TAM O’ THE COWGATE.
A court of old buildings, in a massive style of architecture, existed, previous to 1829, on a spot in the Cowgate now occupied by the southern piers of George IV. Bridge. In the middle of the last century it was used as the Excise-office; but even this was a kind of declension from its original character. It is certain that the celebrated Thomas Hamilton, first Earl of Haddington, President of the Court of Session, and Secretary of State for Scotland, lived here at the end of the sixteenth century, renting the house from Macgill of Rankeillour.[209] This distinguished person, from the circumstance of his living here, was endowed by his master, King James, with the nickname of Tam o’ the Cowgate, under which title he is now better remembered than by any other.
The earl, who had risen through high legal offices to the peerage, and who was equally noted for his penetration as a judge, his industry as a collector of decisions, and his talent for amassing wealth, was one evening, after a day’s hard labour in the public service, solacing himself with a friend over a flask of wine in his house in the Cowgate[210]—attired, for his better ease, in a nightgown, cap, and slippers—when he was suddenly disturbed by a great hubbub which arose under his window in the street. This soon turned out to be a bicker between the High School youths and those of the College; and it also appeared that the latter, fully victorious, were, notwithstanding a valiant defence, in the act of driving their antagonists before them. The Earl of Haddington’s sympathies were awakened in favour of the retiring party, for he had been brought up at the High School, and going thence to complete his education at Paris, had no similar reason to affect the College. He therefore sprang up, dashed into the street, sided with and rallied the fugitives, and took a most animated share in the combat that ensued, so that finally the High School youths, acquiring fresh strength and valour at seeing themselves befriended by the prime judge and privy-councillor of their country (though not in his most formidable habiliments), succeeded in turning the scale of victory upon the College youths, in spite of their superior individual ages and strength. The earl, who assumed the command of the party, and excited their spirits by word as well as action, was not content till he had pursued the Collegianers through the Grassmarket, and out at the West Port, the gate of which he locked against their return, thus compelling them to spend the night in the suburbs and the fields. He then returned home in triumph to his castle of comfort in the Cowgate, and resumed the enjoyment of his friend and flask. We can easily imagine what a rare jest this must have been for King Jamie.
A Court of Old Buildings.
When this monarch visited Scotland in 1617, he found the old statesman very rich, and was informed that the people believed him to be in possession of the Philosopher’s Stone; there being no other feasible mode of accounting for his immense wealth, which rather seemed the effect of supernatural agency than of worldly prudence or talent. King James, quite tickled with the idea of the Philosopher’s Stone, and of so enviable a talisman having fallen into the hands of a Scottish judge, was not long in letting his friend and gossip know of the story which he had heard respecting him. The Lord President immediately invited the king, and the rest of the company present, to come to his house next day, when he would both do his best to give them a good dinner and lay open to them the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone. This agreeable invitation was of course accepted; and the next day saw his Cowgate palazzo thronged with king and courtiers, all of whom the President feasted to their hearts’ content. After dinner the king reminded him of his Philosopher’s Stone, and expressed his anxiety to be speedily made acquainted with so rare a treasure, when the pawky lord addressed His Majesty and the company in a short speech, concluding with this information, that his whole secret lay in two simple and familiar maxims—‘Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day; nor ever trust to another’s hand what your own can execute.’ He might have added, from the works of an illustrious contemporary:
‘This is the only witchcraft I have used;’
and none could have been more effectual.
A ludicrous idea is obtained from the following anecdote of the estimation in which the wisdom of the Earl of Haddington was held by the king, and at the same time, perhaps, of that singular monarch’s usual mode of speech. It must be understood, by way of prefatory illustration, that King James, who was the author of the earl’s popular appellation, ‘Tam o’ the Cowgate,’ had a custom of bestowing such ridiculous sobriquets on his principal councillors and courtiers. Thus he conferred upon that grave and sagacious statesman, John, Earl of Mar, the nickname Jock o’ Sklates—probably in allusion to some circumstance which occurred in their young days when they were the fellow-pupils of Buchanan. On hearing of a meditated alliance between the Haddington and Mar families, His Majesty exclaimed, betwixt jest and earnest: ‘The Lord hand a grup o’ me! If Tam o’ the Cowgate’s son marry Jock o’ Sklates’s daughter, what’s to come o’ me?’ The good-natured monarch probably apprehended that so close a union betwixt two of his most subtle statesmen might make them too much for their master—as hounds are most dangerous when they hunt in couples.
