VA D’UN VOL À CHRIST—
Go with one flight to Christ; which, the reader will find, can only be made out by Latinising his name into Nicholaus Eduartus. We learn from Moyses’s Memoirs that, in January 1591, this house was the temporary residence of James VI. and his queen, then recently arrived from Denmark; and that, on the 7th of February, the Earl of Huntly passed hence, out of the immediate royal presence, when he went to murder the Bonny Earl of Moray at Donibrissle; which caused a suspicion that His Majesty was concerned in that horrid outburst of feudal hate. Lockhart’s Court was latterly divided into several distinct habitations, one of which, on the north side of the quadrangle, was occupied by the family of Bruce of Kinnaird, the celebrated traveller. In the part on the south side, occupied by the Carnwath family, there was a mantelpiece in the drawing-room of magnificent workmanship, and reaching to the ceiling. The whole mansion, even in its reduced state, bore an appearance of security and strength which spoke of other times; and there was, moreover, a profound dungeon underground, which was only accessible by a secret trap-door, opening through the floor of a small closet, the most remote of a suite of rooms extending along the south and west sides of the court. Perhaps, at a time when to be rich was neither so common nor so safe as now, Provost Edward might conceal his hoards in this massy more.
Alexander Black of Balbirney, who was provost of Edinburgh from 1579 to 1583, had a house at the head of the wynd. King James lodged in this house on the 18th of August 1584, and walked from it in state next day to hold a parliament in the Tolbooth. Here also lodged the Chancellor Thirlstain, in January 1591, while the king and queen were the guests of Nicol Edward.[178] It must be understood that these visits of royalty were less considered in the light of an honour than of a tax. The king in those times went to live at the board of a wealthy subject when his own table happened to be scantily furnished; which was too often the case with poor King James.
On the east side of the wynd, nearly opposite to Lockhart’s Court, was a good house,[179] which, early in the last century, was possessed by James Erskine of Grange, best known by his judicial title of Lord Grange, and the brother of John, Earl of Mar. This gentleman has acquired an unhappy notoriety in consequence of his treatment of his wife. He was externally a professor of ultra-evangelical views of religion, and a patron of the clergy on that side, yet in his private life is understood to have been far from exemplary. The story of Lady Grange, as Mrs Erskine was called, had a character of romance about it which has prevented it from being forgotten. It also reflects a curious light upon the state of manners in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. The lady was a daughter of that Chiesly of Dalry whom we have already seen led by an insane violence of temper to commit one of the most atrocious of murders.
STORY OF LADY GRANGE.[180]
Lord and Lady Grange had been married upwards of twenty years, and had had several children, when, in 1730, a separation was determined on between them. It is usually difficult in such cases to say in what degree the parties are respectively blamable; how far there have been positive faults on one side, and want of forbearance on the other, and so forth. If we were to believe the lady in this instance, there had been love and peace for twenty years, when at length Lord Grange took a sudden dislike to his wife, and would no longer live with her. He, on the other hand, speaks of having suffered long from her ‘unsubduable rage and madness,’ and of having failed in all his efforts to bring her to a reasonable conduct. There is too much reason to believe that the latter statement is in the main true; although, were it more so, it would still leave Lord Grange unjustifiable in the measures which he took with respect to his wife. It is traditionally stated that in their unhappy quarrels the lady did not scruple to remind her husband whose daughter she was—thus hinting at what she was capable of doing if she thought herself deeply aggrieved. However all this might be, in the year 1730 a separation was agreed to (with great reluctance on the part of the lady), his lordship consenting to give her a hundred a year for her maintenance so long as she should continue to live apart from him.
After spending some months in the country, Lady Grange returned to Edinburgh, and took a lodging near her husband’s house, for the purpose, as she tells us, of endeavouring to induce him to take her back, and that she might occasionally see her children. According to Lord Grange, she began to torment him by following him and the children on the street ‘in a scandalous and shameful manner,’ and coming to his house, and calling reproaches to him through the windows,[181] especially when there was company with him. He thus writes: ‘In his house, at the bottom of Niddry’s Wynd, where there is a court through which one enters the house, one time among others, when it was full of chairs, chairmen, and footmen, who attended the company that were with himself, or his sister Lady Jane Paterson, then keeping house together, she came into this court, and among that mob shamelessly cried up to the windows injurious reproaches, and would not go away, though entreated, till, hearing the late Lord Lovat’s voice, who was visiting Mr E——, and seeing two of his servants among the other footmen, “Oh,” said she, “is your master here?” and instantly ran off.’ He speaks of her having attacked him one day in church; at another time she forced him to take refuge with his son in a tavern for two hours. She even threatened to assault him on the bench, ‘which he every day expected; for she professed that she had no shame.’
The traditionary account of Lady Grange represents her fate as having been at last decided by her threatening to expose her husband to the government for certain treasonable practices. It would now appear that this was partially true. In his statement, Lord Grange tells us that he had some time before gone to London to arrange the private affairs of the Countess of Mar, then become unable to conduct them herself, and he had sent an account of his procedure to his wife, including some reflections on a certain great minister (doubtless Walpole), who had thwarted him much, and been of serious detriment to the interests of his family in this matter. This document she retained, and she now threatened to take it to London and use it for her husband’s disadvantage, being supported in the design by several persons with whom she associated. While denying that he had been concerned in anything treasonable, Lord Grange says, ‘he had already too great a load of that great minister’s wrath on his back to stand still and see more of it fall upon him by the treachery and madness of such a wife and such worthy confederates.’ The lady had taken a seat in a stage-coach for London.[182] Lord Grange caused a friend to go and make interest to get her money returned, and the seat let to another person; in which odd proceeding he was successful. Thus was the journey stayed for the meantime; but the lady declared her resolution to go as soon as possible. ‘What,’ says Lord Grange, ‘could a man do with such a wife? There was great reason to think she would daily go on to do mischief to her family, and to affront and bring a blot on her children, especially her daughters. There were things that could not be redressed in a court of justice, and we had not then a madhouse to lock such unhappy people up in.’
The result of his lordship’s deliberations was a plan for what he calls ‘sequestrating’ his wife. It appears to have been concerted between himself and a number of Highland chiefs, including, above all, the notorious Lord Lovat.[183] We now turn to the lady’s narrative, which proceeds to tell that, on the evening of the 22nd of January 1732, a party of Highlandmen, wearing the livery of Lord Lovat, made their way into her lodgings, and forcibly seized her, throwing her down and gagging her, then tying a cloth over her head, and carrying her off as if she had been a corpse. At the bottom of the stair was a chair containing a man, who took the hapless lady upon his knees, and held her fast in his arms till they had got to a place in the outskirts of the town. Then they took her from the chair, removed the cloth from her head, and mounted her upon a horse behind a man, to whom she was tied; after which the party rode off ‘by the lee light of the moon,’ to quote the language of the old ballads, whose incidents the present resembles in character.