the two earlier gates, but we know that the second was thirty yards nearer John Knox's house than the last of the series, which was taken down on 9th August 1764, the material being sold by public auction. This building was very massive, and was one of the greatest adornments of the city. It is said to have been almost a duplicate of the ancient Porte St. Honore at Paris, and it is not unlike some of the old city gates in Holland. The bell was cast at Campvere Nether-Bow Port. in Zealand at the same time as the bells of St Giles'. The successive Nether-Bow Ports sustained a very important part in the city's history, both in the pageants of peace connect- ed with the state entry of the dif- ferent Stewart sovereigns into the capital, and also in the mani- fold interna- tional wars and city * tuilzies.' The Porteous Mob in 1736 had nearly set- tled the doom of the Nether-Bow Port. The Go- vernment, enraged at the insult offered to Queen Caro- line's Regency while the King was absent in Hanover, offered large rewards for the apprehension of the ring- leaders. Enraged at their non-success, a Bill was intro- duced into the House of Commons, in which, amongst NETHER-BOW PORT. The Book of Old Edinburgh. other pains and penalties against town and magistrates, there was one clause, to dismantle the Nether-Bow Gate and disband the Town Guard. The Scottish Members in London stood shoulder to shoulder, encouraged by the example of John, Duke of Argyll, who, in the House of Lords, denounced in no measured words the intended ■?^J ^; i WITH YOUR ftJAJESTY's LEAVE, TO GET MV BEAGLES READY. degradation to the ancient capital of Scotland. ' I will make Scotland a hunting-field,' said the angry Queen. ' Then,' said the Duke, ' I go down, with Nether-Bow Port. your Majesty's leave, to get my beagles ready.' The stately courtliness of the words was Delphic, the deep reverence of the bow was ominous. Could the name of Argyll be dissevered from the cause of the Protes- tant succession in spite of his family wrongs ? There was a skeleton at the Court feasts of the second George, as at those of Egypt long ago. Was there not grow- ing up at Rome a young prince of the exiled Stewart race — brave, spirited, debonair ? What were his possibilities against those of the king's Fritz ? Stolen waters were not unsweet to the statesmen of the period. The issues were weighty. The Go- vernment gave way, and the mat- ter was eventually commuted into a money payment by the city of Edinburgh to the widow of Captain Porteous. The after- echoes of the storm were amus- ing. Edinburgh was allowed to possess her Nether- Bow Gates, but they were to be 'cleekit back' — to TAKEN BY THE HIGHLANDERS. lO The Book of Old Edinburgh. stand open by night as well as by day — so that the city might be scoured through by a detachment of the British army when the second Porteous Mob came ! Nine years afterwards, and the Nether-Bow Port was taken in war for the last time, the assailants being the Highlanders of Prince Charles's army in the Rebellion of 1745. There must then have been a rush for neat's- foot oil and for the hammermen of the good smith craft of the Magdalen Chapel. The gates were in bad order. No wonder ! The succes- sors of Vulcan in Old Edinburgh did their work promptly and well, and the gates were eventually closed. The capture, how- ever, was an easy one. There is some historical haze about the transaction, but — the Provost was a Stewart. We learn from a table of the ' Common Good ' in 1690 that the rent of the apartments over the Nether- Bow Gate was ^112 Scots ^ — surely, of all houses in neighbourly Edinburgh, the best for a 'School for Scandal ' or for gossip ! Further, from the * Funeral ^ ;,^io sterling. GATES IN BAD ORDER. Nether-Bow Fort. II Sermon by Claudero ' over the old gate's decreed downfall, we learn that there was a smithy in the Port, and that the Nether-Bow Coffee-house was literally ' at the gate,' thus making the old Nether Bow a very news-centre for all classes of the populace. The smithy, doubtless, might be in the Northern Vault, which was of greater value in 1558, when it was mort- gaged for 100 merks to repair the whole structure. A brief extract from the Nether Bow's ' Funeral Ser- mon' will show Claudero's grim humour; and the sarcastic prophecy concerning Leith Harbour has happily found fulfilment. 'What was too hard,' he says, 'for the great ones of the earth, yea, even queens to effect, is now, even in our day, accomplished. No patriot Duke opposeth the scheme as did the great Argyll in the grand senate of our nation. Therefore the project shall go into execution, and down shall Edina's lofty porches be hurled with a vengeance. . . . The city shall be joined to Leith on the north, and a procession of wise masons shall there lay the foundation of a spacious harbour. . . . Our city shall be the greatest wonder of the world ; and the fame of its glory shall reach the distant ends of the earth,' On the final destruction of the Nether-Bow Gate by the order of the magistrates of Edinburgh, the ancient clock was placed in the tower of the Old Orphan Hos- pital, which stood not far from the site of the present The Book of Old Edinburgh. General Post-Office of Edinburgh. When the Hospita was removed for the construction of the North Britisl Railway, the old clock is said to have found an abiding- place and work in the tower of the New Orphan Hos- pital at the Dean. For one hundred and twenty years has the old Nether-Bow clock told the flight of time to these love-bereft children ; but never did it look down on a young face more sad than it did some two hun- dred years ago, when James vii. was King. In the first year of that king's reign the martyr James Guthrie was executed at the ' Mercat Croce ' without the shadow of a trial, and ' They have set his head on the Nether Bow, To scorch in the summer air ; And months go by, and the winter's snow Falls white on his thin grey hair. There sitteth a child by the Nether Bow In the light of the summer sky ; And he steals there yet in the winter's snow, But he shuns the passers-by, — "A child in whom childhood's life is dead, Its sweet life marred and dim ; And he gazes up at that awful head As though it held speech with him. But ever he meekly went his way ' As the stars came o'er the place, And his mother wept as she heard him say, " I have seen my father's face." ' Nether-Bow Port. 13 AVhen, after the old Scottish law fashion, the Doom- star had pronounced his doom, Guthrie turned to his judges and said, ' My Lords, ... let never my blood be required of the King's children.' HE GAZES UP AT THAT AWFUL HEAD. Cf)e Ctoeltie apostles^ l^ouse, AND THE f rcnclj ^mba00atior'0 C^apeL THIS house was situated in the Cowgate, at the foot of Libberton's Wynd. It was taken down in 1829 for the erection of George IV. Bridge, and it was a good example of the semi-fortified Scottish town house. A strong square tower, presenting the appear- ance of a narrow Border peel, contained a compara- tively well-lighted staircase, which was entered by a stout oak door, beautifully and minutely panelled. In the uppermost story of the west wing there was a double dormer window, surmounted by a pediment on which were carved the heads of the Twelve Apostles. On the top was a figure supposed to have been a representation of our Saviour, but the upper part of the body had long been broken away. Tradition has ascribed to the east wing of this ancient building the name of * The French Ambassa- dor's Chapel,' and on the first floor above the street a The Twelve Apostles' House. 15 room with two handsome windows was indicated as the one that had been so used in the short personal reign of Queen Mary, from 1 56 1 to 1567. It must have required all the sacred- ness that is understood to surround an Am- bassador's per- son and belong- ings to keep this chapel from dis- turbance. Stung by harsh mea- sures under the Beatons and the regency of Mary of Guise, the popular idea of the mob was that THE TWELVE APOSTLES' HOUSE. ' The Paip, that Pagan fou o' pride, Has troubled us fu' lang/ and that the time of retribution had now fully come, and was in their own hands. Above the doorway was a shield i6 The Book of Old Edinburgh. bearing a crescent between two stars in chief, with the motto, * SPERAVi • ET • iNVENi,' but the principal device on the shield was a JVere7C'olf-^suve\y the weirdest and the most horrible guardian that ever man placed over his threshold. This touches on what was once a wide-spread superstition. JFere is the Anglo-Saxon 7c>er, a man. A man-wolf, or Werewolf, was a man who either was transformed, or by the help of Satan had the power of transforming himself for a time, into a wolf, becoming possessed of all the passions and appetites of that animal — more particularly a never-satisfiable hunger to feast on human flesh. As a species of madness the disease is called 'lycan- thropy,' ■ and there are notices of it in Herodotus, Pliny, and other ancient authors. In Northern and Mid Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this superstition, and the cruelties consequent thereon, were at their highest. These were synchronous with the persecutions for witchcraft in our own country (notori- ously in Old Edinburgh) and in New England across the Atlantic. In the Jura alone, 600 people suffered by their own confession. The night before the Feast of the Nativity was the Walpurgis Nacht, or the ' Devil's Sabbath at e'en,' for the werewolves. It seems that Satan's power stopped short of changing the softness of the human eye, and wounds and mutila- tions in the wolf state discovered the wrong-doers on The Twelve Apostles' House. 17 their resumption of the human form. In an old legend, a knight was attacked by a werewolf. Something in the animal's beautiful eyes startled him when its fangs were at his throat. He fought for his life. The werewolf fled, with a long strange cry, leav- ing its fore-paw on the ground. On it the knight saw the betrothal ring he had given his mistress, who was found the next day dead in her bower, and — without her left hand. In 1572, when such were the tales that were told round the hearths of Old Edinburgh on winter nights — and not disbelieved, — it would be more than a matter of strange coincidence when John Dickison of Winkston, the builder of this house, was murdered on the High Street of Peebles in open day, and his murderers acquitted. Instead HF. FOUGHT FOR HIS LIFE. The Book of Old Edinburgh. of werewolves, this v.'as an age when both religion and superstition, and much that savoured of neither, wanted something good written on their lintels and door-posts, either as a benediction or a protection. Whether inscribed in Latin, or written in homely Saxon Scotch with quaint spelling, there is nothing more pleasant or more refreshing to the eye of the antiquary than the giiid words whilk trew men carvit in stane aboon their doors at hanie. The most frequent of the Latin inscriptions was — SOLI • DEO . HONOR • ET ■ GLORIA. — the grace after meat used in families of pretension and learning ; and the most popular of all was the early Reformation grace before meat — BLISSIT • BE • GOD • TOR ■ AL • HIS • GIFTIS. The terminating words wlien used at table were tJirough Jesus Christy Amen — surely the most comprehensive and beautiful of all thanksorivinos. ^ousc in Dicfeson'0 €Io0e. DICKSON'S CLOSE is the first close east from Niddry Street on the south side of the High Street. This house, with its stone basement and pro- jecting wood and plaster upper stories, is supposed to have been the work of Robert Mylne, the builder of the modern portion of Holyrood, and the seventh Royal Master Mason of that hereditary builder-craft family. The date of its building was probably about the Revolution era. In 1508 James iv. granted by charter the Borough Muir to the Town Council of Edinburgh. The magis- trates, to encourage the citizens to purchase the oak trees growing thereon, gave them permission to new- front their houses seven feet forward with that material — a proceeding which narrowed the principal street fourteen feet. These wooden-fronted houses, or as they were named in Scotland ' Timmer Lands,' were, however, a leading feature in European architecture of 19 20 The Book of Old Edinburgh. the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and to this characteristic many of the ancient towns in Germany and Flanders, and our own Chester in England, owe their beauty of old-world quaintness. There was an inner stone structure of substantial masonry. Taylor, the English "W^ater-poet, in his Pennylesse Pilgrimage^ describes the walls of these ' goodlie houses ' as ' exceed- ing strong, not built for a day, a weeke, a monthe, or a yeare, but from Antiquitie to Posteritie for many x\ges.' A w^ooden front was then superadded to these inner walls, supported by projecting beams. With eacli story of height the projections increased, till in some of the closes it was possible for the occupants of opposite attics to shake hands, and hold some small convivialities wuth each other. In some instances the w^ooden fronts were left open, and formed galleries. As a rule, these galleries were of plain beams, owing to the hardness of the Borough Muir oak, but there were examples — notably that of a house near the corner of Blackfriars Wynd, where the rich carving of the front facade showed near relationship to the magnificent old balconies of Bruges and Ghent in the time of Charles v. These open galleries — a feature in the High Street especially — were adorned on gala-days with tapestries and cloths of gold, and were crowded with the dignified worth of Scottish matronhood, and with the bright beauty of Old Edinburgh's youthful daughters. House in Dickson's Close. 21 DIGNIFIED MATROXHOOn AND BRIGHT BEAUTY. The Book of Old Edinburgh. Of the earlier tenants of this ' Timmer Land ' in Dick- son's Close nothing is known, but in 1786 it was tenanted by David Allan, termed the Scottish Hogarth from his characteristic figure-painting. mm CIVILITIES IN DICKSON* S CLOSE. T6oto''f)eaD Cornet ©ouse, I.— IN SUNSHINE. THIS house, taken down in 1878, was one of the finest of the old timber-fronted burgher dwell- ings in the old city, and, from its prominent situation, the best known. It had two elevations — one towards the Lawnmarket, the other towards the West Bow. The street floor only had a stone waL the chimneys being carried up in the gables of the houses on either side. A piazza was on the ground floor towards the Bow, and the beams of the upper floors projected over it, and over each other, with a boldness which made a stranger hold his breath. Perhaps this seeming over- weighting of the house is best described in the words of one of its own tenants — an old man who had been born and who had lived for more than seventy years literally under its roof, for to him belonged the small attic windows in the gable towards the Bow. 'Feared to bide up here on a windy nicht?' said he, 'no' me! The hoose was built afore Sir Isaac Newton invented 23 24 The Book of Old Edinburgh. the centre o' gravity, but, depend upon it, the man that built it kent o' something just as guid I ' The northern ' FEAKED? KO' ME I ' front was the more ornate. On its second floor there were Doric pilasters between the windows, which last were filled with panels of glazed lattice-work. A minute examination of Old Edinburgh shows that the 'front lands' in the High Street were tenanted by merchants and the trading community. The nobility, the landed gentry, and the dignitaries of the Church prior to the Reformation, affected the select retirement of the closes, or the more aristocratic suburbs of the Canongate and the Cowgate. The Bow-head Corner House. 25 shops in the High Street had all open booths entering by a piazza the same as that of the Bow-head ; and the Luckenbooths were so named because they were closed {lucketi), a nearer approach to the shops of modern times. A little to the north-west of the Bow- head house stood the Weigh-house or ' Butter Trone/ which was demolished in 1650 by Cromwell's orders, for F.OW-HEAD COSNER HOUbK. interfering with the 'schottis of the Castell' It was rebuilt at the Restoration, and was removed in 1822 26 The Book of Old Edinburgh. from the High Street to Canal Street, a street which in its turn has been removed to make room for the North British Railway Station. The Bow-head house was especially a coign of van- tage on the occasions of the state entry of the rulers of Scotland into their capital. The law of precedent, always powerful in Court ceremonials, was to enter the Grassmarket by the West Port, thence up the steep zigzag of the Bow into the High Street, then to pass slowly down between the then unbroken Hnes of its towering houses to the Nether-Bow Gate, thence by the burgh of Canongate to the royal home at Holyrood. In some instances the Castle was visited. This was done by Queen Mary on her state entry on the 2d September 1561. She entered her capital on horseback, followed by a great retinue of French and of Scottish nobles, having ridden from Holyrood^ along the Lang Gait (now Princes Street) — sweeping round the strength of the grey Castle Rock ; and right loyally did the old city and its rulers receive their young Queen. At the ' Butter Trone,' hard by the Bow-head house, and near the upper Bow Port of the first city wall, she was presented with the keys of the city — not by the Chief Magistrate, as is now the wont, but — by 'ane bonny bairn,' who issued as if it had been ' ane angel' ^ On this occasion Queen ^^ary used the first side-saddle with a pommel ever seen in Scotland. Bow-head Corner House. 