After it became known that the wily Sir Robert Carey had hurried away from the deathbed of Queen Elizabeth, to announce to the delighted monarch of Scotland his succession to the crown of England, a great many English noblemen and gentlemen came north on much the same errand that brings so many of them at this day--viz., to hunt; the game, in the one case, being place and favour, and in the other, blackcock and grouse. Among the rest, was one Sir Willoughby Somerset, of Somerset-Hall, in Devonshire, a knight of gay and chivalric manners, excellently set off by an exterior on which nature and art had expended their best favours, but exhibiting, at same time, in his total want of true honour and mental acquirements, that tendency to a fair distribution, which nature, in all her departments, delights to display--suggesting, as it did, to an ancient philosopher, that the _pulchrum_ and the _utile_ are dealt out in equal portions under a whimsical law against their union in one person. Having arrived, with his gay suit of servants and splendid equipage, at the palace of Holyrood, Sir Willoughby was informed that there were no apartments close to the palace which could be given to him for his accommodation, in consequence of the great influx of noble visiters who had come from all parts of Scotland and England to testify their allegiance, and express their satisfaction, whether real or assumed, on the occasion of King James' succession. Sir Willoughby, therefore, took up his abode in a house in the Canongate, which was pulled down more than a hundred years ago--at that time known by the name of the House of Gordon, in consequence, it is supposed, of having at one time been occupied by the ducal family of that name. It was situated on the south side of the street, and nearly opposite to the close called Big Loch-end Close, which possessed at that time a very different appearance from what it does at present; for the double row of low Flemish-looking huts which lined the narrow entry, have given place to modern buildings, which do not look half so well as their more humble predecessors.