The shop and workshop of George Heriot existed in this neighbourhood
till 1809, when the extension of the Advocates’ Library occasioned the
destruction of some interesting old _closes_ to the west of St Giles’s
Kirk, and altered all the features of this part of the town. There was
a line of three small shops, with wooden superstructures above them,
extending between the door of the Old Tolbooth and that of the _Laigh
Council-house_, which occupied the site of the present lobby of the
Signet Library. A narrow passage led between these shops and the west
end of St Giles’s; and George Heriot’s shop, being in the centre of the
three, was situated exactly opposite to the south window of the Little
Kirk. The back windows looked into an alley behind, called Beith’s or
Bess Wynd. In confirmation of this tradition, George Heriot’s name
was discovered upon the architrave of the door, being carved in the
stone, and apparently having served as his _sign_. Besides this curious
memorial, the booth was also found to contain his forge and bellows,
with a hollow stone, fitted with a stone cover or lid, which had been
used as a receptacle for and a means of extinguishing the living embers
of the furnace, upon closing the shop at night. All these curiosities
were bought by the late Mr E. Robertson of the Commercial Bank, who
had been educated in Heriot’s Hospital, and by him presented to the
governors, who ordered them to be carefully deposited and preserved
in the house, where they now remain. George Heriot’s shop was only
about seven feet square! Yet his master, King James, is said to have
sometimes visited him and been treated by him here. There is a story
that one day, when the goldsmith visited His Majesty at Holyrood, he
found him sitting beside a fire, which, being composed of perfumed
wood, cast an agreeable smell through the room. Upon George Heriot
remarking its pleasantness, the king told him that it was quite as
costly as it was fine. Heriot said that if His Majesty would come and
pay him a visit at his shop, he would show him a still more costly fire.
‘Indeed!’ said the king; ‘and I will.’ He accordingly paid the
goldsmith a visit, but was surprised to find only an ordinary fire. ‘Is
this, then, your fine fire?’ said he.
‘Wait a little,’ said George, ‘till I get my fuel.’ So saying, he took
from his bureau a bond for two thousand pounds which he had lent to the
king, and laying it in the fire, added: ‘Now, whether is your Majesty’s
fire or mine most expensive?’
‘Yours most certainly, Master Heriot,’ said the king.
Adjacent to George Heriot’s shop, and contiguous to the Laigh
Council-house, there was a tavern, in which a great deal of small legal
business used to be transacted in bygone times. Peter Williamson, an
original and singular person, who had long been in North America, and
therefore designated himself ‘from the other world,’ kept this house
for many years.[85] It served also as a sort of vestry to the Tolbooth
Church, and was the place where the magistrates took what was called
the _Deid-chack_—that is, a refreshment or dinner, of which those
dignitaries always partook after having attended an execution. The
_Deid-chack_ is now abjured, like many other of those fashions which
formerly rendered the office of a magistrate so much more comfortable
than it now is.[86]
The various kirks which compose St Giles’s had all different characters
in former times. The High Kirk had a sort of dignified aristocratic
character, approaching somewhat to prelacy, and was frequented only by
sound church-and-state men, who did not care so much for the sermon as
for the gratification of sitting in the same place with His Majesty’s
Lords of Council and Session and the magistrates of Edinburgh, and
who desired to be thought men of sufficient liberality and taste to
appreciate the prelections of Blair. The Old Kirk, in the centre of the
whole, was frequented by people who wished to have a sermon of good
divinity, about three-quarters of an hour long, and who did not care
for the darkness and dreariness of their temple. The Tolbooth Kirk was
the peculiar resort of a set of rigid Calvinists from the Lawnmarket
and the head of the Bow, termed the _Towbuith-Whigs_, who loved nothing
but _extempore_ evangelical sermons, and would have considered it
sufficient to bring the house down about their ears if the precentor
had ceased, for one verse, the old hillside fashion of reciting the
lines of the psalm before singing them. Dr Webster, of convivial
memory, was long one of the clergymen of this church, and deservedly
admired as a pulpit orator; though his social habits often ran nigh to
scandalise his devout and self-denying congregation.
The inhabitants and shopkeepers of the Parliament Square were in former
times very sociable and friendly as neighbours, and formed themselves
into a sort of society, which was long known by the name of _The
Parliament-Close Council_. Of this association there were from fifty to
a hundred members, who met once or twice a year at a dinner, when they
usually spent the evening, as the newspaper phrase goes, ‘in the utmost
harmony.’ The whim of this club consisted in each person assuming a
titular dignity at the dinner, and being so called all the year after
by his fellow-members. One was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, another
was Dean of Guild, some were bailies, others deacons, and a great
proportion state-officers. Sir William Forbes, who, with the kindness
of heart which characterised him, condescended to hold a place in this
assemblage of mummers, was for a long time _Member for the City_.
Previous to the institution of the police-court, a bailie of Edinburgh
used to sit, every Monday, at that part of the Outer Parliament House
where the statue of Lord Melville now stands, to hear and decide upon
small causes—such as prosecutions for scandals and defamation, or
cases of quarrels among the vulgar and the infamous. This judicature,
commonly called the _Dirt Court_, was chiefly resorted to by
washerwomen from Canonmills and the drunken ale-wives of the Canongate.
A list of Dirt-Court processes used always to be hung up on a board
every Monday morning at one of the pillars in the piazza at the outside
of the Parliament Square; and that part of the piazza, being the lounge
of two or three low pettifoggers who managed such pleas, was popularly
called the _Scoundrels’ Walk_. Early on Monday, it was usual to see one
or two threadbare personages, with prodigiously clean linen, bustling
about with an air of importance, and occasionally accosted by viragoes
with long-eared caps flying behind their heads. These were the agents
of the Dirt Court, undergoing conference with their clients.
There was something lofty and august about the Parliament Close, which
we shall scarcely ever see revived in any modern part of the town; so
dark and majestic were the buildings all round, and so finely did the
whole harmonise with the ancient cathedral which formed one of its
sides! Even the echoes of the Parliament Square had something grand in
them. Such, perhaps, were the feelings of William Julius Mickle when he
wrote a poem on passing through the Parliament Close of Edinburgh at
midnight,[87] of which the following is one of the best passages:
‘In the pale air sublime,
St Giles’s column rears its ancient head,
Whose builders many a century ago
Were mouldered into dust. Now, O my soul,
Be filled with sacred awe—I tread
Above our brave forgotten ancestors. Here lie
Those who in ancient days the kingdom ruled,
The counsellors and favourites of kings,
High lords and courtly dames, and valiant chiefs,
Mingling their dust with those of lowest rank
And basest deeds, and now unknown as they.’