L UCKENEOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 203
Michaell Cranstoun, then a verie fordward minister,” profitably employed the leisure of
the congregation by reading to them “ the Historie of Haman and Mordecai, and such
other places of Scr+ture. . . . In the mean tyme, there ariseth a rumour in the toun,
that the King had givin no good answere to the Kirk ; and in the Tolbuith, that the toun
was in armes, before there was anie suche thing. But it fell furth so immediatelie ; for
a messinger of Satan, suborned by some of the cubicular courteours, came to the kirk
doore, and cried, ‘ Fly ! save yourselves ; ’ and ranne to the streets, crying, ‘ Armour !
armour ! ’ ” The consequences are readily conceivable, friends and enemies rushed
together to the Tolbooth, and EO thoroughly terrified the King, that he speedily after forsook
the capital, and vowed in his wrath that he would erase it from the face of the earth !
a proposition which he really seriously entertained.a
The last Parliament at which royalty presided was held in the same New Tolbooth,
immediately after the coronation of Charles I,, July 1633, and this was in all probability
the latest occasion on which the Scottish Estates assembled in the ancient edifice, as the
more modern Parliament House that still exists was then in course of erection.
From this period the New Tolbooth was used exclusively for the meetings, of the Town
Council, by whom it had been erected, and it was latterly known only by the name of the
Council Chambers. Thither the unfortunate Earl of Argyle was brought from the Castle
preparatory to his execution on the 30th June 1685, and from thence his farewell letter
to his wife is dated. Fountainhall tells us, “ Argile came in coach to the Toune Counsell,
and from that on foot to the scaffold with his hat on, betuixt Mr Annand, Dean of Edinburgh,
on his right hand,-to whom he gave his paper on the scaffold,-and Mr Laurence
Charteris, late Professor of Divinity in the College of Edinburgh. He was somewhat
appaled at the sight of the Maiden,-present death will danton the most resolute courage,
-therfor he caused bind the napkin upon his face ere he approached, and then was led to
it.” Notwithstanding this incident mentioned by Fountainhall, who in all probability
witnessed the execution, it is well known that Argyle exhibited unusual composure and
self-possession on the occasion. The Maiden was erected, according to ancient custom in
cases of treason, at the Cross, so that the Earl would have only a few paces to walk across
the Parliament Close from the Council Chambers, to reach the fatal spot. As a more
recent association with both the earlier and later uses of this building, Mait.land mentions
-in addition to an armoury and wardrobe which it contained-that there also was the
repository wherein were kept the sumptuous robes anciently worn by the City representatives
in Parliament, together with the rich trappings and accoutrements for their horses,
which were used in the pompous cavalcade at the opening of the Scottish Legislature,
styled ‘‘ The riding of Parliament.”
The Parliament Close, which lies to the south of St Giles’s Church, has passed through
a series of stranger and more remarkable vicissitudes than any other portion of the Old
Town. Could an accurate narrative now be given of all the circumstances accompanying
these successive changes, it would s d c e to associate this narrow spot with many of the
most memorable events in Scottish history, till the adjournment of its last Parliament
there on the 22d of April 1707, never again to assemble. While St Giles’s was the
Caldemood’s Hist., vol. v. p. 613.
Fountainhall’s Historical Observes, p. 193.
Ante, p. 88. ’ Maitland, p. 180.
204 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
small and solitary parish church of the ancient unwalled town, there was the burial-place
for ‘‘ the rude forefathers of the hamlet,” and so it continued to the very end of the sixteenth
century. Down to that period the site of the present courts was occupied in part
by the collegiate building, for the residence of the prebendaries and other clergy that
officiated at the numerous altars founded at different times in St Giles’s Church. The
whole of the remaining portion lay open towards the south, extending in successive
terraces to the Cowgate, and the greater part of it appears to have remained in this condition
till the latter end of the seventeenth century. In the nether kirkyard, between St
Giles’s Church and the Cowgate, stood the ancient chapel of the Holy Rood till the
Reformation, when it appears to have been demolished, and its materials used in building
the New Tolbooth. Doubtless the erection of the latter building, where all the great civic
and national assemblies of the period took place, must have had considerable influence
in leading to the abandonment of the old churchyard of St Giles as a place of burial.
While its area continued enclosed with ecclesiastical buildings, and stood apart from the
great thoroughfares of the town, it must have been a peculiarly solemn and fitting place of
sepulture. But when the readiest access to the New Tolbooth was through the open churchyard,
and instead of the old monk or priest treading among its grassy hillocks, it became
the lounge of grooms and lackeys waiting on their masters during the meetings of Parliament,
or of quarrelsome litigants, and the usual retainers of the law, during the sessions
of the College of Justice, all idea of sacredness must have been lost. Such appears to
have been the case, from the fact that no record exists to show any formal abandonment
of it as a churchyard. 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 been gradually forsaken, until the neglected sepulchres of the
dead were at length paved over, and the citizens forgot that their Exchange was built
over their fathers’ graves.
One of the latest notices we have discovered of the ancient churchyard occurs in Calderwood‘
s narrative of the memorable tumult of 1596, described above, though the name
probably remained long after it had ceased to be used as such. On that occasion “ the
noblemen, barons, and gentlemen that were in the kirk, went forth at the alarum, and
were likewise in their armes. The Earl of Mar, and the Lord Halyrudhous, went out to
the barons and ministrie, conveenned in the kirkyard. Some hote speeches passt betuixt
the Erle of Mar and the Lord Lindsey, so that they could not be pacified for a long
tyme.”’ Skirmishes and tumults of a like nature were doubtless common occurrences
- there; exasperated litigants frequently took matters into their own hands, and made a
speedy end to “ the law’s delay,” while the judges were gravely pondering their case
within. In like manner the craftsmen and apprentices dealt with their civic rulers ;
club law was the speediest arbiter in every difficulty, and the transference of the Tolbooth
to the west end of the old kirkyard, transferred also the arena of such tumults to the
same sacred spot. Yet with all this to account for the desertion of the ancient burialplace,
it cannot but excite the surprise of every thoughtful observer, who reflects that
within this consecrated ground, on the 24th November 1572, the assembled nobles and
citizens committed John Knox,-“ the Apostle of the Scots,” as Beza styles him,-
.
Calderwood’s Hist., vol. v. p. 513.
