Full text of "The baronial and ecclesiastical antiquities of Scotland"

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THE 

BAHONIAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL 
ANTIQUITIES 



OF 



SCOTLAND 




^biithtrglj: dlibcr"' anb lontr 



Cie luraniul un^ (Brrleaiastirnl Miquitita nf Irntlauii. 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 



PUtea. 
Xo. 

1. 



2. 
3. 

4. 
5. 



7. 

8. 

9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 

13. 
14. 
15. 
1«. 
17 
16. 



19. 
2C. 
21. 
22. 

28. 

24. 



26. 
27. 



Da.i.f£S8ie House, Aberdeen. — Two Views 

„ ... ... Woodcut: Ground Plan . 

DiRLETON Castle, Haddington. — External View 

„ ... .. Interior of an Octagonal Boom 

„ ... ... Woodcut: The Baron's Seat in the Great Hall 

DouNE Castle, Perth. — External View 

„ ... The Court Yard and Entrance Tower 

Woodcut: The Kitchen 
Dhochill Castle, Peebles. — External View . 

„ ... Woodcut : Corbelling of Turret 

DiiTBUBGii Abbey, Roxburgh. — North side of Choir, Sir Walter Scott's Tomb 

„ ... ... Exterior of the Chapter House and South Transept 

Dunblane Cathedual, Perth. — Western Front 
„ ... ... South Side 

„ South East View 

„ ... ... Interior of the Nave 

„ Woodcut: Ancient Stall Work of the Choir 

Dundee, Forfar. — The Old Church Tower 
DuKEEBMLiNE Abbet, Fife. — North Side 

Interior of the Nave 

Norman Arcade in the Nave 

Exterior of the Refectory 

West End of Eefectory and Palace Kuins 

Woodcuts: 1. The Porch 

2. The Western Front 
Perth. — West Front . 

Interior of the Nave . 
Portion of the South Side 
Interior of the South Aisle 
Woodcut : Restoration of the West Window 
Dtsart, Fife.— Gable End of Old House . 
... „ ... Woodcut: Old House and Church Tower 
Edinburgh, St. Giles' Cathedral. — The Lantern 

„ The Choir 

„ ... ... Woodcut : Circular Headed Doorway 

„ iNTEElOlt OF THE PARLIAMENT HoUSE 

Moray House. — Ceiling in the Balconied Koom 
,, ... Woodcut: Exterior View . 



DUNKELD CaTHEDR.^L, 



Pngnot 

I>c»crii>t'cn. 



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1- 2 



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i- 4 



f 4 



2 
4 



antiiinitifs of Irntlnnlr, 



PUtM. 

No. 

28. 
29. 

30. 
31. 
32. 

33. 

34. 
35. 
30. 
37. 
38. 
39. 
40. 
41. 
42. 



43. 

44. 

45. 

46. 
47. 
48. 
49. 
50. 
51. 
52. 

53. 
54. 
55. 
56 
57. 
58. 
60. 

60. 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.- (continum/.) 

Edinhnrgh, TRnTtTY CoLLEOS CuaBOH.— Exterior 

„ ... ... Interior, looking East 

„ ... ... Woodcut: North Aisle 

., St. Maho.vuet's Wkli, at Eestaluib 

Edsrll Castlk, Forfar. — External View .... 

„ ... Interior of the Grarden Wall . 

,, ... Woodcut: Compartment of the Garden Wall 

Elcho Castle, Perth. — External View .... 

(The Description of Elcho appears on the back page of Dundee Church Tower) 
Elgin. — Arcaded House, illustrative of Street Aechitecture . 
Elsin Cathedral. — The Western Front, and Towers 

„ ... The Western Doorway .... 

„ ... Interior of the Western Front . 

„ ... The Western Towers and South Side 

„ ... The Choir, looking East, internally 

„ ... The Choir and South Aisle, Exterior 

„ ... DetaQ of the Eastern Windows . 

., ... The Chapter House, Interior 

„ ... Woodcuts: 1. South Transept 

„ 2. Details of Doorway 

Falkland Palace, Mfe. — Entrance Gateway 

The Court Yard .... 

,. ... Woodcut: Summit of the Entrance Tower 

Foulis Easter Church, Forfar. — Two Views 

>. ■• ••• (Description on back page of Dundee Tower.) 

Fraskr Castle, Aberdeen. — General View (South) 

The Court Yard (North) 

The East Side .... 

„ Detail of Corbelled Turret in the Court Yard 

Ftvie Castlk, Aberdeen. — Principal Front . . . _ 

Central Gable ... 

„ ... The Great Ne welled Staircase 

>> •■• Woodcut: The Court Yard and Modern Entr.ince 

Glammis Castle, Forfar. — Principal Front . 

,, ... Detail of Turrets and £oof 

„ ... Back View of the Castle 

., ... Interior of the Great Hall 

Glasgow University. — Entrance Front .... 

„ ... The Staircase in the Court Yard 

„ ... The Inner Court ... 

,, ... Woodcut: Staircase in the Outer Court Yard 

Glenbuokbt Castle, Aberdeen. — Court Yard and Entrance 

,. •.. Woodcut: External View 



VtL%n of 
Desoription 



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DALPERSIE. 

Tf the quaiiit-Iooking building, delineated in the accompanying engraving, be meagre m Lwtoiic 
association, it may be considered as still more so in architectural importance, especially it wo are 
to take as sufficient the account of it already published, which merely states that there is upon the 
property of Dalpersie " an old mansion-house, inhabited by the farmer who rents the surrounding 
grounds: it is in the old castle style, and there is nothing about it worthy of particular notice." 
To the casual observer, we must admit that this hasty judgment has all the appearance of being 
true ; but how far it is justified, by a more minute investigation, the following observations may 
show. 

By far the greater number of castles, or rather castellated houses, which, with their picturesque 
terminations of turrets and gabled windows, form so peculiar a feature in the architecture of Scot- 
land, and especially of Aherdeenshire and its immediate neighbourhood, generally exhibit the 
characteristics of distinct ages and styles of architecture. Their lower portions belong generally to 
the massive and plainly built castle of an early period, but most frequently of the fifteenth or 
sixteenth century ; while the upper and ornamented portion, grafted upon them, dates from the 
commencement of the seventeenth century until about the year 1660. The Castle of Glammis, in 
Forfar, is the most colossal example of these mixed styles, but its basement dates even earlier 
than the time we have named. Of these styles, the first partakes generally of the castellated 
architecture of the rest of Britain, but the latter takes its tone from the chateaus of France and the 
neighbouring continental states, with which Scotland before the union of the crowns was for a long 
period both politically and socially connected. 

To such an extent were the rude old castles of Scotland altered by more recent ornamental 
additions, that it is rare indeed to find them retaining anything like their original features, unless 
it be in those cases where the edifices had been left to decay before the introduction of the more 
recent styles. But Dalpersie is an instance of a building remaining unchanged ; and although 
diminutive in extent, this fact, added to its singular fitness in plan for defensive purposes, has 
suggested its appearance in this work, among the more important remains of baronial architecture. 

The house, as originally built, formed a parallelogram externally 28 feet by 18, defended 
by two circular towers attached to two opposite angles — so that the whole accommodation was 
one room on each of three floors, unless we dignify the interior of the towers, lighted only 
by the small port-holes, by calling them apartments. We are quite at a loss to understand how a 
building of such contracted extent could have supplied the domestic wants of the family of a landed 
proprietor ; and that it was evidently insufficient, is proved by another house being attached to it 
about the year 1600. But even with this addition, the edifice must have formed an indifferent 
residence, and one which gives a strange notion of what in old times constituted a comfortable home 
for a laird. With the addition just named, although of ancient date, we have no present concern, 
our object being the original block of building, which, with its circular towers, and their low conically 
capped roofs, stands precisely as it was built, and wants but the moat, with which it was formerly 
surrounded, to bring before us an old house completely arranged for defence by small arms; for 
cannon are out of the question, the circular ports not being quite four inches in diameter, and the 
rooms within the towers only nine feet across. Indeed, the object of these fortified houses was 
not defence against artillery, but protection fi-oni flying marauders and rival clansmen, whose move- 
ments, for their own safety, generally required too much celerity to admit of their carrying any- 

DAI.PEBSIE, 1 — 2. 



2 



DALPERSIK. 



thing beyond tlie oft'ensive means which personal weapons supplied. Annexed is a plan of the 
original house. 

At a is the entrance door, and iramediatelj behind it was a ponderous interlaced or cross-barred 
iron gate, secured by a huge bolt which passed into a space in the wall represented at b. The 
room within the main building has on the ground floor a semicircular stone vault, and the towers, 
which are internally octa£onal, are stone-vaulted in the form of a pointed arch. The loop windows 
c, on the basement floor, are but three inches in width, but above the openings are of more ample 
dimensions. Even the latter were strongly barred with iron gratings, so that ingress or egress, 
othenvise than by the one entrance-door, was out of the question. The particular feature of this 
plan is, however, in the arrangement of the ports marked d ; and these completely command the 
sides of the parallelogram, rendering hostile approach no very safe matter. From the passage to 
the south-western tower we enter the staircase e, built within the wall, and leading to the first floor, 
above which the communication is by a small circular stair, partially supported on a series of cor- 
bels, which appear in the accompanying view. In the plan its position is marked by the circle yi 




Touching the ancient history of Dalpersie, nothing is known but the little which is borne upon 
its own walls by way of decoration ; and if this infoimation is to be taken as its origin, it is a tale 
soon told. Upon the lower corbel-stone of the circular staircase, the first letter of Gordon is sculp- 
tured, and upon a window-sill adjoining, we have a panel, imitative of a plate screwed to the 
wall, bearing the date 1561. The head of this window is ornamented by the laird's crest, a boar's 
head, so beautifully cut as to make one virish that the building had more omameutby tne same liana. 
The Gordon who was its owner in 1745 is said to have been the last person executed for par- 
ticipating in the Jacobite rsing, and a rocess in the upper part of the house, against the roof, is 
shown as the spot where he was captured.* r. w. b. 



* Xcw StAtiiit. Account. AbcrdccuHhirc, \i 446 




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j:,n«rw»va rv- -1 . 



PAILFISIKSniS , AJBISRIE)I&!&HS1HIIRJS 



DIRLETON CASTLE. 

The vast ruins of this castle rise from what at a distance seems a gentle elevation, but, on u 
near approach, is seen to be a sharp perpendicular rock, though of no great height. If is siu- 
rounded by a considerable stretch of garden and pleasure ground, kept in punctilious order. Mixed 
with some ancient trees, the taste of the proprietor has attended to the preservation of a few of the 
more peculiar and uncommon vestiges of ancient gardening — thick, hard hedges of pre vet and yew, 
impervious as green walls, with here and there bushes clipped into artificial forms. Exhibited iu a 
succession of formal terraces, or on a continuous flat plain, this species of gardening often becomes 
intolerable. But round the gloomy ruins of Dirleton, and in immediate connexion witii a forest- 
like assemblage of venerable trees, all feeling of hard, flat uniformity is lost, and the very stiflTncss 
and angularity of the outlines afford a not unpleasant contrast with the rest of the scene. 

The original plan of the edifice appears to have been nearlv a square. The side towards the 
south-east, which, rising from the less abrupt side of the rock, had little protection from nature, is 
a continuous wall of great height, with scarce a shot-hole to break its massive unifonnity. At its 
southern extremity stands a round tower, and, a narrow curtain intervening, another stands farther 
towards the north. They spring from a broad base, their circumference narrowing iu a jjarabolic 
curve as they rise, according to the idea which Smeaton is said to have taken fi'om the stem of the 
oak. In the curtain there is a lofty external pointed arch ; within it, as in a recess, between two 
square towers, there is a gateway, which appears to have been the principal entrance of the castle. 
On the top, between the outer and the inner arch, there is a circular hole, made apparently to 
enable the garrison to assault any enemy that might have penetrated so far towards the interior. 
Opposite to this gateway there are the vestiges of a ditch ; and four square solid pieces of building, 
little wider than pillars, appear to be the remains of the edifices connected with a drawbridge. 

The greater proportion of the interior of the building yet remaining consists of vaults. Of the 
portions above the level of the rock, a few turnpike stairs and small chambers, in the intricacies of 
the masonry between the larger apartments, only remain. The hall, which seems to have been 
of great size, is roofless, and covered with thick grass. At its extremity is to be found the only 
piece of ornament, unless, perhaps, a slender moulding, which the edifice supplies, — the canopied 
seat represented in the subjoined cut, — which yet would hardly be deemed worthy of admiration, if 
it were found in an ecclesiastical instead of a baronial building. 

This fair lordship was one of the possessions of the horde of Norman barons who occupied so 
large a portion of the fruitful Lothians before the war of independence ; and the name of its earlier 
owners, De Vallibus, or De Vaux, at once bespeaks a race who, after the conflict, ceased to be 
connected with Scotland, and gave way to such families as its subsequent owners, the Ruthvens 
and Nisbets. In 1298, when Wallace was falling back before the advancing anns of Edward, 
this castle was strong enough to maintain a Scottish garrison in the very centre of that southern 
district, which in other respects had yielded to the conqueror's arms. The garrison made frequent 
sallies and attacks on the English troops ; and Edward, who was encamped a few miles west of 
Edinburgh, sent his warlike bishop, Anthony Beck, to lay regular siege to the fortress. It oflfered 
a protracted resistance, and surrendered on terms.* When the English were driven from Scotland, 
it became one of the possessions of the house of Haliburton, which, according to Sir Walter Scott, 
who was himself descended from it, " made a great figure in Border history, and founded several 
families of high consequence."t Iq later times, Dirleton belonged to the unruly and unfortunate 
family of Huthveu. It would appear that Logan of Kestali-ig had some claim on its possession. 

• Tytloi-'s Hist., i. lOU. t I'luso W or;,,~, vii. ilJi. 

DutLKTUN C.VSTLK, 1—2 



DIKLETO.V CASTLE. 

and that the admission of this claim was the bribe by wliich that conspirator, owner of the neigh- 
bouring wild sea-tower of Fastcastle, agreed to assist in the Gowrie conspiracy ; for he says in one 
of his letters to his confederate, Laird Bower, " I hev recevit ane new letter fra my lord of 
Gowrie, concerning the purpose that ilr Apexander], his lo[rdship's] brothir, spak to me befoir; 
and I perseif I may hev advantage of Dirletou, in case his other matter tak effect, as we hope it 
sail. ... I cair nocht for all the land I hev in this kingdome, in case I get a grip 
of Dirleton, for I esteem it the pleasantest dwelling in Scotland"* — an opinion by no means discre- 
ditable to the conspirator's taste for rural scenery. 

In the middle of the seventeenth century, a revolting scene, unfortunately too characteristic of 
the age, appears to have occurred within these walls. A man named Watson, and his wife, long 
suspected, as the record tells us, of witchcraft, hearing that John Kincaid " wes in the tonne of 
Dirletone, and had some skill and dcxteritie in trying the divellis marke in the personis of such as 
wer Suspect to be witches," voluntarily offered their persons for trial of his skill, and were 
examined in the " broad hall " of the castle of Dirleton. If the poor people, trusting in their 
innocence, believed that no indication of the unhallowed compact would be found on their persons, 
they were lamentably deceived ; for Mr Kincaid, being a skilful man, succeeded in finding a spot 
on each, which he could pierce without producing sensation, or any issue of blood. One of those 
events, so incomprehensible in the early witch-trials, followed — a confession of strange and ludicrous 
intercourse with the enemy of mankind. Mrs Watson confessed that he appeared to her first in 
the shape of a physician, who prescribed for her daughter, and received a fee of two English 
shillings. He seems to have behaved much like an ordinary individual, for " she gave him milk 
and bread ; and, Patrick Watson coming in, she sent for a pynt of ale." These statements were 
authenticated on Ist July 1647, but the fate of the confessing witch is not recorded.! 

The castle and the surrounding territory are at present the property of Mrs Hamilton Nisbet 
Ferguson. 

* Pitcaim'g Criminal Trials, ii 283. • + Ibid., iii 699. 




"■•^.LL 



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Dniwn hfi RJ^JiUlw^s 



r fwnnt^t i-u <t /j .*/wM 



OCTAC.®MA]L IftOOM KM lailtlJUSTON CA^T]L)E 



DOUNE CASTLE. 

Tn the near neighbourhood of the " Deanston Cotton Works," where people go to see tlie latest 
and most enlightened improvements of the age, in agriculture, manufactm-es, and the practical 
application of chemistry, the venerable towers of Doune Castle frown over the nearly as venerable 
bridge of Teith, and the beautiful rapid river which it spans. This broad square mass is con- 
spicuous on all sides, from the surrounding mountains, and the broad plains watered by tlie Forth. 
It is built on a steep bank close to the edge of the stream, and is surrounded by luxuriant and 
beautiful trees, over which the horizontal lines of tower and screen may be seen stretching to an 
extent which conveys at once a formidable notion of their size and strength. The mass of 
buildings fonn altogether a compact quadrangle, the towers and curtains serving as the exterior 
fortifications, and embracing a court-yard nearly surrounded by the buildings. The bastioned square 
tower of the fifteenth century is the ruling feature of the plan; but the edifices are of various 
ages ; and among them are circular staircase towers, and remains of the angular turrets of the 
beginning of the seventeenth century. Winding stairs, long ranges of corridors and passages, 
and an abundance of mysterious vaults, strong, deep, and gloomy, reward the investigator who 
has leisure enough to pass an hour or two within these hoary walls ; but, as we generally find in 
the old Scottish baronial edifices, there are few decorative features, and massive strength has been 
the great aim of each builder. The great hall, reached by ascending the western staircase, had 
probably an oaken or other ornamental ceiling worthy of its dignified dimensions ; but its bare walls 
are all that now remain. 

From a very early period in Scottish history, a position such as that occupied by Doune Castle 
must have been of great importance as a place of strength. The Teith, the more northerly of the 
two rapid streams which, united, form the river Forth, was the great natural line of demarcation 
between the wild Celtic tribes inhabiting the Western Highlands, and the most valuable and 
civilised of the districts of lowland Scotland. It is an old saying, that " The Forth bridles the wild 
Highlander;" and whether it were for courting an alliance with these predatory races, when 
the Lord of Doune wished to be foiTnidable to the government of the day, or for checking 
them in their inroads on the lowlands, the commander of a fortalice so situated would exercise in 
a great measure the power and influence peculiar to border chiefs. 

Tradition traces the origin of this pile back to a grandson of Banquo, who was made first Earl 
of Monteith, in the middle of the eleventh century.* Well-authenticated history, however, 
corresponding with the character of its architecture, only carries us to the days of the governor, 
Murdoch Duke of Albany, whose vice-royalty terminated on the accession of James I. in 1424. 
We are told that when the new Monarch commenced the execution of the vengeance he contem- 
plated against Albany and his followers, he " took possession of the Castle of Falkland, and of the 
fortified Palace of Doune, the favourite residence of Albany. Here he found Isabella, the wife of 
Albany, daughter of the Earl of Lennox, whom he immediately committed to the Castle of 
Tantallon ; and with a success and a rapidity which can only be accounted for on the supposition 
of the utmost rigour in the execution of his plans, and a strong military power to overcome all 
opposition, he possessed himself of the strongest fortresses in the country." f Albany was executed 

* Old Stat. Account of Scotland, xx. 58. + Tytlcr's Hist., (Third Edition.) iii. 71. 

Doune CAsxr.E. 1 — 2. 



DOIINE CASTLE. 



on the Castle Hill of Stirling, wnence he might have seen rising in the distance the towers of 
Doune— the proud svnibol of the greatness from whence he had fallen. 

Domie became thenceforward a royal domain; and in 1469, when Margaret of Denmark was 
married to James III., and the Scottish ci-own acquired the important accession of the islands of 
Orkney and Shetland, nominally as a security for the young Queen's marriage portion, the castle and 
territories were destined to the Queen as part of her dowry should she survive her husband.* It was 
subsequently in the same manner secured to Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., when she became 
the wife of James IV. In 1528, after this king's death, she married Lord Methven, with whose 
concurrence, and that of the young king, she granted the custody of the castle to James Stuart, a 
younger brother of her husband. The office was afterwards granted to him and his heirs in perpe- 
tual fen-right by James V. " This office had been enjoyed by the family of Edmonstone of Dun- 
treath, and occasioned a deadly quarrel between the families, which ended in the assassination 
of the above James Stuart by Edmonstone of Duntreath. But James, the son of the above 
James Stuart, obtained full possession of the castle, and was afterwards created Lord Doune by 
charter, 1581." t The descendant of Stuart mamed a daughter of the Regent Murray, and the 
domain became and has remained the property of the Earl of Moray, whose eldest son derives from 
it his title, t The castle has not been connected with many great historical events. Queen Mary is 
said to have resided in it, as in every great Scottish fortalice; and it is believed to have been here that, 
in 1580, her young son had planned, under the guise of a hunting party, a project for revolutionis- 
ing the government, and ridding himself of the tutelage of Mar.§ 

It was used as a fortified place so late as the year 1745, when it contained a small Jacobite 
garrison. The reader will perhaps remember this circumstance as interwoven with the incidents in 
Waverley, and as aflfording Home, the author of Douglas, the opportunity for which he longed, of 
experiencing the realities of war. i| 



Tytlers Hist., (Third Edition,) iU. 343. 

X New Stat. Account, Perthshire, 1229. 



t Old Stat. Account, xx. 61. See Douglas' Peerage, ii. 257. 
I Tytler, v.. 269. H Notes to Waverley, ii. 82. 





p 
© 






DROCHIl. CASTLE. 

There are few more remote and secluded glens in the Border higlilands than that in which 
these vast ruins of an unfinished fortalice stand. Leaving Peebles, we pass the lank tower of 
Nidpath on its abrupt rock, celebrated both in poetry and romantic history, and where the Tweed 
forks into two pretty equal streams, tako the more nortiierly, which is termed the Lyne. The 
first object of interest on the route is the parish church of Lyne, a tiny but pure specimen of 
pointed Gothic — the next is tLe scarped declivity of an old hill-fort called a Roman camp ; and on 
penetrating a little farther i :Vo the solitudes of the glen, the brown and broken ruins of the palace 
fortress are seen rising in a b)")ad mass above the trees. It is always stated tliat the building was 
never finished, but it would be diificult, if not impossible, to discover anything that might not be 
a feature of such a work, had it been completed, and fallen afterwards to ruin. It consists of two 
square blocks of building with a ck-ft between, which bears marks of having been vaulted over — the 
imposts of the lower arches, however, alone remaining. There are two round towers, at extreme 
angles of the double square, each with a thin curve or semi-turret, uniting it with the square mass. 
These round towers tenninate square, and in a rather peculiar manner. In general, in such 
changes, the wall-plate of the square coincides with, if it do not project over, the circumference of 
the circle, so that the angles are graduated down to it by corbels. But here the square 
department is incised, so that the angles only reach the circumference of tiie circular. The 
ciiambers within are all square, except the vaults. There is very little decoration throughout 
the whole of this gloomy edifice ; but the effect of the vast broken mass standing in the lonely 
glen, among the surrounding moimtains, is grand and solemn. One of the scanty marks of the 
ornamental chisel is a triangular stone, witii the remains of blazoning, iu which a fetlock is 
distinctly visible. The crest of the Earls of Morton is " A wild boar, proper, striking between 
two clefts of an oak-tree, a chain and lock holding them together." It is taken for granted by 
the few writers who have mentioned this ruin, that it was erected by the Regent Morton ; and 
Pennicuik, in his description of Tweeddale, tells us that, " Upon the front of the south entry of this 
castle was J E O M, James Earl of Mortoun^ in raised letters, with the fetterlock as Warden of 
the Borders." We are not aware of any contemporary authority for this account of the origin 
of the edifice, and it is not mentioned by the family historian Hume of Godscroft, who gives a 
pretty full memoir of the Regent. Pennicuik's substantial statement, followed by others, is, 
" The Nether Drochil hath been designed more for a palace than castle of defence, and is of 
mighty bulk ; founded, and more tlnn ?ialf built, but never finished, by the then great and 
powerful regent, James Douglas, Earl ^f M".rtoun. . . . This mighty Earl, for the pleasure 
of the place, and salubrity of the air, designed here a noble recess and retirement from worldly 
business ; but was prevented by his unforti>iato and inexorable death three years after, Anno 
1581." The blood-stained history of this statesman is too well known to readers of Scottish 
history to need repetition. In the hour of his greatest power, influence, and wealth, his imprudent 
greed had eaten out the foundation of all his influence, and turned outwitted and pillaged sup- 
porters into deadly enemies. All that was necessary was to find a ground of difference of 
opinion, about the project to ally Queen Mary with licr son in the government. '• Morton." says 
tiie quaint and sagacious family historian, " was too old a cat to draw such a straw before him, or 
OROcnii. Casti.k. I — ?. 



2 OKOCHIL CASTLE. 

U- propound anything tending that way : wherefore their best was to make him away, that sc thu 
plot might goe on. And much more good efifect would come of that one stroke. Hee was rici:. 
Hee had fair lands and houses, a fair reward of all their pains and travell. And no question his 
friends that should take his part might be involved and insnared with him — especially, the Earl of 
Angus could hardly in this case of his uncle so behave himself but occasion might be found 
against him, which would be a faire bootie."* 

His ruin turning out to be so promising a speculation, the regent resigned his power. Had he 
not outlived the courage and practical sagacity of his earlier days, he would have felt that his 
safety lay in fighting his post, since he had to deal with opponents who, like himself, trusted to the 
tnortui non mordent. His policy appears to have been to erect a safety-retreat for himself among 
the mountains, near the strongholds of his still powerful kinsmen. His knowledge of his family 
history would teach him the uses of such a refuge. More than once, in the tragic history of his 
house, had the critical moment passed over while the fugitive was safe in his unapproachable 
fortalice. Presuming the legend of the building of Drochil, however, to be well founded, his 
enemies were more active than his builders. A second time he submitted to his fate, instead of 
seeking such refuge as he might have found. " He had forgotten," says Godscroft, " the old 
aaxim of his predecessors, ' that it was better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep,' and 
iheir proverb ' loose and living,' " and surrendered himself on the first summons. 

