[10] A Board-school now occupies the site of the mansion. The doorway referred to is rebuilt into the school-house.
[11] George, sixth Earl of Huntly, took his last illness, June 1636, in ‘his house in the Canongate.’ George, the first duke, who had held out the Castle at the Revolution, died December 1716, at his house in the Citadel of Leith, where he appears to have occasionally resided for some years. I should suppose the house on the Castle-hill to have been inhabited by the family in the interval.
The Citadel seems to have been a little nest of aristocracy, of the Cavalier party. In 1745 one of its inhabitants was Dame Magdalen Bruce of Kinross, widow of the baronet who had assisted in the Restoration. Here lived with her the Rev. Robert Forbes, Episcopal minister of Leith [afterwards Bishop of Orkney], from whose collections regarding Charles Edward and his adventures a volume of extracts was published by me in 1834. [The Lyon in Mourning is here referred to, from which Dr Chambers published a number of the narratives in his Jacobite Memoirs (1834), and from which he also utilised some information of the Rebellion of 1745 in the preparation of his History of the Rebellion. At his death he bequeathed the work to the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, where it now remains. It consists of eight small octavo volumes of manuscript of about two hundred pages, each bound in black leather, with blackened edges, and around the title-page of each volume a deep black border. The collection was the work of the Rev. Robert Forbes, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who became in 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness. It was treasured by his widow for thirty years, and then bought by Sir Henry Stewart of Allanton in 1806. Dr Robert Chambers unearthed it for historical purposes, and later purchased it from Sir Henry Stewart. Some relics which Forbes succeeded in obtaining from his correspondents—such as a piece of the Prince’s garter, a piece of the gown he wore as Betty Burke, and of the string of the apron he then had on, a fragment of a waistcoat worn by the Prince, and other things—were preserved on the inside of some of the boards of the volumes. The Lyon in Mourning was edited by Mr Henry Paton from the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, and published in three volumes by the Scottish History Society (1895).] Throughout those troublous days, a little Episcopal congregation was kept together in Leith; their place of worship being the first floor of an old, dull-looking house in Queen Street (dated 1615), the lower floor of which was, in my recollection, a police-office.
[12] Webster’s Close became Brown’s Close when the property changed hands, and two brothers of that name occupied the house. To Brown’s Close the recently formed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland removed in 1794 from Gosford’s Close, because the latter was too narrow to admit of the members being carried to the place of meeting in sedan-chairs.
[13] Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the widow’s allowance from this fund nearly equalled them. Such was the case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him, Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.
[14] ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our lady in the void spaces.’—Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume, 1844.
[15] Keith’s History.
[16] The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.
[17] Fellows.
[18] Busy.