of his day in Edinburgh, but disliked by the clergy, because of his carrying victual to Spain, thus endangering the souls of the Scottish mariners by contact with popery. His house is a good and not inelegant building forming a court, the entrance to which still exhibits the hooks for the massive gates by which it could be closed up at night and in times of danger. A stone projection over a window indicates an arrangement for pulleying up goods into an upper chamber. A large room or hall in which the queen’s brother, the Duke of Holstein, was entertained ‘with great solemnity and merriness’ in 1597, shews the wealthy state in which this merchant lived. John, who had been a servitor or dependent of the Regent Morton, whose treasures he assisted to conceal, was cut off in the middle of his prosperous career, by a pistol bullet fired at him by a High School boy, while he was exerting his authority as a magistrate in suppressing a barring-out. Near to Macmoran’s house, in what was latterly called the Old Bank Close, there stood till our own time the not less handsome establishment of a merchant named Robert Gourlay, bearing the date 1569. This was a large and, in some respects, elegant building, such as could not be constructed in our day for less than two thousand five hundred pounds. It had a ground-floor directly accessible from the close, and which we may presume to have been a store for unbroken bales and packages; then a first floor, which was probably the warehouse for wholesale and retail traffic—this had a stair-entrance for itself; next there was a second floor, accessible by its own stair likewise, and from which there was an inner stair enclosed in a hanging turret, giving access to two upper floors; these last three floors constituting the accommodation of the merchant’s family. We find that Gourlay, who had originally been a dependent of the Duke of Chastelherault, carried on a large business in the exporting of corn, doubtless importing in return the many various articles which he distributed from his first floor. It is to be feared that he and some of his contemporaries occasionally were indebted for large profits to favour purchased from the bad and ignorant governments of their day. At least, we find that Robert, in 1574, bought a licence from the Regent Morton, enabling him to export grain, while, owing to a dearth, this power was denied to all others. The kirk, which he served as an elder, challenged him for this inhumane traffic, and he for some time stood out under the Regent’s protection, but was at last obliged to succumb, and make public confession of his offence, standing in the _marriage-place_ in St Giles’s, clad in a gown made on purpose, and which he had to bestow thereafter on the poor. Robert lived to accommodate his friend the Regent, in his house, for two or three days, when the latter was awaiting the stroke of the Maiden under a hired guard; and a few years