• Qodscroft's House of DougJiis. ti. 1 87. 








an 

a 

C 

I 

I': 

58 






DRYBURGH ABBEY. 

The visitant of Abbotsford and Melrose now seldom fails to make the short and pleasant addition 
to his journey which brings him to the simple tomb-stone of the feudal poet, under the pointed 
Gothic arches of his ancestral burial aisle. He will then see much that is worthy of notice, 
independently both of historical and poetical association. The scene is one of the finest iu 
Scotland for water, hill, and forest bank. The Tweed winds gracefully — the banks have enough 
of culture to make them green and cheerful, without too forcibly reminding one of stock and 
the rotation of crops ; and the grey ruins rise from a screen of wood sufficient to show their 
picturesqueness without altogether exposing their ragged desolation. The effect of the whole 
scene teaches that monastic ruins are seen to most advantage among cheerful sloping woodlands — 
they remove in a great measure the feeling of desolation, which roofless broken stonework 
has a tendency to create, substituting natural beauty for the artificial symmetry which has 
yielded to the ravages of time and violence. The stranger has been accustomed to notice, in that 
interesting spot, some other objects which have surprised but seldom gratified him. Gateways, 
and other outer edifices of the furniture Gothic of Horace Walpole's time — an eccentric collection 
of statuary, some of it in actual plaster, placed in the most incongruous and unsuitable places; and, 
to crown all these freaks of an eccentric antiquarian nobleman, who dedicated the spot to his 
peculiarities, a huge mass of stone, called a statue of Sir William Wallace, overlooks the whole 
scene from the ridge of the hill. 

The architectural character of the fragments speaks at once to the period of the foundation of 
the institution in the times of the Norman architecture, and its resuscitation, after partial 
destruction, during the immediately following period. It is unnecessary to inquire whether the 
author of the article in Grose's Antiquities has proved that there must have been a Druidical 
establishment here, " because the Celtic or Gaelic etymology of the name Darachbruach, or 
Daraghbrugh or Dryburgh, can be no otherwise interpreted than the bank of the sacred grove of 
oaks, or the settlement of the Druids." It is sufficient to know, that the monastery of Dryburgh 
was founded in the year 1150. David the First is generally believed to have been the founder, 
from his alluding to the Church of the brotherhood dedicated to St Mary as founded by himself, 
in a charter making large grants to the brothers there officiating. On the other hand, the 
Chronicle of Melrose states distinctly that Hugh de Morville was the founder; and the statement 
has been sanctioned by antiquarian critics.* There is no doubt that both were benefactor ; and 
between the church itself and the religious order who were to ser\'e in it there was room for a 
double foundation. Morville was one of those princely Normans who, before the War of Inde- 
pendence, crowded into Scotland, and lorded it over the richest parts of the country. He was 
a great favourite of the king, and obtained from him the office of Constable of Scotland, borrowed 
from the Norman practice at the court of England. He died in 1162. The monastery was 
founded for brethren of the Premonstratensian order who came from Alnwick, and their supenor 
held the rank of Abbot. Of the successive abbots, the first of whom was named Robert, an 

* Uoiles' Anuals', i. i)'. Cbaliuen's Cal., i. 503. 

Drtburuu Abbky, : — 4. 



2 DKYBUKGH ABBEY. 

account may be found, so far as anything is known of their personal history, in the pretace of 
tiie Chartulary of the abbey, known as Liber Sanctm Mariae de Dryburgh^ printed for the 
Bannatyne Club, and in Morton's Monastic Annals of Teviotdah. 

In the year 1322, the fraternity, then richly endowed among the surrounding lands, and lodged 
in a magnificent edifice, received an unpleasant visit from the retreating army of Edward II. It 
is said that the fugitives expected food, and were irritated by the attenuated condition to which 
the miseries of hostile invasion had reduced the monastic larder, with everything else that had 
been rich and prosperous in the land. Tradition says that the brethren vented their jeers on the 
retreating troops. However it may have been, the ruffian soldiery set fire to the edifice, and 
burned it to the ground. Munificent contributions were made to the restoration of the buildings 
by Robert I., and the small extent of masonry left after the conflagration is clearly indicated by 
the predominance of an architecture subsequent to the event. 

It appears that, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the brethren, waxing rich and luxu- 
rious, allowed and perpetrated many abuses ; had vehement disputes with each other, leading to 
personal conflicts, unseemly in men under religious vows ; and entered into simoniacal transactions, 
the mercenary interests arising from which appear to have been the real source of the disorders. 
Excommunicated persons had audaciously braved the power of the Church by performing 
spiritual functions, and had incurred consequences only to be averted by personal appearance at 
Rome, and submission to the discipline of the Pontiff. But this was dispensed with, and the 
power of exercising discipline committed to the Abbot, for the curious but sound reason that, in 
their journey to Rome, persons of the character and habits of these licentious churchmen would 
only find too many temptations to go astray, and might be plunged into still greater excesses.* 

Few of the brethren of the Abbey appear to have arrived at very great distinction. Dempster, 
m that wonderful fictitious biographical dictionary, which he was pleased to name Historia 
EccUstastica Oentis Scotorum, gives us an account of a certain Radulphus Strodus, flourishing 
about the year 1370, who had distinguished himself at Oxford, and was an alumnus of Dryburgh, 
where he afterwards lived and died. Dempster says that in the library of the brotherhood were 
many of his works unknown to the English. He had travelled in the Holy Land, and from 
personal observation produced Itinerarium Terrce Sanctce. In a catalogue of his other works, 
occurs one that, if it ever existed, would perhaps be curious, Phantasma Radulphi ; but most of 
these catalogues of the labours of Scottish writers, as given by Dempster, are fictitious or greatly 
exaggerated ; and he sometimes, in the marauding spirit of his age, drove a distinguished writer, 
with all his herd of works, across the Border — nay, sometimes from the interior of Germany or 
Italy — into his own beloved country, believing that he had done a patriotic duty. He was a 
vehement controversialist on the side of the old religion ; and thus one of the merits of Radulphus 
is, that he wrote Positiones ei xviii. Argumenta contra Wicleffum Hcereticum. Dempster says that 
the Dryburgh monk stood high in the estimation of Chaucer, who counted him " inter prsecipuos 
sui seculi poetas." And we have something like a confirmation of this at the conclusion of 
Troilus and Cresside — 

•■' morall Gower, this book I direct 
To thee and to the philosophical! Strode; 
To vouchsafe, there need is, to correct 
Of your benignities and zeales good," 4c. 

* Morton's Mouastic Annals, 2U7 



DHYBUKGH ABBKV. 3 

A Radolplius Strodes is commemorated as an author by Fabriciua in his Bibliotheca, probably on 
the authority of Dempster, and in Jocher's Lexicon he is mentioned as a monk of " Tedburg,'' and 
6171 guter Poet. Finally, it should be mentioned that Gesner, writing before Dempster, mentions 
a Strodus who, among other works, had written against Wicliffe, but he calls him Anglus. 

The celebrated Andrew Forraan appears, at the commencement of the sixteentli century, to 
have held this abbey in commendam, among his multitudinous ecclesiastical benefices. He was 
Bishop of Moray and Archbishop of Bourges; and after having been gorged with offices by the 
Pope, he was successful in a conflict against the Papal influence for the archbishopric of St Andrews, 
vindicating the principle that it should not be held by an Italian. It is of this great pluralist tiial 
Pitscottie tells an absurd anecdote. In the course of his diplomatic career, according to the honest 
chronicler, it lay with him to entertain the whole Vatican, Pope and Cardinals, to diimer. He 
required to say grace, because " the use and custom was, that, at the beginning of meat, he that 
ought the house, and made the banquet, should say the grace and bless the meat." The bishop, 
" who was not ane guid schoUer, nor had not guid Latine," was perplexed and put out by the 
responses of the Italians, and, losing presence of mind and patience, " he wist not weill how to 
proceed fordward, hot happened, in guid Scottis, in this manner, sayand quhilk they understuid 
not, ' The divill I give yow, all false cardinallis to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.' 
Amen,' quoth they. Then the bishop and his men leugh, and all the cardinallis themselffis."* 
If there be no further truth in the anecdote, it at least shows the opinion entertained by the 
reforming party of the learning of the bloated pluralists, who brought so much scandal on the 
latter days of the Catholic supremacy in Scotland. 

The rich abbey of Dryburgh was too near the Border to escape the marauding expeditions of 
the English. Besides its destruction by Edward II., already mentioned, and attacks from time to 
time by the Border freebooters — which were generally limited to the fat cattle and sheep intended 
for the monastic larder — it suff'ered in that inroad of Richard II., which forms a title to one of 
Wyntoun's chapters — " Quhen Rycharde, Kyng of Ingland, gert bryne abbayis in Scotland." 

The bard makes as short work as the marauders seem to have made — 

" Diyburgh, and Newbotil, thai twa 
In til thar way tbai brynt alsua." 

In a letter of the year 1523, " without a signature, but apparently by the Duke of Albany to 
Cardinal Accolti," it is stated that the monks were grievously subject to the devastating inroads 
of the English, by whom their buildings, and the produce of their lands, were miserably wasted 
and destroyed. " Wherefore the monks needed such a superior as would give his whole attention 
to the afi'airs of the said abbey, repair its buildings, and restore the worship of God therein," and 
James Stewart, Canon of Glasgow, is selected as a person who would answer to these require- 
inents.t The poor abbey had much need of a protector, for within a few years, in 1544, an army 
of marauders 700 strong, headed by Sir George Bowes and Sir Bryan Layton, and including the 
garrison of Berwick, " rode into Scotland, upon the water of Tweide, to a toun called Drybrough, 
with an abbay in the same, which was a pratty toun and well buylded ; and they burnt the same 
toun and abbay, savyng the church, with a great substance of come, and got very much spoylage 
and insight geire, and brought away an hundreth nolte, LX. naggs, a hundreth sheipe."J 

The abbot of that time, however, appeared so far fit for his task that he could retaliate. In 

* Pitscottie's Chronicle, 265. t Morton's Annals, 300. i Letter quoted in Morton's Annals, 301. 



4 DkYBUKGH ABBEY. 

the following year he joined the Earls of Hume and Bothwell, and these allies, taking with them 
some French troops in the Scottish service, made a formidable raid southwards, forming altogether 
an army of 3000 men. They burned Horcliff, and were busy with the destruction of Thornton 
and Shorswood, when they were surprised and driven off with some slaughter by the garrison 
of Norhani.* 

By a charter of James VI., the domains of the abbey were converted into a temporal lordship 
in favour of the descendants of the Earl of Mar by his second wife, Lady Mary Stewart. The 
portion on which the ruin stands, after having been in the possession of the family of Haliburton, 
to be afterwards mentioned, was repurchased by the descendants of its original improprietors, and 
so became the property of the Earl of Buchan. The most interesting feature connected with the 
building at the present day is its association with the memory of Scott. In a touching passage in 
his diary, he describes how he deposited the remains of the thirty-years partner of his days beneath 
the turf on which he had so often sat with her in the sunshine, in days of happiness and prosperity. 
Here too his own dust was laid, in the very centre of all the glories of his chivalrous genius, 
with nothing but a plain slab raised over him, as if, like the tomb of Wren, it said to the pilgrim, 
" Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." 

It was the peculiar character of Scott's mind to resign no claim on descent or lineage to which 
he had any tolerable title. Much more immediately distinguished than those ducal namesakes 
with whom he claimed an indistinct alliance, was his connection with a worshipfiil old family, 
bearing the Anglo-Saxon name of Haliburton of Newmains. This family obtained the estate of 
Dryburgh not long after it had been made a temporal lordship. Sir Walter, not noticing, by the 
way, the circumstance that, in being purchased by the Earl of Buchan, it went to the descendant 
of a still earlier possessor, says, in his autobiography, " Robert Scott of Sandy Knowe married, 
in 1728, Barbara Haliburton, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of Newmains, an ancient and 
respectable family in Bei-wickshire. Among other patrimonial possessions, they enjoyed the part 
of Dryburgh, now the property of the Earl of Buchan, comprehending the ruins of the Abbey. 
My grand-uncle, Eobert Haliburton, having no male heirs, this estate, as well as the representation 
of the family, would have devolved upon my father, and, indeed, old Newmains would have 
settled it upon him ; but this was prevented by the misfortunes of my grand-uncle, a weak silly 
man, who engaged in trade, for which he had neither stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. 
. . . And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father's maternal inheritance, 
but the right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own 
glances over these pages." f 

* Letter quoted in Morton's Annals, 86. t Memoim, l 6, 7. 




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CATHEDRAL OF DUNBLANE. 

In the broad valley which separates the Grampian mountains from the chain of the Oclivl^, 
southward by a few miles of the green ramparts of Ardoch, where the Romans have left unperish- 
ing memorials of their far-reaching energy and entei"pri8e, there lies a pleasant, sequestered, peace- 
ful village, holding, by courtesy, the title of a cathedral city. A transparent flowing stream, with 
luxuriously broken ground on either side — well-kept gentlemen's houses peeping forth from banks 
of rich foliage — a few irregularly scattered ancient houses, all crowned by the broken walls and the 
gray tower of the cathedral — mark the scene of the old popular song of " Jessie, the Flower of Dun- 
blane." The spot is not much frequented, save by occasional parties from the neighbouring mo- 
dem watering-place of the Bridge of Allan ; and the traveller by coach between Stirling and Perth, 
unprepared to meet any celebrated edifice on his route, is often agreeably astonished in passing 
close beneath these fine ruins. The bishopric is territorially obscure ; and on a spot only some twenty 
miles from the cathedral of Dunkeld, in the same county, and not forty from the metropolitan see 
of St Andrews, in the adjoining county, one is not naturally prepared to meet with the vestiges 
of a third episcopate. 

The accompanying plates bring the whole edifice before the eye. The lower part of the square 
tower is Xonnan, and forms undoubtedly the oldest portion of the whole. This has been 
continued, at a later time, in the plain pointed early English style ; and, farther up, embrasures 
and battlements have been supplied, according to a practice pretty common in Scotland, from the cas- 
tellated architecture of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The body of the edifice is a fine stately 
exemplification of the pointed Gothic, exhibiting types of the gradual absorption of the early English 
into what is generally termed the decorative period. The windows, remarkable for their loftiness, 
have a rich as well as a dignified effect, arising, not from abundance of sculptured tracery, of whicli 
the whole edifice is comparatively free, but from the symmetrical character of the design, in which 
the quatrefoil and cinquefoil are very successfully introduced. Neither the capitals of the clustered 
pillars, nor the mouldings on the deep archway of the western door, are flowered, or otherwise 
adorned. The great west window, in three tall lance-headed compartments, derives a lightness and 
grace from having outer and inner mullions. The edifice is a simple nave and choir, without any 
vestige of a transept. The choir, which has no aisles, Is fitted up as the parish church. Its roof 
has, at first sight, rather the appearance of being modern, as it Is not consistent with the ori- 
ginal height of the western gable, which projects awkwardly above it. But though tlius at 
variance with the original plan and symmetry of the building, it Is of considerable age. Some of 
the prebends' stalls, more fortunate than the wood-work of the greater number of the ecclesiastical 
buildings in Scotland, have been preserved, and a specimen of them may be seen in the cut on p. 4. 
A recumbent effigy of a man In annour, with a triangular shield, marks the tomb of one of the lords 
of Strathallan, the once powerful chiefs of the district. 



CATHEDRAr. OP Ddnbi-ank, 1 — 4. 



CATHEDRAL OF DUNBLANE. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



Wc are told by the legends ot the Catholic Ohurcb, tliat St Blane, tL(; patron saint of the church, 
from whom also the diocese and the cathedral town derive their name, was a native of the island of 
15utc, and the descendant of an illustrious Irish house, numbering some of the earlier ecclesiastical 
dignitaries among its members. According to the same authority, he spent seven yeare in the land 
of his ancestors, under the tuition and discipline of the Bishops Congal and Kennet, when he 
retimied with his mother, fortified to fight the battles of the faith, to the small island of his birth, 
whither he crossed in a small skiff, at the mercy of the waves, without oars or sail. If we treat this 
adventure as a mere fortunate accident, his first miracle happened subsequently in this wise: During 
the time of vespers, the light of which he had charge being extinguished, its place was supplied and 
the darkness illuminated bj' a sacred fire radiating from the points of hisfingei's like sparks struck from 
a flint. • He afterwards made a pilgrimage to Rome, and on his way back passed through England — 
not on horseback, as the legend carefully tells us, but on his feet. As he was approaching the border 
of Scotland, he one day heard sounds of grief, proceeding from the parents of a youth who had died 
Through the efficacy of the cross the holy man not only raised the youth to life, but restored to him the 
sight of his left eye, of which he had been for some time deprived.* A curious reference to this miracle, 
placing its consequences in a very substantial shape, occurs in Scottish history. Fordun mentions 
that, after the conclusion of the war of independence by Bruce, the English officials, clerical and 
lay, were driven from the country, as dangerous plotters against its liberty. He complains that a 
like exclusion was not practised against the English in his own day, and that they did not recipro- 
cate the privileges they enjoyed in Scotland, since the bishopric of Dunblane had a clear right to 
the English lordship of Appilby, Congerc, and Trodyngham, together with Malemath, the see 
having been gifted with them by their lord, whose son St Blane had raised firom the dead. 

The muniments of Dunblane Cathedral have long been lamented as lost to the ecclesiastical 
antiquary ; and Keith, in his " Catalogue of Scottish Bishops," complains that he could not find 
sufficient materials for a complete list of the holders of the see, even during a comparatively late 
period.f It is probable that the small Norman portion of the edifice now remaining was built in 
the reign of the sainted David. A curious document, which has been recently recovered, shows 
that in its infancy the bishopric had passed through evil days. It appears that, in the year 1238, 
the Bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld acted, by papal appointment, as judges between the Bishop ot 
Dunblane and the Earl of Menteith. It is narrated that the bishop had represented personally to the 
Pope the destitute state of the see. He stated that it had at one time remained vacant for more 
than a century ,^: and that nearly all its property had been seized by secular persons ; that the 

* Brcviariura Aberdonense, Adv. Lib. Prop. Sanct., 10th August, folio btxvii. This work, of which only two copies, neither 
of them perfect, are known to exist, containing so much curious legendary matter applicable to Scotland, is likely soon to 
become better known to the world through the spirited efforts of the Spalding Club. 

t In a note to " Pitcaim's Criminal Trials," (ii. 569,) after some information, not in itself of much value, about the family 
of Chisholm, which had provided three bishops to the see, there is this notandum : — " The editor is indebted to the industry 
and research of the Rev. Mr M'Gregor Stirling for the information contained in the preceding note. That learned gentleman 
has collected much original matter relative to the see of Dunblane, which it is hoped he may some time be induced to lay 
before the public." The passage is lierc copied for the purpose of echoing the wish. 

t " Per cenhim annos et amplius." 



CATHEDRAL OF DUNBLANE. 3 

bishops subsequently collated, instead of obtaining restoration of this property, had permitted farther 
dilapidations ; and that, indeed, the see had been for ten years vacant and waste at the time when 
the present incumbent was induced to accept of the charge. He pathetically described it as so 
desolate, that he could not find within the edifice a place where to lay his head — that there was no 
college or chapter — but that in the roofless church some country chaplain would occasionally 
perform the service. The Pope desires his commissioners or delegates to institute a dean and 
chapter. He desires them, as an endowment for the establishment, if it can be done without grave 
scandal, to appropriate a fourth of the tithes of all the parish churches of the diocese, that the 
bishop, reserving by competent advice a suitable portion to himself, may assign the remainder to 
the dean and canons. A curious alternative was put in the power of the commissioners if they 
deemed this arrangement Injudicious — to assign to the bishop a fourth of the tithes in the hands of 
laymen, and to transfer the episcopal seat to the neighbouring monastery of canons regular of St 
John of Inchafier, who were to form the chapter and elect to the see. The commissioners appear 
to have taken the opportunity of an ecclesiastical council then held at Perth, to hear parties and 
come to a decision. Their judgment seems to have been voluntarily acquiesced in by the parties, 
but not to have been strictly in accordance with the terms of the commission. On the one hand, 
the bishop renounces all claim to certain ecclesiastical benefices held by the earl in Menteith ; 
while, on the other, the earl cedes the church of Kippen to the chapter, and that of Callendar, the 
well-known threshold of the Perthshire highlands, to the bishop. It is Inferred that the Cathedral 
continued to be governed by a secular chapter, and that the right was not transferred to the con- 
vent of Inchaffer.* It is clearly in allusion to the benefactions of this bishop that Fordun relates 
how, in the year 1256, the country lost a famous preacher of the order of St Dominic, Clement 
Bishop of Dunblane— a man great in word and deed before God and man, who, finding his cathedral 
roofless, desolate, and no better served than a country chapel, raised it up a distinguished sanctuary, 
endowed it with possessions, and extended to It the services of prebends and canons.t It would 
thus appear that the principal portion of the edifice was built during the episcopate of this Clement. 
Among the other scanty historical notes of tliis see, it is stated by the editor of the documents 
already cited, that " the Cathedral of St Blanc, originally founded and endowed by the Earls of 
Stratheme, continued under their protection until the earldom had merged in the crown, and the 
bishop and chapter held their lands, annual rents, and temporalities, of the earls, as their feudal 
superiors. In 1442, James II., in parliament, declared the earldom fallen to the crown ; and 
ordained the bishopric temporalities henceforth to be held in free barony directly of the 
sovereign. I 

This small remote bishopric was but rarely associated with great historical events. In 1633, 
Archbishop Laud, in his visit to Scotland, passed tiirough Dunblane. In his Diary he speaks 
only of his " dangerous and cruel journey " over Highland roads ; but an observer of the times 
has recorded the following dialogue, as having taken place on his remarking that the Cathedral 
was " a goodly church." " Yes, my Lord," said one standing by, " this was a brave kirk 
before the Reformation." " What, fellow ! " said the Bishop, " iJefomiation — not -ffefonnation."§ 
The most celebrated occupant of the chair was Robert Leighton, author of the " Sermons," and other 
well-known theological works. He was elected in 1661, and In 1671 he was prevailed on to accept 

' Abbaciae Canonicorum Regularium de Inchaffer. Ileg. vetiis. Append, p. xxix. f FoixUin & Qoodall, ii. 92. 

t Registnim ut supra. Pref. xiii. § Row's Hist, of the Kirk, p. 36i). 



4 CATHEDRAL OF DUNBLANK. 

of the metropolitan chair of Glasgow, from which he soon afterwards retired into private life. He 
bequeathed liis library to the clergy of his diocese of Dunblane ; and some relatives of the venerated 
bishop, along with other persons, assisted in endowing an establishment for the proper preservation 
of the books. After having undergone various casualties, among which it is recorded in 1843 that 
" about 700 volumes have been lost during the last fifty years," it is said tliat " by the new 
catalogue it appears that there are excellent editions of the classics, several works of the Fathers, 
a host of obscure theological writings of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, a thin 
sprinkling of publications of last century, and few or no modem publications. 

* New Statist. Account, Perthshire, 1040. 





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DUNDEE CHURCH TOWER. 

Perhaps one of the most singular features of Scottish architecture presents itself m the almost 
universal poverty of the church towers erected after the thirteenth century ; for we must except 
those of an earlier period, if either Elgin or Arbroath are to be taken as the general type. Nor, 
indeed, can we call the lantern towers of Edinburgh, Haddington, or Aberdeen, plain, except by 
comparison with the lofty and highly enriched spires of the old English parish churches. 

At a first glance of the more recent ancient Scotch church towers, it would appear that the castle 
keep had been their aim, and that their object was rather the centre of a fortress than the peaceful 
spire pointing heavenward; but an examination of their attached buildings shows their peaceful 
mission, abundance of elaborate detail being within reach of the hand. It is, generally speaking, a 
striking difference between the churches of the north and south of Britain, that those of England 
generally increase in decoration upward, and those of Scotland as decidedly the contrary. 

Dundee Tower is now the largest specimen in Scotland, the most elaborately ornamented, and 
certainly the most picturesque. Yet, with all its ornament, how completely the massiveness of its 
masonry holds the grim keep Tower in view, and it has claims to that title, having been fortified upon 
the occasion of the storming of Dundee by the Parliamentary troops under General Monck, in 1651. 

From a very early period, the important position of Dundee rendered it a constant object for con- 
tention. Twice did the town fall into the hands of Edward I. ; twice was it retaken from the English 
by Wallace and Bruce, and it was twice nearly reduced to ashes by the forces of Kichard II. and 
Edward VI. Of the ecclesiastical buildings of Dundee, the Church Tower alone remains as the 
silent witness of most of these stirring scenes; the attached Church has long since virtually, and even 
fruitfully disappeared ; for now, in place of one adjunct to the Tower, there are no less than four 
religious edifices, under the same series of roofs, the entire mass being known as the " Dundee 
Churches." Never in modern times has old steeple been honoured with such a numerous progeny, 
and well it bears them, raising its gigantic form to a height of nearly 160 feet. 

David Earl of Huntingdon built a church here before the year 1200, to commemorate his escape 
from a tempest. This building appears to have been destroyed by Edward I., and according to 
tradition was rebuilt to be again destroyed by Edward VI., (1547-1553). It is impossible that this 
can be true, for no trace of such recent handiwork exists in the Tower, and we should rather refer 
the destruction and rebuilding to the time of Richard II., (1377-1399). It is to the style of this 
period that the whole mass refers itself. 

In the tracery filling the circular-headed window on the western side of the Tower, we recognise 
the system of window-paneling carried out more extensively in the Cathedral Tower of lona; 
and we draw attention to this feature, because the effect produced is as original as it is beautiful, and 
because it is capable of being varied as a field of design without limit. 

Another feature of Dundee Tower we recommend strongly to the notice of the architect. It is 
the unbroken form of the external line of the octagonal staircase from base to summit, and the 
frequent repetition of its loop windows surmounting each other. This continuation of perpendicular 
line gives an air of loftiness to the mass, and completely neutralises the lowering effect of the 
ornamented horizontal lines prevailing upon the different stages. 

And finally we recommend the imposing mass delineated in our plate to the notice of the men of 
Dundee, wishing at the same time that they would restore the west window, and thus give us the 
opportunity of correcting our own perpetuation of its present plastered deformity. 



ELCHO CASTLE, NEAR PEHTH. 

