[78] St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city
wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the
south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832
when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’
Library.
[79] Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with
water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.
[80] Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.
[81] The Wemysses’ footman was one of the few arrested on suspicion of
being a ringleader in the Porteous riot.
[82] John’s Coffee-house was then situated in the north-east corner of
Parliament Close.
[83] Baijen-hole, see note, p. 155.
[84] In the early times above referred to, £100 was accounted a
sufficient capital for a young goldsmith—being just so much as
purchased his furnace, tools, &c., served to fit up his shop, and
enabled him to enter the Incorporation, which alone required £40 out
of the £100. The stock with which George Heriot commenced business
at a much earlier period (1580)—said to have been about £200—must
therefore be considered a proof of the wealth of that celebrated
person’s family.
[85] Peter had, in early life, been kidnapped and sold to the
plantations. After spending some time among the North American Indians,
he came back to Scotland, and began business in Edinburgh as a vintner.
Robert Fergusson, in his poem entitled _The Rising of the Session_,
thus alludes to a little tavern he kept within the Parliament House:
‘This vacance is a heavy doom
On Indian Peter’s coffee-room,
For a’ his china pigs are toom;
Nor do we see
In wine the soukar biskets soom
As light’s a flee.’
Peter afterwards established a penny-post in Edinburgh, which became
so profitable in his hands that the General Post-office gave him a
handsome compensation for it. He was also the first to print a street
directory in Edinburgh. He died January 19, 1799.
[86] Provost Creech was the first who had the good taste to abandon the
practice.
[87] See _Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen_, vol. ii.
137 (1762).