The Earl of Haddington died in 1637, full of years and honours. At Tyningham, the seat of his family, there are two portraits of his lordship, one a half-length, the other a head; as also his state-dress; and it is a circumstance too characteristic to be overlooked that in the crimson-velvet breeches there are no fewer than nine pockets! Among many of the earl’s papers which remain in Tyningham House, one contains a memorandum conveying a curious idea of the way in which public and political affairs were then managed in Scotland. The paper details the heads of a petition in his own handwriting to the Privy Council, and at the end is a note ‘to gar [that is, make] the chancellor’ do something else in his behalf.
A younger son of Tam o’ the Cowgate was a person of much ingenuity, and was popularly known, for what reason I cannot tell, by the nickname of ‘Dear Sandie Hamilton.’ He had a foundry in the Potterrow, where he fabricated the cannon employed in the first Covenanting war in 1639. This artillery, be it remarked, was not formed exclusively of metal. The greater part of the composition was leather; and yet, we are informed, they did some considerable execution at the battle of Newburnford, above Newcastle (August 28, 1640), where the Scots drove a large advanced party of Charles I.’s troops before them, thereby causing the king to enter into a new treaty. The cannon, which were commonly called ‘Dear Sandie’s Stoups,’ were carried in swivel fashion between two horses.
The Excise-office had been removed, about 1730, from the Parliament Square to the house occupied many years before by Tam o’ the Cowgate. It afforded excellent accommodations for this important public office. The principal room on the second floor, towards the Cowgate, was a very superb one, having a stucco ceiling divided into square compartments, each of which contained some elegant device. To the rear of the house was a bowling-green, which the Commissioners of Excise let on lease to a person of the name of Thomson. In those days bowling was a much more prevalent amusement than now, being chiefly a favourite with the graver order of the citizens. There were then no fewer than three bowling-greens in the grounds around Heriot’s Hospital; one in the Canongate, near the Tolbooth; another on the opposite side of the street; another immediately behind the palace of Holyrood House, where the Duke of York used to play when in Scotland; and perhaps several others scattered about the outskirts of the town. The arena behind the Excise-office was called Thomson’s Green, from the name of the man who kept it; and it may be worth while to remind the reader that it is alluded to in that pleasant-spirited poem by Allan Ramsay, in imitation of the Vides ut alta of Horace:
‘Driving their ba’s frae whins or tee,
There’s no ae gouffer to be seen,
Nor doucer folk wysing a-jee
The byas bowls on Tamson’s green.’
The green was latterly occupied by the relict of this Thomson; and among the bad debts on the Excise books, all of which are yearly brought forward and enumerated, there still stands a sum of something more than six pounds against Widow Thomson, being the last half-year’s rent of the green, which the poor woman had been unable to pay. The north side of Brown’s Square was built upon part of this space of ground; the rest remained a vacant area for the recreation of the people dwelling in Merchant Street, until the erection of the bridge, which has overrun that, as well as every other part of the scene of this article.[211]
[ST CECILIA’S HALL.]
Few persons now living (1847) recollect the elegant concerts that were given many years ago in what is now an obscure part of our ancient city, known by the name of St Cecilia’s Hall. They did such honour to Edinburgh, nearly for half a century, that I feel myself called on to make a brief record of them, and am glad to be enabled to do so by a living authority, one of the most fervent worshippers in the temple of the goddess. Hear, then, his last aria parlante on this interesting theme.
St Cecilia’s Hall.