In its plan, this building is a parallelogram, showing two of its walls, and having attached to the 
two remaining sides the irregular masses we have delineated. They may be stated to represent a 
connecting link between the old Castle, such as Spynie, and the Baronial Mansion, such as Castle 
Fraser, although the lower part of the latter building is probably as old as the first named. 

Elcho's rugged design gives the huge outward ranging port-holes of Spynie, and at its summit we 
see a change working upon the open bartizan,* which eventuated in the turret of a later period. 

From the base to the summit, the windows of the old Scotch Castles appear to have been heavily 
cross-barred with iron, and in Elcho many are left, the principal specimen being a cage-work over 
the large window between the advanced towers in our view. Whatever may have been the use of 
these bars against external assaults, it is quite certain, that, the door well besieged, the inmates 
were rendered absolute prisoners for want of other means of egress. 

Elcho presents a singular instance of opposition of design in the same building, by no means 
uncommon in Scotland. Thus, who would recognise in the massive composition of the back of 
Glammis Castle any affinity to the picturesque design of its front — or who would say that the two 
views of Newark Castle belonged to the same edifice? In the building now under notice, the 
opposite sides to those delineated present nothing but plain walls and windows, excepting one large 
low-roofed turret, and the change of design is complete. 



FOWLIS, FORFAR. 

Tradition has it, that this Churchf was founded in 1142. There is nothing to warrant an origin 
so remote, but the more probable account is given by Spottiswood, who says that it was " founded 
by Sir Andrew Gray of Fowlis, in the reign of King James II." (1437-1460). 

It wants but the bell turret to make Fowhs as perfect a specimen of the fifteenth century as Dalmeny 
is of a village church of the Norman period. Externally, its masonry is as beautiful and perfect as 
the day it was built, but internally all has been modernised, save one feature — the ancient rood loft, 
which now helps to form a chancel partition. No rule without an exception, is verified at FowUs. 
The Reformation in Scotland, which commended the destruction of " idolatrous images and sick lyke," 
has left this one object of its fury with the paintings upon its panels perfect as when executed. 

The church measures externally 90 by 27 feet. It has not a projection upon its walls, and upon 
the north side there is not even a window, and a small door formerly near the west end has been 
walled up. The other portions are, however, full of feature. What can be more at variance with the 
design of churches in general than the three light window of the chancel, and the small circular piece 
eastern window ? or what can contradict the unity of design more than the western and chancel 
windows, than the cluster of small windows between the church doors ? Then we may contrast the 
studied absence of ornament of any kind over the windows with the decorations of the doorway. 

Near this door a singular antiquarian relic is attached to the wall — " thejiujs" — literally the stocks 
of Scotland ; the difference between them and the English mode of penance being, that the neck was 
secured in the one country, and the legs in the other. 

* The peculiarity alluded to is the semi-conical stone roof over the outer angle of the bartizan. 

t It is situate about six miles west of Dundee, and is called Eaiter, to distinguish it from Fowlis Wester m Perthshire. 

Klcuo Cahtlk, Dundee, 1 — 2. 




Drci,n I'V RMBaiiiuis. 



TltlE CCHTUmiCTBI T^^yyiEB.-ISUJHBlKlffio 



PALACE, ABBEY AND CHURCH OF DUNFERMLINE. 

Dunfermline is situated in the county of Fife, between five and six miles north-west of the 
ancient passage across the Frith of Forth, called the Queen's Ferry. From a distance it appears 
to be scattered over the brow of a gentle eminence, which advantageously displays its towers and 
spires, and affords prominence to the picturesque outlines of its ancient ruins : on a near approach 
the ground is found to be variously broken, giving steepness to the streets, and presenting abrupt 
declivities, sometimes surmounted by the hanging gardens attached to the well built modem 
houses of the richer inhabitants, while in other places the irregularities form wooded recesses, 
which, in close junction with some of the remains of the ancient ecclesiastical or regal magnifi- 
cence of the spot, lay open many little glimpses of scenery characterized by much beauty, 
picturesqueness and variety. On a jutting eminence overlooking the wooded glen of PittencriefF, 
is a remnant of architecture called King Malcolm's tower ; it has been one of those simple old 
square buildings which abound in Scotland, and that it is so old as the date attributed to it — 
that of Malcolm Canmore, may be greatly doubted. South-east of this tower, and on the verge 
of the woody glen, stand the stately remains of the Palace, strongly buttressed, with several 
windows, cross-muUioned, and one projecting oriel fashion. Though merely fragmentary, the 
remains of this edifice are fuU of interest, to the antiquarian investigator who delights to trace 
the foundations of departed walls, or to rummage in vaults and crypts half filled with rubbish. 
Among the objects worthy of attention connected with this edifice is a subterraneous passage of 
considerable extent which had connected the Palace with the Abbey. It was personally investi- 
gated by the Reverend Gentleman whose work is so frequently referred to in the following sketch, 
and he has given a full description of the curious results.* 

Of the remains of the Abbey buildings, besides the Church, the most conspicuous is called the 
Frater-hall, — a portion of the walls of the refectory, or great dining-room, which witnessed the 
princely hospitalities of the rich mitred abbacy. Its ancient grandeur is attested by the south 
wall, still standing with its tall buttresses, and three rows of pointed windows, the highest tier of 
which are richly cusped. At one corner of the west gable is an octagonal turret stair-case, and 
at the other a square tower with a ribbed arched passage or pend beneath. In the recessed 
screen between them is a noble window, the upper part of which is divided by the intertwining 
of the mullions into departments, each cusped in quatrefoil. Many minutiae of the architecture 
of this building, and especially a small chamber in the wall with groined arches and bosses will 
interest the investigator. 

The portion of the original Abbey Church still subsisting, is the nave, which, until the building 
of the new Church on the site of the choir, was used as a parochial place of worship. The 
exterior is conspicuous in the massive size of its buttresses. The great western door-way is 
within a deep semi-circular arched recess, of that rich Norman style, which we find in Scotland 
to have gradually been mixed up with the later forms of Gothic architecture, retaining its semi- 
circular shape in the doorways of buildings of which all the other arches are pointed. Thus there 
is but a step between the western doorway of this Abbey, which is purely Norman, and that of 
Haddington Church which belongs to a later age. The upright mouldings or pilasters are of the 
usual character in Norman edifices — alternately polygonal and circular, the shafts undecorated. 
The interior tiers of moulding of the arch are of toothed and rose work, while a broad band of 

* See p. 95 et aeq. of " Historical and Descriptive Account of Dunfermline, by the Rev. Peter CluJiaers, A. M. Minister oi 
the First Charge Abbey Church, Dunfermline, 8vo. 1844." 
Palace, Abbey and Church ok DuNrsaMLiNE, I — 6. 



S PALACE; ABBEY AND CHURCH OF DUNFERMLINE. 

sculpture, representing grotesque heads, animals, and foliage, spreads round the whole, and is 
surmounted by a narrow decorated moulding, resembling the character of a later period. On the 
north side a projecting porch contmns an arched door-way of the simplest form of Norman, and a 
small arcade of the same school of architecture immediately above the porch is in strict accordance 
with its simplicity. In the interior of the porch, represented in one of the woodcuts, it will be 
seen that the arch over the door-way communicating directly with the interior is purely Norman, 
while the somewhat rich groined arching of the roof is of a later date. The same difference in ages 
is marked by the windows of pointed Gothic, and by some other portions of the architecture of the 
two narrow square towers, the northern one surmounted by a spire, which stands slightly within 
the level of the gable at either angle of the western end. Making allowance for some restorations 
made at the period when the new church was built, the portions in the pointed Gothic style 
probably indicate the parts renewed after the destruction of the Abbey by the followers of 
Edward I., to be noticed in the historical sketch. 

The interior is characterized by the same architectural distinctions. Towards the western 
extremity the clustered pillar supports the deeply moulded pointed arch, while further on the 
supporting pillars are circular with the stunted hard Norman capital, and the arches are semi- 
circular. The cylindrical shafts of the easternmost arch on either side are adorned by large zigzags. 
Belonging to the purely Norman department of the architecture, is the strongly marked arcade 
represented in the accompanying plate, with its toothed arches, the scaled capital, and the 
flowered cornice. Though it is not of great size, the effect of the interior of this nave is that of 
uiassiveness and gloom. 




PALACE, ABBBT AND CUUKCH OF DUNFERMLINE. S 

HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

From an early period Dunfermline appears to have been a favourite residence of the Scottish 
Kings. Fordun states that the marriage of Malcolm III. to his sainted Queen, was there cele- 
brated in 1070, and he mentions it as a rocky spot, well fortified both by nature and art, and 
situated amid a dense forest. Turgot, the confessor and biographer of St. Margaret, states that she 
founded and endowed a church at the place of her nuptials, and this probably points to the 
church from which, as we shall afterwards find, her remains were translated. It is referred to 
in the beautiful ballad of Sir Patric Spens. 

The King sits in Dunfermline Tower, 

Drinken the blude red wine, 
Whare sail I find a skeely skipper 

Will sail this ship 0' mine. 

The historical reference of this ballad has never been ascertained, but some critics have 
supposed it to be connected with the mission for the Maid of Norway in 1290. The mass of wall 
which still remains to indicate the position and architecture of the Palace, does not convey an 
impression of great antiquity. In 1812, there was discovered in the ceiling of an oriel window, 
at the south-western extremity, a stone, on which is carved a representation of the Annunciation. 
It appears to bear on a scroll beneath an escutcheon some figures which have been interpreted 
as the year 1100, in Arabic numerals. Without any inquiry, however, as to the time when these 
signs came into use, they were so utterly unknown in Scotland, so far as can be inferred from any 
remains extant at the present day, that their use on this occasion may be held distinctly to shew 
an anachronism. The figures, though they have little pretension to art, are somewhat too freely 
cut for such an age. The arms on the escutcheon are similar to those of George Dury, abbot of 
Dunfermline, at the time of the Reformation, as they appear on the seal of the abbey, and the 
stone is probably of no older date. 

The monastery was dedicated to St. Margaret, the Queen of Malcolm Canmore, who died in 
1093. It is supposed to have been connected with the Culdees, but the supposition rests on no 
better evidence than a reservation in a charter from David I. to the monks of Dunfermline, of the 
right which the Culdees used to enjoy to a pension out of the lands confeiTed by the Charter. 
It was long supposed to have been founded by Malcolm III. whose reign began in 10.57 and 
ended in 1093, on the faith of a charter from that monarch, which the skill of later antiquarians 
has detected as a forgery. The editor of the Chartulary says of it — "The original has never 
been seen. It is not mentioned in the Register. The style of Basileus though adopted in a seal 
of a succeeding king, is a Saxon affectation not likely to have occurred to Malcolm Canmore, 
and very likely to have been invented by some Scotch defender of the Independence when that 
came into dispute. The Earls and Barons are too ostentatiously put forward, at a time when it 
may be doubted if their respective ranks were quite ascertained or named."* 

It is supposed that the foundation was a Priory until the reign of David I. when it was raised 
to the rank of an Abbey, Gaufrid, Prior of Christ's Church, Canterbury, having been elected the 
first Abbot in 1128. It was gifted with extensive lands and ecclesiastical benefices, among which 
was the Church of the Holy Trinity of Dunkeld, which afterwards became the Cathedral of that 
diocese. It was in the year 1244, and while Robert de Keldelecht was Abbot, that the Abbey was 
raised to the dignity of the mitre, the usual privileges of a mitred Abbot being conceded in a 
Bull the terms of which are preserved in the Registry, granted by Pope Innocent IV. at the 
desire of Alexander in. It was not until five years after this event, viz. 1249, that Queen 

* Innes' Preface to Registnini de Dunfcrmelyn, p. 21. 



4 PALACE, ABBEY AND CHURCH OF DUNFERMLINE. 

Margaret, the Patron Saint of the foundation, was canonized, and placed in a position to he 
canonicallv the object of an ecclesiastical dedication. As " miracles infinite" had been pei-formect 
by her remains, an application was made to the Pope in 1246 by Alexsmder II. to admit her to 
the Calendai-. As the general reader is well aware, the evidence requisite to establish such a 
claim required to be full and distinct, so that if we get over the first question whether the class 
of miracles on which such claims were generally rested are to be admitted as proveable by any 
human testimony whatever, the most sceptical must admit that the evidence, such as it might be, 
was generally both abundant and strict. One illustration of this strictness was afforded in the 
present instance, for after a Commission consisting of the Bishops of St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and 
Dunblane, had made a favourable report, it was found invalid because they had not incorporated 
the evidence of the witnesses, and a new Commission was issued. In the year 1250, the bones 
of the saint were " translated " from the place where they were originally deposited, " in the Rude 
Altar of the Kirk of Dunfermhne," to the Choir of the Abbey Church. The young King Alex- 
ander III. with his mother, and a large assembly of nobles and clergy, were present at the 
ceremony. The remains were placed in a silver sarcophagus, which the chroniclers state to have 
been adorned with precious stones. So interesting a scene could not of course occur without its 
appropriate miracle. The remains of King Malcolm, her husband, were deposited in the same 
spot, and at first all the strength of man was found insufficient to remove the relics of the 
maiden wife from the spot, until those of her husband had been first lifted and removed to the 
])lace where hers were destined to lie. According to Wyntoun : — 

" With all thare powere and thare slycht, 
Her body to rays thai had na mycht. 
Na lift her anys owt of that plas, 
Quhar sho that tyme lyand was, 
For all thare devotyownys 
Prayeris and gret orysownys, 
That the persownys gaddryd there 
0yd in devot manere : 
Quhell fyrst thai tuk iipe the body 
Of hyr lord that lay thareby 
And bare it bene into the quere 
Lystly syne in fayre manere 
Uer cors thai tuk up and bare ben. 
And thame enteryd togyddyr then. 
Swa trowyd thai all than gadryd thare 
Quhat hononre dl hyr lord scho bare."'l= 

The possession of these relics made Dunfermline a place of extensive pilgrimage. At the 
Reformation, the shrine in which they were contained was conveyed to the castle of Edinburgh, 
and subsequently was taken in charge by the last Abbot of the monastery, by whom it was 
preserved in his obscure wanderings. It fell into the hands of the Jesuits, and having been 
some time at Antwerp, was subsequently preserved in the College of Douay, where it was an 
object of high veneration to all Scottish Roman Catholics. The shrine and its mortal contents 
subsequently disappeared in those successive troubles to which the manuscripts and other property 
of the Scottish Establishment at Douay fell a sacrifice. 

A list of the places whence this rich and powerful Abbey derived its revenues, supplied by 
Mr. Chalmers, ranges from Berwick on the Tweed, through all the intervening districts to 
Dingwall in Rosshire. Among its possessions and privileges were some taxes and mono- 
polies, and one of these was the important right of ferry across the isthmus of the Frith of 
Forth, which is supposed to have derived the name of the " Queen's Ferry," still retained by it, 

• Wyntoun'g Cronykil, b. irii. c. iO. 



PALACE, ABBEY AND CHURCIl OF DUNFEUM I.I >E. 5 

from Queen Margaret. The monastery was gifted with a diversity of tithes on rents, taxes, and 
commodities, the enumeration of which casts a curious Hght on the habits of the age. Tims 
among the gifts from the monarchs, and chiefly from David I., were " the tenths of all the 
huntings between Lammermoor and Tay : of all his [David's] wild mures of Fife and Fothriff : 
of all the salt and iron brought to Dunfermline for the King's use : of all the money rents of 
Stirling : of all the gold that might come to him from Fife and Fothriff (a proof as some think 
of the precious metals being found in these districts, or, as others imagine, only referring to the 
King's rents or revenues) of all the cane [a species of tax or rent] paj'able to him, brought to 
Dunfermline from Fife, Fothriff and Clackmanan, in grain, cheese, malt, swine and cows, and 
even of eels : of his lordships in corn, animals, fishing, and money : and also the cane of a ship 
wherever it may have plied in his kingdom."* 

Many of the great barons were feudatories of the Abbey, and the Earl of Fife repeatedly did 
homage in the pompous form exacted from the ecclesiastical vassals, who were liable to the 
terrors of excommunication if they did not comply. An inquest regarding the homage of these 
Earls is still extant, in which a witness attested that a former Earl did homage before the great 
altar previous to the celebration of high mass, the king, seven bishops, and seven earls being 
present, and a witness testifies to another act of homage remembered by him, from the particulai 
circumstance, that the abbot's chamberlain received a well-furred cloak on the occasion. 
" vnam super -tunicam benefurratam."f Among the muniments of this great establishment are 
found many notices of the right to bondsmen attached to, and conveyed from master to master 
with the soil. Not the least curious feature is the preservation of the genealogies of these 
unhappy slaves, in respect to whom these records, usually the concomitants of high birth, may 
have performed functions somewhat like those of a modern stud-book, if the pedigrees were 
not preserved for the mere sake of supplying a connected record of ownership. Some allusion is 
made in these documents to the scanty obligations of the monastery to its bondsmen. There was 
no obligation, it appears, to support them in want and old age : but the inquiry appears to have 
been applied not to the regular slaves, but to those members of the bonded families who had 
been allowed to wander forth on the world. All their descendants are allowed the sanctuary of 
the monastery when pursued for slaughter, but the declaration is accompanied with the notandum 
that all the world are entitled along with them to this privilege. It is demanded by the bonds 
men that if any of their race be mulcted for manslaughter, the monastery should contribute the 
amount of twelve merks to the penalty ; but the inquest to whom the inquiry is directed, answer 
that " they never heard of such a thing in all the days oi their life." J 

The formidable power of excommunication has already been alluded to as exercised by the 
Abbey, and the muniments of the establishment shew some remarkable instances of its effective- 
ness. Thus the Lord of Dundas, on the south side of the Firth of Forth, having asserted a right 
in his own person to certain rocks along the shore convenient for the landing of boats, interfered 
with the servants and boats of the abbot when attempting to use them. The Abbot maintaining 
that the rocks were the exclusive property of his monastery, launched a sentence of excommu- 
nication against his opponent, who finding himself compelled to yield, " humbly supplicated the 
Abbot, sitting along with some of his council on these rocks, as being in possession of them, that 
he would absolve him from the sentence of excommunication, and he should abstain from 
molesting the men and boats in future. "§ He was absolved accordingly. 

The Abbot possessed the means of aiding his spiritual anathemas, by temporal powers of a no 
less formidable character. The Abbey possessed a right of regality over its lands, or a 
considerable portion of them. This right gave the lord of regality a jurisdiction greater than 

* C'linlmers' Historical Account. t ">• 215. Registrum, p. 'i.'Jo. % Chalmer.*, 219. Registrum, p. 240-1. 

§ Chalmers' p. 203. Concordantia cum I de Uuudasde Pasoagio, Registrum, p. 262. 



6 PALACE, ABBEY AND CHURCH OF DUNFERMLINE. 

that of the Sheriff, and, in ordinarj' criminal questions, superseding that of the king's supreme 
courts, from which tliose amenable to the regality might be " repledged," or removed for trial 
there. These hereditary jurisdictions were not abolished until the year 1747. They passed 
from hand to hand with the lands to which they were attached : and the regality of Dunfennline 
continuing attached to the temporal lordship after the dissolution of the monasteries, we find tlie 
newspapers so late as the year 1732, recording a conviction by the judge of the i-egality, of some 
gipsies who lived in a cave and plundered the neighbourhood, in these terms : — " This day was 
finished here a very tedious trial of four gypsies (or gypsies habit and repute) strollers, or 
vagabonds, which lasted between eighteen and nineteen hours, by the honoured Captain llalkett, 
James Dewar of Lassodie, and Henry Walwood of Garvock, deputies of the most honorable the 
marquis of Tweeddale, as hereditary baillie of the justiciary and regality courts of Dunfermline : 
when on a full and plain proof, James Ramsay, one of the gang, was sentenced to be hanged the 
22nd of March next ; and the other three to be whipped, the first Wednesday of each month, for 
one half year, and afterwards to be banished the regality for ever.''* 

The remains of the tutelary saint and her husband, deposited in Dunfermline, became the 
commencement of a long procession of Royal burials, and the chroniclers generally mention this 
abbey as the successor of lona, the more ancient burial-place of the Scottish monarchs. On a 
spot now covered by the new church, there used to be visible in the surface of the ground six 
large flat stones, which popular tradition indicated as the royal tombs. Before the interesting 
investigations regarding the tomb of Robert the Bruce to which we shall presently have to refer, 
the earth beneath these stones was examined under the eye of Sir John Graham Dalzell, who 
came to the conclusion that the bodies of the Kings " were deposited in tombs standing above 
the large flat stones, or, at least, that all were not interred below them ; and that these tombs 
were destroyed in the general wreck of the Abbey." The pi-actical results of his excavation were, 
that for a few feet the earth had the appearance of being travelled, and was found to contain 
fragments of bone. 

" Under this, however, about four or five feet from the surface, a coffin rudely built of small 
irregular pieces of sandstone along with a scanty portion of lime, and covered in the same manner 
with similsu- materials, was found, containing the skeleton of a full grown person nearly entire. 
Its position was not directly below the large stone, but one half of the length further west. 
It lay amongst soft humid clay, completely filling the coffin, from which the bones had imbibed 
so much moisture, that on lifting a broken one, the water poured from the lower end as on 
squeezing a sponge. The head, or upper part of the coffin, towards the west, was contracted 
into narrow compass, for admitting the skull, which was quite fresh, and the teeth 80und."t 

He forms the opinion that this subterraneous tomb is to be attributed to an earlier date than 
the death of any of the kings who were buried at Dunfermline. From the moist character of the 
soil it is difficult to believe that bones of even so old a date as these kings could have been so 
well preserved as to have been distinguishable in the present century. 

But the main source of interest connected with the tombs of the kings is the discovery, made 
at a comparatively late period, of human remains, believed to be those of the great King Robert 
Bruce, who was long known to have been buried not far from the spot where they were found. 
This monarch died atCardross on 7th June, 1329, and his remains were conveyed to Dunfermline, 
where they were buried in the choir of the church before the high altar. The body was embalmed 
and a rich tomb or cenotaph was erected above the spot. It, was supposed to have been 
fabricated in Paris, to have been made of white marble in gothic work, and richly gilt ; and 
the Chamberlain's accounts confirm these particulars. Barbour says in " the Bruce" : — 

• Extract from Caledonian Mercury. Chalmen, p. 246. t dialmcrB, p. 137- 



PALACE, ABBEY AND CHnRCH OF DnNFERMLINE. 7 

And qubou thai lang thtu sorrowit had. 
Thai haiff had him to Dunferlyne,— 
And hym solemply erdyt syne, 
Id a fayr tomb, intill the quer. 

Forduti and others confirm the circumstance of the interment having been in the choir. 
Centuries had passed by — the church had fallen in ruins — the gilded marble tomb had been 
purposely dilapidated, or had been overwhelmed in the larger ruins of the church. It was on 
the 17th February, 1818, that some workmen, clearing out the ground for the foundation of the 
new church, which was partly to occupy the area of the old choir, reached a low burial vault, 
within which they found a large leaden coffin, so far decayed in some places that the black 
decaying bones of a skeleton projected through. Mr. Burn, as architect of the new church, 
being near the spot, instructions were given for the enclosure and protection of the vault, until it 
might be inspected in the presence of official persons. The inspection took place on the 5th 
November, 1819, in presence of two of the Barons of Kxchequer, the King's Remembrancer, the 
clergy of the district, and several other gentlemen. A full report of the proceedings, preserved 
by the King's Remembrancer, has been printed by the Society of Antiquaries. It was found 
that the remains were incased in two coats of lead, each about an eighth of an inch thick, not 
constpjcted in the shape of a coffin, but wrapped like a cerecloth round the body. In the 
interior were some fragments of a shroud of fine linen cloth, traversed by a few golden threads. The 
size of the body, and the corporeal strength indicated by the structure of the bones, were said to 
" correspond with the historical accounts of the stature and prowess of the illustrious monarch." 
It was another incidental reason for believing in the remains being those of Bruce, that the breast- 
bone was sawn in two, indicating the means by which persons ignorant of anatomy might have 
removed the heart, in conformity with that King's well-known injunction. Here it may be said 
that the evidence stops, but it has been considered by high antiquarian and historical authorities 
to be sufficiently convincing. Those who had the good fortune to see the vault when it was first 
opened, declared that the leaden covering towards the upper part of the head was worked into 
" the likeness of a kingly crown." At the official inspection no such ornament could be detected 
— the outer covering of the head appearing to be as round as a bullet. It is stated in the official 
report that — ''there were no remains of the rude crown which had been observed at the first 
opening, it having probably been carried off at that time by some of the spectators."* 

Another incidental discovery was allowed for a short period to make the evidence of the 
appropriation of the tomb appear conclusive. It is thus described in the official report: — " The 
workmen in the course of their operations a few days afterwards (10th November), found a plate 
of copper, five inches and a half in length, and four in breadth, and about an eighth of an inch in 
thickness, with holes at each corner for fixing it on the cofl5n, bearing this inscription — Robertus 
Scotoruni Rex ; the letters resemble those on the coins of this King. A cross is placed under the 
inscription, with a mullet or star in each angle, with the crown precisely in the form on those 
coins. It was found among the rubbish which had been removed on the 5th, close to the vault 
on the east side, and most probably had been adhering to one of the stones of the vault, and had 
thus escaped our notice at the time. Immediately upon this important fragment being found, the 
chief magistrate, Provost Wilson, very obligingly sent it to me; and, by your Lordships- 
directions, it has been depo.sited in the Museum of Scottish Antiquaries."t 

'I his relic was subsequently found to be a forgery, the arrangements for its discovery among 
the rubbish having been made in furtherance of a jiractical joke ; it had in the meantime been 
repeatedly engraved, as a characteristic and picturesque illustration of the tomb of the great 
libei'ator. 

* Archaeologia Scotica, II., p. 441. + Archuologia Scotica, II.. p. 447 



6 



Palace, abbey and church of Dunfermline. 



