LOCAL HISTORY
LORD COCKBURN OF BONALY TOWER
“I set up my rural household goods at Bonaly, in the Parish of Colinton by the northern base of the Pentland Hills; and unless some avenging angel shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.”
Thus wrote Lord Henry Thomas Cockburn in which I was not flogged, at least once.’ He (1779-1854) in his famous Memorials of His studied law at Edinburgh University rising Time, of Bonaly Tower on the edge of the in that profession to become a judge, Whig Pentland Hills. Cockburn bought the land reformer and conservationist then Lord with its farmhouse in 1811 from the trustees Advocate and Solicitor General for Scotland. of James Gillespie (1726-97), the snuff-maker He was described by Thomas Carlyle of Spylaw and founder of James Gillespie’s (1795-1881) as, ‘small, solid and genuine.... School. The tower was designed for him by a gentleman, I should say and perfectly in his friend and eminent Edinburgh architect the Scotch type, perhaps the very last of the William H Playfair in 1836. peculiar species’. Henry Cockburn was born on 26th October One of Cockburn’s notable court cases was 1779 in one of the flats on the east side of his defence of Dr Robert Knox the anatomist, Parliament Square in the High Street of the who had unquestioningly accepted corpses Royal Mile. His father, a somewhat distant from the infamous body snatchers Burke figure, was Sheriff of Midlothian and a Baron and Hare. Sir Walter Scott accused Knox of the Exchequer. Of his mother he wrote in “of trading deep in human flesh”. Although his Memorials: Cockburn gained Knox vindication it was “My mother was the best woman I have ever not without disgrace; Knox had to leave known. If I were to survive her a thousand the city. In 1822 Cockburn’s success in years, I should still have a deep and grateful the defence of Stuart of Dunearn for killing recollection of her kindness, piety, her Alexander Boswell in a duel was hailed in devotion to her family, and her earnest gentle, the House of Commons as: ‘The speech that and Christian anxiety for their happiness in had not been surpassed by any effort in the this life and the life to come.” whole range of ancient or modern forensic eloquence’. In 1828, following the Burk and He was educated at the High School and Hare murders, Cockburn again exhibited his explained: ‘six hours a day were spent on brilliance in his successful defence Latin ... out of the whole four years of my attendance there were probably not ten days of Helen MacDougal, Burke’s mistress. 8 | BALERNO
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