384 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
parts of the collegiate church, we feel little hesitation in assigning the erection of the
main portion of the fabric to the close of David’s reign, which extended from 1329 to
1371, or to that of his successor Robert 11. It is finished entirely in that simple and
comparatively plain style of pointed architecture, which Dallaway designates Pure Gothic,
and of which no specimen will be found later than the fourteenth century. It was a period
of almost incessant wars, involving the whole nation in misery’for years ; but it was no
less characterised by religious zeal, encouraged, no doubt, in some degree by the fact
that ecclesiastical property was the only species of possession that had any chance of
escaping the fury of the invaders. Edward IIL, however, carried on his Scottish invasion
with a ferocity that spared not even the edifices consecrated to religion. In 1355, he
desolated the country on to Edinburgh, and laid every town, village, and hamlet in ashes,
though not without suffering keenly from the assaults of the hardy Scots. This bloody
inroad wag peculiarly associated in the minds of the people with the unwonted sacrilege of
the invaders, and as it happened about the time of the Feast of Purification, it was
popularly known as the Burnt Candlemas.’ In this desolating invasion, St Giles’s Church,
no doubt, suffered greatly; but the misery of the people, and the uncertainty involved in
such a state of continual warfare, did not prevent the restoration of their churches, and
we accordingly find in the Burgh Records a contract made, in the year 1388, between
the Provost and some masons to vault over a part of the church. This was, no doubt,
speedily accomplished, as in 1384 the Scottish barons assembled there and resolved on a
war with England, notwithstanding the desire of Robert 11. for peace. The result was
that the whole town was exposed to another general conflagration by the invading army
of Richard II., and the Church of St Giles is expressly mentioned as involved in the
general destruction. There is no reason, however, to conclude from this, that the massive
walls of the old Gothic fabric were razed to the ground by the flames that consumed the
simple dwellings of the unwalled town. The cost of its restoration appears to have been
borne by the Government, and various entries occur in the accounts of the Great
Chamberlain of Scotland, rendered at the Exchequer between the years 1390 and 1413,
of sums granted for completing its re-edification. Nevertheless, the archives of the
city preserve authentic evidence of additions being made out of its own funds to the
original fabric in 1387, only two years after the conflagration, and an examination of such
portions of these as still remain abundantly confirms this idea; the style of decoration
being exactly of that intermediate kind between the simple forms of the old nave and the
highly ornate style of the choir, which is usually found in the transition from the one to
the other.
The contract for the additions made to St Giles’s Church from the revenues of the
town, and the contributions of its wealthier citizens at the time when the main fabric was
left to be restored from the general revenues of the kingdom, while it affords an insight
into the progress of the building at that date, cannot but be regarded as a curious proof
of that singular elasticity which the Scottish nation displayed during their protracted wars
with England; showing as it does, the general and local government vieing with one
another in the luxury of ornate ecclesiastical edifices almost as soon as the invaders had
retreated acrom the Borders. The agreement bears to be made at Edinburgh, November
Ddrymple’e Annals, pp, 237,8.