‘The concerts of St Cecilia’s Hall formed one of the most liberal and attractive amusements that any city in Europe could boast of. The hall was built on purpose at the foot of Niddry’s Wynd, by a number of public-spirited noblemen and gentlemen; and the expense of the concerts was defrayed by about two hundred subscribers paying two or three guineas each annually; and so respectable was the institution considered, that upon the death of a member there were generally several applications for the vacancy, as is now the case with the Caledonian Hunt. The concerts were managed by a governor and a set of six or more directors, who engaged the performers—the principal ones from Italy, one or two from Germany, and the rest of the orchestra was made up of English and native artists. The concerts were given weekly during most of the time that I attended; the instrumental music consisting chiefly of the concertos of Corelli and Handel, and the overtures of Bach, Abel, Stamitz, Vanhall, and latterly of Haydn and Pleyel; for at that time, and till a good many years after, the magnificent symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, which now form the most attractive portions of all public concerts, had not reached this country. Those truly grand symphonies do not seem likely to be superseded by any similar compositions for a century to come, transcending so immensely, as they do, all the orchestral compositions that ever before appeared; yet I must not venture to prophesy, when I bear in mind what a powerful influence fashion and folly exercise upon music, as well as upon other objects of taste. When the overtures and quartettes of Haydn first found their way into this country, I well remember with what coldness the former were received by most of the grave Handelians, while at the theatres they gave delight. The old concert gentlemen said that his compositions wanted the solidity and full harmony of Handel and Corelli; and when the celebrated leader—the elder Cramer—visited St Cecilia’s Hall, and played a spirited charming overture of Haydn’s, an old amateur next to whom I was seated asked me: “Whase music is that, now?” “Haydn’s, sir,” said I. “Poor new-fangled stuff,” he replied; “I hope I shall never hear it again!” Many years have since rolled away, and mark what some among us now say: A friend, calling lately on an old lady much in the fashionable circle of society, heard her give directions to the pianist who was teaching her nieces to bring them some new and fashionable pieces of music, but no more of the unfashionable compositions of Haydn! Alas for those ladies whose taste in music is regulated by fashion, and who do not know that the music of Haydn is the admiration and delight of all the real lovers and judges of the art in Europe!
‘The vocal department of our concerts consisted chiefly of the songs of Handel, Arne, Gluck, Sarti, Jornelli, Guglielmi, Paisiello, Scottish songs, &c.; and every year, generally, we had an oratorio of Handel performed, with the assistance of a principal bass and a tenor singer, and a few chorus-singers from the English cathedrals; together with some Edinburgh amateurs,[212] who cultivated that sacred and sublime music; Signor and Signora Domenico Corri, the latter our prima donna, singing most of the principal songs, or most interesting portions of the music. On such occasions the hall was always crowded to excess by a splendid assemblage, including all the beauty and fashion of our city. A supper to the directors and their friends at Fortune’s Tavern generally followed the oratorio, where the names of the chief beauties who had graced the hall were honoured by their healths being drunk: the champion of the lady whom he proposed as his toast being sometimes challenged to maintain the pre-eminence of her personal charms by the admirer of another lady filling a glass of double depth to her health, and thus forcing the champion of the first lady to say more by drinking a still deeper bumper in honour of her beauty; and if this produced a rejoinder from the other, by his seizing and quaffing the cup of largest calibre, there the contest generally ended, and the deepest drinker saved his lady, as it was phrased, although he might have had some difficulty in saving himself from a flooring while endeavouring to regain his seat.[213] Miss Burnet of Monboddo and Miss Betsy Home, reigning beauties of the time, were said more than once to have been the innocent cause of the fall of man in this way. The former was gifted with a countenance of heavenly sweetness and expression, which Guido, had he beheld it, would have sought to perpetuate upon canvas as that of an angel; while the other lady, quite piquant and brilliant, might have sat to Titian for a Hebe or one of the Graces. Miss Burnet died in the bloom of youth, universally regretted both for her personal charms and the rare endowments of her mind. Miss Home was happily married to Captain Brown, her ardent admirer, who had made her his toast for years, and vowed he would continue to do so till he toasted her Brown. This sort of exuberant loyalty to beauty was by no means uncommon at the convivial meetings of those days, when “time had not thinned our flowing hair, nor bent us with his iron hand.”
