In February 1804, Bell & Bradfute sold a copy ofJames Craig's New Town design for sixpence. By thistime, nearly four decades after it was firstproduced, Craig's plan was dated. But into thenineteenth century people in Edinburgh stillconsulted old maps, plans and cadastral surveys tomake new plans to further extend and improve theircity. The propertied and professional classesenlisted architects and mapmakers in the project ofplanning what is known as Edinburgh's second NewTown. This new New Town extended beyond the frame ofCraig's plan, stretching north from Queen Street inblocks of genteel Georgian terraces. It was withthis later iteration of the New Town that theinitial dream of a quiet, residential and exclusivesuburb was most fully achieved by the elites whodesigned it. Moreover, the form, appearance andgenteel character of the second New Town has beenlargely maintained in the centuries since, a factthat can partly be explained in terms of the powerthat possessing property bestowed at the time. Itwas with the planning of this new New Town that, asRichard Rodger has explained, ‘propertyrelationships in the early nineteenth centuryassumed a new dimension, enabling and acceleratingurban expansion in Scotland’ in the decades thatfollowed.

The buyer of Craig's plan in 1804 was George Cumin, aWriter to the Signet who resided in Princes Streetin the first New Town. Cumin was a regular customerof Bell & Bradfute's and he also bought onbehalf of the Signet Library. At this time, legalprofessionals like Cumin and his fellow SignetSociety members were commonly employed to managetransferences of land and property. As thebooksellers’ records show, later in 1804 a copy ofWilliam Marshall's On theLanded Property of England (1804), withits practical advice on how to purchase land, wentto ‘Signet Library, sent Mr. Cumin’. Cumin hadalready bought his own copy in August 1803, so heseems to have approved of the practical wisdom itoffered. The book asserts the benefits of, andvarious legal techniques for, ‘appropriatingcommonable lands’ and ‘inclosing open grounds’.