Читать книгу Traditions of Edinburgh - Robert Chambers - Страница 35

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Several houses in the neighbourhood of the Old Bank Close served to give a respectful notion of the wealth and domestic state of certain merchants of an early age. Immediately to the westward, in Brodie’s Close, was the mansion of William Little of Liberton, bearing date 1570. This was an eminent merchant, and the founder of a family now represented by Mr Little Gilmour of the Inch, in whose possession this mansion continued under entail, till purchased and taken down by the Commissioners of Improvements in 1836. About 1780 it was the residence of the notorious Deacon Brodie, of whom something may be said elsewhere. Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, mentioned a few pages back as the original owner of the old house in Lady Stair’s Close, was another affluent trafficker of that age.

In Riddel’s Close, Lawnmarket, there is an enclosed court, evidently intended to be capable of defence. It is the place where John Macmoran, a rich merchant of the time of James VI., lived and carried on his business. In those days even schoolboys trusted to violence for attaining their ends. The youths of the High School,[58] being malcontent about their holidays, barred themselves up in the school with some provisions, and threatened not to surrender till the magistrates should comply with their demands. John Macmoran, who held the office of one of the bailies, came with a posse to deal with the boys, but, finding them obdurate, ordered the door to be prised open with a joist. One within then fired a pistol at the bailie, who fell shot through the brain, to the horror of all beholders, including the schoolboys themselves, who with difficulty escaped the vengeance of the crowd assembled on the spot.

It was ascertained that the immediate author of the bailie’s death was William Sinclair, son of the chancellor of Caithness. There was a great clamour to have justice done upon him; but this was a point not easily attained, where a person of gentle blood was concerned, in the reign of James VI. The boy lived to be Sir William Sinclair of Mey, and, as such, was the ancestor of those who have, since 1789, borne the title of Earls of Caithness.

Bailie Macmoran’s House, Riddel’s Court.

A visit to the fine old mansion of Bailie Macmoran may be recommended. Its masonry is not without elegance. The lower floor of the building is now used as ‘The Mechanics’ Library.’[59] Macmoran’s house is in the floor above, reached by a stone stair, near the corner of the court. This dwelling offers a fine specimen of the better class of houses at the end of the sixteenth century. The marble jambs of the fireplaces and the carved stucco ceilings are quite entire. The larger room (occupied as a warehouse for articles of saddlery) is that in which took place two memorable royal banquets in 1598—the first on the 24th of April to James VI. with his queen, Anne of Denmark, and her brother the Duke of Holstein; and the second on the 2nd of May, more specially to the Duke of Holstein, but at which their Majesties were present. These banquets, held, as Birrel says, with ‘grate solemnitie and mirrines,’ were at the expense of the city. It need hardly be said that James VI. was fond of this species of entertainment, and the house of Macmoran was probably selected for the purpose not only because he was treasurer to the corporation and a man of some mark, but because his dwelling offered suitable accommodation. The general aspect of the enclosed court which affords access to Macmoran’s house has undergone little or no alteration since these memorable banquets; and in visiting the place, with its quietude and seclusion, one almost feels as if stepping back into the sixteenth century. Considering the destruction all around from city improvements, it is fortunate that this remarkable specimen of an old mansion should have been left so singularly entire. One of the higher windows continues to exemplify an economical arrangement which prevailed about the time of the Restoration—namely, to have the lower half composed of wooden shutters.[60]

The grandest of all these old Edinburgh merchants was William Dick, ancestor of the Dicks, baronets of Prestonfield. In his youth, and during the lifetime of his father, he had been able to lend £6000 to King James, to defray the expense of his journey to Scotland. The affairs in which he was engaged would even now be considered important. For example, he farmed the customs on wine at £6222, and the crown rents of Orkney at £3000. Afterwards he farmed the excise. His fleets extended from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The immense wealth he acquired enabled him to purchase large estates. He himself reckoned his property as at one time equal to two hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Strange to say, this great merchant came to poverty, and died in a prison. The reader of the Waverley novels may remember David Deans telling how his father ‘saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o’ Provost Dick’s window intill the carts that carried them to the army at Dunse Law’—‘if ye winna believe his testimony, there is the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths—I think it’s a claith-merchant’s buith the day.’ This refers to large advances which Dick made to the Covenanters to enable them to carry on the war against the king. The house alluded to is actually now a claith-merchant’s booth, having long been in the possession of Messrs John Clapperton & Company. Two years after Dunse Law, Dick gave the Covenanters 100,000 merks in one sum. Subsequently, being after all of royalist tendencies, he made still larger advances in favour of the Scottish government during the time when Charles II. was connected with it; and thus provoking the wrath of the English Commonwealth, his ruin was completed by the fines to which he was subjected by that party when triumphant, amounting in all to £65,000.

Poor Sir William Dick—for he had been made a baronet by Charles I.—went to London to endeavour to recover some part of his lost means. When he represented the indigence to which he had been reduced, he was told that he was always able to procure pie-crust when other men could not get bread. There was, in fact, a prevalent idea that he possessed some supernatural means—such as the philosopher’s stone—of acquiring money. (Pie-crust came to be called Sir William Dick’s Necessity.) The contrary was shown when the unfortunate man died soon after in a prison in Westminster. There is a picture in Prestonfield House, near Edinburgh, the seat of his descendant, representing him in this last retreat in a mean dress, surrounded by his numerous hapless family. A rare pamphlet, descriptive of his case, presents engravings of three such pictures; one exhibiting him on horseback, attended by guards as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich ships at Leith; another as a prisoner in the hands of the bailiffs; the third as dead in prison. A more memorable example of the instability of fortune does not occur in our history. It seems completely to realise the picture in Job (chap. xxvii.): ‘The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm, hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.’

The fortunes of the family were restored by Sir William’s grandson, Sir James, a remarkably shrewd man, who was likewise a merchant in Edinburgh. There is a traditionary story that this gentleman, observing the utility of manure, and that the streets of Edinburgh were loaded with it, to the detriment of the comfort of the inhabitants, offered to relieve the town of this nuisance on condition that he should be allowed, for a certain term of years, to carry it away gratis. Consent was given, and the Prestonfield estate became, in consequence, like a garden. The Duke of York had a great affection for Sir James Dick, and used to walk through the Park to visit him at his house very frequently. Hence, according to the report of the family, the way his Royal Highness took came to be called The Duke’s Walk; afterwards a famous resort for the fighting of duels. Sir James became Catholic, and, while provost in 1681, had his house burned over his head by the collegianers; but it was rebuilt at the public expense. His grandson, Sir Alexander Dick, is referred to in kindly terms in Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides as a venerable man of studious habits and a friend of men of letters. The reader will probably learn with some surprise that though Sir William’s descendants never recovered any of the money lent by him to the State, a lady of his family, living in 1844, was in the enjoyment of a pension with express reference to that ancient claim.