From the same fund came the expenses for the king’s visit to Edinburgh in 1641. When the Scottish parliament in the same year mustered ten thousand men to go to Ireland and suppress the rebel Catholics, the little army could not have marched without the meal which Sir William Dick furnished. His national loans afterwards extended to transactions in which the credit of the English parliament was concerned; and here ruin overtook him. The time came when such loans were not recognised, or at least met with but slight reverence; and this Scottish Crœsus—a national creditor to the extent of sixty-four thousand pounds—actually spent his last days in a jail at Westminster, under something like a want of the common necessaries of life. While it appears that so many noted merchants stood up for the popular cause, that of royalty was espoused by at least one eminent trader, namely, Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, a cadet of the noble house of Gray, and direct ancestor of the present lord. Sir William, whose house, with his arms and initials, and the date 1622, may still be seen in Lady Stair’s Close, Lawnmarket, is said to have conducted foreign trade upon a large scale, considering the times, and he became, for his age, extremely rich. For corresponding with the Marquis of Montrose, a fine of a hundred thousand merks was imposed upon him, and he actually paid thirty-five thousand, being nearly two thousand pounds sterling. When one of his sons married the Mistress of Gray, Sir William gave him the handsome endowment of 232,000 merks. Sir William Dick and Sir William Gray are perhaps the first commercial men of our city who reached the character of merchant-princes.