72 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
promise of replacing, at some indefinite period, ‘‘ als mony als gud jeistis ” as had been
taken away.l
Materials and money continued equally difficult to be obtained; the master of the
work had again to have recourse for stones to the old building, although the magistrates
were anxious, ifpossible, to preserve it. On the 5th of March 1562, an order appears for
taking the stones of the chapel in the Nether Kirk-yard. This supplies the date of the
utter demolition of Holyrood Chapel, as it was styled, which had most probably been
spoiled and broken down during the tumults of 1559, It stood between the present
Parliament House and the Cowgate; and there, on the 12th of August 1528, Walter
Chepman founded a chaplainry at the altar of Jesus Christ crucified, and endowed it with
his tenement in the Cowgate.’
In the month of April, the Council are threatened with the entire removal of the Courts
to St Andrews, for want of a place of meeting in Edinburgh. This is followed ‘by forced
taxation, borrowing money on the town mills, threats from the builder to give up the
work, (‘ because he had oft and diverse tymes requyrit money, -and could get nane,” and
the like, for some years following, until the magistrates contrived, at length, by some
means or other, to complete the new building to the satisfaction of all parties.
this interval, the Town Council held their own meetings in the Holy-Blood Aisle in St
Giles’s Church, until apartments were provided for them, in the New Tolbooth, which
served alike for the meetings of the Parliament, the Court of Session, and the Magistrates
and Council of the burgh.
The New Tolbooth, thus erected with so much difficulty, was not the famous Heart
of Midlothian, but a more modern building attached to the south-west corner of
St Giles’s Church, part of the site of which is now occupied by the lobby of the Signet
Library.
In February 1561, the Lord James, newly created Earl of Mar, was publicly married
to Lady Agnes Keith, daughter of the Earl Marischal, in St Giles’s Church. They
received an admonition “to behave themselves moderately in all things; ” but this did not
prevent the event being celebrated with such display as gave great offence to the preachers.
A magnificent banquet was given on the occasion, with pageants and masquerades, which
the Queen honoured with her presence. Randolph, the ambassadar of Queen Elizabeth,
was also a guest, and thus writes of it to Cecil :--“At this notable marriage, upon Shrove
Tuesday, at night, sitting among the Lords at supper, in sight of the Queen, she drank
unto the Queen’s Majesty, and sent me the cup of gold, which weigheth eighteen or twenty
ounces.” The preachers denounced, with veh‘emence, the revels and costly banquets on
this occasion, inveighing with peculiar energy against the masking, a practice, as it would
seem, till then unknown in Scotland.’
The reformation of religion continued to be pursued with the utmost zeal. The Queen
still retained the service of the mass in her own private chapel, to the great offence of the
preachers ; but they had succeeded in entirely banishing it from the churches. The arms
and burgh sed of Edinburgh, previous to this period, contained a representation of the
patron saint, St Giles, with his hind; but by an act of the Town Council, dated 24th
During,
1 Council Register, 10th Feb. 1561, &c.
Council Register, Maitland, p. 183.
Maitland, p. 21, 22. Chambers’s Minor Antiquitits, p. 141-0.
Knox’s Hi&, p. 276. Tytler, vol. vi. p. 301.