It remains to mention briefly the more marked of those calamities which have reduced the 
ancient edifices of the Abbey to their present state. Edward I. with his court spent the winter of 
1303 in the Abbey, where he was royally entertained — a marked indication of its early magnifi- 
cence. On the departure of his court, early in the spring of 1304, the Abbey biiildings were 
set fire to by his soldiers, whether in savage recklessness, or under the instruction of the King 
himself, actuated by a conqueror's distaste towards the emblems of power and magnificence 
among those whom he considered his subjects. The church was spared, and the massive Norman 
architecture still extant, is evidently of an age anterior to the destruction. The buildings suffered 
in the troubles of the Reformation, and Lindsay of Pitscottie briefly and emphatically, in chro- 
nicling the events of May, 1560, says — " Upoun the 28 day thairof, the whoUlordis and baronis 
that war on this syd of Forth, passed to Stirling, and be the way kest down the Abbey of 
Diimfermling . ''* 

The new Church, built over the site of the ancient choir, on a plan provided by Mr. Burn, 
was opened for public worship on 30th Sept. 1821. Mr. Chalmers says : — 

" The interior of the Church is much and universally admired for the simplicity, chasteness, 
and elegance of its form and ornaments. It is in the figure of a cross, as similar as could be 
supposed to that of the original Abbey Church, on the site of which it stands, having two 
transepts near the eastern extremity, from the centre of which rises the high tower, supported by 
four massive columns. These columns, like the smaller ones supporting the roof, are fluted with 
Roman cement in the solid mason work, and their capitals are ornamented with beautiful imitations 
of foliage. The ribs of the different arches, and the decorations on the ceiling, are in excellent 
taste; and the effect of the whole, from every quarter, but pailicularly from one of the gallery 
doors, is grand and pleasing."t 



Chronicles of Scotland, p. 555. 



« Historical Account, &c. p. 323. 





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THE CATHEDRAL Oh DUNKELD. 



Whkn the traveller sweeps round the shoulder of Birnain Hill, and rapidly descends t'rom the 
level to which, in his journey from Perth, he had gradually and almost insensibly risen, he feels 
emphatically that he is crossing " the Highland line," and that there is at once a marked tran- 
sition in the character of the country. Behind, the landscape stretches far off in small undulating 
lulls, fruitful but uninteresting. In front is a deep glen bounded by craggy rocks, where the bare 
stone projects here and there in huge rough gray masses, and the heather aids with its solemn 
purple the impressiveness of the vast crowd of mountain-tops, which appear all at once to have 
risen up from the flat earth. Yet the scene wants not softening and beautifying elements. While 
the rich coppice-wood of indigenous birch, hazel, and oak, coat the more sheltered portions of the 
elevated ground, the lower valleys are rich in stately spreading trees, some of them conspicuous 
for their age and great size. The Tay, still an abundant rapid river, and beautifully clear, 
flows winding through the sinuosities of the glen, and close by the village of Dunkeld it is 
spanned by a stately bridge. But the chief individual ornament of the scene is the Cathedral, with 
its gray square tower rising up from a vast mass of trees, which cluster round and shade the ruined 
church. The choir, where stands the tomb and recumbent statue of that celebrated freebooter the 
Earl of Buchan — better known as the Wolf of Badenoch — is fitted up as the parish church. 
The nave — the only part where the pristine features are preserved — is ruinous, but not so far 
advanced towards decay as to deprive it of its dignity and peculiar character. The circular 
pillars might in England have been held to point to the Norman period, although an examination 
of their proportions would, wherever they were met with, show that they did not legitimately 
belong to that peculiar style. It has been found, however, in Scotland, in many instances, that fea- 
tures which have generally been considered peculiar to the Norman, have descended far down through 
the later developments of Gothic architecture. The arches of the triforium, though semicircular, 
cannot be adduced as an instance of this peculiarity, since they are divided by muUions enclosing 
trefoils according to a late type of Gothic architecture, and indeed are, on a small scale, similar to the 
arches of the triforium of York Minster. The clerestory windows are rude in their interior form ; it 
would almost seem as if they nmst have originally been adorned with carved work, which has been 
destroyed. The other windows are pretty fully decorated ; and it is interesting and historically 
curious, to mark, even in this distant mountainous episcopal see, traces of the flamboyant character 
of the French Gothic artists. A singular illustration of the arbitrary wilful ways of the mediaeval 
architects, appears above the great western window. The canopied moulding is twisted to one 
side, to make room for a circular ornament, containing some of the details of a decorated geome- 
trical window. There does not appear any reason whatever, why the ornament should be there, 
and the arch and moulding of the window rendered unsymmetrical, unless that the architect chose 
to try how neatly he could adapt the flamboyant style to a small circular pattern, and chose this 
particular part of the wall for the exhibition of his skill, without allowins: any weight to the 
circumstance that it disordered the harmony of the buildiui/; 
The Catukdbal ov Dunkeld, 1 — 4. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

This secluded spot was one of those selected for the semi-monastic institutions of die religious 
body called, in early Scottish history, the Culuees. When, and in what manner, they planted them- 
selves here, it would now be difficult to discover ; though Abbot Mill commences his Lives of the 
Bishops of Dunkeld by the statement, that it was given by Constantine III., king of the Picts, to St 
Columba. The Abbot may, perhaps, have had more authentic ground for some memorials of the 
customs of these Culdees, who, he tells us, had wives according to the habit of the Eastern Church — 
a qutbuSy dum vici'ssttn ininistr&runt, ahstinebant.* In the course of his policy towards the Church of 
Rome, King David superseded the authority of the Culdee institution by procuring its erection into 
a see, of which the head of the monastery was the first bishop. The date of the erection is gene- 
rally stated to be 1127.t Although it contains traces of an early Gothic age, it is not likely that any 
pan of it was built during a. full century later than this date. As to the progress of the structure, we 
are toid by Mill, that the foundation-stone of the nave was laid by Bishop Robert Cardeny — whose 
tomb and recumbent statue still ornament the nave — on the 27th of April, in the year 1406 ;\ but 
the pillars would appear to belong to an earlier period. By the same authority, this bishop is said 
to have constructed the second arches — vulgariter le hlindstorijs, meaning evidently the triforium, 
and to have glazed all the windows of the choir, except the eastern one, which appears to 
have been completed by his successor, Donald Macnachtane. His own palace is said to have 
been built in the Alpine fashion — probably of wicker-work — and thus open to the incursions of 
the Highland reivers, who appear to have been ever the terror and the torment of the bishops 
of Dunkeld. Cardeny built a fortified palace for his protection, which Mill mentions as existing in 
his own day. In Slezer's view, where the Cathedral is represented nearly in the state in which it 
is at present, there appear the remains of a tower or fortalice — probably the same which was 
erected by Bishop Cardeny. From the time of its erection, the bishop appears to have waged 
more equal war with his wild neighbours. The Highland names of these outlaws are quaintly 
dotted over Mill's arid Latin, and he informs us that Bishop Lauder was attacked, when at the 
altar on Pentecost, by a " someir" of the Clandonoquhy, who discharged a shower of arrows at 
him ; but that the bishop succeeded in subduing the whole tribe. Bishop Bruce suffered from 
the invasions of Robert Reoch Makdonoquhy, who ravaged the land of little Dunkeld, belonging 
to the temporalities of the see. It is just possible that this and other ravages may have given rise 
to the grotesque lines of a later date — 

" Was there e'er sic a parish — a parish — a parish, 
Was there e'er sic a parish as little Dunkell, 
Where they sticket the minister— hanged the precentor — 
Dang down the steeple, and drunk the bell." 

We are told that Bisbip Lauder, whose accession is dated in 1450, completed the nave, roofing 
it in, and glazing the windows ; and that, in 1469, he founded the campanile or belfry. This 
bishop was a great benefactor of the Cathedral. A list has been preserved of ceremonial robes and 
precious ornaments with which he supplied it, including a cross, in which a relic of the real cross 

• Mill, V.tjc Episcoponim Duiikeldcusium. t lb., Kcilli's Ciitiiloguo, i>. 4G. t ViUe, p. 10. 



THE CATHEDRAL OF DUNKEI.D. 6 

was inlaid. He caused the twenty-four miracles of St Coluinba to be painted at the altai, where 
he placed two images of that national saint. 

There are matters of higher interest, however, connected with the bishops of Dunkehl. Bishop 
Sinclair has a fame both historical and traditionary, from his conduct in the war of independence 
with England, which procured for him the name of the Warlike Bishop ; while Robert the Bruce, 
sympathising more with his heroic than his ecclesiastical qualities, called him his own bishop, ^^'hen 
an invasion of Scotland was attempted in 1317, after the battle of Bannockburn, the English army 
landed on the coast of Fife, and so intimidated the gentry and common people of the district, 
unprepared to meet such an attempt, that the invaders had a fair prospect of again subduing the 
country. The high-hearted Bishop threw aside for the time his peaceful religious character- 
no uncommon sacrifice in those days — and engaged in a double conflict, to overcome the recreant 
misgivings of his countrymen, and lead them on to attack their enemy. With the slightest possible 
portion of the decorations of his ecclesiastical office about him, but well armed as a soldier, he rallied 
the fugitives, crying out — " Turn for shame! Let all who love Scotland follow me." The 
English invaders were routed, and driven back to their ships. 

Another name, still more celebrated, adorns the see of Dunkeld — that of Gavin Douglas, the 
scholar and poet, whose translation of Virgil has almost the merit of originality, and will be a 
lasting specimen of the expressiveness and literary adaptability of the Scottish language at the 
dawning of the sixteenth century. This effort, after more than a century, afibrding the noblest 
specimens which English genius has contributed to the same species of literature, had passed 
over it, was revived as a valuable work ; and now, after the interval has been more than 
doubled, and an incalculable quantity of rare talent has been devoted to the same field of exertion, 
the translation of Virgil by Gavin Douglas attracts the earnest attention of the student both of 
classic and British literature. Though thus known to our age as the scholar and man of letters, 
few men had experienced more of the turbulent politics of Scotland. He was one of the parties in 
a great conflict for ecclesiastical patronage between the Crown and the Church, having been 
destined for the archiepiscopal see of St Andrews, but driven from it by Prior Hepburn and the 
canons, who had procured the papal sanction for Andrew Forman. In the great dissensions 
between the Hamiltons and the Douglases, during the minority of James V., Bishop Gavin signally 
appeared as a peacemaker, though his blood relationship to one of the parties would have readily 
justified him, in that and much later periods, had he become a violent partisan. His reproof admi- 
nistered to another prelate, who acted the more natural but less dignified part, has become historical. 
In the Black Friars' Church in Edinburgh, he requested Bishop Beatoun to mediate, as he himself 
was doing, between the parties. Beatoun was defensibly armed for the conflict, and with too 
much vehemence, in which he forgot what was under his sacerdotal robes, he struck his hand 
against his breast, saying that in his conscience he knew nothing of the matter, while he made the 
plates of his armour rattle. Douglas's rejoinder, as given by old Pitscottie, was — " My Lord, your 
conscience is not guid, for I hear it clattering."* Yet Douglas, when he was appointed to the see 
of Dunkeld, was obliged to have recourse to temporal weapons. He had an opponent in a rela- 
tion of the Earl of Athol, who had overawed the chapter, and fortified the tower of the Cathedral 
with wall-pieces; and it was partly by a successful siege, and partly by negotiation, that the 
Bishop got possession of the temporalities of the see. 

The edifice of the Cathedral suffered much injury at the Reformation. A document is 

* Chronicles, 287. 



THE CATHEDRAL OF DUNKELD. 



preserved, by wliich, in the year 1560, two neighbouring landowners were directed " to pass 
incontinent to the Kirk of Dunkeld, and tak down the haill ymages therof, and bring furth 
to the kirkyard and burn them openly ; and siklyk cast down the altaris and purge the kyrk of 
all kinds of monuments of idolatyre."* Unfortunately the iconoclasts did not restrict themselves 
to their peculiar duty ; but, once set on the art of destioiction, carried it out as far as their tastes and 
the occasion induced them. " The Cathedral and the choir," says the author of the Statistical 
Accmmt, " were completely sacked. The windows were smashed, and the doors torn from their 
hinges. For the credit of the mob, it does not appear from the walls that fire had ever been 
applied as one of their engines of destruction." The edifice must have suffered further cala- 
mities in the Highland wars of the Revolution. When the troops of Claverhouse, victorious, but 
without their leader, marched southwards from Killiecrankie, they encountered the Cameronians at 
Dunkeld, where a fierce conflict naturally ensued between bodies who so cordially detested each 
other. The tower of the Cathedral was fortified and defended, while the inhabitants of the villaee 
found refuge in the Churcli. It was the only edifice in Dunkeld then saved from absolute destruc- 
tion by fire.j 



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SOUTH AJSLE OF THE UAVT 



DYSART— STREET ARCHITECTURE. 

A RAMBLE among the grey old towns which skirt the ancient " Kingdom " of Fife, might well 
repay the architectural or archaeological investigator. He would not alight on anything so very 
ancient, perhaps, as those stone edifices of the English cathedral towns which sometimes develop 
traces of Norman work ; but there is an impressive and curious venerableness in the irregular 
scattered zigzag streets, and the dusky, eccentric, and often highly decorated buildings. Be- 
ginning with Queensferry and Inverkeithing, this series of ancient towns may be said to pass in 
one continuous chain round the Fifeshire coast to Abemethy. Some of them were places of great 
importance. To Inverkeithing the meeting of a sort of burghal parliament, which assembled there, 
communicated a metropolitan character, and it was at one time looked upon as the Scottish 
capital. Its neglected streets are full of quaint houses, and one gaunt projecting crow-stepped 
edifice is pointed out as the dwelling-place of Queen Annabella Drummond. The chief interest of 
these old burgh towns is in their having suffered no change save a gentle decay, and their 
presenting to the nineteenth century a pretty good type of the flourishing Scottish towns of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth. They all possess natural harbours, more or less suited for small craft ; 
but none of them has been found adapted to the greater commerce of modem times. Their 
ancient trade, consisting in salt, coal, and cured fish, thus fell off, or rather, it might be said, was 
far outrun by the commerce of the other growing ports — Leith, Dundee, and Aberdeen. When 
the cultivation of Fifeshire consisted of little beyond the arable patches round these burghs, the 
county used to be compared to a serge mantle with silver buttons ; but the rich inland agriculture 
would now make a stronger contrast with the decayed seaports in the opposite direction. 

The skippers who traded with Flushing or Dunkirk would probably note the quaint decorations 
of the domestic architecture in such towns, and desire to emulate it at home. The street architecture 
of Fifeshire is not so decidedly spiral and French as that of the northern towns, but it is distinctly 
foreign, partaking In a considerable degree of the Flemish ; and very diiferent from the more 
simple, open, and cheerful style adopted in England. Stone is the universal material. There are 
scarcely any brick houses among these old towns, and there is certainly not one built of wood. 
The difference of national customs between England and Scotland, in this point, is curious, and 
might form an interesting subject of elucidation. Timber has been very sparingly used for house 
architecture in Scotland, though in Edinburgh it was in some measure employed, in consequence 
of a law to encourage the use of timber, in attaching extended fronts and projections to the stone 
edifices. But brick, the popular material in England, seems always to have been held in special 
detestation in Scotland ; and it is scarcely ever used even in those districts where clay abounds, 
and the only stone obtainable is the hard, intractable, and costly granite. 

The material used in these Fife burghs Is a freestone, liable to darken, from the effects of the 
humid sea-winds — thus imparting an additional air of antiquity to the dusky decayed dwellings of 
the merchants and skippers of other days. Iliey are built on the shelving rocky banks of the 
shore, each In such a position, without any regard to general effect, as its owner chose. Hence, 
small as are these towns, they are a perplexing labyrinth to the stranger, from the absence of 

Dtsart. — Street Abchitectu BE, 1—2. 



2 



DTSART. — STREET ARCHITECTURE. 



continuous streets or general architectural arrangements. Dysart — with the other to^vns close 
beside it, Pathhead, Sinclairtown, and Kirkcaldy — is indeed penetrated, and in some measui-e 
opened up, by the great north roads ; and these protracted villages are so close to each other that 
the traveller, going through upwards of three miles of almost unintermitting street, might 
naturally suppose himself to be in a large town. 

A general feature in these old burghs is a faded town house or city hall, generally with some 
architectural pretensions, and possessing carved panels and old rickety presses and cabinets. Of 
the general character of the street architecture, the accompanying plate and woodcut are fair 
specimens. In general, there are the remains of ecclesiastical buildings in these towns, such as 
the church tower and porch of Dysart; but few of them, like the beautiful Church of St Monance 
— engraved in this collection — are sufficiently complete to form separate illustrations. The scanty 
remains of an old building in Dysart, traditionally called the chapel of St Dennis, were some 
years ago converted into a smithy. There is, among the late General Button's manuscript 
collections, a sketch of it before its utilitarian adaptation ; but it is a simple crow-stepped building, 
with square windows and an ordinary castellated vault, having no apparent ecclesiastical decora- 
tions. Near Dysart, on the top of a sea-beaten rock, are the ruins of the castle of Ravenscraig, 
the ancient fortress of the Sinclairs, commemorated in the tragic ballad of Eosabel. It is a fine 
object, from its picturesque and commanding position, but has no peculiar architectural merits. 





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ST. GILES'S CHURCH, EDINBURGH. 

Few visitors of Edinburgh can fail to be acquainted with the main features of Old St. Giles*. 
A few yeare ago, when the city was less amply endowed with edifices of a spiral character than it 
is at present, the airy lantern of this church, situated at so great an elevation, was the main 
feature in ihe long rugged outhne of buildings covering the ridge of the narrow eminence from the 
Castle to the Canongate ; its Ught and graceful details formed a fine contrast with the massive 
features of the Castle, and even yet it asserts a marked superiority in dignity and elegance over 
the modern steeples by which it is surrounded. This species of lantern, formed by cross ribs as 
in groined arching, seems to be pecuUar to the north of Britain. It does not occur further south 
than Newcastle, while in Scotland we find it still remaining in King's College, Aberdeen, and the 
Trou steeple in Glasgow; until lately it existed at Linlithgow, and formerly terminated the tower 
of Haddington. Of all the Scottish instances, St. Giles' is at once the richest and the lightest. 
The others had merely been formed by two crossed arches springing from the corbels of the tower. 
That of St. Giles' has an octagonal character, from two arches — springing from the centres of the 
wall-plates. Along the intermediate spaces, there is a parapet pierced with quatrefoils, having a 
flowered moulding at the projection, and cusps on the upper edge. The outer edges of the arches 
are adorned with crocketed pinnacles ; and, supported by the general keystone, there springs from 
the centre of a cluster of small pinnacles, rising tier over tier, a graceful spire. The whole plan exhibits 
those capricious irregularities so frequently to be found in the finest specimens of Gothic work. 

The general plan of the Church is a cross, the lantern tower springing from the meeting of the 
arms. Continuous with the extremity of the nave is an additional transept with a flat roof. 
The main transept has aisles, and the southern branch has projecting edifices on either side, which 
give it in itself the form of a cross. From the accompanying plate of the chancel it will be seen 
that the pillars nearest to the centre are plain octagons, the arches corresponding in simplicity, 
while those at the east end are clustered with decorated capitals supporting moulded arches. It 
will be observed that the roof is groined, the ribs of the groining resting on the imposts of pilasters 
supported on corbels springing above the capitals of the pillars. The great east window and 
the clere-story windows are reconstructed from the ancient remains, a circumstance from which 
the mullions and mouldings are necessarily somewhat thinner than they originally were. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

That some portions of this edifice are of considerable antiquity, a few features of its present 
architecture, and particularly the semicircular arched doorway now preserved in the transept 
the subject of the accompanying cut, sufficiently testify ; but in its earlier form it seems to havt 
been a small and obscure parish church, for in the records of other ecclesiastical buildings it is 
seldom referred to. In an old ecclesiastical taxation of the Archdeaconry of Lothian, we find 
" Ecclesia Sancti Egidii de Edinburhu" rated at 26 merks, while that of Restalrig, a small chapel 
near Leith, elsewhere mentioned, is reckoned at 25.* The earliest among the few notices of the 
edifice in the ecclesiastical records, mentions that on the Sunday before the Feast of St. Thomas, 
in the year 1297, Donaca, daughter of John, son of Herveus, resigned certain lands to the convent 
of Holyrood, in full consistory held in the Church of St. Giles. t 

• Reg. Prior. St. Andrea;, p. 29. t Reg- St. Cnicu, p. 81. 

St. (iiles's Church, Edinburuh, 1 — 4. 



2 ST. Giles's church, Edinburgh. 

It is somewhat curious to find that the Church which became the principal ecclesiastical 
institution in the metropolis, and for a brief period a cathedral, was a dependancy on the now 
obliterated monastery of Scone. Scone was one of the foundations of that ancient and mysterious 
religious community, the Culdees, whose constitution and rules, as well as their pastoral pedigree, 
have created so much curious discussion among ecclesiastical antiquaries and polemical disputants . 
When the Romish clergy gradually superseded the scattered institutions of the Culdees, 
Alexander I, established in Scone a house of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, brought from the 
Church of St. Oswald, in Yorkshire. In early times this now obscure place might well compete 
in importance with Edinburgh. In a charter of Malcolm IV. it is spoken of as the chief seat of 
Government. It was occasionally the place where Parliaments were held. Alexander II. and 
his son were here crowned, and both Baliol and Bruce began the royal careers so strangely con- 
trasted in history by a coronation at Scone.* These incidents of the ancient importance of the 
spot prepare us to find that the patronage of St. Giles was conferred on the monastery of Scone, 
by Robert III. and that in the year 1.395 the Bishop and Chapter of St. Andrews, in consideration 
of the losses occasioned by recent misfortunes to the monastery of Scone, united the Church of 
St. Giles with the monastery, appointing that when James Lyon, then vicar, should cease by death 
or otherwise to hold the benefice, the canons of the monastery should enter on possession of 
the Church, keep it in repair, and supply it with ecclesiastical services. The union was confirmed 
by a Papal Bull, which enlarges on the great expenses borne by the monastery, from its being 
so close to the seat of Government, and thus frequently entertaining assemblages of the nobles, 
met for the transaction of urgent business.f 

It appears from a contract noticed by Maitland, that a portion of the Church was arched in in 
1380, and he has preserved the terms of a contract made between the Provost and community of 
Edinburgh on the one hand, and two masons, in the year 1387, for the construction of five 
separate chapels along the south side of the edifice. J The same historian records the foundation 
of several altars and chaplainries during the fifteenth century, which were probably the means of 
applying these chapels to ecclesiastical uses — of occupying the empty tenements. In the year 
1462 considerable additions or repairs appear to have been in progress, for the Town Council then 
passed a rule that all persons selling corn before it was entered should forfeit one chalder to 
the Church- work. In the year 1466, St. Giles's was erected into a Collegiate Church, the 
foundation consisting of "a Provost, curate, sixteen prebendaries, sacristan, beadle, minister of the 
choir, and four choristers."§ Various sums of money, lands, tithes, &c. were appropriated for 
the support of the establishment. The chaplainries and altarages appear to have been very 
numerous ; Maitland gives the names of about forty. 

The history of this Church has been somewhat turbulent for that of a temple raised for the 
worship of the religion of peace. In 1558, during the time when the Queen Regent was adopting 
vigorous and daring measures for stemming the progress of the Reformation, it was resolved to 
carry forth from the Church the image of St. Giles on that saint's day, and to lead through the 
town a procession of more than usual splendour. It was discovered, however, on approaching the 
shrine, that the image had been removed. A smaller statue of the Saint which happened to be in 
possession of the grey friars — a "marmouset idol" Knox calls it — was borrowed for the occasion. 
To give dignity to the ceremony, and impose a wholesome awe on the people, the Queen Regent foi 
some time attended on the procession. The impatience of the citizens, who had formed a con- 
siderable mob, was restrained during her presence, but when she left the scene it speedily burst 
forth. Some of them pressing gradually towards the image, professed to join in its support, while 

* Liber Ecclesio.' de Scone. Introdaction. t lb. p. 149, 150. { Maitland's HUt. p. 270. 

f Maitland's Hist. p. 270. Keith's Catalogue, 468. 



ST. Giles's chukch, edinbukqh. S 

they endeavoured to shake it down. This task, however, they found difficult, as it had been 
securely nailed to its supporters. The struggle and the triumph of the mob were delightful to Knox, 
who described the event with the inimitable glee in which he indulged on such occasions.* 

In 1571. when Kirkaldy of Grange held the city against the Regent Morton — or rather was 
fortifying himself and his party at the expense of the citizens, who suffered from the warlike opera- 
tions of both sides — the tower of St Giles was mounted with cannon, and served as a fortification. 
In the words of a contemporary, " Thair wes placit in the steiple of Edinburgh on the samyne day 
thrie pieces of brasin ordinance, with victuallis and utheris necessaris for defending of the 8amyn."t 
St. Giles' was the principal scene of the tumultuous dispute between King James and the 
leaders of the Church party in 1596. The place where the King was then sitting is supposed 
to have been the Toll-booth, close adjoining to the Church, but Mr. Chambers observes, that 
" The contemporary accounts of the tumult, all tend to shew that the King was sitting at first in 
the place latterly known as the Tolbooth Kirk, and that he retired for safety into the upper room 
of the new Toll-booth, latterly the Justiciary Court room; an account of the transaction very 
different from that hitherto given, which has always assigned the old jail as the locality of King 
James's terror and rescue. It also appears that the Octavians (a body of eight statesmen, into 
whose hands James had committed all his financial affairs and patronage) sat in the Tolbooth Kirk. 
It may be worthy of notice, that the latter building is often, in works of that age, called the Laigli 
Tolbooth, while the Justiciary Court room is styled the high or upper Tolbooth." J The disturbance 
from which Jsmies felt himself to be in peril, arose out of an address by Balcanqual, a popular 
preacher, who called on the Protestant barons and his other chance auditors, to meet the ministers 
in the " Little Kirk," where they tumiiltuously came to a resolution to " intercede " with the 
King, on the necessity of changing his policy, and dismissing from his confidence the councillors 
who had advised it. The progress of a deputation towards the place where the King was to be 
found, brought with it the mob who had created the tumult, and when the bold expressions of the 
deputation were seconded by a crush of the crowd into the presence chamber, the King grew 
frightened and made his retreat. When the deputation returned to the Little Kirk, they found that 
the portion of the multitude who had not attempted to follow them into the presence chamber were 
listening to an address by a clergyman of the name of Cranstoun, on the text ofHaman and Mor- 
decai. The auditors, hearing that the King had retreated without any explanation to the deputation, 
concluded that his flight was attributable to some deeper cause than personal fear. They rushed 
forth, shouting, " bring forth the wicked Haman," and endeavoured to batter down the doors of the 
Tolbooth. It was a disturbance in which there was not any definite and decided purpose— one ot 
the few indeed in Scottish history where there was a sort of frenzied excitement, and scarcely a 
distinct aim. It was dangerous, however, and James was glad to escape to Holyrood.§ 

For forty years after this event the edifice of the Church seems to have been undisturbed by 
tumults, until the memorable attempt in 1637 to force the newly prepared Service Book on the 
Scottish Presbyterians. The first act of hostility in the great civil war of the seventeenth century 
may thus be said to have commenced within the walls of this Church. This event occurred on 23rd 
July, I637. After the reader had read the prayers, Dean Hanna ascended the pulpit to proceed 
with the new liturgy. The storm then commenced, and the first missile — a stool - was discharged 
by the celebrated Jenny Geddes at the Dean. A small folding stool, preserved in the Antiquaries' 
Museum of Edinburgh, is said to have been the missile used on the occasion. 