‘Let me call to mind a few of those whose lovely faces at the concerts gave us the sweetest zest for the music. Miss Cleghorn of Edinburgh, still living in single-blessedness; Miss Chalmers of Pittencrief, who married Sir William Miller of Glenlee, Bart.; Miss Jessie Chalmers of Edinburgh, who was married to Mr Pringle of Haining; Miss Hay of Hayston, who married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Bart.; Miss Murray of Lintrose, who was called the Flower of Strathmore, and upon whom Burns wrote the song:
“Blithe, blithe, and merry was she,
Blithe was she but and ben;
Blithe by the banks of the Earn,
And blithe in Glenturit Glen.”
She married David Smith, Esq. of Methven, one of the Lords of Session; Miss Jardine of Edinburgh, who married Mr Home Drummond of Blairdrummond—their daughter, if I mistake not, is now the Duchess of Athole; Miss Kinloch of Gilmerton, who married Sir Foster Cunliffe of Acton, Bart.; Miss Lucy Johnston of East Lothian, who married Mr Oswald of Auchincruive; Miss Halket of Pitferran, who became the wife of the celebrated Count Lally-Tollendal; and Jane, Duchess of Gordon, celebrated for her wit and spirit, as well as for her beauty. These, with Miss Burnet and Miss Home, and many others whose names I do not distinctly recollect, were indisputably worthy of all the honours conferred upon them. But beauty has tempted me to digress too long from my details relative to the hall and its concerts, to which I return.
‘The hall [built in 1762 from a design of Mr Robert Mylne, after the model of the great opera theatre of Parma] was an exact oval, having a concave elliptical ceiling, and was remarkable for the clear and perfect conveyance of sounds, without responding echoes, as well as for the judicious manner in which the seating was arranged. In this last respect, I have seen no concert-room equal to it either in London or Paris. The orchestra was erected at the upper end of the hall, opposite to the door of entrance; a portion of the area, in the centre or widest part, was without any seats, and served as a small promenade, where friends could chat together during the intervals of performance. The seats were all fixed down on both sides of the hall, and each side was raised by a gradual elevation from the level area, backward, the rows of seats behind each other, till they reached a passage a few feet broad, that was carried quite round the hall behind the last of the elevated seats; so that when the audience was seated, each half of it fronted the other—an arrangement much preferable to that commonly adopted, of placing all the seats upon a level behind each other, for thus the whole company must look one way, and see each other’s backs. A private staircase at the upper end of the hall, not seen by the company, admitted the musicians into the orchestra; in the front of which stood a harpsichord, with the singers, and the principal violoncellist; and behind these, on a platform a little elevated, were the violins, and other stringed and wind instruments, just behind which stood a noble organ. The hall, when filled, contained an audience of about four hundred. No money was taken for admission, tickets being given gratis to the lovers of music, and to strangers. What a pity that such a liberal and gratifying institution should have ceased to exist! But after the New Town arose, the Old was deserted by the upper classes: the hall was too small for the increased population, and concerts were got up at the Assembly Rooms and Corri’s Rooms by the professional musicians, and by Corri himself. Now a capacious Music Hall is erected behind the Assembly Rooms, where a pretty good subscription concert is carried on; and from the increased facility of intercourse between Paris, London, and Edinburgh, it seems probable that concerts by artists of the highest talents will ere long be set on foot in Edinburgh in this fine hall, diversified sometimes by oratorios or Italian operas.
