[Illustration]
In the Canongate there is a house which has had the fortune to be
connected with more than one of the most interesting points in our
history. It is usually styled Moray House, being the entailed property
of the noble family of Moray. The large proportions and elegant
appearance of this mansion distinguish it from all the surrounding
buildings, and in the rear (1847) there is a fine garden, descending in
the old fashion by a series of terraces. Though long deserted by the
Earls of Moray, it has been till a recent time kept in the best order,
being occupied by families of respectable character.[242]
This house was built in the early part of the reign of Charles I.
(about 1628) by Mary, Countess of Home, then a widow. Her ladyship’s
initials, M. H., appear, in cipher fashion, underneath her coronet upon
various parts of the exterior; and over one of the principal windows
towards the street there is a lozenge shield, containing the two lions
rampant which form the coat armorial of the Home family. Lady Home was
an English lady, being the daughter of Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley.
She seems to have been unusually wealthy for the dowager of a Scottish
earl, for in 1644 the English Parliament repaid seventy thousand
pounds which she had lent to the Scottish Covenanting Government; and
she is found in the same year lending seven thousand to aid in paying
the detachment of troops which that Government had sent to Ireland.
She was also a sufferer, however, by the civil war, in as far as
Dunglass House, which was blown up in 1640, by accident, when in the
hands of the Covenanters, belonged to her in liferent. To her affluent
circumstances, and the taste which she probably brought with her from
her native country, may be ascribed the superior style of this mansion,
which not only displays in the outside many traces of the elegant
architecture which prevailed in England in the reign of James I., but
contains two state apartments, decorated in the most elaborate manner,
both in the walls and ceilings, with the favourite stucco-work of
that reign. On the death of Lady Home the house passed (her ladyship
having no surviving male issue) to her daughters and co-heiresses,
Margaret, Countess of Moray, and Anne, Countess (afterwards Duchess)
of Lauderdale, between whom the entire property of their father, the
first Earl of Home, appears to have been divided, his title going into
another line. By an arrangement between the two sisters, the house
became, in 1645, the property of the Countess of Moray and her son
James, Lord Doune.
It stood in this condition as to ownership, though still popularly
called ‘Lady Home’s Lodging,’ when, in the summer of 1648, Oliver
Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. Cromwell had then just
completed the overthrow of the army of the _Engagement_—a gallant
body of troops which had been sent into England by the more Cavalier
party of the Scottish Covenanters, in the hope of rescuing the king
from the hands of the sectaries. The victorious general, with his
companion Lambert, took up his quarters in this house, and here
received the visits of some of the leaders of the less loyal party of
the Covenanters—the Marquis of Argyll, the Chancellor Loudoun, the
Earl of Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho, and Burleigh, and the
Reverend Messrs David Dickson, Robert Blair, and James Guthrie. ‘What
passed among them,’ says Bishop Henry Guthrie in his _Memoirs_, ‘came
not to be known infallibly; but it was talked very loud that he did
communicate to them his design in reference to the king, and had their
assent thereto.’ It is scarcely necessary to remark that this was
probably no more than a piece of Cavalier scandal, for there is no
reason to believe that Cromwell, if he yet contemplated the death of
the king, would have disclosed his views to men still so far tinctured
with loyalty as those enumerated. Cromwell’s object in visiting
Edinburgh on this occasion and in holding these conferences, was
probably limited to the reinstatement of the ultra-Presbyterian party
in the government, from which the Duke of Hamilton and other loyalists
had lately displaced it.
When, in 1650, the Lord Lorn, eldest son of the Marquis of Argyll, was
married to Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Moray, the
wedding feast ‘stood,’ as contemporary writers express it, at the Earl
of Moray’s house in the Canongate. The event so auspicious to these
great families was signalised by a circumstance of a very remarkable
kind. A whole week had been passed in festivity by the wedded pair
and their relations, when, on Saturday the 18th of May, the Marquis
of Montrose was brought to Edinburgh, an excommunicated and already
condemned captive, having been taken in the north in an unsuccessful
attempt to raise a Cavalier party for his young and exiled prince.
When the former relative circumstances of Argyll and Montrose are
called to mind—when it is recollected that they had some years before
struggled for an ascendancy in the civil affairs of Scotland, that
Montrose had afterwards chased Argyll round and round the Highlands,
burned and plundered his country undisturbed, and on one occasion
overthrown his forces in a sanguinary action, while Argyll looked on
from a safe distance at sea—the present relative circumstances of
the two chiefs become a striking illustration of the vicissitudes in
personal fortune that characterise a time of civil commotion. Montrose,
after riding from Leith on a sorry horse, was led into the Canongate by
the Watergate, and there placed upon a low cart, driven by the common
executioner. In this ignominious fashion he was conducted up the street
towards the prison, in which he was to have only two days to live, and
in passing along was necessarily brought under the walls and windows of
Moray House. On his approach to that mansion, the Marquis of Argyll,
his lady, and children, together with the whole of the marriage-party,
left their banqueting, and stepping out to a balcony which overhangs
the street, there planted themselves to gaze on the prostrated enemy of
their house and cause. Here, indeed, they had the pleasure of seeing
Montrose in all external circumstances reduced beneath their feet; but
they had not calculated on the strength of nature which enabled that
extraordinary man to overcome so much of the bitterness of humiliation
and of death. He is said to have gazed upon them with so much serenity
that they shrank back with some degree of discomposure, though not till
the marchioness had expressed her spite at the fallen hero by spitting
at him—an act which in the present age will scarcely be credible,
though any one well acquainted with the history of the seventeenth
century will have too little reason to doubt it.