27 from a cloud with folding leaves. To the silver keys were added a Bible and a Psalter, bound in purple rRKSKNTATION f)F THE! KEYS. velvet, whereupon, an old writer quaintly remarks, ' the bairn returned to its place, and the dud steekit^ The Book of Old Edinburgh. Members of the Town Council, with some 'honest nychtbours,' to the number of sixteen, bore aloft a canopy of purple velvet fringed with gold over the Queen and her palfrey. Good men and true they were, who had fought the Southron in Hertford's time, and who were ever promptly 'reddy bodin for weir' to man the city wall at the ' jow of the common bell ' — for ' Bauld sword in Defens ' was a primary requisite in the civic rulers of those days. On that gay September day, however, they were all clad in the black velvet and the cramoisie of the old song, and, masters on their own ^caulsay,' they took their honourable place beside their Queen, to be followed by dame and noble, squire and knight; but nathless long before the brilliant throng reached Holyrood, the good city fathers, with their canopy-carrying, would be 'sair forfeuchan.' Similar ceremonies took place on the entry of James vi. in 1579, and on that of his bride, Anne of Denmark, ten years later, when the King's 'darrest spous' was propyned with jewels worth 20,000 crowns — true evidence of the royal bridegroom's remark, that 'a king wnth a new-married wife doesna come hame ilka day.' Up the Bow once again came King James in 161 7 from his new kingdom of England, impelled by his Majesty's own 'salmonlyke instinct' to see 'our native soyle and place of our birth and breeding.' Up the Bow came Charles 1. for his Bow-head Corner House. Scottish coronation at Holyrood ; and up the Bow, in due time, he was succeeded by OHver Cromwell and his Ironsides, who at ]\Iarston Moor and Naseby had turned back the battle-shock of Rupert's Royalists, as the grim Bass Rock does the swell of the ocean in a north-east gale. UP THE now RODE CROMWELL AND HIS IRONSIDES. 30 The Book of Old Edinburgh. II.— IN SHADOW. ' Lassie,' quo' he, ' their travail "s great, While we sit lown an' calm ; Bring doun, bring doun the Haly Beuk, We '11 sing the mornin' Psalm.' An' we sang the mornin' Psalm, until The tears drapt frae oor e'e. My faither prayed for the camp of God, I prayed for my brethren three. - Old Song. As the brightest sunlight has the deepest shadows, so was it with the old Bow-head house. As it saw Sovereigns pass to the throne, so w-as it compelled to witness sufferers, justly or unjustly, pass to the scaf- fold. From the Restoration down to 1784 the place of public execution was in the Grassmarket, and whether the place of previous confinement had been the Tol- booth or the Castle, it behoved the ghastly procession to pass the Bow-head house and down the Bow. If the sufferer was deemed of gentle blood, however, as in the case of Morton, Argyll, Montrose, Guthrie, and Others, the ' Maiden,' or the gibbet, was erected at the ' Mercat Croce ' in the High Street. For twenty-eight years after the Restoration those ' passers-by w^ho never returned' were chiefly the Covenanters, who, desiring to worship the God of their fathers according to their conscience, sealed their testimony with their blood, and, to use Bow-head Corner House. GLORIFIED GOD IN THE GRASSMARKET. the ribald words of the Duke of RuUies, one of their judges, literally 'glorified God in the Grassmarket.' During the same years, in Eng- land there was Bunyan in Bed- ford Jail, and the Restoration revenge on the Puritans, and ships following on the track of the Mayflower across the At- lantic, with brave men, self-exiled, who feared God and knew no other fear — fit hands to lay the foundation-stones of the mighty Republic of the West, on which the Pilgrim Fathers had already graven the secret of that nation's greatness — Freedo^i TO w^oRSHiP GoD. And away across in France, during the very same years, there were the Dragonnades, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and an old Huguenot merchant writing with his sword on his door, 'Loyal au Roy, mais ma Foy est a Moy :' — 'Loyal to the King, but my religion is my own.' In the wor- ship of a pure God it may be conceded that a sub- ject might have differed from the faith and practice of such monarchs as Charles ii. and Louis xiv., yet, in spite of posterity having vindicated the action of these men, as it has benefited by their sufferings,— j'^/, until Thomas Carlyle came, who with no un mighty sickle The Book of Old Edinburgh. shore out the tares that had choked and hidden Truth, burning them with no gentle hand, and with no unbitter smoke before our eyes, — yet, until he came, there have not been wanting writers who have stigma- tised the martyrs' religion as fanaticism, their con- science-scruples as narrow-mindedness, and who have appraised their buffetings, their banishment, their tortures, and their death by a sneer. Amongst much of Old Edinburgh that has passed away there is no room to regret the genteel Jiistory-writing of the past centuries, and its emasculated shadow in the present day. The interior decorations of the Bow-head house were good j some of the ceilings were formed in panels with wrought mouldings and ornamentation, and at one time one of the rooms was decorated with Edinburgh- made Spanish leather in crimson and gold. We quote again our old Bow-head informant, who was an uphol- sterer, and an authority on the technical history of his craft. Upholsterers or ' tapischers ' were formerly also wall-decorators. In the seventeenth century, stamped leather, an artistic covering for walls and furniture, was manufactured by Bailie Brand, afterwards Sir Alexander Brand. Specimens of the Scottish make are getting rare. sgajot mtWs J^ouse* HE north side wynd of the ' Old Edinburgh ' Street ter- minates with a representa- tion of the gable of Major Weir's house, the most famous of the many haunted houses in the old city. It stood in a small back court, which was entered by a narrow close from the West Bow, its lintel joining that of a jiAjoR WEIR. door on which was in- scribed the legend— SOLI • DEO • HONOR • ET • GLORIA • 1604. The narrow close was associated in the popular mind with very different work, for the story of Major Weir touches upon the witnessed ipalpcihle^persona/iyy of Satan, and his active bodily interference in the concerns of men. The whole subject is surrounded with difficulties, and is now relegated to the outposts of religious belief, c 34 The Book of Old Edinbumh. but, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it occupied a different and a very prominent position in the minds of the Christian communities of Great Britain, and of the Puritan colonies across the Atlantic. We refer the curious in these matters — and they are many — for the history of Major Weir, to a book named Safari's Invisible World Discovered^ noting, how- ever, that the Satan of this volume is a very different spirit from the * archangel ruined ' of Milton. This work, now little known, was once to be found on the book-shelf in the major- ity of religious Scottish homes : side by side with The Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War of Bunyan, Baxter's Saints' Pest, Howe's Redeemer's Tears, Cind other strong food of Puritan faith, beloved by the sterner minds of our forefathers. It was written by MAJOR WEIR S HOUSE, Major Weir's House. 35 George Sinclair, Professor of Philosophy in the College of Glasgow, a man of high scientific attainments, and published at Edinburgh in 1685. Copies of the original edition are exceedingly rare. This work represents the serious side ^ of much that was grotesque in the miracle-plays of the Romish Church, and that has remained so in the works of many of the early Scottish poets or 'makaris,' and notably in the works of the national poet Burns, as seen in * Tarn o' Shanter ' and the ' Address to the Deil ' :— ' Great is thy pow'r, an' great thy fame ; Far kend an' noted is thy name ; An' tho' yon lowin' heugh 's thy hame, Thou travels far ; An' faith ! thou 's neither lag nor lame, Nor blate nor scaur. When twilight did my grannie summon, To say her pray'rs, douce, honest woman ! Aft yont the dyke she 's heard you bummin', Wi' eerie drone ; Or, rusthn', through the boortrees, comin', Wi' heavy groan. Annexed is a reprint of the title-page of the first edition of SataiUs Invisible World Discovered^ which tells its own tale. * The pitiful side of the subject is seen in the following quotation from Nicoll, 9th March 1659 : ' There were fyve wemen, witches, brunt on the Castell Hill, all of them confessand their covenanting with Sawtan, sum of them renunceand their baptism, and all of them oft tymes dancing with the Devell.' .J, t DISCOVERED; t •|[» OR, •$• I* A choice Colle6tion of Modern Re- J T lations , proving evidently againft T ^ the Saducees and Atheifts of this a, .|. prefent Age, that there are Devils^ »|» ^ Spirits^ Witches^ and Apparitions^ ^ ^ fromAuthentick Records, Attefta- "^ y tions of Famous Witneffes , and "f I undoubted Verity. T 4* To all which is added , •$• 4* That Marvellous Hiflory of Major Weir, 4* •}[♦ and his Siller : ♦Jf T With two Relations of Apparitions at T "^ Edinburgh. ^- iA» 1^ •A* By Mr. George S'lnclar^ late Profeflbr of Philofophy, iA» • in the College of Glafgoiv. •^ T No Man should be vain that he can injure the merit of J ^ a Bookf for^ the meanest Rogue may burn a City, or ^ *$* kill an Hero, ivhereas, he could never build the one, *$* •J* or equal the other. Sr. G. M<:K. •$• ^ »A» t Edinburgh,?nntQd.hy John Reid. 1685. f 1^ *A» W "^ f^ •A* 'V' "^ '^ 'w' "af 'w' "^ Major Weir's House. 37 Major Weir was burned at the Gallowlee, between Edinburgh and Leith, in 1670, and his sister Jean, other- wise Grizell Weir, was hanged in the Grassmarket. The whole story is believed now to have been a tissue of crime and superstition, which ended in madness. OEarl of ^i?nDfarti's 5)ouse. THIS very picturesque building was in South Gray's Close, though its principal entrance was from the adjoining Hyndford's Close. Its style was a com- bination of the early Border Tower, on which were grafted the features of the Franco- Italian influence, which began to affect Edinburgh architecture after the Restoration. For many years this mansion was the residence of the Earls of Selkirk, and afterwards of the Earls of Hyndford, who latterly removed to No. 8 St. John Street. This peerage became extinct in the per- son of Andrew Carmichael, sixth Earl, in 1817, when the art treasures of a succession of ambassadors, from the time of James vi. onwards, were sold by public auction. The Hyndford Close house now became the property of Dr. John Rutherford, Professor of the Practice of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Ruther- ford was a Borderer, a son of Yarrow Manse, and was educated at Selkirk. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh, Leyden, Paris, and Rheims. At Leyden he was the pupil of Boerhaave, the most celebrated physician of the eighteenth century. Following the example of his 38 Earl of Hyndford's House. 39 famous master in Holland, he was the first in this country to institute the practice of giving clinical lec- tures to his students, which he did in the Royal I n fi r m a r y, 1748. His College lec- tures were de- 1 i V e r e d in Latin, as was then the cus- tom through- out Europe; but these clinical lec- tures were given in the vigorous Bor- der vernacular earl of hyndford's house. — kindliest of Scottish dialects — and what a great relief this must have been to many an eager young student-mind hirpled by meagre scholarship ! The mother of Sir Walter Scott— Anne Rutherford- was Dr. Rutherford's only child by his first marriage, and her girlhood was passed in this very pleasant old 40 The Book of Old Edinburgh. city home. To school she went in the neighbouring Blackfriars Wynd, taught by a worthy gentlewoman, Mrs. Euphame or Effie Sinclair, of the ancient house of Longformacus, who, if judged by results as seen in her pupils, must have been possessed of a culti- vated mind well stored in literature, in addition to the thorough housewifely training — so pleasant a feature in the girl-educa- tion of the eighteenth century. Married in 1758 to Walter Scott, W.S., Anne went to her new home, on the third flat of the house in College Wynd, where, in 17 71, her dis- tinguished son was born, to whom she was a good, able, loving, and much-loved mother. The Hyndford Close house afterwards became the property of her half-brother, Dr. Daniel Rutherford, Professor of Botany, the King's Botanist for Scotland, and a chemist, moreover, of European fame. To Sir Walter Scott, when a lad at the neighbouring High School and subsequently, this house, with its inmates and its surroundings, was a second home. rO SCHO(JL SHE W; Cf)e 5i5ameless f^omt. THIS building stood in the Cowgate, in the antique row of houses between the College Wynd and the' Horse Wynd, on the east side of St. Peter's Pend, and near Symson's house. It is a ^ ^■'^' , good specimen of pic- turesque street archi- tecture attained by simple means. The effect of the double row of dormer windows and the high crow- stepped gable contain- ing the stair is at once bold and pleasing. The builders of these old houses understood the junction or meeting- point of roof and sky better than the architect who planned the new Edin- burgh across the Nor' Loch in 1768."°^'''' ^^°" cowgate. The mile-long granary-like sameness of front elevation, and the carefully ruled roof summit lines which came 41 42 The Book of Old Edinburgh. into fashion with early Princes Street, are an example in point — a state of matters from which that street, perhaps the most beautifully situated in the world, has been freeing itself with vigorous rapidity in these later days. There is no historical clue all down the centuries to any inhabitant of this house. The initial letters at the foot of the page, doubtless those of the original owner and his spouse, were engraved on the lintel, which to us looked somewhat like a gravestone. The name- lessness of the house is typical of the now forgotten units of the people who dwelt within its walls — part of the unnoted and unnumbered population of the old city, * Who have worked their work, and reap The unfathomable sleep ' of the dead within its old churchyards. M^ iiV|H!\l^ii;i'/j!V^:^Pi'W TABLET ON COWGATE HOUSE. ?Laus Deo ^ouse# THIS house stood on the north side of the Castle Hill, at the head of Blyth's Close. It bore the legend LAVS DEO R • M • 1591 in finely-twisted, hand-wrought iron letters on its front. It is an open question with antiquarians whether this house formed part of the adjoining Palace of Mary of Guise, or whether it existed as an independent build- ing. The back portion of the house bore internal evidence of being erected at the same time as the Guise Palace. The elevation of polished ashlar to the front street was of more modern erection. At the iron date given, 1591, Mary of Guise had been in her tomb at Rheims in France for thirty years, and Fotheringay had seen her daughter's sorrows ended in 1587. The original title-deeds of the building are lost. The earliest existing are two contracts of alienation, in favour of James Rynd and Robert M 'Naught, merchant- burgesses, in 1590. Probably the original front had 43 44 The Book of Old Edinburgh. been in wood, Hke those of the adjoining houses, and these sensible citizens appear conjointly to have re- fronted the building with stone the next year; in token of which there was sculptured on one of the lowest crow steps '^^\~7J§/W R-\^^^. t?^. Riff ^ ^' S^ a shield bearing an "^n! ' ' f.N t'^ IkTrt Fl imSL.^:4Sfi'*^ open hand— symbol 'ifi .-^ -«€'i;ii-':i^^-R*i^'^-*ji-'\. of amity and mutual proprietorship. The initials R. M., in our opinion, do not re- present Maria Re- gina, but Rynd — M'Naught. In an apartment on the second story of this house, but entering from Blyth's Close, the discovery of a most exquisitely painted ceil- ing on wood was made in 1840 by Mr. Cumberland Hill, now the honoured Chaplain to St. Cuthbert's Poorhouse, and author of the Reminiscences of Stock' bridge. Acting on the hint of a little lad that a gold star was seen above a window soffit, he scrambled up LAUS DEO HOUSE. Laus Deo House. 