ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES. 41 I
the entrance to the churchyard, at the foot of the Candlemaker Row, the following moral
distich was originally inscribed :-
Remember, Man, as thou goes by,
AE thou art now, 80 once was I ;
As I am now, 80 shalt thou be ;
Remember, Man, that thou must die.’
The principal gateway, opposite the east end of the church, is a work of more recent
construction, and appears, from the records of Monteith, to have involved the destruction
of the monument of no less illustrious a citizen than Alexander Miller, master tailor to
King James VI., who died in the year 1616. The Old Greyfriars’ Church, as it was styled,
was suddenly destroyed by a fire which broke out on the morning of Sunday the 19th of
January 1845, and presented to the astonished parishioners a blazing mass of ruins as they
assembled for the services of the day. It bore on the north-east pillar the date 1613, and
on a panel surmounting the east gable that of 1614, underneath the city arms. It was a
clumsy, inconvenient, and ungainly edifice, with few historical associations and no architectural
beauties to excite any regret at its removaL It is very different, however,
with the surrounding churchyard, which it disfigured with. its lumpish deformity. Its
monuments and other memorials of the illustrious dead who repose there form an object
of attraction no less for their interesting associations than their picturesque beauty ; while
it is memorable in Scottish history as the scene of the signing of the Covenant by the
enthusiastic leaguers of 1638, and the place of captivity, under circumstances of peculiar
cruelty, of the insurgent Covenanters taken in arms at Bothwell Brig. Like other great
cemeteries it forms the peaceful resting-place of rival statesmen and politicians, and of many
strangely diverse in life and fortune. Here mingle the ashes of George Heriot, the father
of the royal goldsmith ; George Buchanan, Alexander Henderson, Sir George Mackenzie,
Sir James Stewart, Principal Carstairs, Sir John de Medina, the painter; Allan Ramsay,
Colin Maclaurin, Thomas Ruddiman, and many others distinguished in their age for rank
or genius.
The Carmelites, or Whitefriars, though introduced into Scotland in the thirteenth
century, did not acquire an establishment in Edinburgh till 1518, when the Provost and
Bailies, conveyed, by charter dated the 13th April, “ to Jo. Malcolme, provincial of the
Carmelites, and his mcceseors, y’ lands of Green-side, with the chapel1 or kirk of the Holy
Cross y’of.” From this we learn that a chapel existed there in ancient times, of which no
other record has been preserved, and adjoining it was a cross called the Rood of Greenside.
It was the scene of martyrdom of David Stratoun and Norman Gourlay, a priest and layman,
who were tried at Holyrood House, in the presence of James V. ; and on the 27th of
August 1534, were led ‘‘ to a place besydis the Roode of Grepsyd, and thair thei two war
boyth hanged and brunt, according to the mercy of the Papisticall Kirk.”’ The tradition
has already been referred to that assigns the same locality for the burning of Major Weir.
On the suppression of the order of Carmelites at the Reformation, John Robertson, a
benevolent merchant, founded on the site of their convent an hospital for lepers, “pursuant
Monteith’s Theatrum Mortalium, p. 1. The last word is evidently intended to be pronounced in the old broad
Scottish fashion, &e. ’ Inventar of Pious Donations. Knox’s Hist., Wodrow Soc., uol i. p. 60.
