LUCKENBOUTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. 205
to the grave: the Regent Morton pronouncing over him his brief, but just and memorable
requiem, and before the generation had passed away that witnessed and joined
in his funeral service, 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 time-honoured monuments of the past, which it is now thought
a weakness to deplore.’
on the authority of “ the then Recorder of
Edinburgh, that many of the tombstones were removed from St Giles’s to the Greyfriars,
where they still exist; ” but we do not know of a single inscription remaining that gives
probability to this assertion. All the monuments in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard are of
a later date than Queen Mary’s gift of the gardens of the ancient monastery, though
even were it otherwise, it would not be conclusive, as the royal grant was in all probability
only an extension of an ancient burial-ground attached to the monastery in the Grassmarket.
It is mentioned almost immediately thereafter as a place of burial during the
dreadful plague of 1568, when a huge pit is ordered to be dug in the (‘ Greyfriars’ Kirkzaird.”
* Bailie Macmorran’s monument is, we believe, the only one in the old cemetery
which dates so early as the sixteenth century ; we are therefore forced to conclude that,
in the same spirit that led to the abandonment of St Giles’s burial-ground, its ancient
monuments were converted to a similar purpose with the old chapel of the Holy Rood,
that stood in the lower yard.
A few of the most important changes that have taken place on this interesting spot, in
the heart of the ancient capital, arranged in the order of their occurrence, will best illustrate
the rapidity with which it passed through successive transitions. In the year 1496, the
provost of St Giles’s Church granted to the citizens the northern part of his manse, with
the glebe, for augmenting the cemetery. In 1528 Walter Chepman, the celebrated
printer, founded and endowed a chaplainry in the chapel of the Holy Rood, in the nether
kirkyard; in 1559 the chapel was deqolished and left in ruins; and in 1562 its materials
helped to build a new Tolbooth at the north-west corner of the churchyard. On the
Protestant clergy being finally established in the stead of their Catholic predecessors, the
prebendal buildings became the residence of the tom ministers, and thither, in the year
1580, the nucleus of the present University Library was removed, until a suitable building
should be procured for it. From this clerical college the ministers were ejected in 1597
by the incensed King, who trusted thereby to weaken their power and influence, by compelling
them to live apart from one another. The substantial forfeit thus wrung from the
reclaiming clergy seems to have been regarded by him as a peculiarly acceptable trophy ;
no doubt, in part at least, from the evidence it furnished of his having come off victorious
in a contest with those who, until then, had always proved his most untractable opponents.
It is mentioned in the “ Traditions,”
1 hte, p. 83. ’ Prdbably the annals of no other town could exhibit the Hame indifference to ita ancient cemeteries, which even the
rude Indian holds sacred. Before the Reformation there were the Blackfriars kirkyard, where the Surgical Hospital
or old High. School stands ; the Kirk of Field,-now occupied by the College,-Trinity College, Holyrood Abbey, St
Roque’s and St Leonard’a kikyards. In all these places human bona are still found on digging to any depth. In thia
respect Edinburgh exhibita 8 striking contrast to the more crowded English capital.
a Chambers’s Traditions, vol. ii. p. 196. “ Statuta for the Pest.,’’ Maitland, p. 32.
