The restrictions imposed upon a city requiring defence appear as one of
the forms of misery leading to strange associations. We become, in a
special degree, sensible of this truth when we see the house of a royal
personage sunk amidst the impurities of a narrow close in the Old Town
of Edinburgh. Such was literally the case of an aged pile of buildings
on the north side of the Castle-hill, behind the front line of the
street, and accessible by Blyth’s, Nairn’s, and Tod’s Closes, which was
declared by tradition to have been the residence of Mary de Guise, the
widow of James V., and from 1554 to 1560 regent of this realm.
[Illustration: Ancient Pile of Buildings, North Side of Castle-Hill.]
Descending the first of these alleys about thirty yards, we came to
a dusky, half-ruinous building on the left-hand side, presenting one
or two lofty windows and a doorway, surrounded by handsome mouldings;
the whole bearing that appearance which says: ‘There is here something
that has been of consequence, all haggard and disgraced though it now
be.’ Glancing to the opposite side of the close, where stood another
portion of the same building, the impression was confirmed by further
appearances of a goodly style of architecture. These were, in reality,
the principal portions of the palace of the Regent Mary; the former
being popularly described as her _house_, the latter as her _oratory_
or chapel. The close terminated under a portion of the building; and
when the visitor made his way so far, he found an exterior presented
northwards, with many windows, whence of old a view must have been
commanded, first of the gardens descending to the North Loch, and
second, of the Firth of Forth and Fife. One could easily understand
that, when the gardens existed, the north side of the house might have
had many pleasant apartments, and been, upon the whole, tolerable as
a place of residence, albeit the access by a narrow alley could never
have been agreeable. Latterly the site of the upper part of the garden
was occupied by a brushmaker’s workshops and yard, while the lower was
covered by the Earthen Mound. In the wall on the east side there was
included, as a mere portion of the masonry, a stray stone, which had
once been an architrave or lintel; it contained, besides an armorial
device flanked by the initials A. A., the legend NOSCE TEIPSUM, and the
date 1557.
Reverting to the door of the queen’s house, which was simply the access
of a common stair, we there found an ornamented architrave, bearing the
legend,