Page:Origin and history of Glasgow Streets.djvu/17

. The tenement fronting Argyle Street which forms the entrance to this popular promenade was built by John Reid, the father of "Senex," about 1780, but the Arcade was formed by John Robertson Reid of Gallowflat, who was of the same family. A practical joke was carried out here by an officer who was quartered with a troop of the Lancers in the Cavalry Barracks, which were at that time (about seventy years ago) situated in Eglinton Street. This officer and gentleman took a bet with some of his compeers that he would ride through the Arcade at mid-day in full military tog, including carbine, sword, and lance, and he did it entering at Buchanan Street and emerging at Argyle Street. The private constable had for the nonce been invited into a tavern by an emissaiy, which left the course clear, and the horse carrying the warrior pranced through the flagged way, much to the astonishment of the toyshop men and terror of the milliners. The soldier man, however, had to pay sweetly for his little escapade at the Police Court next day. The Argyle family, like another ducal line, are unduly commemorated in our city, which was never in any way indebted to them, and their record does not read well. The first peer of the family, Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow, founded the Collegiate Church at Kilmun in the year 1442, and he died eleven years thereafter, and was buried in the church which he had set up From that time Kilmun became the burial-place of the Argyle family, and among the chiefs whose bones repose here may be mentioned that singularly unhappy nobleman, Archibald, first Marquis of Argyle. He was decapitated by the guillotine or "Maiden" at the Cross of Edinburgh on the 27th May, 1661. His head was stuck on the Tolbooth on the very pinnacle where the head of his heroic adversary the great Marquis of Montrose had been exposed for ten long years. The remains of Argyle were more tenderly dealt with, as on the 8th of June, 1664, King Charles the Second granted a warrant to have it taken down and deposited beside his body in the tomb of his ancestors at Kilmun. The son and successor of this peer, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, was fated like his father to die on a scaffold at Edinburgh, but his dust found a resting-place in the neighbouring church of Greyfriars. Archibald, first Duke of Argyle, died under rather peculiar circumstances in England on 28th September, 1703. In extracts from the Argyle papers by James Maidment, advocate,