45 through a hole in an ordinary stucco ceiUng that had been constructed below. Calling in the assistance of a friend, Wil- liam Munro, now long dead, the house was rented for a time, and these young artisan artists made exact and spirited representa- tions of the whole ceil- ing, and for five months spent all their evening hours over their labour of love — falling meanwhile under the amusing suspicion of the neighbours that they were coiners ! The ceiling itself, or rather a fragment of it, was placed in the Antiquarian Museum, ^ but not till the THOUGHT THKV WEKE COIKEK^ A painting in oil of the centre compartment is in the Antiquarian Museum, but the drawings were unfortunately sold at the sale of Charles Kirkpatrick vSharpe. Prior to this, they were used by Dr. Daniel Wilson, author of Mciiwriah of Edinburgh, to illustrate a lecture which he gave on this ceiling before the Society of Anti- quaries of Scotland. 46 The Book of Old Edinburgh. falling in of a chimney-stalk, in a thaw after a severe snow-storm, had broken it, and the melted snow had spoiled its rich colouring. The ceiling was arched, and painted in distemper. In the centre was a large circular compartment containing a representation of our Saviour in royal robes as a king, the vivid blue back- ground making the figure stand out as if living. In gold letters on the same deep blue ground, and encircling it, were the words — EGO • SUM . VIA • VERITAS • ET • VITA — 1 am the IVaj', the Truth, and the Life. There were other frescoes, each in its separate compart- ment. The strangest of these was an allegory of the Christian life, painted before John Bunyan dreamed his dream in Bedford Jail to be 'his ministrie to all posteritie.' In this northern Ftigrt'jn^s Progress Chris- tian is seen standing on the deck of an ancient ship in full sail, speeding swiftly over the Sea of Life ; above him are the letters V. ^., a contraction for Vita Sterna — Life Eternal. The City of Destruction is burning in the distance ; Death riding on a horse amidst the waves is aiming an arrow at his heart. Overhead is Satan, with black wings, marked Diaboius. Another great dragon of the deep, marked Persecution is pursuing the ship, but overhead, in the sky, is the word nin^ — the Hebrew symbol for Jehovah, — shining with a glory as of the sun, Laus Deo House. 47 and a hand comes forth from the glory holding a golden chain, which is linked to the ship. Seeing the hand and the chain, one knows that Christian will be brought through storm and tempest at last unto his desired haven, even as the Christian and the Hopeful of our childhood passed through Bunyan's River of Death — broad, black, bridgeless, — unto the shores of the * Delightsome Land.' The other pictures were Jacob's Dream, the Baptism of Christ, Death on the Pale Horse, and Jesus Asleep in the Storm. This last picture gives the means of approximating the date of its pro- duction. For the scenery on the shores of the Sea of Galilee there is substituted a north view of Edinburgh — from Salisbury Crags and Holyrood to the Castle ! This would demonstrate that the painter was Edinburgh-born, in his desire to place his native city as near as possible to that most beautiful, most sacred, and now most silent of waters. The representation of bold crags on the far side from Tiberias is a truth, as we are able to testify from having noted a resemblance when on the spot ; but the sight of the steeple of the last Nether-Bow Gate, erected 1606, and that of the old Weigh-house, taken down 1650, raises a kindly smile over the pleasant conceit — a conceit not unusual in pictures of the time. The dates given show that the whole ceiling adornment, a work of undoubted genius and great labour, must have been done in the earlier half of the seventeenth century. 48 The Book of Old Edinburgh. The first quarter of the seventeenth century was a time of mercantile prosperity to both kingdoms. The strife for religious liberty had not begun in Scotland, nor that for civil liberty in England. King James's favourite text was ' Blessed are the peacemakers/ and under its influence he stretched out an appreciative hand to Learning and Art, and encouraged the esta- blishment of new manufactures in the capital of his 'auncient kingdom.' TirrSE YOUNG ARTIi-.ANS MADC EXACT REPRESENTATIOrJS OF. THli CKILl.NG. THE Cunzie-House, or ' Cunyie Nook,' stood on the west side of the Candlemaker Row, where it joined the Grassmarket, and fronted the Cowgatehead. Its timber-arched porch, its outside stairs, and its ancient ' ballusters ' gave it a picturesque individuality of appearance, which was heightened by its wooden eaves, rhones, and brackets, and by its crow-stepped gables decorated with cope pediments. Money was coined in Scotland from the time of Alexander i. till the Union in 1707. The locality of the Mint varied. Be- sides this Cowgatehead Cunyie Nook, which was used in the regency of Mary of Guise, there was in Edinburgh an earlier Mint, on the west side of the Abbey Close at Holyrood. Another is mentioned in the examination of Darnley's murderers as being on the south side of the Canongate, opposite the Tolbooth ; but the exist- ence of this Mint is not elsewhere mentioned. Another Cunzie-House was in the Castle. It was destroyed in the ruinous siege of 1573. Coining was not confined to the capital. Stirling, Linlithgow, Roxburgh, Dundee, 50 The Book of Old Edinburgh. Dumbarton, Perth, and Aberdeen have each for a longer or shorter time possessed a Royal Scottish Cunzie-house. In 1574 the Scottish Mint was finally established by Regent Morton in the specially erected and semi-fortified building in South Gray's Close. The legend EE . MERCIFVL • TO • ME • O • GOD '1574 on the tower over its main entrance may have been the choice of that strange two- sided nature. Here the Mint remained till the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, when the Scottish dies were all destroyed. From it and from the other Cunzie - houses were issued the Ly o n-pieces and the Uni- THE CUNZIE-HOUSE. C O r n S, t h C Angel-pieces and the Bonnet-pieces, the Nobles and The Cunzie-House. 51 the Nonsunts, the Ryders and the Ryals,the Merks and the Half-merks, the Crown Groats and the Groats of the Flower-de-luce, the Pennies and the Placks, the Bodies and the Bawbees — all current coin of the realm of Scotland, and whose names are enshrined to us still in its history and song. GOLU COIN— FKANCIS AND MARY— 1558 Paul's amar&. THIS building, \vhich stood at the foot of Leith Wynd, was built by the Magistrates in 1619 as a-- charitable work-factory, and bore the name of St. Paul's Wark. Prior to this there had been an original foundation by Thomas Spens, Bishop of Aber- deen, who, for the maintenance of twelve poor men, founded a hospital in 1479, which bore the name of ' The Hospital of Our Lady in Leith Wynd.' In 1582 the ]\Iagistrates adjusted this foundation in accordance with the Reformed religion, and all ' Beids- men ' of this hospital were to be ' na Papist, but of the trew Religion ; na Blasphemer or Swerer, Drunkard, Cairter, Dysser, Theiffes or Pykers ; na sturdie Beggars, bot exerceesing themselves in sum honest Trade.' The last requirement, in the above curiously constructed quotation, was certainly a sine qua non^ for the whole revenue of the Hospital under its original and its restored foundation was only ;Q\2 sterling per annum. In 1619 the Edinburgh magistrates entered into a contract with William Dickson, of Delft, to bring over four Dutch weavers to instruct poor boys and girls in the making of woollen stuffs — ' Grograms, Seys, and 52 Paul's Wark. 53 Bays (baize).' It was for this purpose that this dormer- windowed building was reconstructed. It was decor- ated with the Edinburgh City Arms, and over the principal door was inscribed GOD • BLIS • THIS • WARK • 1619. The city, and also private citi- zens, subscribed liberally to this new work-chari- ty ; but exotic manufactures are too delicate for Scottish air, and subsidised trade invariably tends towards a black balance- sheet ; conse- quently the undertaking col- lapsed. It should be noted that Paul's Wark was a large building erected round a green or close. ^ The building in the Old Edin- burgh Street gives the front elevation. ^ In the English Cathedral, and also In the Old Parliament Hoivse, acceptation of the word. PAUL S V.-AKl' 54 The Book of Old Edinburgh. In 1632 the two eastmost houses on the south side of the close became a House of Correction, and as this was the first experiment of the reformatory idea of prison life in this country, ' ane certain Strangeir expert therein,' from England, by name William Stanfeild, was brought down to superintend its arrangement, and the east front house in Paul's Wark was allotted to him for a dwelling. In The Heart of Midlothia7i^ when Sharpitlaw is trying to elicit some story of the Porteous Mob from the faded memory of Madge Wildfire, he asks her, ' Were I to send you to the Wark Honse in Leith Wynd, and gar Jock Dalgleish lay the tawse on your back — ' 'That wad gar me greet,' said poor Madge, 'but it wadna gar me mind.' There appears to have been a good deal of the hangman's tawse used in St. Paul's Wark in the effort to compel ' ydill People to betake themselves to sum Vertew and Industrie.' In 1650 the westmost house was a military hospital for General Leslie's wounded soldiers \ it was after- wards a woollen manufactory, as mentioned by Arnot ; and the whole edifice was eventually removed during the construction of the North British Railway. JOCK DALGLEISH. ^gmson tU prmtet'0 i^omt. THIS timber-fronted house was on the south side of the Cowgate, near the foot of the Horse Wynd, and possibly it was one of the oldest in the district, dating from the early years of the sixteenth cen- tury. Above its massive oak door there was a fine elliptic architrave, surmounted by rich mouldings, with the inscription — that is, If we did as we should^ we might have as we would. We once saw a similarly rounded door archi- trave in oak, of the date 15 15, in the same quaint letter- ing and spelling, but with this sage advice — that is, Get afid save^ and ye shall have. 1515. 55 56 The Book of Old Edinburgh. These proverbial and pithy mottoes were a door- ornamentation of earlier date than the religious legends, none of which in the mother tongue is older than 1543 — the date when, by Act of Parliament, the Bible in the vernacular was first allowed to the people, pro- vided always ' that no persons dispute, argue, or hold opinions of the same.' Nothing is known of the earlier inhabitants of this house, except that they must have belonged to the noble or the wealthy of the land. In 1698 the upper floor was the printing- office and the dwell- ing-house of Andrew S y m s o n, printer, but who, for up- wards of twenty years ^ «Vi, ;VMSON THE l-RINTERS HOUSE. prior to the Revolution, had been parish minister (P^piscopal) of Kir- Symson the Printer's House. 5/ kinner. Nothing is known of his early personal history ; but he tells himself us that he had a University education, and was a con-disciple of Alexander, Earl of Galloway, who succeeded to the estates in 167 1. Through this early friendship with the son, it is possible that Earl James was led to exercise his patronage, and give Symson the incumbency of Kirkinner about 1663. While minister of Kirkinner, he wrote the La7'ge Descrlptmi of Gallo- way^ 1684. Symson was a man of rare Christian charity. Though his congregation dwindled down to three persons, he would give no information to the Government as to the recusant Covenanters who formed the bulk of his parishioners. In 1688, when the ecclesiastical pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of the arc, and Presbyterianism again became the established religion of Scotland, he was not one of the many curates who became Presbyterians to retain their livings, like the proverbial Vicar of Bray, who under the Tudor sovereigns changed his religion four times : — ' Come what will, come what may, I am determined to die the Vicar of Bray.' He was ' necessitate, however, to retire to a quiet lurk- ing-place,' where he was found and cherished by the Galloway family. Long after losing his incumbency he records thankfully that * his lot had been cast in pleasant places.' He acted as amanuensis to Sir Geors^e Mackenzie of 58 The Book of Old Edinburgh. Rosehaugh, the celebrated Lord Advocate, well known as the founder of the Advocates' library in Edinburgh, and more widely notorious for his persecuting proclivi- ties, and by the distich applied to him when dead and inside his jail-like grave in Greyfriars Churchyard — ' Bluidy Mackenyie, come if ye daur ! Lift the sneck, and draw the bar ! ' In 1698 Symson edited and published a new edition of Sir George's Observations on the history of Statutes. In 1705 he was the author of ' Tripatriarchicon, or the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob / in verse — very hamelt. For his rustic style he has elsewhere a versified apology, and in the Preface he gives a very quaint estimate of his own poetic merit : — ' The author does not in the least expect to be classed with our famous modern English Poets. No, no ; the height of his ambition is to be ranked inter minores Poetas ; or, if that seems too bigg, he is content to be lifted inter minimos: — Providing ordinary Ballad-makers, Country Rhythmers, mercenary Epitaph-mongers, and several others of that tribe be wholly excluded the number.' Another of his own works is a series of Elegies — thirteen in number, — now very rare. In 1706 he published his poem on the Union with England, then imminent. He was in favour of the measure. The Symsoii the Printer's House. 59 poem is entitled ' Unio ; Politico, Poetico, Joco, Serio.' A quotation is given to show a voice of ' Old Edin- burgh,' from the Cowgate, on the question of a Redistribution Bill : — ' Thus we see Essex has eight (members), and Cornwall fourtie thrie ; London, tho' rich, wide, pop'lous, sends no more Than four, and little Winchelsea sends two. Yet London doth in everything exceed The others, much more than Nile doth Tweed ; And yet for all these inequalities I caii't see where the disadvantage lyes J ( ! ) Watson, in the Preface to his History of Printmg, gives an account of the printing-ofiEices of Edinburgh, and informs us that * in 1700, Mr. Matthias Sympson, a student in Divinity, set up a small House; but he, design- ing to prosecute his Studies, left the House to his Father, Mr. Andrew, one of the Suffering Clergy, who kept up the House, till about a year ago when he died.' Watson's work was pubhshed in 17 13, from which it would appear that Symson must have died early in 1712. His library was disposed of by public sale. The catalogue was printed under the title of ' Bibliotheca Symsoniana : a Catalogue of the vast Collection of Books in the Library of the late reverend and learned Mr. Andrew Symson. Edinburgh : Printed in the year 1712.' 4to. Pp. 34. 6o The Book of Old Edinburgh. It is to be noted that on the door of this house in the * Old Edinburgh Street ' there is a risp^ or ri7igle^ or iirli?ig-pn, the modest, old-fashioned precursor of door- knockers and door-bells. A risp was a twisted or ser- rated bar of iron standing out vertically from the door, provided with a ring, which, being drawn along the series of nicks, gave a harsh, grating sound, summoning the inmates to open. Tirling-pins are often mentioned in Scottish ballad literature, e.g. in ' Annie of Lochryan,' the ' Drowned Lovers,' ' Glenkindie,' and also in ' Sweet William's Ghost ' :— ' There came a ghost to Margaret's door Wi' mony a grievous groan ; And aye he tirled at the pin, But answer made she none. ' ' Is that my father Philip ? Or is't my brother John ? Or is't my true love Willie To Scotland now come home ? '' ' Ghosts and lovers, being modest in ballads, may have tirled at the pin, — that is, touched it gently, — but it was possible for a dun seeking money to make the ring grate along the risp in a way calculated to rasp the feelings of all within the house, and hence the homely name of *a crow,* or, in Edinburgh parlance, 'a craw,' the noise being not unlike the croak of the raven. Andrew Symson, in a small Latin vocabulary, pub Symson the Printer's House. 6[ lished 1702, makes mention of this apphance by defining * comix ' as * a crow ; a clapper or ringle.'^ ^ Chambers's Traditions ^ p. 226. (Ed. 1869.) 'THIiKE CAME A GHOST TO MARGARET's DOOK, A.NU AYE HE TIKLED AT THE I'IN.' Cfte Dratorp of ^atp of (3m0t. THE Oratory of Mary of Guise stood on the east side of Blyth's Close on the Castle Hill. Its doorway was half-way down the close, opposite the chief entrance to her Palace. The whole formed an extensive range of building which stretched westward over the areas of Tod's Close and Nairn's Close, hav- ing, as was the wont in these unsettled times, various exits and entrances to all the three closes. The Guise Palace was erected after the English invasion of 1544. The Palace and Abbey of Holy rood and the whole burgh of Canongate were situated outside the city wall, — the powerful defence of 'Abbey Sanctuary' having been sufficient for protection in warfare till Hertford came, who had respect ' for neither monke nor masse, priest nor devil.' It was a divided and an unprepared Scotland that awaited him. Queen IMary was an infant of months, and the contending parties of the Regent Arran, of the Queen-Mother, and of Cardinal Beaton, were striving for pre-eminence. The instructions given by Henry viii. to his lieutenant were vast ; Hertford's The Oratory of Mary of Guise 63 performance was thorough. Arran withdrew, the Cardi- nal, unHke his fighting uncle, fled in terror to Stirling, and the only leader left in Edinburgh at this strait, with brains and a sword-arm, was Sir Adam Otterburn, the Provost, who, with the citizens, and amongst them Hal- kerston, of Halker- ston's Wynd, fought * rycht lustilie, and monie of thame to the deid,' for their city and their infant Queen. As it was the Cardinal and the ex- treme Church party who had foiled Henry's matrimonial intentions for his son, Hertford's vengeance fell sorely upon them, and the religious houses of the Lothians and the Merse, including Holy- rood Abbey and Palace; and subsequently the four rich Abbeys of the Border — Melrose, Dryburgh, Jed- burgh, and Kelso, — were burned and pillaged by this marriage-thwarted iconoclast. MARY OF GUISE S ORATORY. 