To recur briefly to other matters connected with the history of this Church. It was made the 

* Knox's Hist. Wodrow Edit. I. 260. t Diurnal of Occurrents, (Bannatyne Club) |i. 226. 

X M inor A ntiquities of Edinburgh, p. 175. § See Tytler's Hist. vol. viii.p. 2't5,etseq. and tlie other hUtorian^ of the period. 



4 ST. Giles's chubcu, Edinburgh. 

Cathedral of the new diocese of Edinburgh in 1634. The patent of Forbes, the first Bishop, was 
dated on 26th January of that year. The last Bishop was Alexander Rose, who was translated 
from Moray in 1687, and in the following year the Revolution deprived him of his position and 
emoluments. " He hved still," observed one of his contemporaries, " in the city of Edinburgh, 
and had the chance to outlive all his brethren of his order, and all the bishops likewise in England, 
who had been possessed of sees before the Revolution ; so that he had much respect paid him, not 
only by the clergy of his own communion, but all the laity also of both nations."* 

At the Reformation the edifice was divided into compartments, each forniing a separate place 
of worship. One of these, forming part of the north transept, and known by the singular 
name of Haddo's Hole, because Sir George Gordon of Haddo was there imprisoned for some 
time before his execution in 1644, was not opened as a place of worship until the year 1699. 
Before the late alterations brought the fabric into a symmetrical form, the various chapels 
mentioned above were grouped in a longitudinal mass along the south side, and various small 
edifices called the Crames, used chiefly as shops, were attached to their walls, as similai" buildings 
still are to the exterior of the large churches in Belgium. 

* Keith's UataloKue, p. 64. 





Orxurn br R U . 



.'^n,jr.i i,^J h J ti I.f K^'o- 



?- <G.jijL,iESfi ris.irKisraiSLAa:-, K7^25r:a"-!H.--sr. 




jji-aivn by It.n^.BUiuuts 



Etu^m*vJ hv J.S.Le St'u.i-. 



THK rllom. LOOKINc; EAST. 



THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE, EDINBURGH. 

A ROOM which so many hundreds of thousands have seen, and which none who have seen 
can fail to remember, scarcely needs to be described. The Parliament Hall is of great size and 
commanding proportions, possessing a kind of rude and simple grandeur characteristic of an 
earlier age than it can boast of dating from. The sides covered with simple plaster, but once 
adorned with tapestry and old pictures, are somewhat bare ; but this defect is in a great measure 
obviated by the depth to which the roof, the noblest feature in the building, descends. It rest* 
on ornamented brackets, chiefly consisting of boldly sculptured heads, and is formed of dark oaken 
tie and hammer beams with cross braces. The parts are adjusted to the outline of a circular arch, 
indented by small gilt ball pendants from the hammer beams The general effect of this roof 
would carry one to the date of Westminster or Crosby Hall, but, as will presently appear, it is 
no older than the seventeenth century. A modem floor of inlaid oak has a good effect, but the 
other adjuncts scarcely correspond in dignity with the older features of the hall. A large square 
painted window of questionable gothic, at the southern extremity, represents a figiu-e of Justice, 
adopted from a pannel of the great painted window of New College, Oxford. The representa- 
tion was, no doubt, intended to be symbolical of the proceedings which usually take place within 
the hall ; but it has been justly observed that as the full front of the face and figure are seen from 
the inside of the hall only by looking out, and they are crossed by the bars of the window, the 
general effect is to display Justice excluded, and vainly seeking an entrance. Some modem 
lobbies and corridors branching out from it are in harmony with the old hall, and the several 
Court rooms, with the extensive Ubraries of the Faculty of Advocates, and the Society of Writers 
to the Signet, are in various styles of architecture, among which the classical predominates. A 
great portion of the Advocates' hbrary is crowded into a range of dingy rooms under the great 
hall. 'ITieir walls are, of course, as old as the hall ; probably some portion may be more ancient, 
but the internal architecture is in general painted wooden pannelling, apparently no older than the 
latter part of the seventeenth century. Formerly, the exterior of the Parliament House corres- 
ponded with the period and character of the great hall, but it was part of the late system of 
improvements in the city, to carry a classical arcade and colonnade round the whole range of 
buildings occupying the old " Parliament Square," and the portions of the edifice adjoining to the 
square were revolutionized, and made a part of this system. From the new bridge across the 
Cowgate, some of the square turrets and other characteristic specimens of the old exterior architec- 
ture of the Parliament House, not visible of course from the front, may still be seen ; and the 
whole irregular cluster of buildings, old and new, has from this point a fine picturesque effect. 

Before the erection of this Hall, the National Parliament, with the Courts of Justice, and the 
Town Council of Edinburgh held their sittings in an edifice built in the middle of the sixteenth 
century, occupying nearly the same site.* The ground on which both edifices were built, 
constituted, at a still earlier period, the churchyard of St. Giles ; and in the laying of the founda- 
tion of some recent additions to the Courts of Law, the remains of many bodies which had been 
there interred were discovered. Both these edifices were built at the expense of the citizens of 

* Maitland's Hist, p. 21. Edinburgh in the Olden Time, p. 72. 
Parliahint Hovsi, Edinburgh, 1—2. 



9 TBB PABLIAMBNT HOUSE, BDINBUROB. 

Edinburgh, acting under a species of compulsion, in the threatened removal of Parliament, and 
the Courts, to some other place, if satisfactory accommodation were not provided for them. In 
1 632 the Town Council began to raise funds for meeting the expense of the new edifice ; " and 
in order to try the generosity of the citizens on this occasion, caused books to be made, and 
appointed certain days for the inhabitants of the several parts of the town, to repair to the Town 
Council House, to subscribe such sums as they were respectively willing to contribute, to promote 
the erection of those necessary and desirable works.''* As might have been anticipated, the 
prospect of partaking in the common advantage was not sufficient to elicit large individual sacri- 
fices for such a purpose ; and Maitland in continuation says, " The expensive work being begun, 
it was found, that neither the sums subscribed, or money borrowed, were sufficient to accomplish 
the undertaking, the said Council determined to borrow a sum of money, sufficient to finish the 
work, which was to be repaid by a new contribution ; but if that should not answer, the money 
to be raised by a tax on the inhabitants."t 

Howell, in his " Familiar Letters," writing from Edinburgh in 1639 says, " there is a fair Par- 
liament House built here lately," and regretting that Charles I. did not open it in person, he 
continues, " they did ill who advised him otherwise." A time had come when revolutions had 
their first impulse not in the battle field, but in deliberative assemblies, and the Parliament that 
met in 1639, was no less unprecedented in its constitution and its powers, than the hall in which 
it assembled was a new edifice. The prelates ceased to have a voice among the " three estates." 
The actual business was no longer left to the Lords of the Articles, but while this body was made 
more strictly elective, the sitting of the full Parliament as a deliberative assembly with fi-eedom of 
speech was established. Thus the new hall speedily witnessed a greater number of stormy debates 
than the whole history of preceding Parliaments could shew. The proceedings that took place 
within its walls are matter of history, and need not be detailed. It was towards the close of its 
career, as the assembling place of a separate legislature, and during the discussion of the Legis- 
lative Union with England, that its walls resounded to the fiercest war of party. It was on the 
25th day of March, 1707. that the Scottish Parliament ceased to sit, and the voice of legislative 
discussion became silent in their hall for ever. 

It was by degrees that the hall became exclusively devoted to its present purpose, as a vestibule 
to the Court rooms forming the several judicial chambers of the Court of Session. Two small 
niches near the door, were, until within a few months past, occasionally occupied by individual 
judges of the " outer house" department of the Court, but the hall now serves for the lawyers of 
Edinburgh, the purpose fulfilled by an " exchange" to the merchants of a commercial town, and 
it is occupied by the counsel and solicitors who are waiting on the proceedings of the Court, or 
who find it a convenient place for meeting and transacting business with each other. During a 
considerable portion of the eighteenth century, it was divided by partitions, not reaching so high 
as to interfere with the general perspective of the roof. Among the purposes for which small 
portions of it were thus applied, was a shop for Creech, the celebrated bookseller ; booths for a 
few dealers in various commodities, and a small tavern, occupied by the renowned Peter William- 
son, whose adventures from the time when he was kidnapped in Aberdeen, to his return, after 
having been domesticated as an American Indian, form a romance of no common interest. J 

* Maitland's Hist. p. 185. f >•>• P- 185. 

J In Mr. Chambers' Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, ther<! is a plan of the Parliament House and its coropartroeuts, as it wa.' 
occupied in the middle of the last century. 



MORAY HOUSE, EDINBURGH. 

In the midst of the vestiges of ancient grandeur, and the indications of modem squalidness. 
which are so heterogeneously mixed with each other in that fine old street, the Canongate, one 
edifice attracts notice as possessing a character of its own which separates it from all the others 
in the same spot, and even in the same city. It is old, and it is magnificent, but its age and 
magnificence are both different from those of the lofly piled-up houses of the Scottish aristocracy 
of the Stuart dynasty. Like the hotels of Paris, they were houses built above houses. 'ITie 
inroads of the English made every yard of ground within the walls valuable, and as the city 
increased it forced itself upward, instead of extending itself horizontally. Hence, a powerful 
noblemarfs whole suite of apartments was on one floor or two, of the gigantic towering 
edifices peculiar to Edinburgh ; where people, instead of penetrating blind alleys, as in London, 
ascended upright lanes, called common stairs, to reach the several houses. Moray House is 
of a totally different character. Like an English mansion of the seventeenth century, built in 
a qountry where the laws had long been strong enough to preserve internal peace, it is spread 
over a considerable space, as if neither the quantity of ground occupied by it, nor its applicability 
to defence, were an object of importance. Instead of the narrow suspicious openings which con- 
nected the interior of an old Scottish house with the open air, all the apertures, whether doors 
or windows, have an open, hospitable, conspicuous apj)earance. It is at once evident that the 
person for whom the house was built had a taste cultivated in England, and must have been 
very wealthy ; and that the edifice was erected ac a tune when feudal outrages were so far 
modified, that the laird or chief did not require to make a castle of his city house as well as ot' 
his fortalice in the country. 

The proportions of this house are noble and pleasing ; the exterior has little ornament save 
a massive balcony, and two stone spires on either side of the gateway, conspicuous in the accom- 
panying cut. There are two noble rooms within, both of them dome-shaped, with the ceilings 
profusely pargetted, or ornamented with designs cast in bas-relief. The larger of these rooms, 
the subject of the accompanying plate, opens on the balcony. The house is now deserted and 
dreary, but until within these few years it was filled by a large, cheerful, hospitable family, by 
whom the great domed chamber was worthily devoted to minister to their fondness for music ; 
and it was frequently filled with -the solemn tones of a noble organ. 

Behind the house is a noble terraced garden, sloping down from the Canongate towards the 
glen which separates that part of Edinburgh from Salisbury Crags. It is so little liable to be 
overlooked by the surrounding houses, that it has an air of country solitude, enhanced by the 
majestic rocks which overshadow the glen. In the highest terrace of the garden stands a large 
ancient thorn tree, which, according to tradition, was planted by Queen Mary. In another 
part of the garden a sort of arbour, produced by the crossed limbs of old trees, was long called 
" Mary's Bower.'" The association of the name of this Queen with the spot may probably 
have arisen from the supposition that the house had belonged to the Regent Murray. At the 
lower end of the garden the remains of an old stone pleasure house, surmounted by the effigies 
01 two greyhounds — the supporters of the arms of the Earl of Moray — have been glazed and 
converted into a hot-house. Here, according to tradition, was commenced the signing of the 
treaty of Union with England. 

Moray House, Edinburgh, 1 — 4. 



MORAY HOUSE 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



From its name of Moray House, this edifice has been popularly associated with the Regent 
Moray, and the history of Queen Mary. But though not destitute of curious historical 
reminiscences, the style of architecture marks it as no older than the early part of the seventeenth 
century. Mr. Chambers says, "This house was built in the early part of the reign of Charles I., 
(about 1628), by Mary Countess of Home, then a widow. Her ladyship's initials, M. H., 
appear, in cipher fashion, underneath her coronet, upon various parts of the exterior ; and over 
one of the principal windows towards the street, there is a lozenge shield, containing the two 
lions rampant which form the coat armorial of the Home family. Lady Home was an English 
lady, being the daughter of Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley. She seems to have been unusually 
wealthy for the dowager of a Scottish earl, for, in 1644, the English parliament repaid seventy 
thousand pounds which she had lent to the Scottish Covenanting government, and she is found 
in the same year lending seven thousand to aid in paying the detachment of troops which that 
government had sent to Ireland."* The records of the Canongate as a separate Corporation, 
contain evidence of the house having been built for this lady, and having been subsequently 
transferred to the Moray family. Among these there is a charter of confirmation by the 
magistrates of Edinburgh to Alexander Earl of Moray, dated August 26, 1653, where, after 
describing several small parcels of land which had been obtained from different individuals, the 
description of the aggregate mass proceeds, " Whilkes particular and divydit lands and tenementis, 
back and foir, under and above, with the yairdis and pertinentis theirof, as laitlie re-edified, 
constructed, and builded by the said deceist Marie Countes Dowager of Home, in ane great 
ludging with gardens, orchards, yairds, and pertinents of the samyn, and lyis contigue in the 
said burgh of the Canongait, on the south syd of the hie streit thairof." The record further 
bears that the place " laitlie pertainit to the Right Honourable Margaret Countes of Murray, 
and Anne Countes of LauderdaiU, dochters and aires portioners servit and retoureit in speciall 
to the deceist Marie Countes dowager of Home, their mother," and that the portion of the 
fonner was secured to "the said Alexander, now Earl of Murray, her son."t 

When Cromwell had gained his victories over the men of " the Engagement" in the north of 
England, we are told that " then the Marquis (of Argyle) conducted Cromwell and Lambert 
to Edinburgh with their army, where they kept their head-quarters at the Lady Home's house 
in the Canongate." J So that if the old walls had a tongue,' they might reveal conferences 
connected with events which were the greatest of the seventeenth century, and were the 
prototypes of still greater in the eighteenth. Here, two years subsequently, occurred a scene 
of another kind. On the afternoon of Saturday, the 18th of May, 1650, a cart was dragged 
through the Canongate, on which was placed the captive Montrose, fettered and seated on 
a high chair. On the previous Monday the Lord Lorn, the son of Argyle, had been married 
to Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Moray. The wedding festivities had not 
been concluded at the time when the great enemy of the house and cause of Argyle was thus 
ignominiously dragged beneath the walls of their festive hall, and the temptation to behold the 
fallen adversary appears from contemporary accounts to have overcome more generous feelings. 
One writer says, " The Lord Lorn and his new Lady were also sitting on a balcony, joyful 

* Article, " Old Historical House iu £diDburgh," Chambers' Journal, 1837. 
t Copies from the Register, in possession of Mr. Chambers. t Guthrie's Memoirs, 2'J7. 



, MORAY HODSE. S 

spectators ; and the cart being stopped when it came before the lodging where the Chancellor, 
xlrgyle, and Waiiston sat, — that they might have time to insult, — he, suspecting the business, 
turned his face towards them, whereupon they presently crept in at the windows : which being 
perceived by an Englishman, he cried up, it was no wonder they started aside at his look, for 
they durst not look him in the face these seven years bygone."* This anecdote is thus confirmed 
by Monteith of Salmonet.f " It was seven o'clock at night when he entered the prison, 
whither he could have easily been brought by a shorter way: but these gentlemen were 
pleased to deal so by him, and make him pass through the High Street, which is the whole 
length of the city, in order to give that divertisement to the people. Their malice was not 
confined to that ; they caused the cart to be stopped for some time before the Earl of 
Murray's house, where, by an unparalleled baseness, Argyle, with the chief men of his cabal, 
who never durst look Montrose in the face while he had his sword in his hand, appeared 
then in the window and balcony in order merrily to feed their sight with a spectacle wliich 
struck horror into all good men. But Montrose astonished them with his looks, and his 
resolution confounded them." 

It must weigh somewhat against the credibility of this story, that it is not mentioned by 
Wishart in his " Memoirs of the most renowned James Graham, Marquis of Montrose :" and 
yet this author was not likely to omit any act of contumely, so well calculated to exhibit a spirit 
of despicable malice in the enemies of his hero, as the following description, applicable to the 
passing of the procession along the street which the balcony overhangs, may shew : — " Beside? 
the guard which attended the cart in arms, the whole streets were crowded with people lo see 
him : among whom were great numbers of women, and other of the lower sort, who were 
hounded out to abuse him with their scurrilities, and even to throw dirt and stones at him as he 
passed along. But there appeared such majesty in his countenance, and his carriage and 
behaviour were so magnanimous and undaunted, as confounded even his enemies, and amazed 
all the spectators ; so that their intended insults and reproaches were converted into tears and 
prayers for his safety : whereby their ministers were so far exasperated, and transported with 
rage and fury at the disappointment, that next day, which was Sunday, they were not ashamed, 
openly in their sermons, to exclaim against the people for not embracing that opportunity of 
abusing him."J 

In 1686, when King James was urging those measures in favour of the Roman Catholics, 
which were generally believed to be the preludes to the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic 
hierarchy, under the guise of toleration, a new ministry was formed, chiefly consisting of members 
of the King's own faith. Among these the owner of Moray House, Alexander Earl of Moray, a 
recent convert from Protestantism, held the great office of Lord High Commissioner to the 
Scottish Parliament. Like the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the present day, the Commissioner 
had to represent royalty in the festive hall as well as in the senate ; and the Earl's magnificent 
mansion, right in the centre of the most aristocratic department of the city, would be better 
suited for courtly receptions than the neighbouring palace of Holyrood. 

The next historical event with which this building has been associated, is the Union of 
the Kingdoms. The tradition of the summer house has been already mentioned. That much of 
the intrigue and discussion which took place in connexion with that great event occurred within 
the walls of Moray House is inferred from the circumstance of its having been then the residence 

• Wigton MS. lu printed in Napier's Life of Montrose, 481. t Hist, of the Troubles, 513. 

} Memoir, p. 304. 



MORAY HOL'SE. 



of the Earl of Seafield, Lord Chancellor of Scotland ; but we are not aware of any other evidence 
than tradition of its having been so occupied. Seafield was made Lord Chancellor in 1702. 
In 1704 he, was appointed Lord High Commissioner, but he was reinstated in his judicial office 
in the ensuing year.* He was appointed one of the Commissioners for negociating the Union on 
the part of Scotland, and being entrusted with a considerable portion of the somewhat unscrupulous 
work consigned to the official promoters of the measure, he gave it his zealous advocacy, and 
reaped a corresponding share of unpopularity. It was he who, on giving the Royal assent by 
touch of the sceptre to the Scottish Act of Union, is reported to have said, " There's an end 
of an auld sang." 

At a somewhat later period, though the old house no longer glittered with state pageantry, or 
sheltered political intrigues, it was adopted to purposes of Uttle less public importance, and 
was tenanted by the busy ministers of a new power, that, though working quietly and unosten- 
tsitiously, has been no small state engine in modern times. It became the office of the old and 
important banking establishment, called The British Linen Company of Scotland. It was 
subsequently occupied as a private house, but has been for some years deserted The latest 
occasion on which Moray House attracted any public notice was about two years ago, when some 
passengers along the street at night declared that they saw through the dfirk dusty windows, a 
figure in spectral white gliding along the deserted apartments. A small crowd, which gathered 
on the occasion, exorcised the apparition by casting stones through the windows, a measure which 
probably was pretty efficacious, as it is believed that some jocularly inclined person, having access 
to the premises, was practising on the terrors of the people, by repeating the performance of 
the gho^t. 

* Dou^laa Veeraec, i. .^t^6. 




TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH, EDINBURGH. 



This fragment of the ecclesiastical architecture of the fifteenth century, stands on the lowest 
level of the deep glen which separates the old from t.he new Town of Edinburgh. Previously to 
the erection of the latter portion of the city, it must have stood at the vei^e of the north- 
eastern suburb, the dense and thickly peopled masses of houses in the High Street, rising over it 
on the one side, the rocky solitudes of the Calton Hill approaching it on the other. It is now on 
the very edge of the North British Railway, and so near its commencement as to be almost in 
contact with the edifices connected with the terminus. It is thus with some surprise that the 
traveller, just as he emerges from the temporary looking sheds, and fresh timber and plaister work 
of the railway offices, finds himself hurried along a dusky and mouldering collection of buttresses, 
pinnacles, niches, and Gothic windows, as striking a contrast to the scene of fresh bustle and new 
life which he has just left, as could well be conceived; but the vision is a brief one, and the more 
usual concomitants of railways, a succession of squalid houses, and a tunnel immediately suc- 
ceed it. 

This interesting edifice claims from us peculiar attention as it is understood that it is doomed 
to be destroyed for the purpose of facilitating the attentions of the Railway company. In an age 
characterised by projects so numerous and so costly, for the restoration of early architecture, it 
seems strange that some effort has not been made for the preservation of a truly valuable speci- 
men of the period when the Gothic style had reached its highest developement. It might bo sup 
posed that there is room in the world both for railways and antiquities, and that without materially 
impeding the operations of the former, provision may be made for the preser\'ation of the latter. 
But it is not in general until the mischief lias been accomplished, that the public are roused to 
feel an interest in such matters. After the lapse of some years, not only is the irrecoverably lost 
edifice looked back upon with regret, but everything connected with its removal, is enlarged on 
with a spiteful pleasure, and all those who either have been instrumental in it, or might have 
averted it but declined to interfere, are held up to public odium in such a fashion, as makes 
them regret that they did not know the enormity of the offence in time to avoid committing it. 
In the end, perhaps, " a minstrel's malison is said," 

" Oh, be his tomb like lead to leaa, 
Upon its dull destroyer's head." 

lliis edifice is, with the exception of Holyrood Chapel, the finest specimen of Gothic architec- 
ture in Edinburgh. It has many of the peculiar beauties of the age to which it belongs, that of 
the decorated style. It was never completed, and consists only of a choir and transept, the crossing, 
probably intended to be surmounted by a tower, being simply roofed in. The western extremity 
is a bare wall, which has been pierced with a round window, filled up in an imperfect and modern 
manner. The columns, the imposts, and the springs of the arches of the eastern commence- 
ment of the nave, still standing with the edges of the stone fresh and sharp, mark the exact 
extent to which the original work had been carried. Many repairs of this edifice, which are but 
too visibly in discordance with its original design, must have been executed about the year 1815. 
when the newspapers state that " the old seats and galleries, which were very ruinous, have been 

Trinity Collerk Church, Edinburgp, I — 6 



2 TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH. 

completely renewed. The fine Gothic windows, which were in a great measure built up with 
stones or bricks in the coarsest manner have been opened up and restored, and an entirely new 
arrangement of the seating has been adopted. Tlie noble windows on the north and south ends 
of the transept are now completely replaced, and admit a blaze of light." But these two windows, 
the greater part of the tracery of which was extant when the plate in Maitland's History was 
engraved, are tne only places where an attempt appears to have been made to restore the Gothic 
details. The clerestory windows on the north side, visible in the representation of the interior, 
are the only ones which retain the original mullions. The oriel at the extremity of the choir is 
merely filled with square panes, and the aisle windows with those of the southern clerestory, 
have the still more objectionable feature of simple crossed mullions. The buttresses are pinnacled, 
and connected vnth the clerestory by flying buttresses. The portions still remaining of a consi- 
derable number of niches, shew that they must have been adorned with great delicacy and 
beauty. Several gurgoiles in the exterior, and brackets within, exhibit the grotesque contortions so 
frequently a feature of buildings devoted to the most pious purposes. Attached to the north aisle 
is a small edifice, in the form of a house, but from the character of its details probably coeval 
with the church. It may have been formerly the Chapter-house of the College ; it now accommo- 
dates the Kirk Session. It is believed that the remains of the foundress lie interred beneath the 
floor of this building, but there is no monument or other external indication of a sepulchral cha- 
racter connected with it. The entrance to this small edifice will be observed, by the plate of the 
interior, to be through one of those semi-circular arched doors, which in Scotland carried some 
of the features of the Norman architecture into the succeeding age of Gothic. 

The interior is fitted up in the usual manner of a Presbyterian Church, and is defaced with 
galleries. The general effect ot the architecture is lofty and solemn, and though the decorations 
are rich, they are not sufficiently extensive to overbalance the proportions, or detract from a 
general character of plainness and dignity. The pillars are deeply clustered, their capitals ai-e 
flowered, and the bossings on the groined arches of the roof are bold and full. Mr. Rickman 
says of the general features of this interesting edifice : — 

" The interior is a very beautiful decorated composition, with the capitals of the piers enriched 
with foliage, not exceeded in design or execution in any English Cathedral. The mouldings of 
these piers and arches are very good, and the Church is groined, the aisles plain, the centre and 
transepts richly ornamented with very good bosses. The exterior has some good mouldings and 
other details. The south door has an open porch, formed by a circular segmental arch, between 
two bold buttresses with good groining. This porch is evidently the original, from which some- 
thing of the same kind, though much smaller, at Rosslin Chapel, has been taken. This building 
is all of good decorated character, and is deserving of minute examination and study."* 

* Rickman'a Gothic Architecture, p. 283. 



