By Scottish bards of highest fame,
Wise Hawthornden and Stirling’s lord.’
The following letter to Sir Archibald from his friend Sir James Balfour, Lord Lyon, occurs amongst the manuscript stores of the latter gentleman in the Advocates’ Library:
‘To Sir Archibald Achesone,
one of the Secretaries of Staite.
‘Worthy Sir—Your letters, full of Spartanical brevity to the first view, bot, againe overlooked, Demosthenicall longe; stuffed full of exaggerations and complaints; the yeast of your enteirest affections, sent to quicken a slumbring friend as you imagine, quho nevertheless remains vigilant of you and of the smallest matters, which may aney wayes adde the least rill of content to the ocean of your happiness; quherfor you may show your comerad, and intreat him from me, as from one that trewly loves and honors his best pairts, that now he vold refraine, both his tonge and pen, from these quhirkis and obloquies, quherwith he so often uses to stain the name of grate personages, for hardly can he live so reteiredly, in so voluble ane age, without becoming at one tyme or uther obnoxious to the blow of some courtier. So begging God to bless you, I am your—
Ja. Balfour.
‘London, 9 Apryll 1631.’
Twenty years before the Duchess of Gordon lived in the venerable house at the head of the close, a preceding dowager resided in another part of the town. This was the distinguished Lady Elizabeth Howard (daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, by Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Marquis of Worcester), who occasioned so much disturbance in the end of Queen Anne’s reign by the Jacobite medal which she sent to the Faculty of Advocates. Her grace lived in a house at the Abbeyhill, where, as we are informed by Wodrow, in a tone of pious horror,[249] she openly kept a kind of college for instructing young people in Jesuitism and Jacobitism together. In this labour she seems to have been assisted by the Duchess of Perth, a kindred soul, whose enthusiasm afterwards caused the ruin of her family, by sending her son into the insurrection of 1745.[250] The Duchess of Gordon died here in 1732. I should suppose the house to have been that respectable old villa, at the extremity of the suburb of Abbeyhill, in which the late Baron Norton, of the Court of Exchequer, lived for many years. It was formerly possessed by Baron Mure, who, during the administration of the Earl of Bute, exercised the duties and dispensed the patronage of the sous-ministre for Scotland, under the Hon. Stuart Mackenzie, younger brother of the Premier. This was of course in its turn the court of Scotland; and from the description of a gentleman old enough to remember attending the levees (Sir W. M. Bannatyne), I should suppose that it was as much haunted by suitors of all kinds as ever were the more elegant halls of Holyrood House. Baron Mure, who was the personal friend of Earl Bute, died in 1774.