ECCL ESIA S TICA L ANTIQUITIES. 417
of Gillie Grange, by which a part of it is still known, and that of The Grange, mw the property
of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., preserve memorials of the grange or farm which
belonged of old to the Collegiate Church of St Giles. Here, towards the close of the
prosperous reign of James IV., Sir John Crawford, a canon of St Giles’s Church, founded
and endowed the Church of St John the Baptist, portions of the ruins of which are believed
still to form a part of the garden wall of a house on the west side of Newington, called
Sciennes Hall. The following notice of its foundation occurs in the Inoentar of Pious
Donations, bearing the date 2d March 1512 :-c‘ Charter of Confirmation of a Mortification
be Sir Jo. Crawford, ane of the Prebenders of St Giles Kirk, to a kirk bigged by
him at St Geillie Grange, mortyiefying yrnnto 18 aikers of land, of the said lands, with
the Quarrie Land given to him in Charitie be ye said brongh, with an aiker and a quarter
of a particate of land in his 3 aikers and a half an aiker of the said mure pertaining to
him, lying at the east side of the Common Mure, betwixt the lands of Jo. Cant on the
west, and the Common Mure on the east and south parts, and the Murebrugh, now bigged,
on the north.” This church was designed as a chantry for the benefit of the founder and
his kin, along with the reigning Sovereign, the Magistrates of Edinburgh, and such others
as it was usual to include in the services for the faithful departed in similar foundations,
The chaplain was required to be of the founder’s family or name, and the patronage was
assigned after his death to the Town Council of Edinburgh.
Almost
immediately after its erection, the Convent of St Katherine de Sienna was founded by the
Lady Seytoun, whose husband, George, third Lord Seton, was slain at the Battle of Flodden.
‘( Efter quhais deceisa,” pap the Chronicle of the House of Seytoun, “his ladye
remanit wido continualie xlv yeiris. Sche gydit
hir sonnis leving quhill he was cumit of age; and thairefter sche passit and remainit in
the place of Senis, on the Borrow Mure, besyd Edinburgh, the rest of her lyvetyme.
Quhilk place sche helpit to fund and big as maist principale.” The history of this religious
foundation, one of the last which took place in Scotland in Roman Catholic times,
and the very last, we believe, to receive additions to the original foundation, acquires a
peculiar interest when we consider it in connection with the general progress of opinion
throughout Europe at the period. The Bull of Pope Leo X. by which its foundation is
confirmed, is dated 29th January 1517. Cardinal WoIsey was then supreme in England,
and Henry VIII. was following on the career of a devoted son of the Church which
won him the title of Defender of t h FaitA. Charles V., the future Emperor of Germany,
had just succeeded to the crown of Spain, and Martin Luther was still a brother of the
order of St Aqwstine. This very year Leo X. sent forth John Tetzel, a Dominican monk,
authorised to promote the sale of indulgences in Germany, and soon the whole of Europe
was shaken by the strife of opinions. The peculiar circumstances in which Scotland then
stood, delayed for a time its participation in the movement; and meanwhiIe the revenues
of the convent of St Katherine de Sienna received various augmentations, and the Church
of St John the Baptist was permanently annexed to it as the chapel of the convent. The
nuns, however, were speedily involved in the troubles of the period. In 1544 their convent
shared the same fate as the neighbouring capital, from the barbarous revenge of the
The Church of St John the Baptist did not long remain a solitary chaplainry.
Sche was ane nobill and wyse ladye.
Hi& of House of Seytoun, p, 37.
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