In a Latin manuscript of this period, the gardens connected with the
house of the Earl of Moray are spoken of as ‘of such elegance, and
cultivated with so much care, as to vie with those of warmer countries,
and perhaps even of England itself. And here,’ pursues the writer, ‘you
may see how much the art and industry of man may avail in supplying the
defects of nature. Scarcely any one would believe it possible to give
so much beauty to a garden in this frigid clime.’ One reason for the
excellence of the garden may have been its southern exposure. On the
uppermost of its terraces there is a large and beautiful thorn, with
pensile leaves; on the second there are some fruit-trees, the branches
of which have been caused to spread out in a particular way, so as to
form a kind of cup, possibly for the reception of a pleasure-party,
for such fantastic twistings of nature were not uncommon among our
ancestors. In the lowest level of the garden there is a little
receptacle for water, beside which is the statue of a fishing-boy,
having a basket of fish at his feet, and a _clam-shell_ inverted
upon his head.[243] Here is also a small building, surmounted by two
lions holding female shields, and which may therefore be supposed
contemporaneous with the house: this was formerly a summer-house,
but has latterly been expanded into the character of a conservatory.
Tradition vaguely reports it as the place where the Union between
England and Scotland was signed; though there is also a popular story
of that fact having been accomplished in a _laigh shop_ of the High
Street (marked No. 117), at one time a tavern, and known as the _Union
Cellar_.[244] Probably the rumour, in at least the first instance,
refers only to private arrangements connected with the passing of
the celebrated statute in question. The Chancellor Earl of Seafield
inhabited Moray House at that time on lease, and nothing could be more
likely than that he should there have after-dinner consultations on the
pending measure, which might in the evening be adjourned to this garden
retreat.
It would appear that about this period the garden attached to the house
was a sort of a public promenade or lounging-place; as was also the
garden connected with Heriot’s Hospital. In this character it forms a
scene in the licentious play called _The Assembly_, written in 1692
by Dr Pitcairn. _Will_, ‘a discreet smart gentleman,’ as he is termed
in the prefixed list of _dramatis personæ_, but in reality a perfect
debauchee, first makes an appointment with Violetta, his mistress, to
meet her in this place; and as she is under the charge of a sourly
devout aunt, he has to propound the matter in metaphorical language.
Pretending to expound a particular passage in the Song of Solomon for
the benefit of the dame, he thus gives the hint to her young protégée:
‘_Will._ “Come, my beloved, let us walk in the fields, let us lodge in
the villages.” The same metaphor still. The kirk not having the liberty
of bringing her servant to her mother’s house, resolveth to meet him in
the villages, such as the Canongate, in respect of Edinburgh; and the
vineyard, such as _my Lady Murray’s Yards_, to use a homely comparison.
‘_Old Lady._ A wondrous young man this!
* * * * *
‘_Will._ The eighth chapter towards the close: “Thou that dwellest in
the gardens, cause me to hear thy voice.”
‘_Violetta._ That’s still alluding to the metaphor of a gallant, who,
by some signs, warns his mistress to make haste—a whistle or so. The
same with early in the former chapter; that is to say, to-morrow by six
o’clock. Make haste to accomplish our loves.
‘_Old L._ Thou art a hopeful girl; I hope God has blest my pains on
thee.’
In terms of this curious assignation, the third act opens in a walk in
Lady Murray’s Yards, where Will meets his beloved Violetta. After a
great deal of badinage, in the style of Dryden’s comedies, which were
probably Dr Pitcairn’s favourite models, the dialogue proceeds in the
following style:
‘_Will._ I’ll marry you at the rights, if you can find in your heart to
give yourself to an honest fellow of no great fortune.
‘_Vio._ In truth, sir, methinks it were fully as much for my future
comfort to bestow myself, and any little fortune I have, upon you, as
some reverend spark in a band and short cloak, with the patrimony of a
good gift of prayer, and as little sense as his father, who was hanged
in the Grassmarket for murdering the king’s officers, had of honesty.
‘_Will._ Then I must acknowledge, my dear madam, I am most damnably
in love with you, and must have you by foul or fair means; choose you
whether.
‘_Vio._ I’ll give you fair-play in an honest way.
‘_Will._ Then, madam, I can command a parson when I please; and if you
be half so kind as I could wish, we’ll take a hackney, and trot up to
some honest curate’s house: besides, a guinea or so will be a charity
to him perhaps.
‘_Vio._ Hold a little; I am hardly ready for that yet,’ &c.
After the departure of this hopeful couple, Lord Huffy and Lord
Whigriddin, who are understood to have been intended for Lord Leven
(son of the Earl of Melville) and the Earl of Crawford, enter the
gardens, and hold some discourse of a different kind.