[Illustration: THE OLDEST HOUSE IN GLASGOW.]
According to those, and other, authorities, the house was in the first instance erected as a residence for the priest in charge of St. Nicholas’ Hospital, and afterwards became the residence of one of the Cathedral prebendaries—the Prebendary of Balarnock, whose prebend included a long strip of land extending from the Cathedral to Cowlairs and Provanhall, five miles away to the east, where the country-house of himself and those who succeeded him still stands. He was Lord of the Manor of Provan, and so were his secular successors. Thus “Provand’s Lordship,” a title Lord Rosebery, speaking in October 1907 at a dinner given by the “Provand’s Lordship Literary Club,” professed himself unable to understand. But what that sorry fugitive figure of political failure cannot comprehend is not, it will be seen, after all, so difficult of comprehension.
And now to revert to the secular story of Glasgow, which has been so long interrupted. The village had by 1136 become important enough for the site of the first Cathedral, and so through centuries it grew, retaining the reputation of being “an exceedingly beautiful little place” until the very dawn of the eighteenth century. It early stood for law and order, and preferred the Hanoverians to the Stuarts, both in the ’15 and the ’45: opposing the Old Pretender on the first occasion with 600 men, and Prince Charlie on the second with double that number. But the city was made to supply the rebels of 1745 with £5,000 in gold and £500 worth of munitions. Its population was then about 50,000. In 1768, when the modern commercial career of Glasgow may be said to have commenced, in the works for the deepening of the Clyde then undertaken, the inhabitants numbered about 70,000. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the figure had risen to 83,769, in 1851 to 360,000, and is now computed at close upon one million.
The commercial genius and the farsighted energy of the Scottish people have transformed what was the shallow, muddy estuary of the Clyde into a busy waterway second to none in the world. As a river, the Clyde has never counted for much, but as an estuary it has ever been of importance; an importance, however, sadly neutralised by the shoals that from the earliest known times obstructed the passage. Even in remote days Glasgow made attempts to clear the fairway, and in 1565 efforts were devoted to increasing the depth of the channel, and to correcting its course, “aimless in its wanderings, and dangerous with banks and quicksands.” But little was done, and in 1651 it was reported as every day more and more filling up. At that time no considerable vessel could approach nearer Glasgow than Dumbarton, fourteen miles distant, and the tonnage of the port was a mere 957 tons. This condition of affairs remained until 1740, when John Golborne, a Chester engineer, was employed to dredge and build jetties.