130 ROSLIN, HAWTHORNDEN,
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heights on either side, one gazes upon a world of moving tree-tops in the
ravine below. ~
A little way back, on the Ieft bank, lies the single-streeted village of
Roslin. Between the village and the Esk, on a grassy height called the
College Hill, stands the Chapel ; and some hundred yards below, on a rocky
promontory, formed by a bend in the river, are the ruins of the Castle,
accessible only by a stone bridge of great height which spans a natural ravine
between the promontory and the College Hill. From this position the Castle
derived its name-XmZianRe, the promontory of the waterfall. The Esk
forms a cascade as it bends sharply round the promontory, and it is still at
this point called ‘the Lynn.’
The St. Clairs, or Sinclairs, of Roslin, or Rosslyn, trace their descent from
a ‘Seemly St. Clair,’ a Norman knight of fair deportment, who ‘ came in’ with
the Conqueror, and whom Malcolm Canmore diplomatically allured over the
border by big grants of Scottish land. Roslin, amongst other places, was given
to the family, and the Castle probably dates from the beginning of the fourteenth
century. In
1622, when it had begun to fall away, a newer house was built over its vaults;
and this was inhabited about eighty years ago by a good old Scottish Laird,
the last heir-male and lineal descendant of the ‘ Seemly St. Clair.’ It is still
let in summer to families wanting rustic accommodation ; and for one season
at least it was tenanted in this fashion by the late Mr. Robert Chambers of
Edinbu?gh. . The ‘ground about the hoary old ruins is now bright with the
fruit and flowers of a market-garden. But in the middle of the fifteenth century
the Castle was the seat of the good and scholarly William St. Clair, ‘ Prince of
the Orkneys and Duke of Oldenburgh,’ the founher of Roslin Chapel. He
was a very great personage indeed, with a town mansion at the foot of Blackfriars
Wynd in Old Edinburgh, and a great retinue of lords and gentlemen.
Sevenv-five gentlewomen attended upon his lady, who, when she rode from
Edinburgh to Roslin, was accompanied by a guard of two hundred horse, and
also, if it was after nightfall, by eighty bearing torches. On one occasion - part of the Castle was set on fire by the carelessness of one of this lady’s
handmaidens. The women fled in fear j and the Prince, who was upon the
College Hill at the time, no doubt superintending the building of his pet
Chapel, on hearing of the fire, ‘was sorry for nothing but the loss of his
charters and other writings.’ These, which were kept in the dungeon-head,
his chaplain cleverly saved, throwing them out-four boxfuls of them-and
following himself on a bell-rope tied to a beam. The good Prince rewarded
From that time it was the chief residence of the St. Clairs.
