[19] Not improbably this was done in a spirit of literal obedience to the injunction (Matthew vi. 6): ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.’ Commentators on this passage mention that every Jewish house had a place of secret devotion built over the porch.
[20] When Colonel Gardiner occupied it the house was known as Olive Bank. It was later changed to Bankton House by Andrew Macdowall, who, when raised to the Bench in 1755, took the title of Lord Bankton.
[21] Bankton House has been burned down and rebuilt since this was written.
[22] History of Edinburgh, p. 205, note.
[23] Before Major Weir took up house in the West Bow he is said to have lodged in the Cowgate, where he had as a fellow-lodger the fanatic Mitchell (Ravaillac redivivus), who attempted to shoot Archbishop Sharpe.
[24] Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till 1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662-73. It was he who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of London.
[25] The Rev. Mr Frazer, minister of Wardlaw, in his Divine Providences (MS. Adv. Lib.), dated 1670.
[26] Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.
[27] The causeway. A skirmish fought between the Hamiltons and Douglases, upon the High Street of Edinburgh, in the year 1515, was popularly termed Cleanse the Causeway.
[28] Cane.