‘Before concluding this brief memoir of St Cecilia’s Hall Concerts, I shall mention the chief performers who gave attractions to them. These were Signor and Signora Domenico Corri, from Rome; he with a falsetto voice, which he managed with much skill and taste; the signora with a fine, full-toned, flexible soprano voice. Tenducci, though not one of the band, nor resident among us, made his appearance occasionally when he came to visit the Hopetoun family, his liberal and steady patrons; and while he remained he generally gave some concerts at the hall, which made quite a sensation among the musicals. I considered it a jubilee year whenever Tenducci arrived, as no singer I ever heard sang with more expressive simplicity, or was more efficient, whether he sang the classical songs of Metastasio, or those of Arne’s Artaxerxes, or the simple melodies of Scotland. To the latter he gave such intensity of interest by his impassioned manner, and by his clear enunciation of the words, as equally surprised and delighted us. I never can forget the pathos and touching effect of his Gilderoy, Lochaber no more, The Braes of Ballenden, I’ll never leave thee, Roslin Castle, &c. These, with the Verdi prati of Handel, Fair Aurora from Arne’s Artaxerxes, and Gluck’s Che faro, were above all praise. Miss Poole, Mr Smeaton, Mr Gilson, and Mr Urbani were also for a time singers at the hall—chiefly of English and Scottish songs.
‘In the instrumental department we had Signor Puppo, from Rome or Naples, as leader and violin concerto player, a most capital artist; Mr Schetky, from Germany, the principal violoncellist, and a fine solo concerto player; Joseph Reinagle, a very clever violoncello and viola player; Mr Barnard, a very elegant violinist; Stephen Clarke, an excellent organist and harpsichord player; and twelve or fifteen violins, basses, flutes, violas, horns, and clarionets, with extra performers often from London. Upon the resignation of Puppo, who charmed all hearers, Stabilini succeeded him, and held the situation till the institution was at an end: he had a good round tone, though, to my apprehension, he did not exceed mediocrity as a performer.
‘But I should be unpardonable if I omitted to mention the most accomplished violin-player I ever heard, Paganini only excepted—I mean Giornovicki, who possessed in a most extraordinary degree the various requisites of his beautiful art: execution peculiarly brilliant, and finely articulated as possible; a tone of the richest and most exquisite quality; expression of the utmost delicacy, grace, and tenderness; and an animation that commanded your most intense and eager attention. Paganini did not appear in Edinburgh till [thirty years] after the hall was closed. There, as well as at private parties, I heard Giornovicki often, and always with no less delight than I listened to Paganini.[214] Both, if I may use the expression, threw their whole hearts and souls into their Cremonas, bows, and fingers.
“Hall of sweet sounds, adieu, with all thy fascinations of langsyne,
My dearest reminiscences of music all are thine.”’
G. T. Octogenarius Edinburgensis, Feb. 1847.[215]
Stabilini, to whom our dear G. T. refers, and who died in 1815, much broken down by dissipation, was obliged, against his will, to give frequent attendance at the private concerts of one of these gentlemen performers, where Corelli’s trios were in great vogue. There was always a capital supper afterwards, at which Stab (so he was familiarly called) ate and drank for any two. A waggish friend, who knew his opinion of Edinburgh amateurs, meeting him next day, would ask: ‘Well, Mr Stabilini, what sort of music had you the other night at —— ——’s?’
‘Vera good soaper, sir; vera good soaper!’
‘But tell us the verse you made about one of these parties.’
Stabilini, twitching up his shirt-collar, a common trick of his, would say:
‘A piece ov toarkey for a hungree bellee
Is moatch supeerior to Corelli!’
The accent, the manner, the look with which this was delivered, is said to have been beyond expression rich.
It is quite remarkable, when we consider the high character of the popular melodies, how late and slow has been the introduction of a taste for the higher class of musical compositions into Scotland. The Earl of Kelly, a man of yesterday, was the first Scotsman who ever composed music for an orchestra.[216] This fact seems sufficient. It is to be feared that the beauty of the melodies is itself partly to be blamed for the indifference to higher music. There is too great a disposition to rest with the distinction thus conferred upon the nation; too many are content to go no further for the enjoyments which music has to give. It would be well if, while not forgetting those beautiful simple airs, we were more generally to open our minds to the still richer charms of the German and the Italian muses.
[THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.]
While this event is connected with one of the most problematical points in our own history, or that of any other nation, it chances that the whole topography of the affair is very distinctly recorded. We know not only the exact spot where the deed was perpetrated, but almost every foot of the ground over which the perpetrators walked on their way to execute it. It is chiefly by reason of the depositions and confessions brought out by the legal proceedings against the inferior instruments that this minute knowledge is attained.
The house in which the unfortunate victim resided at the time was one called the Prebendaries’ Chamber, being part of the suite of domestic buildings connected with the collegiate church of St-Mary-in-the-Fields (usually called the Kirk o’ Field). Darnley was brought to lodge here on the 30th of January 1566-7. He had contracted the smallpox at Glasgow, and it was thought necessary, or pretended to be thought necessary, to lodge him in this place for air, as also to guard against infecting the infant prince, his son, who was lodged in Holyrood House. The house, which then belonged, by gift, to a creature of the Earl of Bothwell, has been described as so very mean as to excite general surprise. Yet, speaking by comparison, it does not appear to have been a bad temporary lodging for a person in Darnley’s circumstances. It consisted of two stories, with a turnpike or spiral staircase behind. The gable adjoined to the town-wall, which there ran in a line east and west, and the cellar had a postern opening through that wall. In the upper floor were a chamber and closet, with a little gallery having a window also through the town-wall.[217] Here Darnley was deposited in an old purple travelling-bed. Underneath his room was an apartment in which the queen slept for one or two nights before the murder took place. On the night of Sunday, February 9, she was attending upon her husband in his sick-room, when the servants of the Earl of Bothwell deposited the powder in her room, immediately under the king’s bed. The queen afterwards took her leave, in order to attend the wedding of two of her servants at the palace.
It appears, from the confessions of the wretches executed for this foul deed, that as they returned from depositing the powder they saw ‘the Queenes grace gangand before thame with licht torches up the Black Frier Wynd.’ On their returning to Bothwell’s lodging at the palace, that nobleman prepared himself for the deed by changing his gay suit of ‘hose, stockit with black velvet, passemented with silver, and doublett of black satin of the same maner,’ for ‘ane uther pair of black hose,[218] and ane canvas doublet white, and tuke his syde [long] riding-cloak about him, of sad English claith, callit the new colour.’ He then went, attended by Paris, the queen’s servant, Powry, his own porter, Pate Wilson, and George Dalgleish, ‘downe the turnepike altogedder, and along the bak of the Queene’s garden, till you come to the bak of the cunyie-house [mint], and the bak of the stabbillis, till you come to the Canongate fornent the Abbey zett.’ After passing up the Canongate, and gaining entry with some difficulty by the Netherbow Port, ‘thai gaid up abone Bassentyne’s hous on the south side of the gait,[219] and knockit at ane door beneath the sword slippers, and callit for the laird of Ormistounes, and one within answerit he was not thair; and thai passit down a cloiss beneath the Frier Wynd [apparently Toddrick’s Wynd], and enterit in at the zett of the Black Friers, till thay came to the back wall and dyke of the town-wall, whair my lord and Paris past in over the wall.’ The explosion took place soon after, about two in the morning. The earl then came back to his attendants at this spot, and ‘thai past all away togidder out at the Frier zett, and sinderit in the Cowgait.’ It is here evident that the alley now called the High School Wynd was the avenue by which the conspirators approached the scene of their atrocity. Bothwell himself, with part of his attendants, went up the same wynd ‘be east the Frier Wynd,’ and crossing the High Street, endeavoured to get out of the city by leaping a broken part of the town-wall in Leith Wynd, but finding it too high, was obliged to rouse once more the porter at the Netherbow. They then passed—for every motion of the villains has a strange interest—down St Mary’s Wynd, and along the south back of the Canongate to the earl’s lodgings in the palace.
High School Wynd.