64 The Book of Old Edinburgh. Holyrood being no longer safe as a royal resi- dence, the selection of this site on the Edinburgh Castle Hill by the Queen-Mother showed both judg- CLEAPv THE CAUSEWAY. mcnt and great refinement of taste. Safety was guaranteed by the Palace being under the protection The Oratory of Mary of Guise. 65 of the Castle guns, and annoyance from the not un- common street *tuilzies' was guarded against by its being placed behind the ' fore lands ' of the Castle Hill, and well up the close. Closes in those days were all provided with gates, promptly closed on the first cry of ' Clear the causeway ! ' The crook hinges on which these gates hung were placed a short distance in from the main street. They used to be a common enough sight to the antiquary, but they wellnigh disappeared a few years ago when iron and batting lead were at their highest quotations in the market, — * pykit oot,' it is said, by small speculative fingers. Another evidence of wise foresight was seen in an old-fashioned draw-well i7iside the Oratory walls ; its waters ever inexhaustible, — clear and cold in the hottest day of summer. As regards beauty of prospect, it is very questionable if there is a royal residence existing that can equal that which this Guise Palace possessed to the seaward side. Edinburgh, like Jerusalem of old, is beautiful for situa- tion •' on the sides of the north.' True, the immediate foreground is now very different from the time when Mary of Lorraine saw her gardens sloping sharply down to the Nor' Loch, with the site of ^lodern Edinburgh, then a heathy moor, lying beyond ; but the everlasting hills are the same — near at hand, the strength of the Maiden Castle Rock; Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, and Ben Voirlich in the far north-west ; the green Ochils, £ 66 The Book of Old Edinburgh. and Fife, with her golden girdle of towns on which the sunbeams love to rest; Inchkeith, the Bass, North IS THERE A ROVAL RESIDENCE THAT CAN EQUAL ITS BEAUTY OF PROSPECT? Berwick Law, Arthur Seat, and the far beyond of the sea, — a prospect truly where one realises how very far The Oratory of Mary of Guise. ^y the east is distant from the west, — and beautiful enough and changeful enough in morning-time, at noontide, and in evening light, in sunshine and in storm, to satisfy the longing of mind and spirit. The internal decorations of Palace and Chapel, taken as a whole, were the finest of any in the Old Edinburgh houses. The massive mantelpieces in the principal apartments were of stone, with pillared supports, or with grouped Gothic shafts rose-adorned. In two of the Oratory rooms, prior to 1820, were two carved oak mantelpieces, the four pilasters of which had com- posite capitals with figures of the four Evangelists beautifully undercut. The oak for the beams and finishing was not the home-grown oak of the Borough Muir, which was used for the fronts and beams of the Timmer Lands ' — a wood hard enough perhaps for a cannon ball to strike through without splintering, but also fatally hard for the carver's tools. It was a sea-borne oak that was employed, and in all likelihood imported for the special purpose from the Baltic — possibly from Dantzic, with which city Scotland had an early and a prosperous trade. This oak was of large size, beauti- fully ' chamfered' and more easily worked. It is strange that one of these beams, when opened after having been in its resting-place for more than three hundred years, gave out the same forest bark odour to the saw, 68 The Book of Old Edinburcrh. and was as fresh as if it had come over the German Ocean with the wood cargo of last autumn. Originally, the under rooms of the Oratory had as a ceiling, the beams supporting the floor above, displayed. These were ornamented on three sides with conventional designs in gold and colours. The oak carvings succes- sively removed from the Chapel proper were very fine, and showed the high position which this art then held in Scotland. Specially noteworthy were a series of trusses with long pendant finials of pomegranates, grapes, and leaves full-size, in high relief, and boldly cut. The whole of the carving was executed with a bold freedom, combined with delicacy, which is the characteristic of old Scottish carving before the Reformation era, and the best exemplification of which are the famous Stirling Heads — the medallions which, prior to 1777, formed the ceiling of the King's Presence-chamber in Stirling Castle. In the midst of a plethora of nominally old carved oak that is spurious, and of much that is good but which is utterly apocryphal in its history, one regards these Stirling: Heads — each a historical portrait — as the standard of Scottish oak carving. We inherit the opinion of the best judge of old oak that we ever knew, in saying that the same hand which carved the Stirling Heads carved the ornamental wood-work in the Guise Palace and Oratory. The artist who was employed by James v., at Stirling, 1529-39, and who The Oratory of Mary of Guise. 69 carved the characteristic medallion portraits of that monarch, and of Mary of Guise herself, would naturally be summoned to adorn the new Palace of her widow- hood, built some twelve years later. ^ A gallery on the first floor passed over the Close from the Palace to the Oratory, and at the right hand of the fireplace there was a niche in the richest style of Decorated Gothic architecture. It was probably used for the display of some of the altar-service plate. Behind this niche was found a small iron coffer, which is now at Abbotsford. These niches were a feature in both the Oratory and the Palace. There were seven in all. Only one, however, had a drain-hole, which is the distinctive mark of a piscina of the Roman Catholic Church. In it the officiating priest rinses the chalice at the celebration of the Mass, and washes his hands. Several years ago, when a piscina was removed out of a private chapel in Barringer's Close, we were curious to trace the course of the drain-hole, knowing that pipes existed not in Old Edinburgh. Mounting a ladder, we picked it out, and found it was drilled through a course of solid stone to the front of the building ; the water then simply dropped down on the pavement below. ^ Ten of these medallions, sold at the late Lord Cockburn's sale in 1854, were purchased by the late Marquis of Breadalbane, and are now in the possession of the Honourable R. Baillie Hamilton at Langton. 70 The Book of Old Edinburgh. When 'Gardyloo' {gardez V eati) was one of the voices of the night, a shower of compara- tively pure water — blessed or unblessed — would be a mere bagatelle! In this work it is not possible into the detail of the Palace ornamentation and arrangements, with its panelled walls, its arched roofs, its emblematic ceihng paintings, its heraldic blazonries \ its ' Deid Chalmer,' black in colour and sorrowful in its suggestive- ness; its secret chamber, which, enter- ing by a moveable panel, and issuing by a secret stair, wound round the outside of an ordinary turnpike, unknown and unsuspected for generations. There is little doubt that the furnish- ing of the Oratory and Palace of Mary of Guise would be in keeping with the artistic beauty of the internal decoration. It was the age of the triumphs of the goldsmith's art and kindred work — the Renaissance age of the GARDVLOO The Oratory of Mary of Guise. 71 Medicis in Italy, and of Francis i. and Henry 11. in France. Without speaking of the possibiHty of specimens of the rare gold and silver work of France, then in one of its best periods, as commissions or presents from her daughter — the Dauphiness, and subsequently the Queen, of that artistic nation during the years of the Oratory's existence as a religious building — we are safe in saying that the ' Chapel Graith ' would be in keeping, and fully equal to that of the Old Edinburgh High Kirk of St. Giles at the Reformation. The Inventories of St. Giles's Church in the Edinburgh City Records tell of the Great Eucharist, or Communion Cup, with golden * weiks ' and stones ; item^ sl unicorn and a pix of gold ; ifem, a silver ship for incense ; t^em, altar-cloths and priestly vestments in gold brocade and in crimson velvet embroidered with gold, and a detailed profusion of church service-plate wrought in the precious metals — the mere enumeration of which makes the usually commonplace pages of an inventory read like those of a treatise on Art. As to the Palace furniture, we read in T/ie Itiventories of Mary Queen of Scots, published by the Bannatyne Club, that the Queen Regent — Mary's mother — possessed 12 sets of tapestry, one of these containing the 'historic of the judgement ofSalamon, the deid barne, and the twa wiffis,' the tapestry being 'maid of worsett, mixt with threid of gold;' item, 72 The Book of Old Edinburgh. 5 palls or cloths of state ; item^ 2 Turkey carpets — a floor-covering that has altered neither in texture nor in colour from her time to our own day. Her daughter, Queen Mary, owned 36 of these carpets, a luxurious possession of such moveables even in the present age ; but then she returned to Scotland as the wealthy ' Reine Douairiere ' — the Regina Dotaria — of France : strange title for the girl-widow of eighteen ! In the Guise Palace and Oratory, without and within, there was a redundance of the beauty of Nature and Art, of luxury and refinement, if there had only been rest of mind to enjoy it withal. After the resignation of the weak Regent Arran, Mary of Guise became his successor, and it was in the early years of her regency that she occupied her Castle Hill Palace. It was no woman's hand — especially no foreign woman's hand — that could hold the reins of government in the mid career of a Scottish religious revolution. Mary was entirely under the influence of France, and under the guidance of her six brothers of the house of Guise, and, with many good qualities, she possessed the hereditary insincerity of her people, * the brood of false Lorraine.' The Scottish Stewarts were a straightforward race of kings ; of them the old distich was true, ' The Kingis word Is cross on swurd,' — The Oratory of Mary of Guise. 73 that is, the King's word is as the oath of another man sworn on the cross-hilted swords worn by the Crusaders, and used to witness an oath as kissing the Bible is now ; and often, moreover, held up to comfort the glazing eyes of the dying warrior in battle. It was not so with the house of Guise, and from her dates that obliquity of speech, that unroyal swerving from truth, which crops out in several of her Stewart de- scendants. To quote the words of her grandson King James: — ' I ken the story of my grandmother, the Queen- Regent, that after she was inveigled to break her pro- mise to some mutineers at a Perth meeting, she never saw a good day, but from thence, being much beloved before, was despised by her people.' ^ After the Queen-Regent's death, in 1560, the building for two centuries and a half passed down in the occupa- tion of wealthy tenants, but at last it was divided into small houses. The whole was taken down in 1845 for the erection of the Assembly Hall and College of the Free Church of Scotland. ^ Burton, vi. 6l. THIS gate, with its finely-groined Gothic roof, was the chief entrance from the city into the court- yard of Holyrood Palace. It was built by Robert Bellenden or Ballantyne, Abbot of Holyrood, about 1490. Father Augustine Hay records of this Abbot Bellenden, that *he brocht hame the gret bellis, the gret brasin fownt ; ... he theikit the kirk with leid ; he biggit ane brig of Leith, ane other ouir Glide, with many other gude workis.' The great brazen font, used for the royal baptisms, was stolen in the Earl of Hert- ford's campaign in 1544, and was presented to the Ghurch of St. Albans by Sir Richard Lee ; but ' ill- gotten gear does not thrive ' even in a church, for it disappeared in the troublous times of Gharles i. King James vi. was baptized in a font of gold, weighing 333 ounces, a gift from Queen Elizabeth, which in its turn was coined by Queen Mary into 5000 crowns, to defend her own and Both well's cause against the confederated nobles. The bridge which the good Abbot Bellenden built at The Royal Porch. 75 Leith was the first stone bridge over the Water of Leith. It had three arches, joining South Leith to North Leith, and existed till 1788, when it was replaced by the draw- bridge at the foot of the Tolbooth Wynd. He also erected the Church of St. Nin- ian, which remained the parish church of North Leith till 18 16. Abbot Bellenden's own house adjoined the Royal Porch, and, in 1753, both were remorselessly de- molished by the Duke of Hamilton, the Hereditary Keeper of the Palace, who employed the soldiers of the regiment then garrisoned at Edinburgh to do the work. Swan-like, the Royal Porch is made to sing its own -^ WH KOVAL PORCH. 76 The Book of Old Edinburgh. dirge in a poem by Claudero, entitled ' The Echo of the Royal Porch of Holyrood House, which fell under ^Military Execution, Anno 1753 ' : — ' They do not always deal in blood, Nor yet in breaking human bones, For, Quixot-like, they knock down stones. Regardless they the mattock ply, To root out Scots antiquity. MARY OF GUISE. {From a 7feod ccirT.fin^foriMcrly \ Stirling CastU.) Cbe Colfiootf), FROM the reign of James iii. down till 1817 there existed a street, once the best business thorough- fare of the city, between St. Giles's Church and the north side of the High Street. It narrowed the width of the High Street to fourteen feet, it was separated by a crooked passage from the church, it hid the fine front of that sacred edifice, and its name was The Luckenbooths. Its most easterly house, facing the Canongate, was lat- terly Creech's Land, with Allan Ramsay's Circulating Library on its first floor ; and at the west end of this interjection of a street — so pleasingly named — was the Tolbooth, the ' Auld Tolbuith,' the Heart of Mid- lothian, the Pretorium Biirgi de Edlnhui-gi^ which in its time had been Parliament Hall, Court of Justice, Council Chambers, and which at last was degraded into being the common prison of the city of Edinburgh. The crooked narrow lane on the High Kirk side was well known by the name of the ' Krames,' and of it Sir Walter Scott writes : — ' To give some gaiety to this sombre passage, a number of little booths or shops, after 78 The Book of Old Edinburgh. THE HICII STREET IM THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The Tolbooth. 79 the fashion of cobblers' stalls, were plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied every " buttress and coigne of vantage " with nests, bearing the same pro- portion to the building as the martlets' did in Mac- beth's castle.' The Frauenkirche at Nuremberg is be-nested in a similar manner to the present day. Krajfie?'et, a good German word of extensive grasp, well describes the nature of the goods sold round both cathedrals ; and ' Krames ' are still well known to the young at Scottish country fairs — now waxing so faded and so few. The building of the Tolbooth was condemned in Queen Mary's time (1561) as old and unsafe; but it appears to have remained on as the prison while the New Tolbooth, or the Laigh Council-House, was built, at the south-west corner of St. Giles', for the accom- modation of the High Courts of the land and the Civil Council. Howard the philanthropist visited the prison in Reference to the Diagram. A The City Guard-house. GG The Krames. B The Mercat Cross. H The Parliament House. C The Pillory. I The Lawmiiarket. D The High Kirk. J The Weigh-house. E The Luckenbooths, KKK The West Bow. F The Tolbooth. L The Cowgate. M The Grassmarket. So The Book of Old Edinburgh. 