The tenement is noted for its interiors, including a Renaissance board-and-beam painted ceiling discovered in 1999,[1] a plaster ceiling with exotic fruit and flower mouldings with the arms of Pringle of Galashiels (five escallops on a saltire) dated 1650 painted on the wall, and a wooden barrel-vaulted attic apartment which is expressed on the roofline.

[2][3] Notable people associated with the house include Scotland's first eminent portrait painter George Jamesone, the English spy and writer Daniel Defoe, who was instrumental in the passing of the 1707 Act of Union with England, and Archibald Constable, proprietor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

In Trunk's close, over a stone vaulted basement, can be seen "massive corbelled projections" which contained straight flights of stairs serving the north wing, perhaps part of Adam Moubray (III)'s building of 1529 and its extension.

"[6] The present site was laid out c.1472-7, after reconstruction of the Netherbow Port close to "John Knox's House" by Alexander Bonkill.

In 1494 Andrew Moubray (I) disputed the rent of another house he owned in Leith with his tenant the sailor Robert Barton.

[11] On 18 August 1482, jointly with Laurence Taillefer, he was appointed "Customar of Edinburgh", the collector of royal rents and duties owed by the town to the King.

[17] When Andrew Moubray (II) died in 1499, his children were still minors, so James IV gave his property to Patrick Halyburton until they came of age.

[20] Hoppar and Adam Carkettil were members of the religious confraternity of the Holy Blood, and witnessed the censure of the poet and priest Gavin Douglas when the mass on 27 February 1511 was not properly performed.

His son, Adam Hopper was master of the Edinburgh Merchants Guild, established by "seal of cause" in 1518 when it was given the Holy Blood Aisle in St Giles Kirk.

[27] Archibald and Isobel lost the Forrester house, and the lands she held near Peebles when James V reached his majority and escaped from the Douglases.

[29] Katrine's sister Janet was married to Hugh Rig of Carberry, a lawyer who acted for Isobel Hoppar after Kilspindie's death, and was said to have been an advisor and flatterer of Regent Arran before the battle of Pinkie.

[33] In 1541, Katherine Bellenden, now married to Oliver Sinclair, with John Tennent and other kin who served the royal household donated an adjacent property to the west of Moubray House for a chantry in St Giles and various charities.

[34] Also in 1541, Andrew Mowbray (III) travelled to Middelburg as commissioner for the city of Edinburgh to negotiate a trade agreement with Maximilian II of Burgundy.

[39] During the war of the Rough Wooing, his widow Katrine Hoppar (died 1551) supplied iron from Gdańsk for entrenching tools sent to Jedburgh in February 1549.

[49] By this time, James Hoppringle or Pringle of Whytbank and Woodhead and his wife Mariota Murray were already in possession of the Netherbow House.

[50] In November 1595, their son, James Pringle of Whytbank made a successful plea to the Privy Council on behalf of seven schoolchildren who had been imprisoned following the shooting of Baillie John MacMorran.

There is a moulded plaster ceiling of this era in the second-floor front room, which includes the Seton heraldic badge of crescent and cinquefoil, and royal emblems of England and Scotland.

In the 18th century the building housed a tavern, and until 1822 the shop on the street front was the premises of the publisher and bookseller Archibald Constable, proprietor of the Scots Magazine, the Edinburgh Review and the Encyclopædia Britannica.

[57] An American benefactor, Debra Stonecipher acquired the various sub-divided flats and further restored the house and gave it to the nation, in the care of Historic Scotland in 2012.