secluded character of the place inust have been
destroyed. ?? Queen Mary granted the gardens of
-the Greyfriars? monastery to the citizens in the
year 1566, to be used as a cemetery, and from
that period the old burial-place seems to have
and are now said to be among the miscellaneous
collections at Holyrood. Begun in 1632, the hall
with its adjacent buildings took seven years to
erect; but subsequently the external portions of
the edifice were almost totally renewed. Howell,
the citizens forgot that their Exchange was built
over their fathers? graves.? Yet within six years
after Queen Mary?s gr.ant, Knox was interred in
the old burial-ground. ?Before the generation
had passed away that witnessed and joined in his
funeral service,? says the author of ? Memorials of
Edinburgh,? ?the churchyard in which they laid
him had been converted into a public thoroughfare !
We fear this want of veneration must be regarded
as a national Characteristic which Knox assisted
to call into existence, and to which we owe much
of the reckless demolition of those time-honoured
monuments of the past which it is sow thought a
weakness to deplore.?
As a churchyard in name it last figures in 1596
as the scene of a tumult in which John Earl of
Mar, John Bothwell, Lord Holyroodhouse, the
Lord Lindsay, and others, met in their armour,
and occasioned some trouble ere they could be
pacified. It was the scene of all manner of rows,
when club-law prevailed ; where exasperated litigants,
sick of ?the law?s delays,? ended the matter
by appeal to sword and dagger ; and craftsmen and
apprentices quarrelled with the bailies and deacons.
It has been traditionally said that many of the
tombstones were removed to the Greyfriars? churchyard;
if such was the case no inscriptions remain
built here lately,? and regretting that Charles I. did
not inaugurate it in person, he adds that ?they
did ill who advised him otherwise.? The time
had come when old Scottish raids were nearly past,
and when revolutions had their first impulse, not
in the battle-field, but in deliberative assemblies ;
thus the Parliament that transferred its meetings
from the old Tolbooth to the new House in 1639
had to vote ?? the sinews of war ? for an aymy
against England, under Sir Alexander Leslie, and
was no less unprecedented in its constitution and
powers than the place in which it assembled was a
new edifice. Outside of a wooden partition in the
hall was an oak pulpit, where a sermon was preached
at the opening of parliament; and behind was a
small gallery, where the public heard the debates
of the House.
To thousands who never saw or could have
seen it the external aspect of the old Parliament
House has been rendered familiar by Gordon?s
engravings, and more particularly by the view of it
on the bank notes of Sir William Forbes and Co.
Tradition names Inigo Jones as the architect, bit
of this there is not a vestige of proof. It was
highly picturesque, and possessed an individuality
that should have preserved it from the iconoclastic
?improvers? of 1829. ?There was a quaint
The Parliament Hall, which was finished in
1639, at the expense of the citizens, costing
A11,600 of the money of that time, occupies a
considerable portion of the old churchyard, and
possesses a kind of simple grandeur ? belonging
to an anterior age. Its noblest feature is the roof,
sixty feet in height, which rests on ornamental
brackets consisting of boldly sculptured heads,
and is formed of dark oak tie-and-hammer beams
with cross braces, producing a general effect suggestive
of the date of Westminster or of Crosby
Hall. Modern corridors that branch out from it
are in harmony with the old hall, and lead to the
various court rooms and the extensive libraries of
the Faculty of Advocates and the Society of
Writers to the Signet. The hall measures 122 feet
in length by 49 in breadth, and was hung of old
with tapestry and portraits of the kings of Scotland,
some by Sir Godfrey Kneller. These were bestowed,
in 1707, by Queen Anne, on the Earl of Mar,
?
we are told, ?and the rude elaborateness of its
decorations, that seemed to link it with the courtiers
I of Holyrood in the times of the Charleses, and its
last gala days under the Duke of York?s viceregency.
Nothing can possibly be conceived more
meaningless and utterly absurd than the thing that
superseded it ?-a square of semi-classic buildings,
supported by a narrow arcade, and surmounted by
stone sphinxes.
Above the old main entrance, which faced the
east, and is now completely blocked up and hidden,
were the royal arms of Scotland, beautifully
sculptured, supported on the right by Mercy holding
a crown wreathed with laurel, and on the
left by Justice, with a palm branch and balance,
with the inscription, Stant his feZiciin r p a , and
underneath the national arms, the motto, Uni
unionurn. Over the smaller doorway, which forms
the present access to the lofty lobby of the House,
were the arms of the city, between sculptured
