On the right of the picture rises the Canongate Tolbooth with its conical roof and projecting clock, reminding one strongly of French architecture. The spire showing in the distance belongs to the Tolbooth Church, at the top of Lawnmarket.
the day the Treaty of the Union was passed. All Edinburgh had gathered at the Parliament House, many in order to mob the promoters of the hated measure, and the Canongate was left silent and deserted. The Marquis of Queensberry was prominent among those who had brought about the Union; and, when he returned home in triumph with his family and household, it was to find that in their absence the gigantic idiot son, Lord Drumlanrig, had escaped from his darkened prison-room, had wandered through the empty house till he came to the kitchen, and had there found the little turnspit turning the joint roasting for dinner. He had taken the joint from the fire, killed and spitted the child, and was devouring the half-roasted body. “This horrid act of his child was, according to the common sort of people, the judgment of God upon him for his wicked concern in the Union.”[45]
A pleasanter memory of Queensberry House is of
... Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untamed,
who was the patroness of the poet Gay.
The Canongate Tolbooth, with its barred windows, square tower, and turrets, forms to-day a picturesque and noticeable feature just where the Canongate ends.
Close to it is the gem of all the Edinburgh closes,—Whitehorse Close,—with its famous old inn with overhanging timber porches and its flight of steps branching to left and right.[46] This very fine old close is still intact,—has indeed been lately renovated. There is a story told that it was here that the fourteen Covenanting lords gathered to ride to Berwick in obedience to King Charles’s summons, and the Edinburgh citizens filled the court and prevented them, lest evil communications should corrupt good manners, and Montrose was the only one who got through the press and rode to his King. But, as a matter of fact, Loudon and Lothian also went to Berwick; and it is probable that Argyle and the other ten were inspired by other motives than fear of a street crowd for their refusal to go. The palace of John Paterson, the fifth of the Established Episcopalian Bishops of Edinburgh, a stately old mansion with a stone turnpike stair, is within Whitehorse Close. It is still called “the Bishop’s palace,” though many who call it so are unaware what manner of Bishop had his home in it.
Almost the last building, before the street widens out in front of the palace, is the old Canongate Parish Church, where in Catholic days all the ancient Guilds had each its pew, and in whose “God’s acre” so many of Edinburgh’s most famous and worthy citizens lie at rest, at the foot of the town where they spent their days.