Mungo Russell (merchant)

[2] As town treasurer, he purchased sweetmeats and a confection flavoured with rose water known as "scotchets" to banquet an English diplomat Francis Walsingham in August 1583.

[4] He was associated with a paper mill on the Water of Leith operated on the estate by two German entrepreneurs Peter Grote Haere and Michael Keyser.

[7] He supplied fine purple Florentine velvet to make a canopy for the entry and coronation of Anne of Denmark in Edinburgh in May 1590.

[10] A number of people owed him money, including John Mowbray of Barnbougle, William Baillie of Provan (for materials bought by his wife Elizabeth Durham), Agnes Leslie, Lady Lochleven, the carpenter Frances Mansioun, and Archibald Douglas, whose wife Barbara Napier was the widow of the bookseller George Ker.

His legacies included a gift to Thomas Fenton, who was "keeper of the king's pets", the royal menagerie at Holyrood Palace.

[14] Gideon Russell, who died in 1601, continued building the house and his will details his debts owed to masons, carpenters, and to Hew Lyell (d.1619), a Leith timber supplier.

[15] In February 1594, Gideon Russell and his wife Margaret Stewart made a new contract with the German paper makers Michael Keysar and John Seillar.