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GEORGE HERIOT

1563-1624

COTLAND has furnished the world with its full share of merchants and men of business. Go where you will, into the great cities or far afield to the out-of-theway corners of the earth, there the thrifty Scot will be found trading and accumulating this world's goods. He is a hard man to bluff or to worst in an argument, and a competitor who is never wisely ignored.

He is almost always successful, and has a most enviable reputation for integrity, shrewdness and sound common sense. He risks nothing beyond the line of prudence; he is solid in his finance, and it is safe, almost always, to trust a Scotsman.

It is of a Scot that the story is told that he called to his office his son who was about to leave home to seek his fortune. "My son," said he, "of two things would I admonish you. Do right and fear no man. Don't write and fear no woman.' "His caution is traditional, and makes for a substantial balance to his credit; yet he too possesses the faculty of imagination-and that is indeed indispensable to success-though he hides it so deep below the surface as to make it frequently undiscoverable except in its achievements. But imagination has helped the Scotsman in every part of the globe to win position and wealth, and to no race have the fascination and romance of trade appealed more strongly.

But this commercial spirit was comparatively slow in developing. The instinct for trade was there, but opportunity was extremely limited. One cannot trade without people, and up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the population of Scotland was very small. It would have been difficult in all probability for any other race, the Jews alone perhaps excepted, to make for that very small country, with its beautiful but barren hills, so delightful a history and so rich a result. For in this northern country, far from the active centres of the south, the Scotch trader was eclipsed by his rivals in London, Hull, Winchester, Bristol and other towns.

Yet Scotland was fortunate in having rulers who realized that a people who are commercially successful are a happy people, and privileges and favours were frequently granted to those who endeavoured to push forward the commerce of the country. From the time of David I. we hear of progress, slow indeed, but very sure. Those who carried wool, hides and fish to foreign towns returned to the north of the Tweed with spices, food products, wines, haberdashery, ironmongery, and such articles of commerce, and against great odds a small trade was built up in Edinburgh, Berwick, Perth, Leith, Stirling, Glasgow and Dumbarton.

Edinburgh received its first charter from Robert Bruce in 1329, fifteen years after the battle of Bannockburn. In 1436 it was recognized as the capital of Scotland, and in 1450 King James II. encouraged its citizens to enclose and fortify the town, and from that time Edinburgh became gradually divided into wards as London had been, with certain portions assigned to each of the various branches of trade.

The energetic King James IV. showed special favours to merchants who traded in foreign countries. Anderson, in his History of Edinburgh, tells us that "they were encouraged to extend their trading voyages, to purchase foreign ships of war, to import cannon, and to superintend the building of ships-of-war at home. In these

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cases the monarch not only took an interest, but studied the subject with his usual enthusiasm, and personally superintended every detail. He conversed with his mariners, rewarded the most skilful and assiduous by presents, visited familiarly at the houses of his principal merchants and sea officers, and delighted in embarking on short voyages of experiment, in which he became acquainted with the practical parts of navigation. The consequences of such conduct were highly favourable to him he became as popular with his sailors as he was beloved by his nobility; his fame was carried by them to foreign countries; shipwrights, cannon-founders, and foreign artisans of every description flocked to his Court from France, Italy and the Low Countries."

His efforts made Edinburgh more and more attractive, and enterprising men from the outlying districts came to enjoy the advantages which their country's capital offered. Among them was a George Heriot, whose great-great-grandfather James is spoken of as a confederate" of James I. Our only concern with this George Heriot, however, is that he was the grandfather of the subject of our sketch, George the younger.

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This great merchant was born in 1563, married in 1587 a Mistress Christian Marjoribanks who possessed a little fortune of her own, and became a goldsmith with his own booth. He must soon have shown both skill and business ability, for in 1588 he became a member of the Goldsmiths' Company of Edinburgh, and during the same year doubled the size of his booth.

Heriot's business was evidently in a flourishing condition, but his greatest good fortune lay in winning the goodwill and patronage of Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James VI., a customer who proved on many occasions her inability to resist his tempting wares. We can picture him in his little booth-it was only seven feet square-handling the jewels that, wrought in Spain, in Venice, or even in India, and brought by hardy Scottish travellers for hundreds of thousands of miles in small