Our surprise is naturally somewhat increased when we learn that the builder and first possessor of this house does not appear to have been a man of rank, or one likely to own unusual wealth. His name was Robert Gourlay, and his profession a humble one connected with the law—namely, that of a messenger-at-arms. In the second book of Charters in the Canongate council-house, Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, and commendator of Holyrood, gave the office of messenger or officer-at-arms to the Abbey to Robert Gourlay, messenger, ‘our lovit familiar servitor,’ with a salary of forty pounds, and other perquisites. This was the Robert Gourlay who built the noble tenement in the Old Bank Close; and through his official functions it came into connection with an interesting historical event. In May 1581, when the ex-Regent Morton was brought to Edinburgh to suffer death, he was—as we learn from the memoirs of Moyses, a contemporary—‘lodged in Robert Gourlay’s house, and there keeped by the waged men.’ Gourlay had been able to accommodate in his house those whom it was his professional duty to take in charge as prisoners. Here, then, must have taken place those remarkable conferences between Morton and certain clergymen, in which, with the prospect of death before him, he protested his innocence of Darnley’s death, while confessing to a foreknowledge of it. Morton must have resided in the house from May 29, when he arrived in Edinburgh, till June 2, when he fell under the stroke of the ‘Maiden.’ In the ensuing year, as we learn from the authority just quoted, De la Motte, the French ambassador, was lodged in ‘Gourlay’s House.’

David Gourlay—probably the individual whose initials appeared on the attic—described as son of John Gourlay, customer, and doubtless grandson of the first man Robert—disposed of the house in 1637 to Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall in liferent, and to his second son, Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse.[52] We may suppose ‘the Advocate’ to have thus provided a mansion for one of his children. A grandson in 1696 disposed of the upper floor to Hugh Blair, merchant in Edinburgh—the grandfather, I presume, of the celebrated Dr Hugh Blair.

This portion of the house was occupied early in the last century by Lord Aberuchil, one of King William’s judges, remarkable for the large fortune he accumulated. About 1780 his descendant, Sir James Campbell of Aberuchil, resided in it while educating his family. It was afterwards occupied by Robert Stewart, writer, extensively known in Perthshire by the name of Rob Uncle, on account of the immense number of his nephews and nieces, amongst the former of whom was the late worthy General Stewart of Garth, author of the work on the Highland regiments.

The building used by the bank was also a substantial one. Over the architrave was the legend:

SPES ALTERÆ VITÆ,

with a device emblematising the resurrection—namely, a couple of cross-bones with wheat-stalks springing from them, and the date 1588. Latterly it was occupied as the University Printing-office, and when I visited it in 1824 it contained an old wooden press, which was believed to be the identical one which Prince Charles carried with him from Glasgow to Bannockburn to print his gazettes, but then used as a proof-press, like a good hunter reduced to the sand-cart. This house was removed in 1834, having been previously sold by the Commissioners of Improvements for £150. The purchaser got a larger sum for a leaden roof unexpectedly found upon it. When the house was demolished, it was discovered that every window-shutter had a communication by wires with an intricate piece of machinery in the garret, designed to operate upon a bell hung at a corner on the outside, so that not a window could have been forced without giving an alarm.

In the Cowgate, little more than fifty yards from the site of this building, there is a bulky old mansion, believed to have been the residence of the celebrated King’s Advocate Hope, himself, the ancestor of all the considerable men of this name now in Scotland. One can easily see, amidst all the disgrace into which it has fallen, something remarkable in this house, with two entrances from the street, and two porte-cochères leading to other accesses in the rear. Over one door is the legend:

TECUM HABITA: 1616;[53]

over the other a half-obliterated line, known to have been

AT HOSPES HUMO.