1782, and, returning in 1787, expressed regret that it had not been removed ; but the overwhelming import- ance of the foreign legislation, consequent on the wars of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, turned attention from social and domestic politics, and thirty years were added to its old age before it was taken down in 181 7. The Tolbooth was five stories high. The eastern and original portion, built of polished ashlar — in all probability as old as the Stewart dynasty — was the felons' prison. The western, a later addition built of rubble-work, of the time of Charles i., was the debtors' prison. The principal features to the south are the two turnpike stairs. Once inside the building, these wheel stairs were dark, steep, and bewildering. A slippery pendent rope from the floor above guided the stranger, and in the darkness he was invariably informed that it had been used for hanging some criminal ! At the extreme west end there was a projection, two stories high, the flat roof of which served as a plat- form for executions, the gallows being projected from a hole in the west gable above. The last sentence of the law was carried out here from 1785 to 181 7, when the place of execution was changed to the head of Libber- ton's Wynd. Sketches of the northern elevation to the High Street are rare. In fact, so narrow was the main thoroughfare at this place that a view of the north side of the Tol- The Tolbooth. 8i booth could only be got by craning the neck and strainmg the eyes upward ; but the architectural beauty of the windows in the old section bore witness, in the degradation of its later days, of the time when it was the Parliament Hall and the Court House of the king- dom. Above these windows, on the summit of its pointed gable, was the topmost iron pin of the Tolbooth — a pinnacle of degradation reserved for the blood stained heads of the greatest State criminals. In 1 58 1 the head of the Regent Morton was placed here, 'sett up on a prick on the highest stone of the gabell of the Talbuith, toward the publict street.' Here, in 1650, was placed the head of Montrose from the gibbet, to be suc- ceeded, in 1 66 1, by that of the Marquis of Argyll from the 'Maiden,' — 'both by merit raised to that bad eminence ;' for, apart from all the virtues and all the crimes alternately attri- buted to either statesman by successive generations of love and hate, there is no doubt that both these great men, seeing what they thought right so differently, 82 The Book of Old Edinburgh. fell victims to i^arty vengeance, consequent upon a change of government. In this matter let it be conceded that the present has improved upon the past. A change of Her Majesty's Ministry does not send a flight of its prede- cessors away into the nearest enemy's coun- try ; neither does a Prime Minister nor the eader of the Opposi- tion grimly regard his opponent's head as a fit and possible orna- ment to be spiked on the front elevation of our civic buildings. Below the decorated windows of this gable the street had the name of ' The Puir Folks' Purses,' from its being A BEDESMAN. ^hc jjlace where the Bedesmen, or King's Blue Gowns,i got ^^^^ yearly dole. On Maundy Thursday,- or, as it was termed in 1 /:".-. Edie Ochiltree. * The Ccciia Domini of the Romish Church. The Tolbooth. 83 Scotland, Skyris Furisday — the Thursday before Good Friday — it was the custom for RoyaUy, following that of the Pope, to wash the feet of sundry poor people, on whom blue gowns ^ and money were afterwards bestowed. In 1585, James vi. altered the King's Maundy to his own birthday (in June), and gave ' nyneteen gownis of Blue Claith, nyneteen purses, and in ilk purse nyneteen schillingis, to nyneteen aiget men, accordmg to the yeiris of his Hienes' age.' The opening of this purse was a puzzle to the un- initiated, and each Bedesman wore a round leaden badge inscribed with the words — Pass and Repass. The * Blue-goun Dole ' was the earliest morning act in the vigorous celebration of the King's Birthday in Old Edinburgh, as sung by Fergusson : — ' Sing likewise, Muse, how Blue-goun bodies, Like scare-craws new ta'en doun frae woodies, Come here to cast their clouted duddies An' get their pay ; Than them what magistrate mair proud is On King's birthday ? ' The Blue Gowns had to hear a sermon ; the audience failed in restful attention. It was preached early in the morning, before breakfast, and they were expected 1 The blue gown was intended to be a token of our Saviour's seamless garment. 84 The Book of Old Edinburgh. to pray for His Majesty's long life. The breakfast con- sisted of bread and strong ale, a barrel of which stood on a gantrees at the church door. The scene and the crowd may be imagined — fit subject for the pencil of. a Sir David Wilkie. In 1817 the giving of the dole was changed to the aisle of the Canongate Church. The custom is now extinct/ and it is said that on the last occasion, instead of the many bagpipes, each play- ing its own blithe lilt, there was only one pibroch wailing the Lament, ' We return no more.' In the matter of debtor and creditor, the old mercan- tile laws of Scotland, like those of Holland, were very stringent. By Act of the Court of Session, bankrupts or dyvours had to sit on a special ' pillory of heun stane beside the Mercat Croce,' from ten o'clock in the morn- ing till one hour after dinner on market-days, clad in parti-coloured garments. In both countries the default- ing colour was yellow. If, however, the dyvour paid up his debts in full — a not uncommon event in the old city — he could return to his own taste in the matter of apparel. The street-floor of the Tolbooth was let as shops, the roofs being of strong arched masonry. The larger of the two shops on the north side in the Luckenbooths was at one time tenanted by Messrs. Inglis and Horner, silk merchants, the latter of whom was the father of ^ The lai' tion of Argyll, they tried the poor beast by jury, found liim guilty of high treason, and hanged him — for which satire on the Government of the day the Herioters got into sore trouble. Their successors of 1783 were true, however, to the honour and to the traditional clannish- ness of George Heriot, their founder. Their characterless comrade had thrown himself on their protection, and in despite of the fears of the powers that be, with the offered reward of twenty guineas, and in defiance of the powers of darkness, they saved their food, clambered down the wall by night, and managed to give him succour and sustenance till the search grew cold. James Hay left the Grassmarket driving one of the Glasgow carriers' carts. He escaped to America, and prospered. The central event in the history of the Tolbooth is the Porteous !Mob. It took place in 1736 — thirty-five years before its historian. Sir Walter Scott, was born, — and its origin, its details, and its possibilities are still the mystery of P^dinburgh. In the yards of the High School it was a favourite story long before Sir Walter wove it into the beautiful web of truth threaded with fiction, which has almost canonised the memory of the old city prison, and has turned thitherwards the feet of literary pilgrims from all lands. In one of the years prior to that of the False Alarm The Tolbooth. 89 (1S04), when Lords and Commoners occupied seats on the same High School benches, and, Hke their elders, were all fired with martial zeal, as described in The Antiqua?y, a lithe, yauld^ country-dressed lad joined Dr. Adam's class. He was understood to walk some miles every day into town by the old Gilmerton Road. He was soon asked what rank in military or naval service he would prefer — there being in the class generals, colonels, captains, commodores, etc. ' Are there ony privates ? ' was the cautious Scottish question, by way of answer. ' No,' was the reply. It seems that that im- portant part of the British Army had been entirely for- gotten. 'Then,' said he, 'I will be a private, for they get the feck o' the fechtin, and that suits me.' This answer was admired in the ' Yairds.' It admitted him to a degree of favour which an incomer into the Rectors class seldom received. Shortly after, in talking of the Porteous Mob, a * Lordie,' otherwise ' The Brigadier,' made the claim — a claim very frequently advanced, and generally admitted —that the chief actors in the mob had belonged to the nobility, grounding it on the fact that a guinea had been left on the counter of Luckie Jeffrey's shop in the Bow for the coil of rope taken to hang Porteous— which munificence he held to be the action of a lord ! ' It was naething but the action o' a fule to gang and gie a guinea for what was only worth a shillin', and 90 The Book of Old Edinburgh. plenty to pay for hanging the like o' him wi',' said the Private; 'but div ye mean to say that there are no* a hunder ordinar' Scotsmen that wud hae putten doon a guinea if their blude was up ? ' 'Where are they?' the Brigadier asked. 'Oh, plenty,' was the answer; 'Sir WuUie^ up at the Parliament Close for ane ; he could lay doon guineas an' "Sir WuUies"- wi' a' the lords in Scot- land !' 'But he's a Sir— a Baronet,' objected 'The Bugler,' who finished off the sentence, as well as every sentence he ever uttered out of school, with one of the Castle bugle-calls. 'Yes,' said the Private, getting warm, 'but he was born a plain Wullie like mysel', and a Sir is a commoner, though he got the title sune eneugh, only he made every penny o' his siller himsel', and — ' */ say' — broke in the Brigadier — '/ say that the Porteous Mob leaders were a' lords, and they had generals among them — everybody says sae, — and that nana but trained men could hae dune what they did, and—' '/ say they were plain Wullies, jist like Wilson himsel',' retorted the Private. ' I '11 fecht ye for 't,' said the Brigadier. ^ Sir William Forbeat.i?^,?s operate. Calderwood's statement is that on May 28th, 1574, Robert Gourlay, an elder of the kirk of Edinburgh, was ' ordeanned to mak his publict repentance in the kirk for the sin of t7'ansporting wheaie out of the countrie during a dearth^ Regent Morton, however, from whom he had purchased this wheat-selling monopoly, screened him from the repentance-stool, though eventually he had to give in to the powers of the Church. Doubtless Robert Gourlay's House. 103 a serviceable man to his superiors, but not beloved by his neighbours, was this Robert Gourlay. In those days of crowded, but cosy and neighbourly sociality, he desires to dwell apart, and a right-of-way case — always a dainty morsel in Scottish law — was summarily ended by King James interposing his divine right to possess the solum of a close ! * Na personnis,' said the King, * can justlie plead ony richt or entrie to ye said vennel, q"^ be all lawis inviolable observit in tymes bygane has pertainit, and aucht to pertene, to ns.^ His Majesty ends by a mandate to build a dyke across the close. This dyke eventually took the form of a house for Gourlay's son John. It was erected in 1588. This second house became the Bank of Scotland in 1700. The Bank, established in 1695, had occupied as its first premises a flat in one of the twelve-storied tenements in the Parliament Close, but was burned out in the Great Fire of 1700. It continued to transact all its business in this narrow ad-de-sac till the present building at the head of the Mound was erected in 1805. 'The Auld Bank' had on its north front the device of several stalks of wheat growing out of bones — a mediaeval emblem of the resurrection, — with the motto ' spes ALTERA VITiE.' Robert Gourlay's own house was built for the requirements of an unsettled age. Substantial flights of stairs led from the same point to different parts 104 The Book of Old Edinburgh. of the mansion, and it was easily convertible into several distinct residences. On its demolition in 1834, a secret chamber was discovered between the ceiling of the first story and the floor of the second. Robert Gourlay seems to have put his house at the service of the Government — doubtless for ' a consideration ; ' in fact, he seems to have been a man given to considerations, — and during his lifetime it had the bad pre-eminence of being a condemned cell for state prisoners of gentle blood. The turret, which is a noteworthy feature in the original building, contained a curious spiral stair, which led to the room thus used at the top of the house, and a small closet adjoining was the sleeping-place of the lockman in attendance. Amongst others. Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, his brother Sir James, and the Regent Morton, all passed over its threshold to die. One does not augur well of this Robert Gourlay, who could thus draw the shadow of the scaffold over his hearthstone. Even his piety has much of being only a wooden afterthought. The legend O • LORD • IN • THE • IS • AL • MY • TRAIST was sculptured over his door, but the first two words * O Lord ' Avere on the near side, and off the lintel, and were found to have been cut in oak and afterwards let neatly into the stone. Notwithstanding the wooden eke, Old Edinburgh wit, sjiell as its own east wind, would not be slow to grasp the dubiety of meaning^ Robert Gourlay's House. 105 and to insinuate that Gourlay's 'traist' in princes was certainly not that of the Psalmist. King James himself was a whilom tenant of the mansion when disturbed by the fear of Francis Lord Bothwell, or by the pangs of an impoverished ex- chequer, and doubtless he would find the Gourlay self- contained close a canjiy Meld and a lowii. Here also was lodged Sir William Drury, after whom Drury Lane in London was named, the commander of the English auxiliaries in the siege of Edinburgh Castle in 1573, an account of which is given by Holinshed in the first edition of his Chronicles^ published 1577, accompanied by a map and ground-plan of the Old Edinburgh of that date. Gourlay's grandson David retired to Prestonpans, and sold the house to Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall. Amongst its more famed after tenants was Sir George Lockhart ofCarnwath, Lord President of the College of Justice, who was assassinated at the head of the close by Chiesly of Dairy. Tradition, rightly or wrongly, names the apartment in the Gourlay turret stair as the scene of 'The Last Sleep of Argyll' The story is well known from the national fresco by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the lobby of the House of Commons at West- minster. The Earl of Argyll, son of the Marquis who suffered death under Charles 11., was doomed to die by James vn. A few hours before his execution a mem- io6 The Book of Old Edinburgh. ber of the Privy Council — one of his judges — opened the prison door, and saw * the great Argyll ' sleeping peacefully. *The heart of the renegade smote him,' says Macaulay, ' and in an agony of remorse and shame he rushed from the place, and cried, " I have been in Argyll's prison ; I have seen him within an hour of eternity sleeping as sweetly as ever man did, but as for me—'" Sixty years after, the sorest condemnation of this act, by the person it interested most, was written by Prince Charles Stewart to his father — the son and heir of the same King James vii. The letter is dated Perth, Sep- tember loth, 1745. It is quoted from a book entitled The Lyoii in Mourning} a narrative of the Rebellion of 1745, from the Stewart point of view, written by the worthy Bishop Forbes. 'There is one man,' writes Prince Charles, 'whom I could wish to have my friend, and that is the Duke of Argyll, who, I find, is in great credit amongst them on account of his great abilities and quality, and has many dependants by his large fortune ; but I am told I can hardly flatter myself with the hopes of it. The hard usage which his family has received from ours has sunk deep into his mind. What have those Priiices to aimverfor^ 7vho, by their cruelties, have raised enemies^ 7iot only to themselves^ hut to their innocent children ! ' ^ Edited under the title of jfacoln'fe Jl/enioirs of the Rebellion of 1745, ^^y Robert Chambers. 1834. Robert Gourlay's House. 