[Illustration: Doorway of Duke of Gordon’s House.
Now built into School in Boswell’s Court.]
Tradition points out, as the residence of the Gordon family, a house,
or rather range of buildings, situated between Blair’s and Brown’s
Closes, being almost the first mass of building in the Castle-hill
Street on the right-hand side. The southern portion is a structure
of lofty and massive form, battlemented at top, and looking out upon
a garden which formerly stretched down to the old town-wall near
the Grassmarket, but is now crossed by the access from the King’s
Bridge.[8] From the style of building, I should be disposed to assign
it a date a little subsequent to the Restoration. There are, however,
no authentic memorials respecting the alleged connection of the
Gordon family with this house,[9] unless we are to consider as of
that character a coronet resembling that of a marquis, flanked by two
deer-hounds, the well-known supporters of this noble family, which
figures over a finely moulded door in Blair’s Close.[10] The coronet
will readily be supposed to point to the time when the _Marquis of
Huntly_ was the principal honour of the family—that is, previous to
1684, when the title of Duke of Gordon was conferred.[11]
[Illustration: DUKE OF GORDON’S HOUSE.