392 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
The change8 effected .on the north transept, though equally radical with any we have
described on other parts of the church, were accompanied with some beneficial effects, calculated
to atone in a slight degree for the destruction of its ancient features. This transept
remained in ita original state, extending no further than the outer wall of the north aisle
of the choir. Beyond this, and within the line of the centre aisle of the transept, was the
belfry turret, with its curious and picturesque stone roof, which is accurately represented
in the view from the north-west. This turret was entirely removed and built anew, with
a crocketed spire in lieu of the more unique though rude form of the old roof, in a
position to the west of the transept, so as so admit of the latter being extended aa far north
as the outer wall of the old building. This was accomplished by the demolition of an aisle
which had been added to the old transept, apparently about the end of the fifteenth century,
and which, though equally richly finished with groined roof and sculptured bosses
and corbels, wa.s used till very shortly before its demolition as the offices of the town-clerk.
The appropriation, indeed, of the centre of the ancient Collegiate Church, was perhaps an
act of as disgraceful and systematic desecration as ever was perpetrated by an irreverent
age. The space within the great pillars of the centre tower was walled off and converted
into a stronghold for the incarceration of petty offenders, and the whole police establishment
found accommodation within the north transept and the adjoining chapels. The
reverent spirit of earlier times, which led to the adornment of every lintel and fapade with
its appropriate legend or Scripture text, had long disappeared ere this act of sacrilege was
so deliberately accomplished, otherwise a peculiarly suitable motto might have been found
for St Giles’s north doorway in the text : ‘( My house shall 6e called the louse of prayer,
but ye lave made it a den of thieves ! ”
In the subdivision of the ancient church for Protestant worship, the south aisle of
the nave, with three of the five chapels built in 1389, were converted into what was called
the Tolbooth Eirk. Frequent allusions, however, by early writers, in addition to the
positive evidence occasionally furnished by the records of the courts, tend to show that
both before the erection of the new Tolbooth, and after it was found inadequate for the
purposes of a legislative hall and court house, the entire nave of St Giles’s Church was
used for the sittings of both assemblies, and is frequently to be understood as the place
referred to under the name of the Tolbooth. In the trial, for example, of ‘‘ Mr Adame
Colquhoune, convicted of art and part of the treasonable slaughter and murder of umqIe
Robert Rankin,” the sederunt of the court is dated March 16, 1561-2, “ In Insula, vocat.
Halie-blude Iill, loco pretorii de Edr.,” and nearly a century later, Nicoll, the old diarist,
in the midst of some very grave reflections on the instadilitie of man, and the misereis
of kirk and stait in his time, describes the frequent changes made on “the Eirk callit
the Tolbuith Kirk, quhilk we8 so callit becaus it we8 laitlie the pairt and place quhair the
criminal1 court did sitt, and quhair the gallous and the mayden did ly of old ; lykewyse,
this K&k alterit and chayngit, and of this one Kirk thai did mak two.’’4 During the
interval between the downfall of Episcopacy in 1639, and its restoration in 1661, a constant
succession of changes seem to have been made on the internal subdivision of St Giles’s
Church, though without in any way permanently affecting the original features of the
building.
Pitcairn’s Crim. Trials, Supplement, p. 419. ’ Nicoll’s Diary, p. 170.
