On the south side of the Canongate are the three great houses: Moray House; a House “wi’oot a name” or a history, but with three carved Latin mottoes, and the date 1570 right across its frontage; and Queensberry House. Between these are several wonderfully interesting old buildings with rounded turrets containing turnpike stairs, lit by strongly barred windows.
On the north side of the Canongate, besides innumerable closes, all with interesting stories, are the Canongate Tolbooth, Whitehorse Inn, and the Canongate Parish Church.
Moray House was built in the reign of Charles I. by Lady Home (sister of the Countess of Moray), and is beautiful architecturally as well as interesting historically. Here Cromwell stayed during his first visit to Edinburgh in the summer of 1648; and the Cavalier party “talked very loud that he did communicate,” in Moray House, to the Marquis of Argyle and other disloyal peers and clergy, “his design in reference to the King.” But Moray House is chiefly notorious for its Balcony Scene. On Saturday, 15th May 1650, the Marquis of Argyle was attending the marriage festivities of his son, Lord Lorn, and the Earl of Moray’s daughter; and on that day the great Montrose was dragged on a hurdle through the streets of Edinburgh to the Tolbooth, amid all the insults that the cruelty of the Covenanting rabble could devise.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.[44]
As the procession passed Moray House, the entire wedding party stepped out on to the balcony to exult over the fallen hero. It was an incident worthy of the French Revolution—the narrow street packed with a yelling and execrating populace, and in the midst of them that pale, proud, beautiful face of the vanquished royalist, and in the balcony above the gaily dressed group of wedding guests. The enemies looked at each other, and before the steady dignity of Montrose’s gaze Argyle turned away.
It was in a summer-house in the garden of Moray House that some of the signatures were affixed to the Treaty of Union in 1707, though others were signed in the greater secrecy of a cellar in the High Street.
In Queensberry House a horrible tragedy took place
