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This venerable lady, after being long at the head of society in Edinburgh, died in November 1759, having survived her second husband twelve years. It was remembered of her that she had been the first person in Edinburgh, of her time, to keep a black domestic servant.[51]

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The Regent Morton—The Old Bank—Sir Thomas Hope—Chiesly of Dairy—Rich Merchants of the Sixteenth Century—Sir William Dick—The Birth of Lord Brougham.

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Amongst the buildings removed to make way for George IV. Bridge were those of a short blind alley in the Lawnmarket, called the Old Bank Close. Composed wholly of solid goodly structures, this close had an air of dignity that might have almost reconciled a modern gentleman to live in it. One of these, crossing and closing the bottom, had been the Bank of Scotland—the Auld Bank, as it used to be half-affectionately called in Edinburgh—previously to the erection of the present handsome edifice in Bank Street. From this establishment the close had taken its name; but it had previously been called Hope’s Close, from its being the residence of a son of the celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, King’s Advocate in the reign of Charles I.