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Our surprise is naturally somewhat increased when we learn that the builder and first possessor of this house does not appear to have been a man of rank, or one likely to own unusual wealth. His name was Robert Gourlay, and his profession a humble one connected with the law—namely, that of a messenger-at-arms. In the second book of Charters in the Canongate council-house, Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, and commendator of Holyrood, gave the office of messenger or officer-at-arms to the Abbey to Robert Gourlay, messenger, ‘our lovit familiar servitor,’ with a salary of forty pounds, and other perquisites. This was the Robert Gourlay who built the noble tenement in the Old Bank Close; and through his official functions it came into connection with an interesting historical event. In May 1581, when the ex-Regent Morton was brought to Edinburgh to suffer death, he was—as we learn from the memoirs of Moyses, a contemporary—‘lodged in Robert Gourlay’s house, and there keeped by the waged men.’ Gourlay had been able to accommodate in his house those whom it was his professional duty to take in charge as prisoners. Here, then, must have taken place those remarkable conferences between Morton and certain clergymen, in which, with the prospect of death before him, he protested his innocence of Darnley’s death, while confessing to a foreknowledge of it. Morton must have resided in the house from May 29, when he arrived in Edinburgh, till June 2, when he fell under the stroke of the ‘Maiden.’ In the ensuing year, as we learn from the authority just quoted, De la Motte, the French ambassador, was lodged in ‘Gourlay’s House.’