by Walter Scott
NOTE C.--THE OLD TOLBOOTH.
The ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh, Situated as described in this CHAPTER,was built by the citizens in 1561, and destined for the accommodation ofParliament, as well as of the High Courts of Justice;* and at the sametime for the confinement of prisoners for debt, or on criminal charges.Since the year 1640, when the present Parliament House was erected, theTolbooth was occupied as a prison only.
* [This is not so certain. Few persons now living are likely to rememberthe interior of the old Tolbooth, with narrow staircase, thick walls,and small apartments, nor to imagine that it could ever have been usedfor these purposes. Robert Chambers, in his _Minor Antiquities_ ofEdinburgh, has preserved ground-plans or sections, which clearly showthis,--the largest hall was on the second floor, and measuring 27 feetby 20, and 12 feet high. It may have been intended for the meetings ofTown Council, while the Parliament assembled, after 1560, in what wascalled the Upper Tolbooth, that is the south-west portion of theCollegiate Church of St. Giles, until the year 1640, when the presentParliament House was completed. Being no longer required for such apurpose, it was set apart by the Town Council on the 24th December 1641as a distinct church, with the name of the Tolbooth parish, andtherefore could not have derived the name from its vicinity to theTolbooth, as usually stated.]
Gloomy and dismal as it was, the situation in the centre of the HighStreet rendered it so particularly well-aired, that when the plague laidwaste the city in 1645, it affected none within these melancholyprecincts. The Tolbooth was removed, with the mass of buildings in whichit was incorporated, in the autumn of the year 1817. At that time thekindness of his old schoolfellow and friend, Robert Johnstone, Esquire,then Dean of Guild of the city, with the liberal acquiescence of thepersons who had contracted for the work, procured for the Author ofWaverley the stones which composed the gateway, together with the door,and its ponderous fastenings, which he employed in decorating theentrance of his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. "To such base offices may wereturn." The application of these relies of the Heart of Mid-Lothian toserve as the postern-gate to a court of modern offices, may be justlyridiculed as whimsical; but yet it is not without interest, that we seethe gateway through which so much of the stormy politics of a rude age,and the vice and misery of later times, had found their passage, nowoccupied in the service of rural economy. Last year, to complete thechange, a tomtit was pleased to build her nest within the lock of theTolbooth,--a strong temptation to have committed a sonnet, had theAuthor, like Tony Lumpkin, been in a concatenation accordingly.
It is worth mentioning, that an act of beneficence celebrated thedemolition of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. A subscription, raised andapplied by the worthy Magistrate above mentioned, procured themanumission of most of the unfortunate debtors confined in the old jail,so that there were few or none transferred to the new place ofconfinement.
[The figure of a Heart upon the pavement between St. Giles's Church andthe Edinburgh County Hall, now marks the site of the Old Tolbooth.]