TRIMTY COLLEOE CUl'KCH. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



This Church was founded by Mary, daughter of Arnold Duke of Guelders, and wife of King 
James II. The Royal Charter of erection was dated 5th March, 1462, not quite two years atler 
her husband's death, and was confirmed by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, on the first of April, 
in the same year. Of this Queen, who was a grand-daughter of John Duke of Burgundy, 
Lindsay of Pitscottie, says, that she " was verrie wyse and vertuous in hir husband's tyme;" 
but continuing to say that " soone efler his deceas, shoe kna>ving hirselff to be regent and gover- 
nour of the realme, sieing all men to obey hir and none to controU hir, — '' he then gives an account, 
rather too distinct for quotation in the present day, of conduct, which certainly not without reason, 
" caused her to be lightlied of all the nobilitie of Scotland.''* It is stated by Lindsay that she 
died in 1463, and " was buried in the Trinitie Colledge, quhilk shoe built hirselif." It is 
probable that her decease, so soon after the edifice was commenced, may be the cause of its not 
having been completed. 

The Church was dedicated '' to the Holy Trinity, to the ever blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, 
to St. Ninian the confessor, and to all the saints and elect people of God." The foundation was 
a Provostry ; for a Provost, eight Prebendaries, and two Clerks ; and several ecclesiastical benefices, 
and portions of land were assigned with much specific minuteness to the support of the several 
offices. There are some provisions in the foundation charter, of a peculiar character, at least in 
Scotland, and curiously illustrative of the manners of the times. It is provided : — 

" And we appoint and ordain that none of the said prebendaries or clerks absent themselves from their offices without leave of the 
Provost, to whom it shall not be lawful to allow any of them above the space of fifteen days at a time, unless it be on extraor- 
dinary occasions, and then not without consent of the chapter ; and whosoever of the said prebendaries or clerks, shall act con- 
trary to this ordinance, his office shall be adjudged vacant, and the same shall by the Provost and chapter, with consent of the 
ordinary, be conferred on another. And if any of the said prebendaries shall keep a concubine or fire-maker, and shall not 
dismiss her, after being thrice admonished thereto by the Provost, his prebend shall be adjudged vacant, and conferred on anothri , 
by tx>ngent of the ordinary as aforesaid. 

" Tlie Provost of the said College, whenever the office of provostry shall become vacant, shall by us, and our successors 
Kings of Scotia'^) '..e presented to the ordinary. And the vicars belonging to the out-churches aforesaid, shall be presented by 
the Provost and cnapter of the said College to the ordinary ; from whom they shall receive canonical institutions and that no 
prebendary shall be instituted unless he can read and sing plainly, count, and discount, and that the boys may be found docile 
in the premises. And we further appoint and ordain, that whenever any of the said prebendaries shall read mass, he shall, after the 
same, in his sacerdotal habiliments, repair to the Tomb of the Foundress with hyssop, and there read over the prayer de prq/undit, 
together with that of the faithful, and an exhortation to excite the people to devotion. "f 

In 1502, the establishment was enlarged by the addition of a Dean and Sub-deaii, for whose 
support the College received a gift of the rectory of the Parish Church of Dunottar in Kincar- 
dineshire. J 

The Church and the Prebendal buildings suffered with the other religious houses in Edinburgh, 
during the early tumults of the Reformation,§ and they are said to have been subsequently injured 
by Cromwell's soldiers. || 

The history of this ecclesiastical edifice is intimately connected with that of the " Trinity 
Hospital" founded by the same Queen. It stood close beside the Church, until it was rerooved 

* Chronicles of Scotland, p. 169. Lindsay calls her Margaret instead of Mary. j* Maitland, p. 209. 

J MS. Memorial respecting the Trinity College Church, in the possession of Dr. Steven. 
§ Memorials of Edinburgh, p. 63. |] Nicol's Diary, p. 40. 



4 TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH. 

in 1845, to make room for the operations of the North British Railway; and though far from 
being ornamental, its extreme air of antiquity — the smallness of the windows, the depth of the 
recesses, and the general irregularity of the cluster of buildings, looking silent, melancholy, and 
deserted in the centre of a crowded city, seldom failed to strike the passer by with a mysterious 
interest. In the year 1164, Malcolm IV. founded a hospital, for the reUef of pilgrims, the sus- 
tentation of the poor, and the help of the sickly, on Soltre or Soutra Hill, dividing the Lothians 
from Lauderdale, the remains of which are stUl, or were lately visible. The hospital was gifted 
with the Church of Soltre, and several other sources of revenue. On the 6th of March, 1461, 
the Bishop of Glasgow, in virtue of a commission from Pope Pius II., granted letters of 
extinction, suppression, and annexation of the hospital of Soltre, on the narrative that it had been 
founded by a King of Scotland, and that the reigning King, James III., consented to its revenues 
being transferred to the hospital to be founded by the widow of the late king.* Coeval with the 
foundation of the church, the hospital was incorporated for thirteen bedesmen. In 1567, Sii" 
Simon Preston, of Craigmillar, Provost of Edinburgh, obtained from the Regent Murray, a grant 
of the whole estabUshment, reUgious and eleemosynary, which had been annexed at the Reforma- 
tion. Within two days after, he conveyed them to the city of Edinburgh, an act which has 
received much praise as a public spirited disposal of his own private property. It appears, how- 
ever, from the following extract from the minutes of the Town Council of Edinburgh, that the 
Provost's merits more properly consisted in his having solicited the gift as representing the 
community. 

" The quhille day in the ConnsaU Houss of this Burgh, comperit Sir Simon Prestoun of Craigmillar, Knight, Provost of ttxis 
Burgh, and shew and declarit to the said BaiUies, Coonsall, and Deckynes, that he had obtained and im|)etrat at my Lord 
Regent's hands, the gift of the Trinity College Kirk, housses, biggins and yards adjacent thereto, and lyand contigue to the samyn, 
to be ane Hospital to the puir, and to be beggit and uplialdane by the guid Town, and the Elemosinaries to be placet thereinto, 
to be the Provost, Baillies, and Counsall present, and being for the time, and notwithstanding that he has labborit the samyn, it 
was not his mind to laubor it to his awin behuif, hot to the guid Town as said is, and therefore presentelie gaess the gift thereof 
to the guid Town, and transferrit all right and tytill the he had, hes, or might have thereto in the guid Town, fra him and his airs 
for ever, and promisit that quhat right hereafter they desirit him to make them thereof, or suretie, he wald do the samyn ; and that 
he, nor his airs, or others his assignays would never pretend rycht thereto, and this of his awin free motive will, for the favor 
and luitf that he beris toward the guid Town. Quhairfore they thankit his Lordship ; and Adam FuUarton, Baillie, at the 
desire of the said Provost, and of his consent, askit instruments upon the premises, and desyret tme act to be made thereupon in 
their books." 

It appears, however, that this grant was burdened with existing interests vested in the officials 
of the establishment. They had embraced the Reformation, and passed a series of canons for the 
government of the bedesmen, appointing that they " sal leir and have profitlie the ten command- 
ments of God, the Lord's Prayer, and the articles of the belief," and also appointing certain rules 
of moral discipUne, with penalties to be levied " gif ony of the beidmen be drunkinsam, Twilziours, 
bannairs, swerairs, or outragious to yair said maister hospitaler, to any of the prebendaries, or to 
any of the beidmen yair braithring."t In 1571 the office of Provost was conferred on Robert 
Pont, a versatile, restless, and able man, who held several clerical benefices, was a judge of the 
Court of Session, published some works connected both with poUtics and science, and mixed 
largely in all the political and ecclesiastical disputes of his stormy age. Great part of his 
checquered career seems to have been spent in legal and polemical quarrels. In 15 7^, when the 

* Statement in regard to the Trinity College MS. in possession of Dr. Steven, 
t Maitland, p. 211. 



TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH. 

establishment of the Edinburgh University was contemplated, the magistrates appear to have 
been anxious, by a treaty with the Provost of Trinity College, to connect the new institution with 
that old foundation, and they appointed a deputation to " converse with, and enter into fair rea«on- 
ing with him touching the erection and foundation of the University in the Trinity College ;"^ 
but without effect. 

Having apparently been defeated by Pont in their attempts to accomplish the purposes of the 
gift of Sir Simon Preston, the magistrates appear to have endeavoured by various means to induce 
him to resign his rights or claims on the revenues of the establishment. At length, in l.')78, on their 
agreeing to pay him 300 merks and an annuity of £160. (both Scots money) a contract was 
entered into between them declaring " that the said Mr. Robert, moved by the good zeal, conscience, 
and earnest affection to advance the hospitals and colleges of the said Burgh, founded, or to be 
founded by the said magistrates or their successors within the same, for help and sustentation of 
the poor, sick, and decayed fathers and orphans, and for instruction of youth in letters and virtue, 
whereby charity might increase to the glory of God and his true religion, &c. ;" therefore the said 
Robert Pom conveyed " all and haill the benefice of the Trinity College beside Edinburgh, with 
all and sundry kirks, teind sheaves, other teinds, glebes," &c. to " the Provost, Baillies, and com- 
munity of the Burgh of Edinburgh and their successors."t In 1587, an Act of Parliament was 
passed for the general revocation of all grants made in the King's minority, of " whatsumever 
hospitallis, maison-dewis, landis or rentis appertening thereto." The object of the revocation 
was that they might be applied to their original purpose of the sustentation of the poor, and 
that His Majesty's conscience might be relieved of the responsibility of having made these 
eleemosynary institutions the object of individual aggrandisement. In this Act it was specially 
provided " that the rentis of the hospitall of the Trinitie college, besyde the burgh of Edin- 
burgh, qnhilk is now decayit, assignit and givin to the new hospitall erectit be the Prouest, 
Baillies, and Counsall of the Burgh of Edinburgh, be nawayes comprehendit under this 
present reuocatioun." 

In virtue of several royal charters, and of the discretionary powers contained in them, the 
revenues of the college came to be part of a mixed fund to be applied by the Corporation of 
Edinburgh for the support of the Clergy, and the educational and eleemosynary establishments 
of the city.J It appears to have been in the year 1587, that "The Trinity Hospital" was recon- 
stituted by the city authorities as a corporation charity, and it is said that they obtained a 
suitable edifice by repairing the ruinous buildings that had been inhabited by the Provost and 
Prebends. § The revenues lately amounted to about £2000. a year. Since the hospital 
buildings have been removed, the inmates have been boarded in the city. The following state- 
ment describes the condition of the hospital at the time when the dispersal took place. " The 
inmates are decayed burgesses of Edinburgh, their widows, sons, and daughters. The right of 
presentation is vested in several public bodies, and in certain families in Scotland. The average 
number of inmates is about fifty, besides 100 out pensioners, who receive about £6. per annum." 
Attached to the institution there was a library, chiefly curious in books of old divinity, but in 

* Statement, &c. ut. sup. t Statement, &c. ut. sup. 

t Memorial respecting the Trinity College, 1828, MS. ^ Arnot's Edinburgh. 

II New Stat. Ac. Edin. p. 721. 



TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH. 



the whole more remarkable for the pristine condition in which the volumes were preserved, 
than for their value as rarities. The church is now that of " The Trinity College Parish' of 
the city of Edinburgh. Its present incumbent is the Rev. Dr. Steven, author of the History o( 
Herrot's Hospital, referred to in another part of this work. 





Ortmtvhy RW JiiUauis 



.^J./'li.-J f'% (. 'ft7l/«-/- 



THE 1 1IO1RJ.0UKING EAST 



ST MARGARET'S WELL, RESTALRIG. 

Alterations of various kinds have so changed thecharacter of the place where this rich fountain 
gushes forth, that those who have been famiUar with it of old would find clifBculty in discovering 
the spot where it stands, and few will now be able to observe its architectural beauties. In former 
times a mossy bank rising out of pleasant meadows covered the little pillared cell, and the surplus 
water running out in a slender rill fell into a pure mountain stream, fed from the springs of Arthur's 
Seat. The spot, though close to two large towns, was solitary, and the most conspicuous objects 
in the neighbourhood were the range of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, with the ruins of 
St. Anthony's chapel on the one side, and those of the old church of Restalrig on the other. For 
some time, the streams from Arthur's Seat have been made the means of irrigating the surrounding 
meadows with the contents of the Edinburgh sewers. It is into this fetid marsh that the waters 
of St. Margaret's Well now run. For many years its unpleasant position had made this a spot 
seldom visited; but, even since the drawing for the present engraving was taken, a huge mass <;t' 
storehouses, and other buildings connected with the North British Railway, have been squatttu 
right over the well. So much respect has been paid tu it, that the architecture has been left entire, 
and a long narrow vault, only broad enough to allow one person to pass along, has been con- 
structed to give access to the fountain from the exterior. This long passage is perfectly dark, so 
that the architecture of the old cell cannot be seen without artificial light. Some centuries hence, 
if they last so long, it may puzzle those examining the remains of the railway buildings to find 
this remnant of an older age of architecture imbedded like a fossil in the ruins. 

A small round pillar rises out of the centre of the cistern, supporting a circle of ribbed vault- 
work with ornamented bosses ; a simple plan, of which the whole details may be fully compre- 
hended from the accompanying plate. No authentic traces can be found of the history of this 
consecrated fountain From its name it appears to have been dedicated to the Scottish Queen 
and Saint, Margaret, wife of Malcolm III. In the legend to which we have already had 
occasion to refer in the account of Holyrood which represents King David as having been 
miraculously preserved from being slain by a hunted hart, Bellenden, who tells the story, says, 
"The hart fled away with gret violence and evanist in the same place quhere now springs the rude 
well." From its vicinity to Holyrood, St. Margaret's has been supposed to be the well here 
alluded to, but this view is entirely conjectural. The neighbourhood has many ancient and 
historical associations. On the top of an eminence overlooking a small lake are the remains of 
the house or fortalice of Logan of Restalrig, celebrated for his connection with the Gowrie con- 
spiracy, in a manner to which we may in this work have occasion more particularly to refer. Still 
nearer to the well is the old Church of Restalrig formerly a ruin, but repaired and nearly rebuilt 
within the past ten years. It has at first sight the air of being an entirely modern church, but 
on a minute inspection old mouldings and carvings make their appearance in conjunction with 
the modern stone work. It is a simple, quadrangular building, without aisles or transept. It 
was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and its foundation is attributed to James III.* It appears to 
have been an establishment of considerable note, having a Dean, with nine Prebends, and two 
singing boys. A document in the Leith Register of Marriages, at the close of the sixteenth 

* New statistical Account ol Scotlaiu!, Ediiiburijb. p. C.'>7. 
St. Margaret's Wkm.. Restalrig, 1 — 2. 



2 ST. MARGARETS WELL, RESTALRIG. 

ceiunrj', called, " The number of the Prebend:.ries of the Colledge Kirk of Restalridge and the 
Chaplains thereof," commences, '• Item, imprimis the sext prebendries of Buite foundit upon the 
personage and vicarage of Rothsay in Buite and upon the personage and vicarage of Elein Kirk, 
VVilliame Barbour haveand thre of thamc, ane provydit of auld, and twa pro\'ydit of new 
be the first regenttis grace quha is with God, the twa part allowit to him in his stipend to be the 
kings third."* 

Grose says: — "At the Reformation this Church was ordered by the General Assembly to be 
demolished as a monument of idolatry ; notwithstanding which, the east window and part of the 
walls are still remaining; from which it appears to have been a very plain building. In the 
churchyard is a vaulted mausoleum of a polygonal figure, formerly the burial place of the family 
ofLoganof Restalrig; it afterwards became the property of the Lords of Balmerino, and at present 
belongs to the Earl of Moray. In this vault are the remains of many persons of quality and 
fashion : one inscribed Lady Janet Ker, Lady Restalrig, quha departed this hfe 17 May, 1526. 
Over this vault is a high tumulus of earth, planted with yew trees, which, with the surrounding 
tumbs or burial places, all neatly filled up and preserved from the depredations of the parson s 
cattle and the idle boys of the parish, have a most solemn effect. "t 

* Hutton AiSS t Autiquities, 42. 




hnuvn If a il Hi, 



Hnaravtd bv o Winier 



STMARffrAlElSTS W]gE,)L, mifiSlfAK.lRK©. 



CASTLE OF EDZELL. 

In the broad strath which approaches the foot of the north-eastcni chain of the Grampians 
stand the broken towers of Edzell, seeming as if tliey were the fortaiice of the supreme lord over 
that wide fruitful district — as in truth they were, before the sway of the Lindsays had yielded to 
that of the Panmure family in the Mearns. The antiquary who consents to go so far out of beaten 
tracks, will be astonished and delighted with the remnants of ancient magnificence which have 
there been mouldering unnoticed. As in many other Scottish mansions, the oldest part, and the 
nucleus round which the other buildings have from time to time clustered, is the strong square 
tower or barbican, which still remains virtually entire, while its gayer and more fragile parasites 
have been crumbling in decay. By the expansive and varied view still obtained from the 
bastions, one can see how well the Eagle-nest — Edzell was of old pronounced Eagle — was adapted 
to aid the power, and gratify the pride, of its owner. No force, whether at the command of the 
Crown, or of a feudal chief, could pass northwards through the accessible Lowlands, without the 
lord of Edzell knowing of it ; and the Highland rievers, when they burst from the mountains 
down upon the fruitful How of the Mearns, were held in wholesome fear of the garrison of Edzell, 
if they were not already checked by that of its outpost — the tall tower of Glen-Mark, at the 
opening of the main pass to the higher Grampians. Besides the size and strength of the principal 
buildings, and the vast old trees by which they are surrounded, there are other objects of interest 
here, especially in a turreted and highly decorated pleasure-house, and a garden or pleasance, 
called in the family documents a Viridartum — small indeed, since it was necessarily within the 
cincture of the fortification, but still possessing the remains of rich and highly curious decoration. 
Built into its wall are double rows of brackets, the lower close to the ground, and so arranged that 
evidently statues or some symmetrical mouldings must have arisen from the lower to the higher row ; 
and another series must have stood between the upper brackets and a species of canopy, so as to 
give to the whole, whether it was filled with statues or with some other decoration, the effect of a 
colonnade of pilasters. Whatever may have been removed, there is still a considerable remnant of 
sculpture, representing in high relief the Christian and cardinal virtues, the sciences, and other 
allegories. Lord Lindsay, who discusses the garden with the united zeal of the artistic critic and 
the family annalist, says, in reference to the predominating tone which he finds in these sculptures, 
that " it is curious that the last relics of the school of Nicola Pisano should be found under the 
shadow of the Grampians." * 

The square cavities which are conspicuous in the cni^'-avlne mignt be assigned as the recep- 
tacles for ornaments which were never filled in, or have been removed, were it not that they 
represent the Lindsay blazon of the fexse-chequie. They arc surmounted by the stars or mullets 
of the Stirlings, from whom the Lindsays inherited this domain. " To show," says Lord Lindsay, 
" how insecure was enjoyment in that dawn of refinement, the centre of every star along the 
wall forms an embrasure for the extrusion, if needed, of arrow, harquebus, or pistol." But the 
perforations in the stars are too high to have been convenient embrasures, and could afford no 
range for a weapon. It has been suggested that they were made for the innocent purpose of 
inducing birds to build their nests in them. 

The Lindsays of Edzell appear to have branched off in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
and, on the failure of the main line and later branches, to have become the head of the house 
early in the seventeenth. David, Lord Edzell, appears to have built a considerable portion 
of the Castle, his arms and initials, with the date 1553, being sculptured over the principal 

* Lord Lindsay's Lives of the LindBays, i. 347. 
Casti.k of Kdzem,, 1—2. 



2 CASTLE OF EDZELI-. 

entrance. His son, who completed the building, and decorated the garden, was a great planter, 
and provided an extensive forest district for subsequent generations of the dwellers in Glenesk. 
He was a man of travel and reading, and made some desperate efforts to turn his knowledge to 
account by extracting the precious metals from the rocky glens of his wide territory. By a con- 
tract with a certain Hans Ziegler of Nuremberg, he makes over to him for twenty-five years 
all and sundry mines of gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, tin, lead, and other minerals, in Edzell 
and Glenesk — the German adept agreeing to pay a seigneury of a fifth of the produce, and being 
empowered *' to big and erect towns and burghs beside the said mines ; to create baillies, officiaires, 
and other members within the samyn, to hold courts and to do justice thereintil." Besides 
this Ziegler, we find the Earl's brother. Lord Menmuir, introducing to him another German 
• adept, Bernard Fechtenburg, thus: — "I have chosen ane metal man, very metal like — and lies sent 
him to you as maist necessar for mony affairs. He can burn lime, and says the grey stane 
hard to Invermark, beside the lead eur [ore] whilk also he affirms to be lead eur, is a limestaue. 
He can mak charcoal of peats, and will desire na other fuel, either to bum lime or melt copper." 
In the history of the Edzell family — both throughout the period of its feudal pride, and the 
singularly melancholy circumstances of its fall — we might find abundance of stirring and romantic 
incidents. But they cannot bear the dense abbreviation which would be necessary, were they 
introduced here ; and it is better to refer the reader to the three pleasing volumes, the Lives oj 
the Lindsays, which have been already cited. 





t 







Dranm. hy M.W JJOUn^s: 



Sngrt^td. h\' J, S. Le M<aua>. 



EBaElLnd (GASTILIE. 

EXTERIOR OF THE OARDF.N WALL 




c 



"9 






STREET ARC1IITP]CTURE AT ELGIN. 

With the broad granitic banks of Aberdeenshire on the one side, and the spiked mountains of 
Inverness-shire on tlie other, the smiling plains of Morav repose on a soft bed of fine freestone, 
which supplied ample material for the edifices raised by its industrious colony of priests. Thus 
severed from other parts of Scotland, and naturally fruitful, it became a separate centre of civilisation 
before national institutions had become strong and uniform enough to make Scotland one state. The 
many sculptured relics of antiquity, including the great Sweyn's pillar at Forres, and a slab repre- 
senting a hunting scene, lately excavated beneath one of the streets of Klgin, tell their storv of a 
civilisation anterior to any written memorial. Descending from the barren heights which bound the 
Sp3y, this old cathedral town has an aspect of pleasant, warm repose — deriving dignity from the 
huge brown towers of the cathedral, a handsome classical church of modem days, and some public 
eleemosynary institutions erected by benevolent citizens of the old burgh. When the wanderer 
has entered the town it.self, he will find himself surrounded by objects that might occupy his pencil 
or his pen for weeks. Besides the grand mass of the cathedral, and the clustered castellated remains 
of its close, every street and turning presents some curious quaint architectural peculiarity, from 
the graceful Gothic arches of the Maison Dieu, to the old gray burgher's house, sticking its narrow 
crow-stepped gable, and all its fantastic, irregular, blinking little windows, into the centre of the 
street. Many decorated niches, let in to abrupt cornei-s, now tenantless, mark the spots where once 
stood the image of the Virgin and the lamp, to arrest the notice of the pas.ser-by ; an indication of 
the great antiquity of the street architecture of Elgin. In many cases the houses are ranged in 
the old French manner, round square courtyards communicating with the street by low heavy- 
browed arches. But the most remarkable and characteristic feature is that which will be observed 
in the accompanying Plate. A large number of the houses are supported on colonnades, the designs 
of which have considerable merit, especially in that character of massiveness which seems to adapt 
the pillar and arch to bear the superincumbent weight. From this feature, some of the streets of 
Elgin remind one of those of Berne ; but they are still more quaint, fantastic, and venerable- 
looking than those of the gloomy Swiss city. Never having had either manufactures or trade. 
Elgin has changed little in the coui'se of a century or two ; while, as the centre of a rich agri- 
cultural district, with its clubs and county meetings, it has had enough of vitality to save it 
from total decay by the removal of its ecclesiastical honours. It is inhabited by a consider- 
able number of people with good connexions and small incomes, who naturally surround them- 
selves with the attributes oi modest elegance and eoml'on. 

Elgin was the ancient canital of Moravland, as Edinburerh was of the Lothians : and thus, long 
ere it became a cathedral city, it was a place ot importance. J^'rom the dates ot many charters 
granted by them, it must have been a favourite place of residence with King William the Lion 
and the two Alexanders. It was in 1224 that, probably owing to its rising importance otherwise, 
it became the scat of the cathedral. Its ecclesiastical soon overshadowed its civic glories, and the 
expenditure of an affluent chapter, drawing their teiTiporalities from the fruitful corn-fields of 
Moray, made it one of the most important places in Scotland. Even the burgal seal represented 
Street Architkcture at Elgin, 1 —2. 



g STREET ARCHITEOTUHK AT ET^IN. 

a bishop in full canonicals, with crozier and book. The feudal tenure of the royal burghs was 
<lirectly of the Crown ; but an extraordinary charter was granted by Robert I. to Randolph Earl 
of Moray, in which that potentate was virtually substituted to the king, and the burgh, retaining 
all its privileges, was to owe its feudal service to the earl. Such a charter, extending, as this one 
did, over a whole province, probably came as near to the establishment of a separate principality, 
like the margravates and palatinates of Germany, as any grant conferred in Britain. The early 
corporate constitutions of Scotland closely resembled those of England, and the divergence in 
practice and phraseology which subsequently characterised them, arose after the war of indepen- 
dence, when the French alliance made them exchange the mayor and aldennen, common to them 
and their English enemies, for a provost or prevost and bailies. Yet the old nomenclature lingered 
for a while ; and thus, in 1393, Thomas Dunbar, Earl of Moray, after having remitted certain 
taxes on ale, on the ground of the town having been ravaged by pestilence, grants to the aldermen^ 
bailies, and burgesses of our burgh of Elgin, an exemption of customs upon " all the wool, the 
cloth, and other things that goes by ship out of our haven of Spey." * As in some of the other 
northern burghs, there are vestiges, in the muniments of Elgin, of the old system of local taxation, 
whereby the burgesses met annually at their head court, and, like the barons and the gi-eat eccle- 
siastics, taxed or " stented" themselves for the public service of the community. 