107 There is something in the leader of a forlorn hope that goes very near to the human heart after all hope is gone. So is it now with Scotland and her ' Prince Charlie.' His bravery, his gallant bearing — surely that of the older and better Scottish Stewarts, — his misfor- tunes, his broken life, have made him dear to the Scottish people of every sect and persuasion. Jacobit- ism is no more a moving principle. It exists only as a wistful and poetical sentiment, and Prince Charlie's gallant venture for the crown is the one ray of light that redeems the Restoration Stewarts from execration. His little army was practically an army in an enemy's country — even in Edinburgh, the capital of his fore- fathers. The Castle held for the Government. The direct road to England by the Borders was guarded by the Chief of Buccleuch — powerful, but silent — whose grandfather had been another of the victims of James vii. The old Duchess — Monmouth's Duchess — the Duchess of the ' Last Minstrel ' — had been dead but thirteen years, believing to the last, moreover, in Monmouth's prior claim to the throne. Prince Charles and his army passed to Carlisle down through the districts desolated by the old Covenanting persecutions. There was no rising ; the people fled. No welcome in the north of England : Derwentwater was asleep in his bloody grave beneath ' Hexham's holy towers/ and the * ever loyal North ' seemed sleeping and as silent as he ; — on to the halt at Derby, — the retreat, — io8 The Book of Old Edinburgh. the meteor victory at Falkirk, and the last sad defeat at Culloden. It was too late. Prince Charles, as he writes with his own hand, suffered for the sins of his fathers. In the Edinburgh Convention of 1689 there had been a sore strain between the blind feudal vassal- age due to the old dynasty of kings and the nation's sense of violated rights. The King had fled ; the strain- ing bonds snapped. The throne was declared for- FAULTED and LEFT VACANT. The ^ Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin ' had been written against the Stewart race, and the Scottish people as a vafion said — Amen ! IT WAS TOO LATR. CatDinal lBcaton'0 i^omt. THIS house formed the right angle of the north side of the Cowgate by its junction with the east corner of Blackfriars Wynd. In 1230, Alexander 11. founded the Blackfriars Monastery on the ground after- wards occupied by the site of the old High School, and gifted the Dominican brotherhood with the Wynd •that has so long borne their name. From this time down to the Revolution in 1688, when Scotland as a nation ceased to possess a hierarchy, this district re- mained the residence of Church dignitaries and the centre of clerical influence. This mansion was built by James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 1508-24, and afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews — a statesman of mark in his day, but whose career is overshadowed by that of his nephew, Cardinal David Beaton, who suc- ceeded his uncle in the Primateship, was the statesman who marred the life of James v., and who will never be forgotten in Scotland as the early persecutor of the Protestant faith. The building was one that could easily be put into a 109 no The Book of Old Edinburgh. state of defence. The entrance was from Blackfriars Wynd by an arched passage; thence a flight of broad steps llp*^^ led to the first floor, I Pill , Qj^ which were the principal rooms. The under flat was arched over with solid masonry, and when the house was taken down in 1874 it was found that the space between the arches and the floor above was packed with a close thick- ness of quarry sand, which, with the ab- sence of wood in the erection, would go far to make the street floor almost fire- proof. The gardens in the Beaton time extended over the ground afterwards covered by the ]\Iint buildings. The most prominent or ' kenspeckle ' feature in the house was the hexagonal tower, which, springing from a shaft, projected at the corner of the street. CAKDIXAL l.rATOX S HOUSE. Cardinal Beaton's House. Ill It was here, in 1520, that Gawin Douglas, poet-Bishop of Dunkeld, visited Archbishop Beaton on an errand of peace — to hinder a city combat between the Douglases of Angus and the Hamiltons of Arran. The fighting Archbishop, on the Arran side, had already donned a coat of mail beneath his lace rochet, and, though pre- paring for the battle, struck his breast, and swore upon his conscience that he knew nothing of the matter. 'Your conscience clatters, my Lord,' was the answer of the good Gawin, who, seeing further interference to be THROUGH THE NOK LOCH FOR THEIR LIVES. useless, withdrew to bear the tidings to his nephew Angus, and to pray. The battle, known as * Cleanse the Causeway,' and 112 The Book of Old Edinburgh. fought upon the High Street of the capital, ended in favour of the Douglases ; and the Earl of Arran and his son, seizing a coal-horse, threw themselves both on it, and rode through the Nor' Loch for their lives. The mailed Archbishop fled for refuge to the altar of the Blackfriars, had his rochet torn from his back, and would have been slain had not his visitor of the morning hurried to the spot and rescued him. ' O Dowglas, Dowglas, Tendir and trew,' and yet to die in poverty and an exile ! ^ In 1528, James v. resided some days in this house as the guest of the Archbishop, and the family of Douglas was disgraced and put to the horn. That same year the Cardinal was made Lord Privy Seal. He arranged the King's first marriage, with the Princess Magdalen of France, who, when she stepped on Scottish earth, knelt and kissed the ground for the love she bore her husband and her husband's country ; but in forty days she died. He then arranged the King's second marriage, with Mary of Guise, widow of the Duke de Longueville, and while on this mission obtained the Papal Bull that gave St. Mary's College to the town of St. Andrews. He was the King's adviser in the institution of the College ^ This estimate of the noble family of Douglas by Sir Richard Holland in The Hoivlate'vi certainly as much justified by the life of the gentle poet Gawin as by that of the good Sir James. Cardinal Beaton's House. 113 of Justice in Scotland, which may be said to have in- fefted Edinburgh anew as the capital of the kingdom; but in the interests of France and of his Church, he thwarted all peace with England, hindered James from meeting his uncle Henry viii. at York, where by tryst he had come to meet him, and he urged on the un- fortunate struggle which ended in the King's death from shame and a broken heart. His private life was openly the heaviest scandal against his own Order, then suffering from the pungent satires of Sir David Lyndsay, which ' Branded the vices of the age, And broke the keys of Rome.' After the martyrdom of George Wishart, Cardinal Beaton was killed in the Castle of St. Andrews by the Leslies of Rothes, with whom he had a business quarrel ; and associated with them were Kirkcaldy of Grange and Melvill of Raith, the latter a friend of Wishart's, and bent on avenging his death. Cardinal Beaton be- queathed his enormous wealth by will to his six natural children. In 1555 the Cardinal's house was rented by the city for the temporary use of the Grammar School, while the new High School was ' being biggit on the east side of the Kirk of Field.' The Edinburgh High School, though not under the one roof, remained on the Blackfriars ground for upwards of 270 years; but on the 23d June 1829, the boys, after giving three cheers to the old H 114 The Book of Old Edinburgh memories, marched away four abreast to the new build- ing on the Calton Hill. To the remanent members of that day's leave-taking — a thinning band now, as the years of the century are waxing old — there remain pleasant and picturesque memories of the old High School Wynd : the piazza house at the top, believed then to be a Dutch house from Amsterdam, with its wooden piles visible ; the dormer-windowed roofs ; the queer timber outshots, sorely troubled with old age ; not one house like its neighbour, but each possessing its own artistic individuality, and ending with the Cardinal's Tower standing boldly across the middle of the Wynd at the foot. That Tower was believed to be the model of a bottle- shaped dungeon of traditional horrors in St. Andrews. The ' Yairds' ' wit, moreover, had named it ' Cardinal Beaton's bluidie Peerie.' It must be confessed that the similitude, when viewed from the High School Wynd, was not unstriking ; and, to a High School boy, rever- ence in any matter connected with Cardinal Beaton will ever be — an unknown quantity. In 1562 the 'Cardinallis ludging in the Blak Freir Wynd' was the scene of festivities consequent on the marriage of the Earl of Moray to Lady Agnes Keith. Queen Mary graced the feast, and was conveyed home by 'honest young men of the toun in masqueing attire.' In Cardinal Beaton's house, in the last quarter of the Cardinal Beaton's House. 115 eighteenth century, and under the sign of the Golden Cock, was a shop belonging to the last of the ' Lori- mers,' a trade now extinct in name, but which, in the original seal of cause granted in 1483 to the Incorpora- tion of Hammermen, ranked third on the roll. A Lorimer made the iron-work used by saddlers, and the word exists as a surname. Many of the old trades are surnames, as Fletcher (an arrow - maker), another extinct craft. Baker or Baxter, Sievwright, Goldsmith, Fuller, etc. The Gentle Reader can extend the list at will. It is a profitable pastime, and a pleasant. A PROCESSION. Cf)e Parliament ©taire; anO %o\iti) ©able of tf)€ laDlo parliament rpall THE Parliament Stairs, otherwise the Back Stairs, and the Meal Mercat Stairs, formerly had their steep ascent from the Cowgate up to the Parliament Close, which, since the first quarter of this century, has had its ancient name regrettably modernised into that of the Parliament Square — an infringement at once of the laws of Euclid and of good taste. The Parliament Close was originally the churchyard belonging to the High Kirk of St. Giles. It extended down the steep slope to the Cowgate — the nether part being termed the Lower Kirkyard, or the Kirkheugh. On the Kirkheugh, near the site of the Parliament Stairs, once stood the Chapel of the Haly Rude, in which Walter Chepman endowed an altar with his tenement in the Cowgate, 1528. Walter Chepman, along with Andrew Myllar, was the first to introduce printing into Scotland (1507), under the sympathetic patronage and he occasional personal assistance of King James iv. 116 The Parliament Stairs. 117 On the west side of the ParHament Close, prior to the Reformation, stood the houses of the Provost and the resident clergy of St. Giles. These houses subsequently became the manses of the Protestant city ministers. In 1632, on the site which these buildings had occupied, A>: EARLY I'KIXTIXG-OFFICE. was built the Parliament Hall — sometimes called the Westminster Hall of Scotland. The oak ceiling beams, and the same fulness of roof space, are characteristic of the Scottish Parliament Hall^ as they are of the Great Ii8 The Book of Old Edinburgh. Hall of the Southem kmgdom ; and the memories of the historic past associated with both testify that the re- semblance is that of kinship of spirit as well as that of kin- ship of form. The Parliament Hall was used exclusively for the meeting of the Scottish Parlia- ment till the Union, which was consum- mated under its roof, I St May 1707 — a measure then deemed by patri- otic Scottish Statesmen as a dark cloud and a frowning provi- dence to Scotland, but to whose chil- dren the cloud's silver lining has come, bringing a prosperity of which their fathers never could have dreamed. OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE AND STAIRS. The Parliament Stairs. 119 Since 1707 the Parhament Hall has been the abode of the Supreme Courts of Judicature for Scotland. The side wynd in the Old Edinburgh Exhibition ter- minates with a representation of the south gable of the Parliament Hall, which looked down on the steep stone stairs that led to the Cowgate. These stairs were removed in the changes that followed upon the Great Fire of 1824. At the head of the Parliament Stairs in the Exhibi- tion, and towards the left, there is a corridor, the open timber-work roof of which is a facsimile of that of the Old Hall at Linlithgow, — which was taken down so recently, — and which once belonged to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. So far as we know, there is only one open timbered oak roof now remaining in Scotland, namely, that at Darnaway Castle, Forres. The needless and almost wilful destruc- tion of the Linlithgow Hospitium is a matter of irrepar- able regret. Cbe assemfilp Eooms in t&e IBoto. AT the first angle of the Bow down from the Lawn- market, and on the west side of the street, stood the first Assembly Rooms, — a high, picturesque building, and the last within the original city wall of James ii. The iron hook on which the Bow Port had swung remained firmly batted into the wall of the house till the old Bow street was practically swept away in 1836. This building seems to have been erected by Peter Somerville, a bailie of Edinburgh. His initials, the arms of the Somervilles, the date 1602, and the motto * IN DOMINO CONFIDO,' were carved on the architrave of the door. In the first quarter of the present century the premises were occupied by Mrs. Frier, a dealer^ in ^ When the I.awnmarket ceased to be the linen-market, and home-spinning fell into disuse, the shop of this worthy lady was a place where hand-woven linen might still be procured. For this she appears to have had a select circle of ivaiiing customers. The Melrose carrier once brought a message from her to the mistress of a Border farmhouse, to wit : ' Try and spare me a web or twa of six or seven slip yarn. The Lord Advocate and Lord have been here twice, and they are in sair need o' sarks ' ! The Assembly Rooms ill the Bow. 121 wool, Galashiels grey,i and Scottish blankets. One of THE ASSEP.inLV ROOMS IN THE COW, 1 In former days the staple manufacture of that prosperous burgh. To quote the M'ords of an aged informant— dead since the above Hnes were written — 'Galashiels grey was a maist durable claith, made o' sound woo'j wi' a guid twined thread, and wairpit and weftit wr conscience.' This being the case, one does not wonder at the durability nor — the prosperity. 12: The Book of Old Edinburgh. the latter articles, known familiarly as a ' shearer's blanket,' flapping out at the window, did duty as a sign. Ascending by a turnpike stair, the second floor was reached, which, though subdivided in its latter days, had evidently at one time been a large and lofty room with panelled walls and a carved oak ceiling. A small room, formed by an outshot from the building, was a retiring- place, where the fiddlers, proverbially ' drouthie^' could rosin their bows figuratively as well as literally. In 1 710 the Re- volution Whig party, under Godolphin and Sunderland, went into the temporary eclipse which death of Queen Anne. That child-bereaved queen, emancipated from the thraldom of the Duchess Sarah of Marlborough, and under the more suave guidance of Oxford and Mrs. Masham, was understood to favour the succession of her half-brother, the exiled Stewart Prince, rather than that of the more remote relative, as appointed by the Act of the Protestant The Assembly Rooms in the Bow. 23 Succession. The Tory party in Edinburgh, synony- mous at that time with Jacobitism, jubilant at finding themselves once more in office and in the sunshine of Court favour, held the first public dancing As- sembly that same year. The innovation was not regarded favourably in Edinburgh ; and on one occa- sion the Assembly Rooms were assaulted, and the door burned with red-hot spits. And yet the amusement was somewhat severe. Ladies and gentlemen occupied different parts of the room. Minuets and country dances with silence formed the pro- gramme of the evening, — at least when under the eye of the Lady Direc- tress; but doubtless that old story, which is understood to be the accom- paniment of allsuch gatherings, would find some way of being told. And what a gay scene in the old Bow outside ! Gilded sedan-chairs, velvet- lined, with their liveried bearers, the fair occupants MINUETS WITH SILENCE. 124 The Book of Old Edinburgh. attired in the dignified dress of the period — ' gleam of satin and glimmer of pearl,' lace lappets, stately stomachers and trains, which in these days, be it noted, were worn .and not trailed. The hom-s kept were early. The wave of the presiding dowager's fan was Medo-Persianic — the music was silent — the link-boys are ready with their torches — the gentlemen, in Ramillies wigs, velvet coats, lace Steinkirks, and wrist ruffles, sword at side and hat in hand, bow their fair partners to their chairs. They see them, home — and the street is silent. The Assemblies at first had a spas- modic existence in Edinburgh. About 1720 they were transferred to rooms in the Old Assembly Close. Oliver Goldsmith records his amusing description of these second Assembly Rooms in 1753, which were also the scene of the dignified but despotic reign of the famed ]Miss Nicky Murray. !E GIIXTLF.MEM ] X The Assembly Rooms in the Bow. 125 Another amusement, affected by a more youthful section of Old Edinburgh, used to be carried on in the Bow. This was the ' Bickers,' made classical by Sir Walter Scott's self-recorded share in them, and by his story of ' Greenbreeks.' The Bow was the Thermo- pylce of battle between the Grassmarket and West Port ' laddies ' on the one hand, and the Castlehill and Lawnmarket ' callants ' on the other. Down to the first ' bend ' it belonged to the ' High Toun,' and a line drawn from the Assembly Rooms across to the entrance of the close that led to Major Weir's house, of weird wizard fame, was as keenly assailed and as bravely defended as ever were the historical marches on the Borders between Scotland and England. Belted Will Howards and Bothwells of Hermitage were not wanting amongst the youthful wardens of the Bow marches. How the news spread that a ' bicker ' was to be 'on' is best known to boy-nature, much the same in all ages ; but as the hour approached, boys, ' gentle and semple,' were to be seen hurrying to the rendezvous, armed with sticks or shinties, mostly in inverse ratio to the size of the warriors, and with pockets bulging with a select assortment of stones. There might be councils of war beforehand, but in face of the enemy the leader was autocratic. Obedience was an intuition ; prompt confiscation and social ostracism were the punishment of dissentients. If the Town Guard appeared upon the 126 The Book of Old Edinburgh. scene, as it usually did in the fulness of time, there was a swift coalition of all the belligerents against the com- mon enemy ! The bickers were danger- ous both to life and property, and it is truly astonishing now to note with what equanimity the elder citizens regarded the matter, when as yet police and plate-glass were not. It was their own children and their neighbours' who were fighting ; they were struggling as their fathers had done before them ; there might be some ' lozens ' broken in the windows ; — the good house-mothers had some linen rags and some simple 'heal-all' on a handy shelf; nay, to this day grave and reverend seniors startle one with tales of their prowess in the ' bickers ' that belonged to their own special neighbourhood, although in their mature years they have never been overcome by a temptation to rush out and give a helping hand, as is the recorded feat of King James's friend, Tam o' the Cowgate, when Lord President of the Court IF THE TOWN GUARD AI'PEARKU. The Assembly Rooms in the Bow. 127 of Session ! ^ It is related of Mr. Thomas Nelson, who occupied the Bow-head piazza shop, and who was AS THEIR FATHERS HAD DONE BEFORE THEM. the founder of the great publishing firm of Messrs. Thomas Nelson and Sons, that when one of these bickers seemed imminent, even in comparatively recent times, he said, 'Shut the shop, the lads maun hae their training ;' 1 Sir Thomas Hamilton of Priestfiekl, Earl of Melrose 1619, and afterwards first Earl of Haddington 1627. 