The house itself, by this explosion, was destroyed, ‘even,’ as the queen tells in a letter to her ambassador in France, ‘to the very grund-stane.’ The bodies of the king and his servant were found next morning in a garden or field on the outside of the town-wall. The buildings connected with the Kirk o’ Field were afterwards converted into the College of King James, now our Edinburgh University. The hall of the Senatus in the new buildings occupies nearly the exact site of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, the ruins of which are laid down in De Witt’s map of 1648.
[MINT CLOSE.]
The Mint—Robert Cullen—Lord Chancellor Loughborough.
The Cunyie House, as the Scottish Mint used to be called, was near Holyrood Palace in the days of Queen Mary. In the regency of Morton a large house was erected for it in the Cowgate, where it may still be seen,[220] with the following inscription over the door:
BE. MERCYFULL. TO. ME. O. GOD. 1574.
In the reign of Charles II. other buildings were added behind, forming a neat quadrangle; and here was the Scottish coin produced till the Union, when a separate coinage was given up and this establishment abandoned; though, to gratify prejudice, the offices were still kept up as sinecures. This court with its buildings was a sanctuary for persons prosecuted for debt, as was the King’s Stables, a mean place at the west end of the Grassmarket. There was, however, a small den near the top of the oldest building, lighted by a small window looking up the Cowgate, which was used as a jail for debtors or other delinquents condemned by the Mint’s own officers.
In the western portion of the old building, accessible by a stair from the court, is a handsome room with an alcove ceiling, and lighted by two handsomely proportioned windows, which is known to have been the council-room of the Mint, being a portion of the private mansion of the master. Here, in May 1590, on a Sunday evening, the town of Edinburgh entertained the Danish lords who accompanied James VI. and his queen from her native court—namely, Peter Monk, the admiral of Denmark; Stephen Brahe, captain of Eslinburg [perhaps a relative of Tycho?]; Braid Ransome Maugaret; Nicholaus Theophilus, Doctor of Laws; Henry Goolister, captain of Bocastle; William Vanderwent; and some others. For this banquet, ‘maid in Thomas Aitchinsoune, master of the cunyie-house lugeing,’ it was ordered ‘that the thesaurer caus by and lay in foure punsheouns wyne; John Borthuik baxter to get four bunnis of beir, with foure gang of aill, and to furneis breid; Henry Charteris and Roger Macnacht to caus hing the hous with tapestrie, set the burdis, furmis, chandleris [candlesticks], and get flowris; George Carketill and Rychert Doby to provyde the cupbuirds and men to keep thame; and my Lord Provest was content to provyde naprie and twa dozen greit veschell, and to avance ane hunder pund or mair, as thai sall haif a do.’
In the latter days of the Mint as an active establishment, the coining-house was in the ground-floor of the building, on the north side of the court; in the adjoining house, on the east side, was the finishing-house, where the money was polished and fitted for circulation. The chief instruments used in coining were a hammer and steel dies, upon which the device was engraved. The metal, being previously prepared of the proper fineness and thickness, was cut into longitudinal slips, and a square piece being cut from the slip, it was afterwards rounded and adjusted to the weight of the money to be made. The blank pieces of metal were then placed between two dies, and the upper one was struck with a hammer. After the Restoration another method was introduced—that of the mill and screw, which, modified by many improvements, is still in use. At the Union, the ceremony of destroying the dies of the Scottish coinage took place in the Mint. After being heated red-hot in a furnace, they were defaced by three impressions of a broad-faced punch, which were of course visible on the dies as long as they existed; but it must be recorded that all these implements, which would now have been great curiosities, are lost, and none of the machinery remains but the press, which, weighing about half a ton, was rather too large to be readily appropriated, or perhaps it would have followed the rest.
The floors over the coining-house—bearing the letters, C. R. II., surmounting a crown, and the legend, GOD SAVE THE KING, 1674, originally the mansion of the master—were latterly occupied by the eminent Dr Cullen, whose family were all born here, and who died here himself in 1792.