The part which Elgin has taken in the history of Scotland has been that of the victim, its 
proximity to the districts of the most notorious Highland reivers exposing it to their frequent 
inroads. There is a curious indication of the wild manners of the sixteenth century in a procla- 
mation dated 17th August 1556, on the occasion of holding a justice air or assize couii; at Elgin. 
Great fear seems to have been entertained that bloodshed must be the inevitable result of 
assembling together so large a mass of persons, many of them entertaining towards each other 
deadly enmity and feud. All persons, excepting the officers of the court, are prohibited from 
wearing any weapons, except "short knives at their belts;" while there are summary means, 
specially directed against the Highlanders, for apprehending and punishing those who cut down 
grain and carry it off without paying for it. The proclamation is accompanied by an assize of 
the price of provisions, in which " The pynt of Burdeous vync " is fixed at twelve pence, and that 
of " Scherand or Amzerk vyne" at tenpence.t 

* Reports from Commissioners on Municipal Corporations, L 425. t 'Mtaum'B Crioi. Trinle, i. 3.S1>. 




Pi 
.J 



■^ 






!=1 

Si 



■^ 







THE CATHEDRA!. OF ELGIN. 



How completely the Scottish civilisation of the middle ages was self-acquired, and how little it 
depended on the influence of England, is strikingly shown in tiie one fact, that we must go more 
than two hundred miles from tlie Border, and far across the wild Grampians, to see at once the 
most stately and the most beautifully decorated of all the ecclesiastical edifices of the country. 
Though Glasgow Cathedral be stately and solemn, and St Andrews must have been of great size, 
and not deficient in decoration — though the airy symmetrical beauties of Melrose, and the rich 
eccentric decorations of Roslin, make them unrivalled for their extent — yet, as a building in which 
size and ornament are combined, Elgin must have been, as its lovely and majestic fragments still 
indicate, quite unmatched, justifying the worthy bishop, who lamented its devastation, in character- 
ising it a.s patrica decus, regni gloria^ and laus et exaltatio laudis in regnis extraneisf" 

As we shall presently see, history would indicate this building as no older than the fifteenth 
century ; but the character of its architecture speaks unequivocally of a higher antiquity, bringing 
it back to tlie best days of the eai'ly English. Undoubtedly there are later features, as in the 
remains of the aisle- windows, wliere, although there is not a vestige of the depressed Gothic of 
England, there are the characteristics of the contemporary flamboyant scliool of I'' ranee. The 
flowered canopies, too, upon the eastern turrets, and the pilasters at the junction of the choir and 
transept, may have been a late decoration. But those toothed and flowered ornaments, thin, yet 
abundant — mere encrustations, which arc not interwoven witli tlie predominant architecture, but 
cover it like lace — bring us back to the age when the form had changed widely from the Norman, 
but the decoration lingered near it. The enclosing arch of the great western doorway is bcauti- 

* llcgistium Moravieuse, 204. 
The Catuedkal of Elqin, 1—4. 



2 THE CATHEDRAL OF ELGIN. 

fullv encrusted with these thin light ornaments. But more distinct evidence of the very early 
period of great part of these fragments is seen in the elevation of the south transept, represented 
above, (where the latest character of window used in the Norman buildings actually ranges above 
the pointed arches of the succeeding style,) in the narrow pointed compartments of the tower 
windows, and the magnificent double row of lancet-windows at the east end. The only portion of 
the building making an approach to completeness is the octagon chapter-house at the north-east 
angle, in the centre of which a beautiful flowered and clustered pillar sends forth tree-like, as it 
approaches the roof, its branches to the different angles, each with its peculiar encrustation of 
rich decorations, and its grotesque corbel. Within this detached chamber, which is evidently of a 
later date than the body of the church, many of the minor carved fragments found in the dust of 
the ruins have been deposited. A tradition common to many decorated edifices attaches itself to the 
chapter-house. It is called " the 'Prentice Aisle." The reader will be at no loss to recognise the 
origin of this name in a tradition that, in the master's absence, the apprentice completed his 
department of the work so beautifully, as to excite in his superior a jealousy which demanded the 
sacrifice of his life. 

Few places impress, in what remains, so deep a regret for what is gone. A great proportion of 
the edifice must have fallen at a comparatively Late period, since, in the representation given by 
Slezer, the two rows of clustered pillars supporting the nave and choir, with their arches and 
superincumbent walls, appear to have been nearly complete, along with the transept. Now the bases 
only of the pillars can be traced. The clearing away of the huge mine of rubbish caused by the falling 
of these portions of the edifice, and the development of the ground-plan, with the cleaning and 
preserving of what yet remains of Elgin Cathedral, are the result of the zealous exertions of a 
singular individual named John Shanks, who had devoted his days to the cause. He was a thin, 
lank, spider - looking being, clad in obsolete costume, with a quiet, earnest enthusiasm in his 
manner — a sort of Old Mortality, whose delight it was to labour among ruins and tombs. To 
compare the man's attenuated frame with the gigantic heap of ruins which he had removed, 
gave one a wonderful idea of the influence of patient endeavour devoted to one simple end — of the 
non vi sed scepe cadendo. John Shanks had an honest pride in beholding the work of his own hands. 
He not only made the place tidy and approachable, but laid bare the traces of its original plan, and 
discovered many tombs and ornaments buried deep within the rubbish. A monumental inscription, 
in which his services were recorded by an eminent pen, was cut on a tablet within the ruins, 
but was removed, as it appeared to convey a reproach to the public ofl[icers, who had left 
the care of this fine ruin to the zeal of so humble an individual. Among the sculptural fragments 
brought together within the walls, stands one of those old sculptured stones, relics of some very 
early age, with dim glimpses only of artistic civilisation, which so mysteriously appear here and 
there throughout Scotland. The sculpture can be deciphered to represent a hunting party, and is 
rude, hideous, and grotesque to the utmost. Its appearance at once attests its far greater antiquity 
than any surrounding object ; and, to prevent confusion or doubt on the subject, it may be as well 
to record, on the testimony of John Shanks himself, given in answer to an expression of wonder 
that such .an object should be seen in such a place, that it was not found in the rubbish of tlic 
ruins, but had been discovered during some excavations beneath a street in the town. 

It will be found stated in the account of Spynie that the Cathedral of Sloray was established 
there in the year 1203. In 1223, by a Papal bull resting on a representation that Spynie was a 
solitary place, where divine service was much neglected, the canons being obliged to travel to a 



THE CATHEDRAL OF ELGIN. g 

distance to purchase the necessary provisions, the See was transferred to the Church of the 
Holy Trinity at Elgin. According to Fordun, it was destroyed by fire in 1270.* To a date closely 
subsequent on this calamity we may attribute the greater pai-t of the present ruins. It was richlv 
endowed, and in the middle of a basin of fruitful land. Environed by the mountain abodes of the 
predatory Highlanders, the bishop and his chapter would require all their temporal as well as all 
their spiritual power to preserve them from ruthless depredations. It is not stated whether the 
burning in 1270 was accidental or designed.f In 1390 it suffered a like fate, under circumstances 
which admitted of no such doubt. Alexander Stewart, a natural son of Robert II., had taken up 
a sort of robber chiefship in the wild highlands of Inverness-shire, where his feats obtained for 
him the picturesque title of " The Wolf of Badenoch." Having interfered with some of the 
Episcopal domains in these wild regions, the bishop had recourse to his ecclesiastical artillery, and 
excommunicated the Wolf The ferocious chief, excited to fury, went beyond the usual bounds of 
what was even then deemed prudent, and, collecting a band of his savage followers — " wvld, 
wykked Heland-men," as Wyntoun calls them — came thundering from the western braes down 
upon the fertile vale of Moray, and burned the Cathedral, with the canons' houses, and the greater 
part of the town of Elgin. This was a feat which even in a king's son was not to be overlooked. 
Bishop Barr sent an affecting supplication to the king, discoursing eloquently on the ruin made 
among holy things, and his own helplessness — so extreme that he was scarce able to find the 
necessaries of life for himself and his dependants. Being now a feeble old man, he was very unfit 
to carry on a war with the persecutors of the church, but he trusted the matter to the gracious 
consideration of his majesty .J The Wolf had to do penance at the door of the Blackfriar Church 
at Perth, where he was at last received and absolved at the altar by the Archbishop of St Andrews, 
on his engaging to make due reparation for his injuries. This light punishment was insufficient to 
protect the Cathedral from the repetition of such attacks. In 1402, the son of the Lord of the 
Isles plundered it of its precious ornaments, and burned a part of the city.§ Those who read of 
such things need not lament that the spiritual power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was 
so extensive as we find it to have been. 

It has generally been understood tnat the Wolf of Badenoch levelled the building to the ground. 
But the pointed arches and their decorations are a living testimony that he had not so ruthlessly 
carried out the work of destruction. The bishop, in his appeal to the king, desires, it is true, the 
reedificatio of the edifice. There is no doubt that there must have been a considerable portion of 
it to be restored, while at the same time great efforts were made to add to the buildings, — an obliga- 
tion having been taken that every bishop should devote a third of his princely temporalities to that 
end, until the Cathedral should be completed. But there is every reason to believe that the por- 
tions which have since gradually crumbled away are the inferior workmanship of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries, while the solid and solemn masonry of the thirteenth still remains. There is 
no foundation for the common tradition that the Cathedral was torn down by a mob of John 
Knox's friends at the period of the Eeformation. Indeed, the more the history of our ancient 
buildings is examined, the more we are inclined to limit these charges of destructiveness. Mere 
neglect has been in this and in many instances suflicient to account for the devastation. In the 
troubles of the times, however, we find that the hallowed precincts were no longer a sanctuary for 
the victim of deadly feud, lay or ecclesiastic. On the 2d of May 1555, certain gentlemen of the 

* Scotiehronicon, ii. 112. 

t Eodem anno eomiusia eat eccUiia de Eluyn et (tdificiu canonicorum is the whole statement by Fordun. 
t Re(ristniin Moraviensc, 204. § Sliaw's Moray. 



4 THE CATHEDRAL OF ELGIN. 

name of Innes are charged with having, to the number of eighty, invaded the Cathedral Church 
during vespers, and in presence of the holy sacrament, to accomplish the slaughter of Alexander, 
Prior of Pluscardine, and certain gentlemen of the name of Dunbar. The Dunbars are at the 
same time arraigned for having, on another occasion, to the number of sixty, " under silence of 
night," invaded a party of the Inneses within the Cathedral, " upon ancient feud, forethought 
felony, certain purpose, and provision." These quarrels between the Inneses and Dunbars were so 
interminable and fruitful in crime, that in the same record we find a certain tailor, baxter, and 
cordinar, in Aberdeen, complaining for themselves and the other craftsmen of the hardship and 
oppression of having so frequently to sit as jurymen in these disputes, " like as we have been 
divers tymes this year," which is the more unreasonable as the feud is one in which they take no 
interest, and "knaw na thing thairof mair nor thai that dwallis in Jherusalem."* In 1568, 
by an order of the Privy Council, the lead was appointed to be stripped from the roof of the Cathe- 
dral and to be sold "for sustentation of the men of war" until "the rebellious and disobedient be 
reduced." t It was consigned to Holland, to be there sold; but the ship in which it was embarked 
foundered ; and of course such an opportunity would not be lost for connecting the calamity witJi 
the sacrilegious act which had supplied the cargo. Thus exposed to the weather, the interior went 
fast to decay. So late as the year 1640, some paintings of Mater Dolorosas, Crucifixions, and 
other Catholic pictorial decorations, were in existence ; and the adherents of the ancient faith were, 
we are told, in the practice of resorting to them for the performance of their devotion. In that 
year some zealous reformers, headed by the Lairds of Innes and Brcdie, and by some of the neigh- 
bouring clergy, proceeded to the ruins — which must have then exhibited all the sad grandeur of 
incipient decay — and demolished the " symbols of idolatry," with the rood-screen which still 
remained.| 

• PitCMm's Criminal Trials, i. 377. t Shaw, 317. ? Sketches of Moray, 80. 



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FALKLAND PALACE. 

Fife is not <a county renowned for its scenery ; but the glen, or rather hollow, at the foot of the 
Easter Lomond Hill, where glimpses of the old ruined Palace of Falkland, and the smoke of the 
surrounding village, are seen through the trees, would make a beautiful scene in any country. 
The remains of the palace are a diminutive but singularly beautiful fragment, justifying the boast 
tiiat all the Scottish royal residences, though not of great extent, exhibit remarkable archi- 
tectural beauties. It has the appearance at a distance of being but an old mansion-house or 
fortalice, with its keep and parasitical buildings; but, on a near approach, the lover of art who can 
tolerate the northern renovation of classical architecture, in the blending of the Palladian, with the 
Gothic and the stunted baronial architecture of Scotland, will find much to enjoj- in this fragment. 
The western front has two round towers, which are a diminutive imitation of those of Ilolyrood ; 
and stretching southward is a range of building, with niches and statues, which perhaps bears as 
close a resemblance to the depressed or perpendicular style of the English semi-ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture, as any other building existing in Scotland. The east side, again, is diversified by the 
renovations of classical architecture which have just been mentioned. The parts wanting to com- 
plete the quadrangle were destroyed by fire in the reign of Charles II.* No portion of the present 
edifice appears to be of great antiquity ; but at a very early period there must have been a fortalice 
at Falkland. In an ancient document, said to be of the fifth year of David I., mention is made of 
a Macbeath, Thane of " Falleland." It appears that a certain Robertus Burgonensis — which, in 
ignorance of any place in Scotland so Latinised, one might suppose to mean Robert of Bourgogne — 
had sorely vexed the Culdees of St Andrews by his oppression and rapacity, and endeavoured to 
deprive them of the fourth part of their lands of Kirkness. To oppose him a host was collected, oi 
which the principal leaders were the Thane, and Constantine Earl of Fife, the Justiciar. A sort oi 
committee or jury seems to have been formed, to investigate the genuine boundaries of the Culdees' 
estates ; and in this respect, though imperfect and obscure, the document is interesting, as throwing 
light on the habits of the age.f In the year 1267, William Earl of Mar is found dating his charters 
from Falkland. I It is more than a century later, in the year 1371, that the legal documents 
mention the existence of a castle and a forest ; and their keeping is given to the Earl of Monteith 
by Isobel Countess of Fife, who, on the condition of his restoring her to her earldom, which she 
by force and fear had resigned, is acknowledged as her heir. § The domain lapsed to the Crown 
ou the forfeiture of the Earl of Fife in 1425. The hamlet, which, according to old usage, 
clustered under the walls of the fortalice, was erected into a royal burgh in 1458 ; and the 
preamble of the charter gives, as the reason for this promotion, the frequent residence of 
the royal family at Falkland, and the inconvenience experienced by the many prelates, nobles, 
and other great personages who surround the court, for want of innkeepers and sutlers. This 
sweet spot was the scene of one of the direst and most touching tragedies recorded in the bloody 
history of the Stewarts. When Albany was governor, he committed to close confinement here 
David Duke of Rothesay, the eldest son of Robert III. It was intended that the youth should 
never leave his dungeon ; but, instead of violence, the more cruel means of starvation, through 
professed oblivion, was adopted. The spot, according to Sibbald, was not the same as that occu- 
pied by the present palace ; but " there is hard by the palace, to the north, a fair large house, built 
by David Murray, Viscount of Stormont, then Steward of Fife, in the very spot where some think 
stood the old castle, where David Duke of Rothesay was famished." || Along with such charac- 

• New Stat. Account— Fife, 927. + Registrum Prior. S. Andrese, p. 117. t •''• SI 2. 

§ Sibbald's History of Fife, p. 2.33. JnmicRon's Itoyal Palaces, 30. || Sibl)alcl, 380'. 

Falkland Palace, 1 -2. 



2 FALKLAND PALACE. 

teristics of the cruelty and savageness of man, tliis incident also develops the gentler virtues that, 
even in that harsh age, could find a refuge in tiie female breast. A poor woman, say the chro- 
niclers, who had discovered the young prince's dreadful position, stole at night to the grating of his 
cell, and managed, at the risk of her life — which some say was actually her forfeit — to convey to 
him morsels, or rather particles of food, which protracted his existence until her humanity was dis- 
covered. When James I., who may be said to have narrowly escaped a like fate, returned to 
Scotland, it was not likely that he would take up his residence in a place haunted by such unpleas- 
ing associations ; and we hear little of Falkland until the reign of James V. When this monarch, 
in his youth, had fallen into the hands of the Douglases, in the year 1518, they kept him guarded 
in Falkland Palace. Having ordered a great hunting for next day, and thus found an excuse for 
retiring to rest, he dressed himself in the uniform of a yeoman of his own guard, and slunk fortli 
from his palace like a criminal. He managed, long ere his flight was discovered, to place the 
moat of Stirling Castle between him and his pursuers ; and thus a revolution was produced, which 
upset the overgrown power of the house of Douglas. 

Queen JIary enjoyed the privacy and sweetness of Falkland, and there courted a gay ease and 
simplicity, which did not consort with the barbarian pomp of Holyrood, or even of Linlithgow. 
It was a favourite with her son, James VI., from the facilities which it afforded for the sports of 
the field ; and many of the events of his reign, which was essentially one of petty and personal 
incidents, are associated with this summer palace. The notorious Francis Stewart, Earl of Both- 
well, whose desperado attacks on the person of the king were so ludicrously formidable, had 
planned one of his attempts when James was in Falkland ; but having found " certain people 
provided to resist," he was less successful than in his well-known surprise at Holyrood.* The 
modem Solomon was just about to mount his horse at the gate of Falkland, to go forth buck- 
hunting, one fine August morning, when he received mysterious news from the brother of Lord 
Ruthven, about the discovery of a stranger with a pot of Spanish gold. He was induced to start 
immediately for Perth ; and there he went through the series of odd and unfathomed incidents, 
which are generally known as the Gowrie Conspiracy. 

* Hist, of James the Sext, 350. 








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CASTLE FRASER. 

This building, the merits of which have lieretofore been little known, stands in the parish of 
Cluny, in the heart of Aberdeenshire. Its details are so fully exhibited in the accompanying plates, 
that any description of them would be superfluous. It may be considered as standing in compe- 
tition with Fyvie Castle for supremacy among the many French turreted mansions of the north 
While its rival I'ests supreme in symmetrical compactness, Castle Fraser is conspicuous for th 
rich variety of its main features, and its long rambling irregular masses. Descending to 
minute details, while Fyvie is remarkable for its grotesque statuary, Castle Fraser has a more 
abundant richness of moulding and carved decoration. The quantity of tympanum'd dormer win- 
dows, and the variety of decorations with which they are enriched, give much character and effect 
to the building. There is one small feature, taken from France, seldom exemplified in the turreted 
mansions of the north, yet of which there are a few specimens in edifices otherwise meagre — this is 
the light lofty turret, with an ogee or pavilion-shaped instead of a conical roof, and airy-looking 
tiers of small windows, perched in the recess where the round tower joins the central square mass. 
Of that mass the upper will be seen to be of very diiferent character from the lower architectural 
depai-tment, which probably was the unadorned square tower of the fifteenth century. The dates 
which appear on the more modern and ornamental portions point to the time when the turreted 
style had reached its highest development in Scotland, 1617 and 1618. 

The old name of the domain was lluchals, Muchil, and sometimes Muckwells. The earliest 
known allusion to it is in the year 1268, when it is mentioned as contributing the feudal casualty 
of kane to the priory of Jlonymusk.* The name of Fraser became connected with the domain in 
1532, when a charter of the barony of Stony wood and Muckwellis^ was obtained by Andrew Fraser 
of Kynmundy.f The family was raised to the peerage in 1630.J Andrew, second Lord Fraser, who 
succeeded to the title in 1637, was a man of mark in the conflicts of the Covenant. He was one of 
the parliamentary commissioners appointed for suppressing the insurrection in the north, and proceed- 
ing against rebels and malignants. He had gained this advancement by exertions for the Covenanters, 
which make him and his stately new mansion frequently conspicuous in the histories of the northern 
conflicts. The species of provisional government, called " The Tables," had, in 1639, appointed a 
committee to proceed to Turriff". The city of Aberdeen being " malignant " and hostile, it was neces- 
sary to avoid its neighbourhood. " To this effect there convened the Earl of Montrose, the Earl of 
Kinghom, the Lord Coupar, with sundry other barons and gentlemen, about nyue score weill horsed 
and weill armed gallants, haveing buff" coats, carabins, swords, pistols, and the like amies. They 
came not be Aberdein, but upon Wednesday the 13th of February they lodged with the Lord 
Fraser at his place of Muchallis and in the countrie about. And upon the mome, being the 14th 
of Februar, they rode frotn Muchallis to Turreff', having the Lord Fraser, one of the committee, 
with them, and his friends. . . . Thus they took in the town of Turreff", and busked very 
advantageously their muskets round about the kirk yeard, and sat doun within the kirk thereof, 
such as was of tiic committee, viz. Montrose, Kuighornc, Coupar, Fraser, and Forbe8."§ Some 

* View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, 17S«. t Wood's Peci-nge, i. 607. 

J Wood's Peerage, i. 607. § Spiddiug's Histoi-y of the Troubles, i. U3. 

Castle Fhaseh. 1-~-1. 



2 CASTLE FKASER. 

moiuiis subsequently Castle i'raser was threatened with a siege, which It seems to have been slen- 
derly prepared to meet, i^ord Aboyue was passing through the country at the head of two thou- 
sand men, who " plundered meat and drink, and made good fyres ; i.nd when they wanted peats, 
broke doun beds and boards in honest men's houses to be fyres. . . . Upon the 12th of June 
they rode to the Lord Fraser's house of Muchells : but he was fled frae home. The souldiers 
medled witli and plundered his horse, oxen, and kyne, and all other goods that they could gett. 
They threw doun haill stacks of com among their horse feit to eat and destroy. Those who were 
within tlio place shot out some muskets, but did no skaith. Whereupon they resolved to lay ane 
siege about the house ; but, hearing there was forces ryseing in the south, they left that purpose, 
and retumes back againe to Aberdein.'* 

Charles, the fourth lord, who succeeded to the title in 1683, led a somewhat adventurous lite. 
In 1693 he was tried before the High Court of Justiciary for high treason, in having proclaimed 
King James at the Cross of Fraserburgh, where he drank the exiled monarch's health, and cursed 
King William and the adherents of the Revolution. Such actions were generally more of a con- 
vivial than of a warlike or political character. There had been a vast quantity of liquor discussed 
on the occasion, and many oaths uttered, which were more profane than dynastic. Only enough 
of treason was proved against him to subject him to a fine of .£'200. f Two years afterwards he 
took the oath of allegiance and his seat in parliament. He participated, though in no very con- 
spicuous manner, in the insurrection of 1715. Instead of flying abroad, he seems to have remained 
in wandering concealment at home, for Ave years. In 1720, while scranibli.ig among the great 
rocks which guard the coivst of Banffshire, he fell from a precipice and was killed. The title has 
since that time been dormant.^ He was succeeded by William Fraser of Inveralochy, the head of 
a collateral branch. His son Charles had the peculiar distinction of being deep in the confidence of 
the notorious Lord Lovat, to whose estates and honours indeed he might not unreasonably hope to 
succeed. Lovat's letters to him are of the most peculiar and endearing kind. " I was truly more 
concerned," says the venerable ruffian, " than I can express, in parting with you. It was the effect 
of natural affection, and I cannot help it."§ The son of Lovat's correspondent held a command at 
the battle of Culloden, wiiere he was killed, and buried on the field. |i The estates passed by 
female descent to the present proprietor. Colonel Fraser, whose father, Mr Mackenzie, adopted the 
family name by royal license.li 

* Spalding's Histoi-y of the Troublci, i. 161. + Aniot's Criminal Trials, 86. Anderson's Historj- of the Fi-asers, 170. 
t Wood's Pecnme, i. 60S. § Soi,- the letters forming part of vol. ii. of the Miscellany of the Spalding Club 

,i Hay's CiistcUated Architcrtiue. »5. «: lb 1(7. 




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FYVIE CASTLE. 

Few parts of Scotland are less known to the traveller than the gently sloping vale of the 
Ytlian, in the centre of the Lowlands of Aberdeenshire. It is not near any great highway of com- 
munication, nor does it boast of the striking scenery which tourists hunt for. Its rich alluvial 
acres are well prized by sagacious farmers, but fartlier its fame does not spread. The river 
Ythan, little broader than a large brook, which curls round the pleasure-grounds of Fyvie Castle, is 
still and sedgy. Along with this feature, the grounds, so park-like and carefully laid out — the 
meadows and broad trees, and the swans sailing in wide lake-like ponds, remind one of English 
park-scenery. The good preservation of the castle itself would harmonise with the association, 
but there is no such edifice in England. It is indeed one of the noblest and most beaiktiful speci- 
mens of that rich architecture which the Scottish barons of the days of King James VI. obtained 
from France. Its three princely towers, with their luxuriant coronet of coned turrets, sharp 
gables, tall roofs and chimneys, canopied dormer windows, and rude statuary, present a sky outline 
at once graceful, rich, and massive, and in these qualities exceeding even the far-famed Glammis. 
The form of the central tower is peculiar and striking. It consists in appearance of two semi- 
round towers, with a deep curtain between them, retired within a round-arched recess of peculiar 
height and depth. 'Vhe minor departments of the building are profusely decorated with mouldings, 
crockets, canopies, and statuary. The interior is in the same fine keeping with the exterior. One 
may question the goodness of the taste which has inlaid both ends of the hall with looking-glasses, 
that, multiplying its reflection, give it the appearance of almost indefinite length. But the great 
stair represented in the accompanying engraving is an architectural triumph such as few Scottish 
mansions can exhibit ; and it is so broad and so gently graduated as to justify a traditional boast 
that the laird's horse used to ascend it. 