128 The Book of Old Edinburorh. A Cr.EEFUL PIN'CH. Hill. and after looking on for a while, with some other elderly citizens, who had a gleeful pinch of snuff over the matter, he be- took himself quietly home to his house in '""x Trotter's Close, in the West Bow, while an- other sought his in Blair's Close in the Castle In this latter close was born, in 1757, Sir David Baird, of the Newbyth family, who, before he joined the British army, at the age of fifteen, to become the conqueror of Seringapatam and of Tippoo Sahib, won his first laurels as leader of a famous 'Bow bicker.' He drove the enemy, fighting all the way down the Bow, back through the Grassmarket to the West Port, and returned the same way. It may have been some of these doings which made his mother say, when she heard that Hyder Ali had chained the British prisoners one to the other in their captivity, ' Lord pity the lad that's cheenyed to oor Davie!' It is worth stating, however, that the lad so 'cheenyed' lived to come home and tell that Davie was as tender to his comrade in distress, as he was terrible to his enemies in battle. The Assembly Rooms in the Bow. 129 Our intimate acquaintance with the Bow and the Castle-Hill district is owing to a business connection which, for two lives prior to our own, existed with property in the latter street ; the last tenement having been sold so late as 1855 to form Short's Observatory. Similar factorages — each a very coign of vantage for antiquarian observation, and differing much from casual visits — were held for houses in the High Street, the Canongate, the Grassmarket, Blackfriars Wynd, and last — but not least pleasant — with 'Old Newhaven.' Prior to the Irish immigration consequent on the con- struction of railways, which took place in the ''forties^ the Castle Hill was tenanted mostly by a Celtic race. Being near the Castle, the tenants were chiefly old pensioners — long-service men who had fought in the Peninsular wars and at Waterloo. Frasers and Frazers, Gordons and Grants, Camerons, M'Kenzies, and M'Donalds, are among the names we recall. They eked out their pensions as chairmen and porters. Our predecessors' experience did not tally with the character for dirt and poverty sometimes ascribed to the indwellers of these lands. On the contrary, the houses were, as a rule, clean, 'bien,' and comfortable, but the counter complaints against antiquarian intruders were frequent, and sometimes amusing. One of these old pensioners demanded a change of house. He had been at a funeral, and was in the act I 130 The Book of Old Edinburgh. of resuming his working clothes, when a well-known anti- quary — Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe^ — and two ladies, without kfiockmg, walked into his room. Donald, equal to the emergency, seized the bed-quilt, and improvised a Highland kilt or a Roman toga on the spot. * "My coot man," ' said the intruder — we give Donald's own words, — a queer blend of heather English and the home Doric of the Castle Hill, — "My coot man," said he, " I hef procht two leddies to pe seen your lum and ta carfings on it, and ta blue tiles," and ta two womans stood like a kye, and tid not go out whatefer. Now, Sir, ta lum is a coot lum, and goes fery well, but — she wants a shange. She wants ta lum that she will put on ta trews with teecency, with no carfings, and no "coot mans."' Donald got what he desired — a house with an everyday chimney-piece. Another tenant's description was even more graphic : — 'They are,' said she, Sveel-put-on men thae antick folk, but sair gien to breakin' the tenth command, and even wi' the echt I wadna like to lippen ower muckle to their reverence. They want to buy my pouther trenchers, and ca' my hoose clean. Hoo wad they like for me to gang and ca' their hoose clean ? but maybe they ha'e thae feckless, haundless, new-fashioned wives that ken naething, no' like my mither's auld mistress, Leddy ^ Well known in the literary world by his antiquarian writings, and locally by his sobriquet * Cheepin' Chairlie.' The Assembly Rooms in the Bqw. 131 Baird, vvha cam doon the stair every Friday nicht, and passed a white lawn napkin ower the pan-shanks and the pot-bools to see that a' was clean and perfeck; and she had mair dignity in her auld backbane than wad ser' a' the New Toun o' Edinbro. Puir bodies ! I never like to hear men folk praisin' cleanliness.' This old spinster possessed the only ' bink' of shining Scottish pewter trenchers we were ever privileged to see, a miniature of 'Sir Davie,' and a dress shoe of faded blue satin, a triumph of the 'cordiner's' skill, with a heel — we measured it with our first foot-rule — 2y\ inches high. The Leddy Baird who had worn it, — perhaps at some of the old Assemblies, — must, like Queen Elizabeth, have danced — disposedly. LORD riTV THE I. AD. Cf)e TBIacfe Curnpifee^ THIS building was the second house west from the old Tron Church. It was taken down in 1788 for the carrying out of the plans consequent on the erec- tion of the South Bridge, Sir James Hunter Blair being then the Lord Provost — from whom both Hunter Square and Blair Street take their names. It occupied the site of the present corner of the High Street and Hunter Square, and it was entered by three several turnpike stairs. It was of massive height and large extent, and had it not been disfigured by an inartistic timber front, it would have been, according to Maitland, one of the most sumptuous houses in Edinburgh. Tradition ascribed its erection to King Kenneth iii. (994), but the above historian gives the date of a sasine (1461) in favour of George Robertson of Lockhart, the builder's son. There was, however, a later date (1674) over one of the doors in Peebles Wynd, doubtless that of some later alteration, with the legend — one of the most beautiful in the old city — PAX INTRANTIBUS : SALUS EXEUNTIBUS.l The ground-rents belong to George Heriot's Hospital. 1 ' Peace to those who enter : safety to those who gp out. ' 132 The Black Turnpike. 133 In 1567 the Black Turnpike was the stately town house of Sir Simon Preston of that Ilk and Craigmillar, Provost of Edin- burgh, and from its windows Queen Mary saw the last of her kingdom's capi- tal. Alarmed by the exertions that Bothwell was making to secure her infant son James, and a re- ported speech to the effect that the young Prince would never live to ask him any questions as to his father's death, a party of the Scottish nobles arose in arms. Mary met them at Carberry, June 15, 1567, but her army melted away without drawing sword. She bade farewell to Bothwell on the bloodless field, sur- rendered herself to the Confederated Lords, and was brought that night a prisoner to the Provost's house at the Black Turnpike. The character of Queen Mary is one of the vexed problems of history, and it will remain so, though the THE BLACK TL'K: 134 The Book of Old Edinburgh. weight of evidence seems now to be on the side of those that beUeve in her guilt, however fain to have it otherwise. QUEEN MAKY A.NU DAKNLEV. It was to a Protestant Scotland that Mary returned from France in 1561, and, unlike her mother, she made no open attempt to subvert the Reformed religion. She asked, and barely received, toleration for the rites of her own faith — already become unpopular. The blunder was in her marriage to Darnley, July 29, 1565, The Black Turnpike. 135 against the advice of friend and foe. So strong was the Guise opposition that it is said the Cardinal de Lor- raine, an astute man of the world, would have concurred in the substitution of the Huguenot Prince de Conde, who had loved Mary from her youth. She preferred the 'lang lad Darnley,' needy, greedy, dissolute — pos- sessed of good looks, it is true, and of a knack of writing love-songs ; possessed, likewise, of a family motto, AVANT DARNL^, JAMAIS d'aRRIERE, — tO live Up to which he lacked moral vertebrae, and which motto he made the text of every demand, from 'pooch siller' up to the crown matrimonial. He was three years younger than Mary, not out of his teens, and, after her, the next heir to the Crown of England ; but a poor type in brain, heart, and courage of the powerful races of Stewart, Tudor, and Douglas. Mary's power of mind and strength of will have never been disputed. Respect could not exist for Darnley, and love fled after his share in the assassination of her secretary Rizzio. Murray away, and Rizzio dead, Bothwell became her chief counsellor. A loyal servant to the Queen he appears to have been at first; and in the year 1566 he was appointed Warden of the Three Marches, also High Admiral, and obtained grants of the Abbeys of Haddington and Melrose. During the night between the 9th and loth February, 1567, the citizens of Edinburgh were roused by the 136 The Book of Old Edinburgh. noise caused by the blowing up of the Provost's house of the Kirk-of- Field, and the next morning the body of THE CITIZENS WF.KE KOUSED. Darnley was found dead in the orchard adjoining. The crime was Bothwell's. Whether Queen Mary knew will possibly never be known, but existing doubts were deepened by the history of Edinburgh that spring-time. On April 12 Bothwell was nominally tried and acquitted. On April 24, at the head of 1000 men, he intercepted The Black Turnpike. 137 the Queen on her road from Stirhng at FouUbrigs (now Fountainbridge), near Edinburgh, and conducted her prisoner to Dunbar. On May 7 he was divorced from his young wife, Lady Jean Gordon, whom he had mar- ried fourteen months before. On May 1 2 he was created Duke of Orkney, and on the 15th of the same month Mary married him — a weariful fact, for which no justifi- cation can be found, and which practically dethroned herj hence the confederacy of the nobles, the unfought battle of Carberry, the revilings of the people ; and hence the banner representing the young Prince praying for vengeance beside the dead body of his father, that met her weeping gaze as she looked down on the High Street the next morning from the window of the Black Turnpike. This was no fight of rival religions. Bothwell was a Protestant, and had helped well to get all the Church lands in Edinburgh gifted by charter to the city. The quarrel was as old as royalty itself — the safety of the seed-royal. The Scottish people, inherently loyal, turned to the child. With them it was : * What of the bonny Duke of Rothesay, starved to death at Falkland by his uncle Albany?' and 'What of these fair young Planta- genet Princes, Edward and Richard of York, who, only eighty years before, had passed into the Tower of London and were never heard of more? ' The women of Edinburgh have come under blame, as to their speech 138 The Book of Old Edinburgh. and conduct, at this juncture. It is to be remembered, however, that we see Mary's history through the softened gloom of her unlawful imprisonment and her unrighteous death; but to the citizens of Old Edin- burgh the roar of that Sabbath at midnight was in their ears, and the thought of that ' ower sune step-faither ' sent the mothers of the High Street and the Canon- gate ' from their bairnis cradellis to ban.' The next day Mary crossed the Firth of Forth to Loch Leven. A year passed, and then came the gallant deliverance from the island castle, the gathering of the Setons and the Hamiltons to her help, the defeat of Langside, and the far ride to the Solway sands. Not to France for refuge, not to Catherine de Medicis, whom she had flouted as a merchant's daughter — but to Eliza- beth and England, for sympathy, succour, protection, and redress. She crossed the Solway to England and Elizabeth, and at her hands — the hands of the Queen of England — she received captivity, death, and a grave. In both countries the influence of the age was towards good. It was the birth-time of motive forces that have levered the world on to the lines of religious, social, and intellectual rectitude and progress — the endeavours of both Crown and people, working steadily and sternly, though often blindly, to issues greater than they knewj but in these there is no apology for sin, no palliation — none. For that pardon may have been The Black Turnpike. 139 sought, and pardon found ; but in the fierce light that beat on these rival thrones, and that was reflected and flashed back from south to north, and from north again to south, we read with silent and reverent pitifulness — how sore a thing it was to be a Queen. IDE TO THE SOI.WAY SAXUS. Cf)e dotogate JDouse foment tbe e^int CIO0e* THIS house stood on the south side of the Cowgate, and in the earHer years of its existence it was one of the timber-fronted burgher dwellings, with a piazza on its ground floor and an open gallery on the floor above. This fashion of house-building gave a safe open-air play-nook for the children, and a pleasant place for the old people to sit in the sun. The interior, however, of these dwellings must have been very dark. The windows of Edinburgh down to the Restoration had only the upper sash glazed, and this sash was a fix- ture. The under half consisted of folding shutter- boards, which were open in fine weather, and closed during the storms and cold of winter. These shutters were of all qualities, from plain ' eastland buirds ' up to carved oak. In business we have passed these short shutter-panels through our hands richly carved on both sides — that is, adorned to the inside of the house as well as to the outside. In one instance the carved oak 140 Cowgate House foment the Mint Close. 141 was framed round brasses exquisitely chased. These burnished brasses, which were fitted to the window with curiously made cen- tre-pin hinges, be- sides adding to the beauty of the in- terior, would aid materially in light- ing it up. We have already noted that the reign of James i. was the birth-time of many of the Scottish manufactures. In 1 6 10 that of glass wasbegunat Wemyss, in Fife, while those of potash and ' saip' (soap) had their earliest days in Leith, under Patrick Maule. said to be the founder of the family of Panmure. The glass at first was coarse, and abounded in the thick, green-tinted * yolks ' once so common, but which have well-nigh disappeared since rolled plate has superseded blown glass. When this Cowgate house was in process of being taken down, we visited it more than once, when out on antiquarian rambles with the late James Drum- COWGATE HOUSK. 