[49] Lady Primrose’s story forms the groundwork of one of Sir Walter Scott’s best short stories, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.
[50] This story loses its point by the discovery made in St Peter’s upon Cornhill, London, of the marriage register of the second Earl of Stair with Lady Primrose, 27th March 1708. Thus they were married persons several years before the presumed date of this story. Miss Rosaline Masson announced the discovery in an article in Chambers’s Journal for 1912, entitled, ‘The Secret Marriage of Lady Primrose and John, Second Earl of Stair.’ She makes this comment: ‘The testimony of John Waugh, Parson, has lain buried for over two hundred years in the old Register in the city; but the tale, whispered one day, some time about the year 1714, in the High Street of Edinburgh, first among the strutting gallants and loungers at the Cross at noon, and later on, over the delicate tea-cups, in the gossipy gatherings of the fair sex—that tale was nowise buried. It has never died. Did not Kirkpatrick Sharpe repeat it, sixty years after Lady Stair’s death, to young Robert Chambers, at that time collecting material for his inimitable book, Traditions of Edinburgh?’ The article further tries to answer the question why the Earl of Stair and the young widow made this clandestine marriage, which gave opportunity for the story.
[51] Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls ‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In Lady Marie Stuart’s Household Book, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a dark skin.
[52] Raised to the Bench with the title of Lord Kerse.
[53] The lintel bearing this legend is preserved in a doorway at the top of the staircase of the Free Library, George IV. Bridge. The Cowgate portion of the Library building (1887-89) occupies the site of Sir Thomas Hope’s house.
[54] While King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope had the unique experience of pleading at the Bar before two of his sons who were judges—Lord Craighall and Lord Kerse. There is a tradition that when addressing the Court he remained covered, and that from this circumstance the Lord Advocates still have this privilege, although they do not exercise it. Probably the custom introduced by Sir Thomas Hope originated in his being an officer of state, which entitled him to sit in parliament wearing his hat, and he claimed the same privilege when appearing before the judges.
[55] See a Memoir by Sir Archibald Steuart Denham in the publications of the Maitland Club.
[56] The site of Chiesly’s house is that occupied by the Episcopal Church Training College in Orwell Place.
[57] In The Domestic Annals of Scotland the place of his execution is given as Drumsheugh, and Sir Walter Scott says he was hanged near his own house of Dalry.
[58] This was the first High School, built in 1578 in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, of which David Malloch, or Mallet, was janitor in 1717. The building faced the Canongate. In 1777 it was replaced by the building now facing Infirmary Street and used in connection with the university. It is this later building that is associated with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, and other eminent men of the last quarter of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth century.