It is probable that, though the ornamental portions of the edifice are not very old, they have been 
raised on works in the common Scottish square form, of great antiquity. A charter of the year 
1397 mentions the castle of Fyvie, which, along with the lands, it transfers from Thomas Colvil, son 
of the lord of Oxinhame, to Henry de Preston, in return for a hundred pounds sterling, which he 
had advanced to Colvil in his need.* The estate passed from the family of Preston into that of 
Meldrum, and was purchased in 1596 by Alexander Seton, sixth son of George lord Seton, who 
was created Lord Fyvie two years afterwards, made Lord Chancellor in 1604, and created Eai"l 
of Dunfermline in 1606.t He was a legal statesman of great influence and practical ability. A 
member of a strictly Roman Catholic family, he was educated in Italy, where, according to 
some of his contemporaries, he took orders. He was the godson of the unfortunate Queen Mary, 
and early in life became a favourite at her son's court. The family biographer says, " Shortly 
after that he came to Scotland he made his public lesson of the law before King James the VI., 
the senators of the College of Justice and advocates present, in the chapel royal of Holyrood-house, 
in his lawer gown and four-nooked cape, as lawers use to pass their tryalls in the universities 
abroad, to the great applause of the king and all present." J He passed up to the chancellorship 
through several grades of legal office. He was among the unpopular councillors with whom James, 
to satisfy the fears of the Presbyterian party, obliged himself not to meet in council, " at least when 
the cause of religion and matters of the church are treated." But those historians who had least 
sympathy with his Catholic religion praise his impartiality. He was made preceptor to Prince 
diaries, before the death of his elder brother made him apparent heir to the throne — a circumstance 

" Collections on the Sliires of Aberdeen and Banff, 501. t New Statistical Account of Scotland, (Aberdeen,) 323-4. 

t Kingston's Continuation of Maitland's House of Scytouii, 63. 
FvviK Castt.e, 1 — 2. 



2 



FYVIE CASTLE. 



which does not appear to have been noticed by those who have attacked the Catholic tendencies of 
King Charles I. 

The powerful statesman, whose foreign education induced him to make his first appearance in tlie 
French square-topped cap, probably employed an architect from France to adorn the rude 
towers of his new domain. Though a taste for the fine arts was then deemed far beneath the 
true dignity of a statesman, he seems not to have been ashamed to acknowledge such a weakness. 
" Chancellor Seaton," says Craufurd, " was esteemed one of the most eminent lawyers of his time, 
and one of the wisest men the nation then had, a great virtuoso and a fine poet ;" * and Lord 
Kingston, in the family history already cited, says he " was well versed in the mathematics, and had 
great skill in architecture." 

The castle and domain are now in possession of the fannly of Gordon. Fyvie Castle was distant 
from any of the great fields of Scottish contention, and no more important warlike incident is con- 
nected with it than that Montrose spent a night beneath its roof. It holds a humble but popular 
place in poetry, as associated with the loves of its valiant trumpeter and " Mill o' Tiftic's Annie." 
The well-known ballad tells us that 



' He hied him to the head o' the house, 
To the house-top o' Fyvie ; 
He blew his trumpet loud and shrill, 
'Twas heard at Mill o' Tiftie. 



Her father locked the door at night. 

Laid by the keys fu' canny ; 
And when he heard the trumpet sound, 

Said, ' Your cow is lowing, Annie.' " 



Faithful to this poetic legend, the figure of the trumpeter, starting in stone from the peak of a 
turret, points his constant but silent trumpet towards the dwelling of the inexorable miller. His 
daughter was no imaginary personage ; her tombstone is in Fyvie kirkyard, and documents sho" 
that her father was owner of the mill in 1672.t 



• Lives of the OfiBcers of State, p. 156. 



* New Statistical Account, Aberdeen, 325. 








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GLAMMIS CASTLE. 

Surrounded by dusky woods, and approached by long avenues passing tln-ough their shade, 
this vast pile rears its tall gaunt form, crested with multitudinous cone-topped tuiTets, abrupt roofs, 
stacks of chimneys, and railed platfonns. Though it has been shorn of many of its ancient glories, 
and the buildings which crouch beneath the great tower are manifestly modem, no other castle in 
Scotland probably stands in this day so characteristic a type of feudal pomp and power. It by no 
aieans detracts from the solemn grandeur of this edifice and its overawing infiuence, that it conveys no 
distinct impression of any particular age, but appears to have gi"own, as it were, through the various 
periods of Scottish baronial architecture. The dark, low, round-roofed vaults below — the prodigiously 
thick masonry of the walls, and the narrow orifices — speak of the earliest age of castellated masonry, 
and indeed exhibit manifest indications of the Norman period. The upper apartments appear to belong 
to the fifteenth or sixteenth century; and the rich clusters of turrets, with the round tower staircase, 
are evidently the productions of that French architectural school, which first appeared in Scotland 
early in the seventeenth ceutury. 

The edifice is in fine preservation, down to its most minute details; and tiiough in a great measure 
dismantled, a few relics of the possessions of its lordly owners retain considerable interc-t. In the 
great hall — the beautiful pargeted roof of which is depicted in the accomj)anying plate — there are 
several pictures — some of them of no small value They have lately been ristored, and tlieii- 
frames have been gilt, so that their glossy exhibition-room-like freshness is in contrast with the 
grim antiquity of the surrounding objects. Some specimens of old armour — chiefly Oriental, and 
not of much interest or value — are shown to visitors. More worthy of observation is a clothes- 
chest containing some court-dresses of the seventeenth century, still glittering in not entirelj 
obliterated finery, among which is preserved the motley raiment of the family fool, whose licensed 
jests had lightened the heavy pressure of unoccupied time in the long evenings, before Charles I. 
was beheaded or Cromwell had become great. Not the least interesting among the interior features 
is an old painted and pannelled chapel, in pristine preservation, which, though forming one apart- 
ment of a great building of many storeys, curiously reminds one of travelling in Catholic countries 
abroad, and of " the chapel far removed that lurks by lonely ways." But not the least source ot 
enjoyment to the visitor of Glammis will be, if the day be fine, to look around him from the railed 
platform, on the top of the tower, to the wide valley of Strathmorc, full of luxuriant woods and 
rich cultivated domains. 

This castle claims traditionally a high antiquity. Fordun and the other chroniclers tell us, that 
m its neighbourhood Malcolm II. was attacked and mortally wounded in 1034, and that his assas- 
sins perished in attempting to cross the neighbouring loch of Forfar, then imperfectly frozen over. 
Pinkerton, who was never content with doubting the truth of any historical statement, but who 
had always some directly opposite narrative to prove, tells us that " Malcolm 11. died a natural 
death at Glammis," and that "the fables of Fordun and his followers, concerning Malcohn's 
dying in a conspiracy, have not a shadow of foundation." * Cn the other hand, tradition has so 

* Enquiry into the History of Scothuid, u. 192. 
Glammis Castlk, 1 — 2. 



2 GLAMMIS HASTLE. 

far realised and domesticated the assassination, as to show the chamber of the castle in which it 
occurred ; while, to put all scepticism to shame, it points out the indubitable four-posted bed in 
which the deed was perpetrated. This form of the legend is evidently an adaptation of the dra- 
matic version of the murder of Duncan by Macbeth ; and indeed the chamber has been not 
unfrequently shown as the scene of this great tragedy, for which its adjuncts make certainly h 
very appropriate stage. The earliest authentic proprietary notices of Glammis show it to have 
been a thanedom, and its lands regal domains. On the 8th of JVIarch 1372, King Robert II., 
by ciiarter, granted to Sir John Lyon "our lands of the Tiiainage of Glammis."* The family 
of Lyon was ennobled as Lord Glammis in 1445, as Earl of Kinghoni in 1606, as Earl of Strati i- 
more in 1672.t The reader of Scottish history will have made himself familiar with many events 
in which the lords of this fortalice took part. It is noticed for the last time in history in connexion 
with the rebellion of 1715. when the Chevalier lodged for some time in the castle, and tlierc 
received his principal followers. 

It is traditionally stated, that the later portion of the edifice is the work of Inigo Jones ; but 
there is no evidence of the truth of the statement. Considerable additions were undoubtedly made 
to the buildings by Earl Patrick, who died on 15th May 1695.t 

During the eighteenth century, and before its a])pi'oaches were modernised, Glammis frequently 
elicited expressions of strong admiration from tourists. " It is," says the author of the tour 
attributed to De Foe, " one of the finest old built palaces in Scotland, and by far the largest. 
When you see it at a distance, it is a pile of turrets and lofty buildings, spires and towers — some 
plain, others shining with gilded tops, that it looks not like a town, but a city."§ Gray the poet, 
m a letter to Wharton in the autunm of 1 765, concludes a minute description of the castle and the 
grounds, with the general remark that " the house, from the height of it, the gi'eatness of its mass, 
the many towers a-top, the spread of its wings, has really a very singular and striking appearance 
— like nothing I ever saw." || Scott bitterly lamented the subsequent landscape-gardening opera- 
tions, which, sweeping down all the exterior defences, left the clustered tower standing alone, in 
the middle of a park, unprotected, like a modem peaceful mansion. " The huge old tower of 
Glammis, ' whose birth tradition notes not,' once showed its lordly head above seven circles 
(if I remember aright) of defensive boimdaries, thi'ough which the friendly guest was admitted, 
and at each of which a suspicious person was unquestionably put to his answer. A disciple 
of Kent had the cruelty to render this splendid old mansion (the more modem part of which 
was the work of Inigo Jones) more parkish, as he was pleased to call it: to raze all those 
exterior defences, and to bring his mean and paltry gravel-walk up to the very door from 
which, deluded by the name, we might have imagined Lady Macbeth (with the fomi and 
features of Siddons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan." 1[ Scott spent a night in Glammia 
castle in 1793, and he concludes a curious account of his sensations on the occasion, by saying — 
" In spite of the truth of history, the whole night-scene in Macbeth 's castle rushed at once upon 
me, and struck my mind more forcibly than even when I have seen its terrors represented by Joim 
Kemble and his inimitable sister." * * 

* Terras nostras Thanngii do Ulamuyss. Reg. Mag. Sig. page 90. 
t Douglas, ii. 563-567. t Ibid. 566. § Tour through Clruat Britain, iv. 1«6. 

II Works, iv. 53-4. *![ Kssuy ou WuIsluiio Oiudcniug. Life, i. 291. 

• * LetterK ou Dumoiiology and AVitchcraft, 398. Life, i. 296. 




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TDHDS f^aiSAir IHAaiL EN SrLAHCIHirS '.GASTlLlg. 




UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 



Pressing close upon the tlu-onged pavement of the squaHd High Street of Glasgow, the 
University rears its balconied front of many decorated windows, in strong contrast with the 
surrounding edifices. It has an air of well-kept age. Though venerable, and bearing many of the 
marks of time, it has no indication of having fallen from its pristine condition ; and thus it stands 
alone amidst contemporaries that have sunk from their original eminence, or the sordid and totter- 
ing modem edifices which have known no other tenants but the humble and impoverished class of 
whom this portion of the wealthy city has become the abode. The front, with its arched gate- 
way and dusky windows, has an air as if it did not invite curiosity, but desired to keep the scrutiny 
of its uncongenial neighbours at a distance. When the archway has been passed, however, the 
busy dirty street is left as far behind as if it were in another city, and a solenin, quiet, cloistral 
seclusion at once accords with the remembrance that all the surrounding buildings have been long 
sacred to the great peaceful pursuits of studying and uistructing. The general style of the edifice 
is a mixture of the English Elizabethan, with the peculiar architecture which Scotland borrowed 
from France in the seventeenth century. It has the balconies, the tall rectangular chimney-stalks 
corner to comer, and the variously decorated window-tops of the former : while tiie narrow rocket- 
topped towers of the latter, polygonal or circular, are conspicuous in the quadrangles. In the outer 
court the fine massive stair, with its stone balustrade, represented in the woodcut below, leads to the 



2 nNIVEHSlTY OF GLASGOW. 

|)ublic hall, occupying the middle story of the street front. This apartment is plain, but solemn, — 
panelled with dark oak, and deriving an additional gloom from the heavy frames of the small win- 
dows, and the narrowness of the street. The interior court, with its variety of tympanum-shaped 
window-tops, crow steps, and towers, is represented in another plate. The tall square tower 
between the two quadrangles, with belfry, clock, and balustrade, sliows some lingering vestiges of 
Gothic, and In so far reminds one of the towers of Heriot's Hospital. The figure in the niche 
above the arched doorway is that of the renowned Zachary Boyd. Passing inwards from the 
second quadrangle, we reach the Ilunterian Museum, a building of classical character, and not 
without merit, but rather out of harmony with the original edifices of the University. It contains 
several valuable pictures by the great foreign masters. Descending from these buildings towards 
the inky waters of the Molindinar Burn, is a piece of pleasure-groimd with a few scattered trees, 
wofully blackened and blighted by the smoke of the surrounding manufactories. This is the old 
College Garden, known to novel-readers as the scene of the picturesque conflict between the 
Osbaldistoiics, described in Bob Roy. 



■ HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

The bull for the foundation of the University of Glasgow was granted by Pope Nicolas V. on 
the 7th .lanuary 1451.* This document describes the place assigned for the new seat of learning 
as peculiarly fitted to the purpose, from the salubrity of the climate and the sun-ouuding 
abundance of all the necessaries of life. Nicolas, a man of talent and learning, was little less 
distinguished for his patronage of literature than his great successor Leo X. ; and in the usual 
exordium on the benefits of learning, it is characterised with perhaps rather more than common 
felicity, as the precious pearl of knowledge, leading to a good and happy life, raising the accom- 
plished tar above the ignorant, unveiling to the learned the secrets of nature, and raising the lowly 
bom to highest eminence. 

The bull reached Glasgow a few months after its date; and, in the ensuing winter, the Univereity 
was formally constituted, by the establishment of at least a faculty of arts, which passed some 
minute and comprehensive statutes on the curriculum of study. Little provision was made, until 
the lapse of a considerable period, for its permanent endowment ; and having no buildings specially 
assigned to it, the convocations and other solemn assemblies were held in the chapter-house, the 
crypt, or elsewhere in the cathedral. Occasionally the neighbouring buildings of the Blackfriars 
appear to have afforded accommodation for the purposes of the University.! Some time elapsed 
ere any attempt was made to create a collegiate educational establishment, under the auspices of 
the University ; and " it appears, from a minute of the 2d of November 1457, that the two regents, 
who then applied for some support from the purse of the faculty, were personally bound for 
certain sums on account of the rent of a place of education, which sums they were unable to pay 
in consequence of the penury of preceding years, occasioned by pestilence and the small number 

of students Twelve months afterwards, while the finances must still have been very 

slender, the faculty ordered all the money In their coffers to be expended in the building of a 
Pedagogium. This was before Lord Hamilton gave the ground for a college. All the efforts of 

* Munimenta Aliuae UniTeraitatis QlaHgueuiiis, — now in the preag, and edited, for the Mnithuid Club, by .loseph llobcrtion, 
Keq. The date usually, but cnoncously, attributed to the erection is 1450. 
t MuuiniuuUi, IlejKirt of Coniniiis^ion on Univei'siticB of Scotland, .\\>\>. -14, 215. 



UNIVERSITY OF GLASC.OW. 8 

the members, however, were unable, for more than a century, to provide even decent rooms for 
teaching ; so that, in the year 1563, the whole establishment is described in Queen Mar\-'s charter 
as presenting a very mean and unfinished appearance."* 

The first building for a college, properly so called, stood in another part of the town, on the south 
side of the " Rotten Row" — the site of the greater part of the prebendaries' houses. All that is 
known of this edifice is, that it survived the year 1524, when it is mentioned by the term " Auld 
Pedagogye," to distinguish it from the " New Pedagogye," on the site of the present edifice. The 
portion of this site first obtained by the University was granted, along with some lands in the sub- 
urbs, for the foundation and maintenance of a college, by James Lord Hamilton in 1460, who 
required the principal and masters, by the terms of his gift, twice a-day, at the conclusion of the 
noon and evening meal, to pray " for the souls of the Lord of Hamilton, the founder of this college, 
of the Lady Euphemia his wife, of his ancestors, heirs, and successors," along with those of all the 
faithfiil departed-t Another benefactor added some neighbouring lands to the site, on which build-, 
ings fbr the accommodation of the faculty of arts appear to have been speedily erected. Though 
not very extensive — for the united funds, both of the College and the University, would have been 
inadequate to a costly structure — they served to accommodate the collegiate body until after the 
Reformation. At that stormy period some new works, which appear to have been previously con- 
templated, were abandoned ; and this small seat of learning was overwhelmed or overlooked in the 
midst of the great conflicts which raged around. From about 1557 to 1572 the College and University 
may be said to have existed only in name. If any coui-se of instruction was then carried on within 
their walls, the able and indefatigable Editor of the Munimenta^ already cited, has been obliged to 
acknowledge that he can find scarcely any .perceptible traces of its character, or even its existence. 
Yet during that interval the establishment obtained possession of one main source of its subsequent 
prosperity, in the shape of a gift from the Crown, of the neighbouring buildings, with the gardens 
and other grounds, belonging to the Friars Preachers. Some of these buildings were available for 
the purposes of the establishment without much alteration ; and while it is believed that no portion 
of the original College exists, it has been thought that, on the south side of the present edifice, 
there are some remains of the buildings transferred from the Preaching Friars. | Though no idea 
can now be formed of the several tenements then occupied for the purposes of tlie University 
and College, a catalogue of the furniture in the year 1582 casts some curious light on the domestic 
economy of the establishment. Among other things we find "A great silver maser of 18 ounces 
weight ; a silver ta»s ; 14~ silver spoons ; three tables in the hall ; ane great burd in the princi- 
pallis studie, and ane less in the inner chalmer ; 26 beds, besides one in the porter's lodge ; 25 
studies for students ; the dask of buird aik in the lang skuile ; the pulpet in the hall ; ane coverit 
aiken forme in the principallls chalmer ; twa lytle formis in Mr Petris ;§ ane lytle in the princi- 
pallis," &c. &c. 

The erection of the present edifice was commenced^n the year 1614, but it made little progress 
for some time. About the year 1630, an energetic effort was made to carry on the undertaking 
through the solicitation of subscriptions from all classes of the community, from tlie King down- 
wards. At the head of the curious subscription list, still extant, is the name of ( 'liarles I., entered 
in his own handwriting, at Seton, the 14th July 1633, for £200 sterling. A note is added, that 
"this soume was payed by the Lord Protector, anno 1654." This entry is followed by many 

* Report, p. 282. t Muniraenta. J Munimoiitn. Ac, ut sup. 

§ Peter Blackburn, one of the Regents, afterwarda Bishop of Aberdeen. 



4 UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 

names notable in the eventfiil histoiy of the period. Thus, James Marquis (afterwards Duke) 
of Hamilton gives 1000 merks Scots ; James Earl (afterwards Marquis) of Montrose gives 400 
merks ; John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St Andrews, 1000 merks ; Patrick, Archbishop of 
Glasgow, 1000 merks ; James, Archbishop of Glasgow, 1000 merks ; John Viscount of 
Lauderdaill, 300 merks ; William Viscount Sterling, £500 ; John Lord Lowdoune, 300 
merks ; Mr Archibald Johnston, advocate, (afterwards Lord Warriston) 100 merks ; Mr 
Zacharie Boyd, 500 merks. The celebrated Principal Baillie is a contributor of 100 merks ; 
The Provost and Bailies of Glasgow give 2000 merks, and a second subscription of £50 ; the 
town of Stirling, 300 merks; the town of Ayr, 300 merks; the little burgh of Irvine, £100. 
The list shows the names of some of the Highland chiefs, such as Sir Donald Macdonald of 
Sleat, Hector M'Lane, younger of Duart,* &c. 

By means of the simas thus raised, and others subsequently obtained from various sources, the 
present substantial and stately edifice was nearly completed in 1662. The chief individual 
contributor to the building was Mr Zachary Boyd, whose bust was thus deemed worthy of a 
conspicuous place in the inner quadrangle. It may be not uninteresting to read from a MS. 
diary by Principal Fall, of " Affairs relating to the College of Glasgow," an account of the erection 
of the stately staircase, so conspicuous in the plate of the outer quadrangle. "June 20th 1690. — 
The great stair which caryes up to the Fore Common Hall, and my house, &c., wanting a raile, 
made that Hall useless. So upon the day forsaid an agreement was made with William Riddel, 
maso^i, for putting up a raill of ston ballusters about it, with a lyon and unicome upon the first 
turn, for all which he was to have for workmanship twelve pound sterling, the College furnishing 
stone, lyme, and all other materialls. The worke was begune the last day of June, and was 
finished the 15th day of August of the same year."t 

The corporation of the College being affluent, the buildings have been kept in good con- 
dition, and they have lost none of the main features which Slezer represents in his view, taken 
towards the close of the seventeenth century — a circumstance only too remarkable in connexion 
with a Scottish edifice. A very clear, terse, and full account of the University, as an educational 
institution, was prepared for Sir John Sinclair's " Statistical Account of Scotland," which, being 
ascertained to have been written by Dr Thomas Eeid, is incorporated, with notes, in Sir William 
Hamilton's edition of that philosopher's works. 

* Muniments, ut sup. * IWi 




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GLENBUCKET CASTLE. 

As on the banks of tlie Dee, so along the nearly parallel vale of the Don, a line of fortresses 
passed from the centre of the mountain districts into the Lowlands, the upper department of them 
sheltering the "rievers" who plundered other people's fields, those in the low country serving to 
protect the fields of their owners, and some of them perhaps merging into both characters. " From 
Kildrummie," says the New Statistical Account,* " to the head of Strathdon, there is a regular 
chain of ruinous castles; and it is a singular coincidence that the first four are all placed at equal 
intervening distances — Towie Castle being about three miles up the Don from Kildrummy; 
Glenbucket three above Towie; and Culquhanny three miles farther up than Glenbucket: a mile 
beyond Culquhannj' stands the Doune of Invemochty; and lastly, at the head of the strath, the 
Castle of CorgarfF." The last, now a comparatively modern barrack, is the scene of that frightful 
tragedy of feudal vengeance, so pathetically detailed in the ballad of " Adam o' Gordon," in which 
tiic daughter of Campbell of Calder, and her children and servants, were burned to death by Gordon 
of Auchendoun. The scenery on the Don is not so inviting as that on the Dee ; and hence, while the 
greater part of the southern line of fortalices have been converted into pleasant dwellings, those 
along the other valley have been left to the care of the elements, and stand up from the bluflf banks 
and wild brown moors, such ragged masses as the accompanying plate presents. The branch of 
Gordons who inhabited this distant fortress led a wild semi-freebooters' life, and but slight record 
would be preserved of their history. The inscription over the door, which has been fac-similed, 
probably contains the date of the earliest part of the building — 1590. Of this inscription it maj 
be remarked, that the word " faime" which might give a mysteriously ambitious tone to the senti- 
ment, " Nothing on arth reraanis hot faime," is not intended to mean celebrity, but the humbler 
attribute of good repute. It embodies the sentiment expressed by Francis I. after his defeat at 
Pavia, but whether it was suggested by any similar event, must remain a mystery. 

While the castle and its earlier owners have been unknown to the fame which its founder may 
be interpreted to have courted, the ecclesiastical records of the North, in connexion with the parish 
of Glenbucket, bear a curious testimony to the wild remoteness of the district, and the zeal with 
which the church carried its operations into highland wildernesses. In the year 1470, tliere is a 
deed of erection by the Bishop of Aberdeen of a church in " Glenbucliat," on the ground that, in 
proceeding to the proper parochial church at Logy, great perils are undergone by the pious 
parishioners, in fording impetuous torrents, and crossing wide bleak hills; and it is specially 
mentioned that, on one occasion, five or six persons, proceeding to the celebration of Easter, per- 
ished of the hardships they suffered on the mountain track. It was made a very strict condition, 
tliat the clergyman should be resident; and as it seemed to be supposed that no one would remain 
true to that wild district, who could have any opportunity of living elsewhere, the chaplain who 
served at the newly erected church was prohibited from holding any other ecclesiastical endow- 
ment.f 

The estate of Glenbucket became known, along with some other territorial patronymics of a like 
uncouth character, during the Jacobite outbreaks of 1715 and 1 745. The Laird of Glenbucket was 
a feudatory of the Earl of Mar, and had his rude fortalice very near the centre of the Earl's do- 
mains. It would depend entirely on the turn taken by intrigues in London, about which the Laird 
of Glenbucket knew no more than he did of the politics of the court of Cathay, whether he should 

" Aberdeen, 544. + Registrum Episcopatus Abredoneiisis, i. 308-9. 

Glenbucket Castle, 1 — 2. 



2 



GLENBUCKET CASTLE. 



1)0 called out to fight for King George or King James. The latter was decided on, and the stunlv 
laird, having once taken his position, stuck to it. He was present, at the head of the Gordons, in 
the victorious part of the Jacobite army at the battle of Falkirk, and was all along conspicuous 
among the Highland leaders in that war. He kept his Jacobite feelings warm for thirty years, 
and heartily joined the standard of the Prince, unborn in his days of military leadership, who made 
the descent on Scotland in 1 745. He was one of the few men of mark who escaped the vengeance 
of the successful party on both occasions, escaping to France in 1746. Not having been among 
those who had to feed the popular appetite for vengeance, and deliver a dying declaration on the 
scaffold, he has no place among the Jacobite biographies; but his name was so formidable, that, 
according to tradition, George H. used to start from disturbed dreams, in efforts to pronounce the 
name of Glenbucket, accompanied by exclamations of terror. An anecdote of this old hero, not 
generally known, is told by the gossiping Captain Burt, as an instance of clan jealousy. He had 
acquired a right, by the sort of security called a wadset, to some lands in the Macpherson country. 
The tenants troubled not themselves about parchment rights, but, knowing he was no Macpherson, 
declined to pay him any rent or service. " This refusal," says Burt, " put him upon the means to 
eject them by law ; whereupon the tenants came to a resolution to put an end to his suit and new 
settlement in the manner following : — Five or six of them, young fellows, the sons of gentlemen, 
entered the door of his hut, and in fawning words told him they were sorry any di.spute had hap- 
pened ; that they were then resolved to acknowledge him as their immediate landlord, and would 
regularly pay him their rent ; at the same time they begged he would withdraw his process, and they 
hoped they should be agreeable to him in the future. All this while they were almost impercep- 
tibly drawing nearer and nearer to his bedside, on which he was sitting, in order to prevent his 
defending himself, (as they knew him to be a man of distinguished courage,) and then fell suddenly 
on him with their dirks and others, plunging them into his body. This was perpetrated within 
sight of the barrack of Ruthven." The conclusion of the adventure was, that the old warrior got 
hold of his broadsword and put the ruffians to flight. * 

* Letters from a Ocntleman in the Nortli, ii. 73-5. 




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