142 The Book of Old Edinburgh. mond, R.S.A. We found one back window with the original upper transom, to which an under sash. of later workmanship had been added. The former was of oak, with strong finely-moulded and wrought astragals, and, as a specimen of joiner work, perfect. This was one of the oldest houses in the Cowgate, and contemporary with that of Symson the printer. Its windows must have faced the winters and the summers of more than three hundred and fifty years, but not one of these mitres had been 'guttered' in the cutting, not a joint was started, and a stone had to be displaced before it could be removed, which perhaps accounted for its remanent solitariness. The worthy brother of the good * Wrycht Craft ' of St, Mary's Chapel who made it — saw or chisel could not be lifted in the city out of the guild — had nothing to learn from the improved tools of modern days. This transom window was added to Mr. Drummond's own collection. Nothing certain is known of the ' indwellers ' of this house. Cf)e CotDtt (Suaro* FROM the time of Flodden (15 13) onwards, com- panies of soldiers were embodied at various times to guard the city ; but the embodiment proved always temporary, and the watching and warding in- variably returned into the hands of the citizens. In 1625 each citizen took his turn of martial duty every twenty-fifth night. The last disbandment was of a com- pany of 108 men, who had been raised at the instigation of the Duke of York, and was commanded by Captain Patrick Grahame, the Magistrates having petitioned the Estates to the effect 'that the common prison and private men's shops had been more frequently broken since the raising of the said companie than before ' ! The citizens did not take kindly to the return to night- watching, and shortly afterwards the Town Guard is found formally established, and the low, long, one- storied dingy guard-house built in the middle of the High Street esplanade. The picture by Kay of this house is well known, with the fierce Corporal John Dhu looking over the shut 143 144 The Book of Old Edinburgh. half-door, and the wooden horse, with its peculiarly acute-angled back, standing at the western gable. This animal, otherwise known as the ' trie meir,' must have been a terror to evil-doers in the corps and elsewhere. If a soldier was disguised in liquor, or was guilty of using opprobrious language, or was absent from his duty on guard-day, by the rules of the service he for- feited two days' pay — 6d. per diem — and had to ride RlOl.NG THE WOODKN' HORSE. the wooden horse for one hour, — a punishment aggra- vated by muskets being bound to the soles of the culprit's feet. The solitary and suffering unit excepted, it must have been beyond the power of human nature to resist a smile. Entry into the City's service, however, was eagerly sought by the returned Highland soldiers who had seen foreign service. The Town Guard-house was taken The Town Guard. 145 down in 1785, after which the city corps occupied one of the Tolbooth shops facing the Luckenbooths. The 'Toon Rats/ or 'Rattens,' as they were named, were the natural and hereditary enemies of the youth of the old city, and of plenty who had left their youth behind, but who retained its frolics and its follies. To the former belonged the poet, poor Fergusson, who evidently was acquainted with the 'Black Hole' below the 'flags' of the captain's room in the Town Guard house. * And thou, great god o' aqua-vitoe, Wha sways the empire o' this city, When foil we 're sometimes capernoity ; Be thou prepared To hedge us frae that black banditti, The City Guard. O soldiers ! for your ain dear sakes, For Scotland, alias Land d Cakes, Gie not her bairns sic deidly paiks, Nor be sae rude Wi' firelock and Lochaber aix, As spill their blude.' On the adoption of the modern Police system, and the consequent disbandment of the Town Guard in 1S17, a sinecure guardianship of the Parliament Close was accorded by the Lord Provost and Council to John Kennedy, a private in the City Corps. Old, bent, and shrivelled — and ever carrying his Lochaber axe — he ceased not for years to pace, or rather, latterly, to totter K 146 The Book of Old Edinburgh. round the statue of Charles 11. A faithful terrier, ill appearance equally aged, was long his companion. With John Kennedy died the last, in office, of the Town Guard of Edinburgh. The Janitor and Officers in the Old Edinburgh of the Exhibition are dressed in the garb of the Town Guard. - \j^4 THE LAST GUARDSMAN. Clje TBlue TBlanfeet ano tU CraDes incorporations. TRADITION places the origin of the Blue Blanket, the Trades Banner of Edinburgh, in the twelfth century. Scottish craftsmen followed Allan, Lord High Steward of Scotland, to the Holy Land in the third Crusade, when Richard Coeur de Lion, the hero of Christendom, was matched against Saladin, the cham- pion of Moslem chivalry. The Scottish banner was inscribed with this legend from Psalm li., ' In bona voluntate tua edificentur muri lerusalem — ' In thy good pleasure let the walls of Jerusalem be built.' The crafts- men bore the flag honourably in battle, brought it home, and dedicated it to the altar of St. Eloi, their patron saint, in the High Kirk of St. Giles. It was styled the Banner of the Holy Ghost, but was familiarly and fondly known from its colour as the Blue Blanket. The full story is given in a quaint old book written in 1722 by Alexander Pennicuik, Guild brother of Edinburgh. The author magnifies his office, and proves, to his own satisfaction, that the Trades should take precedence of the Professions, inasmuch as hand labour was the occupation of Adam and Eve in a state of innocence, while the professions of Divinity, Law, li7 148 The Book of Old Edinburgh. and Physic were the result of the Fall, which was caused by the intervention of the devil ! The existing Blue Blanket, one of the most honoured relics of Scottish antiquity — it was brought back from riodden Field — and of which the Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh are the guardians, was a gift in 1482 from James in. and his Queen, Margaret of Denmark, who worked it with her own hands. At the unfurling of the banner, not only the craftsmen of Edinburgh, but every burgher craftsman in the country, is bound to obey the summons, 'weil bodin in feir of weir,' under the com- mand of the Convener of the Edinburgh Trades.^ 1 * Ilk Burges hauand fyftie pundis in gudis salbe haill anarmit, as a gentilman aucht to be : . . . and Burges'sis of xx pund in The Blue Blanket. 149 The character of James in. as a social reformer repays close investigation better than that of the more brilliant sovereigns of his race. He seems to have set before himself the problem of raising the citizen or burgher power to act as a counterpoise to the feudal arrogance of the nobles. Markets for different goods were systematised, their times and places regulated, a public weigh-house was established for the first time, and in the seventh year of his reign the National Scot- tish Fisheries were begun, a measure which in itself alone stamps nobility on the mind that originated it. Old Edinburgh benefited largely : the Provost was made here- ditary sheriff within his own town ] the magistrates and council were empowered to make bye-laws and statutes for its good government ; duties on necessary commo- dities were rescinded ; and the Incorporation charters, with very few exceptions, date from this reign. Read- ing these old charters, or ' Seals of Cause,' one by one, there comes to the mind a large respect for the wisdom and thoroughness of both King and Craftsmen, and a suspicion that Archibald Bell-the-Cat, Earl of Angus, when he hanged the royal favourites over Lauder Bridge, aimed at the throttling of the King's measures fully as much as the death of the King's men. The Edinburgh Incorporated Trades of the Mag- gudis salbe bodin with hat, doublet or habirgeoun, sword and bucklar, bow, scheif and knyfe.' — Acts Jas. i. 1429, c. 137. Edit. 1566, c. 123, Murray. ISO The Book of Old Edinburgh. dalen Chapel are the Goldsmiths,^ Skinners, Furriers, Hammermen (17 companies), Wrights, Masons (these last two are named the Associated Trades of St. Mary's Chapel, with 10 companies), Tailors, Baxters, Fleshers, Cordiners, Websters, Waukers, and Bonnet-makers. Then follow the Candlemakers and several of the smaller crafts. Each Corporation possesses its own armorial bearings, and these blazonries are represented in the Exhibition. The Blue Blanket is fitly and safely guarded in the Trades Maiden Hospital. Its duplicate floats over ' Old Edinburgh.' ^ The surgeons, associated with the barljers, were formerly the first of the crafts, but were dissociated 1657. FROM ii.oDnrx. Cf)e CtO0S. IF King James vi. styled his canonised ancestor, David I., a 'sair sanct for the Croun,' there is as little doubt that, during his own occupancy of the Scottish throne, he was for Edinburgh a sair sorner 07t the toun. The Provost and the 'Thesaurer' must have felt many a sinking of heart over the frequent royal missives with the superscription ' Traist Freindis, we greitt zow^ weill/ and the signature 'James R.' By these letters the town was ordered to entertain royal and national guests, and that for any amount of time — as the Danish Ambassador, the Dutch, the Venetian, and the French Ambassadors ; the daughters of the Duke of Lennox (there was some grumbling at this) ; but the Duke of Holstein, the Queen's brother, was feasted 'with great solemnitie and mirrines.' Accord- ^ The letter ' z ' in the old Scots language is pronounced * y ; ' thus Cunzie House is pronounced Cunyie House, and Mackenzie — Mackenyie. 151 1^3 The Book of Old Edinburgh. iiig to Maitland, the money due by the King to the city was 59,000 merks, but the civic council was obliged to take 20,000 merks as full payment. Not- withstanding all this, and in spite of his endless interference in their elections, there was a kindly feeling between James and his Edinburgh subjects. The good city, like Issachar of old, saw that rest was good and the land that it was pleasant, and it certainly bowed its shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute j but the same year King of England gave Edin- By it 'the King deter- THE CROSS. that saw James the burgh its Golden Charter. mined to leave to the citizens a perpetual monument to posterity, and, as a token for future ages, his Majesty not only ratified all its previous charters and ancient immunities and privileges, but invested it with greater and higher privileges beyond all the burghs and The Cross. 153 cities of his Dominion.' ^ The whole charter, in fact, reads more Hke a benediction, or rather a presentation speech, than a legal State document. In the High Street, on April 5, 1603, taking a weep- ing farewell of his tearful Queen and of his mourning people — who foresaw and dreaded the evils of Court absenteeism, — ^James set out with no small pageantry to his new kingdom. The tears of prosperity are sweet, and they are soon dried. The ' Mercat Croce,' from w^hich he had been pro- claimed in his infancy, and which he left behind him on that day of farewells, is the Cross represented in the *01d Edinburgh' of the Exhibition. Fourteen years afterwards (161 7), this Cross was taken down and rebuilt on a different site in the High Street, as part of the preparations in honour of James's expected return to visit his * auncient kingdom.' He came also to a new Nether-Bow Port, and to the restored Palaces of Holy- rood, Stirling, and Falkland. Not only so, but the burghs of Scotland undertook to feed and furnish an assessed number of cattle as vivers for their King an(f his train of courtiers. The method of rating seems strange to the present day. The city of Glasgow and the burgh of Dundee provided each 300 fed nolt (nowt) ; Brechin 100; Perth 60; Musselburgh 12; Newbattle 30; the ^ Inventory of Selected Charters and Documents from the Charter-House of the City of Edinburgh, 1884, p. 21. 154 The Book of Old Edinburgh. town of Alloway 30; Montrose 36; Pittenweem 10: and Stirling ' 20 ky and 20 viellis.' ^ King James came, was joyously welcomed at the West Port, and was 'propynit' with 10,000 merks in gold angels, contained in a silver gilt basin, which he received with 'ane myld and gracious countenance.' There the King saw the Magistrates and Council of Edinburgh in their first robes of office, with the city sword in its velvet sheath, for which, to put Edinburgh on a par with London, he had passed another special charter 1609 — gifting the city, moreover, with two sable- trimmed robes by way of pattern. His Majesty then listened to a thanksgiving sermon in the High Kirk, knighted the Provost, William Nisbet of Dean, at St. John's Cross in the Canongate, and then once more passed below the roof-tree of his old home at Holyrood. James remained fifteen months in his northern kingdom, and thence returned to London, with an abundance of experiences and news to speak over with his gossip, George Heriot, as to how graciously Scotland had welcomed him — ' even your awin native-born Prince, Geordie.' The Cross which King James saw on that day of rejoicing, and which was removed in 1756, is that which has been restored to Edinburgh by the graceful 1 Documents relative to the Reception at Edinburgh of Kings and Queens of Scotland, p. 103. The Cross. 155 gift of Mr. Gladstone. Its shaft and capital formed part of the ancient Edinburgh Cross. Four of the original sculptured medallions of the same old Cross were built into the tower named ' Ross's Folly,' erected in the grounds of St. Bernard's, Stockbridge. Walter Ross had bargained with the Magistrates for some stones, but, getting up early one morning, he carted away the medallions instead. A correspondence ensued, but the medallions were never returned. According to his dying instructions, his body lay unburied for eight days, and thereafter the ' Folly ' became its owner's grave. In 1824, after the death of Sir Henry Raeburn, who was the next owner of St. Bernard's, the tower was taken down for feuing purposes, and the medallions were given to Sir Walter Scott. Their removal from Ross's Folly was witnessed by Mr. Cumberland Hill when a boy. The heavy stone carvings were loosened by the masons, and fell softly, each into a separate cart that was backed against the tower. There had been many discussions between Tom Purdie and Sir Walter as to the transit ; but what was the amusement and delight of the latter, when the four carts drew up before the Castle Street house, to find that Tom had filled them with stable manure ! Sir Walter and Sir Adam Ferguson went down into the street, bareheaded and laughing, to see the stones, and to ask explanations. 156 The Book of Old Edinburgh. ' What made you think of such a thing ? ' said Sir Walter. A ■iS 4 5 WHAT MA MAi>K vol' think: of such a thing * Ye '11 never get these real bits of the true Cross clean again from that stuff, Tom,' added Sir Adam. ' Dinna fear,' replied Tom ; ' it 's saft, but no' sappy. The notion jist cam into my heid like inspirawtion last nicht when I was half-sleepin'. I never had muckle broo o' thae new-fangled imitation manures, ye ken ; and it's no' easy doin' justice to oor land wi' half yin's stable in Embro a' the winter. So, as there 's nae gettin' The Cross. 157 muck the noo in a' Muiris Pairish for either love or siller, it was a twice lucky thocht to tak' this. It 's far better than the ait strae ye spak o', Sir Walter, for it will carry oot the bits o' images as saft as a babby in a blanket, and spread on Lauchie's haugh after a', and ///^/'^ fellin' twae dowgs wi' ae bane, and birlin' your bawbee to come up baith heids and tails at yince ; mair betoken, it didna cost ye a penny, for I got it oot o' your ain toon stable yont the gait. As for Sir Awdam's cleanin', when our Tweed rins dry, we '11 aiblins speel up the brae to his bit Huntley burn !' Both gentlemen shook hands with Tom : ' Mind and take a rest and a feed to yourselves and the horses at AVelsh's,' ^ cried Sir Walter ; and away went the carts round the corner of George Street, up the steep Liberton Brae, down the Gala Water road, then in the full glory of the four-in-hand coaching days of the Royal Mail — the Blucher and the Chevy- chase — past Borthwick Castle, and Torsonce, and Stow to Abbotsford. It was the last year of Sir Walter's happiness before his misfortunes and his sor- rows came. Reading the inscription on the restored Cross, it would have been better if these medallions had rejoined the old pillared shaft and capital; and it is not too "^ ' Welsh's ' — a famous roadside inn for carters, not far from Fushiebridge. 158 The Book of Old Edinburgh. much to say that, had the master mind that created Abbotsford been aUve, they would have come back to Edinburgh, though not perhaps in the same fashion as that in which they left it, and the malison which the poet pronounced upon the iconoclasts of 1756 would have been lifted. The removal of the ancient buildings of Edinburgh has its necessary and its unnecessary side. The driving of ventilating side-shaft streets through the serried masses of the densely crowded closes was necessary for the health, the morality, and the well-being of the people. The Civic Rulers of the city have hitherto regulated wisely the momentum of these great measures, and in this matter it becomes the most aesthetic lover of the Past to yield to the philanthropist without a sigh. As to the unnecessary side — the wanton destruction of such erections as the 'Mercat Croce' is the very 'super- fluity of naughtiness,' and for such procedure there is no blame too heavy. Maitland,^ whose valuable folio History was published in 1753, and who was the expon- ent and mouthpiece of the Taste of the period, deliber- ately wrote down the Market Cross. Of the High Street he thus speaks : ' This beautiful street is so crowded and pestered with a Diversity of Edifices — the Public Wells, the IMarket Cross, a Btiildiiig that may well be spared^ it being only a Receptacle for Filth and ^ Maitland, p. 216; also p. 183. The Cross. 159 Nastiness . . . whereby its (the street's) beauty is greatly ecHpsed.' Maitland is not the first man, nor will he be the last, that will lecture constituted authori- ties on matters of taste — and lead them wrong. Once and again he returns to the charge. The public mind was sedulously educated to believe in a boundless con- tiguity of J/^