Page:Annals of Duddingston and Portobello.pdf/137

104 Secretaryship, was promoted to the Presidency of the Court of Session, under the title of Earl of Melrose.

In 1626, the first year of the reign of Charles I., he resigned his offices of Secretary of State and Lord President, and accepted that of Lord Privy Seal. In 1627 he dropped the title of Earl of Melrose, and had the royal permission to assume instead that of Earl of Haddington, on the ground, it is said, that he considered it more dignified to take his title from a county than from a town.

The Earl, who was equally known for his penetration as a judge, his industry as a collector of decisions, and his talent for amassing wealth, was a favourite and confidant of the King, who, as suited the free and easy custom of those days, was not above visiting and supping with his friends of an evening. The Earl’s town house was situated in the Cowgate, on the site, it is said, now occupied by the southern piers of George IV. Bridge, to make room for which it was demolished in 1829; and stories are told illustrative of the friendly terms on which the King and his ‘*trustie counsellor’ stood to one another; and how this distinguished person from the circumstance of his living there was dubbed by the Scottish Solomon with the sobriquet of ‘‘Tam o’ the Cowgate,”’ under which title he is now better remembered than by any other.

In 1607 a collier named Sandy Maund had in his walks about the Earl’s property of Hilderstone in Linlithgow, chanced to pick up a stone containing veins of a clear metal which proved to be silver. By advice of some one he took it to Sir Bevis Bulmer, then engaged in gold-seeking thereabouts, and the result of further search on the Hilderstone property was that Sir Thomas Hamilton, who was at the time King’s Advocate, imagined himself possessor of a silver mine of inestimable value. He got an order of Council, 17th December 1607, authorising the digging out of the silver ore, and a certain quantity was ordered to be shipped to London to be assayed at the Mint, Thirty-eight barrels of ore were actually sent there, and were found to yield about twenty-four ounces of silver for every hundredweight. Experts were placed upon the mine, and mills were erected on the Water of Leith for the melting and fining of the ore. The sagacious owner, we are told, gave the mine the name of God’s Blessing, By and by the King heard of it, and thinking it improper that any such fountain of wealth should belong to a private person,