[221] The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank,
was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the
older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to
Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike,
the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by
Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than
enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.
[222] It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh
Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes:
‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket
No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up,
hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid,
and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger,
No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had
that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have
the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had
spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt
her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth,
rather too liberally and too loudly.’
[THE BISHOP’S LAND.
On the north side of the High Street, a hundred yards or so below the
North Bridge, there existed previous to 1813 an unusually large and
handsome old _land_ or building named the _Bishop’s Land_. It rested
upon an arcade or _piazza_, as it is called, and the entry in the first
floor bore the ordinary legend: