People don't play riddle games with Giants, or get tricked by Faerie Queens. They don't follow Blind Maniacs into Futures, or have their Lives saved by Death.
Timothy Hunter in The Books of Faerie
54 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holymd
under his great seal, granted to David, Abbot of
Holyrood, a piece of land within the Castle of
Edinburgh whereon to erect a house, to which the
monks, their servants and families, might repair in
time of peace and war. This piece of ground
was eighty feet in length and eighty in breadth,
wherever the abbot might choose, ?beyond the
site of our manor? (the royal lodging?); ?the
said abbot and his successors paying therefor to
us and to our heirs a silver penny at the said
castle on Whitsunday yearly, if asked only, so
that the foresaid abbot and his successors and
their servants shall be bound to take the oath
of fidelity for the due security of the said castle
to the keeper thereof, who may be for the time,
have free ish and entry to the said castle at accustomed
and proper hours.?
On the 5th April, 1391, King Robert III., undei
his great seal, granted a charter to the Abbey of
Holyrood, confirming the charter of David 11. to
the abbey, dated 30th December, 1343. It is dated
at Edinburgh. When the abbey became a species
of palace has never been distinctly ascertained,
but Robert 111. appears sometimes to have made
Holyrood his residence. James I. occasionally
kept his court there; and in the abbey his queen
was delivered of twin princes, on the 16th October,
14 I 6-Alexandeq who died, and James, afterwards
second of that name.
In 1428 a remarkable episode occurred in the
abbey church. Alexander, Lord of the Isles, who
had been in rebellion against James I., but had
been utterly defeated by the royal troops in
Lochaber, sent messengers to the king to sue for
mercy. But the latter, justly incensed, refused to
enter into .my negotiations with an outlawed
fugitive. Alexander, driven to despair, and compelled
to fly from place to place, was compelled at
last to trust to the royal clemency. Travelling
secretly to Edinburgh, he suddenly presented himself,
upon a solemn festival, before the high altar 01
Holyrood, and holding his?drawn sword by the
point, he presented the hilt to the astonished king,
in token of his unconditional submission, and
falling on his knees, in presence of Queen Jane
and the whole court, implored the royal mercy.
The ill-fated James granted him his life, at the
tender intercession of his royal consort, but sent
him a prisoner to the sequestered castle of
Tantallon, on its sea-beat Tock, under the charge
of his nephew, the Earl of Angus. The island
chief eventually received a free pardon, was restored
to all his honours, castles, and estates, and stood
as sponsor for the twin princes, Alexander and
James, at the font
.
In 1437 the Parliament met at Edinburgh, on
the 25th March, after the murder of James I., and
adopted immediate measures for the government of
the country. Their first act was the coronation of
the young prince, in his sixth year, on whose head
at Holyrood, as James II., the crown was solemnly
placed by James Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews,
in presence of a great concourse of the nobles,
clergy, and representatives of towns, amid the usual
testimonies of devotion and loyalty.
On March 27th, 1439, Patrick Abbot of Holyrood
and his convent granted a charter to Sir Robert
Logan of Restalrig, and his heirs, of the ofice of
bailie over their lands of St. Leonard?s, in the town
of Leith, ?from the end of the great volut of
William Logane, on the east part of the common
gate that passes to the ford over the water of Leith,
beside the waste land near the house of John of
Turyng on the west part, and common Venale
called St. Leonard?s Wynd, as it extended of old
on the south part, and the water of the port OF
Leith on the north, and . . . . in the ninth year of
the pontificate of our most holy father and lord,
Eugenius IV., by Divine Providence Pope.?
Chronologically, the next event connected with
the abbey was the arrival of Mary of Gueldres in
1449. In company with John Railston, Bishop
of Dunkeld, and Nicholas Otterburn, official of
Lothian, the Lord Chancellor Crichton went to
France to seek among the princesses of that
friendly court a suitable bride for young James
11.; but no match being suitable, by the advice
of Charles VII. these ambassadors proceeded to
Burgundy, and, with the cordial concurrence of
Duke Philip the Good, made proposals to his
kinswoman, hlary, the only daughter and heiress
of Arnold, Duke of Gueldres, and in 1449 the
engagement was formally concluded. Philip promised
to pay _f60,boo in gold as a dowry, while
James, on the other hand, settled IO,OOO crowns
upon her, secured on land in Strathearn, Athole,
Methven, and East Lothian, while relinquishing all;
claim to the Duchy of Gueldres, in the event of
an heir male being born to Duke Arnold ; and the
Parliament met at Stirling, resolved that the royal
nuptials should be conducted on a scale of splendour
suited to the occasion.
The fleet containing the bride anchored in June
in the Forth. She was ?young, beautiful, and of a
masculine constitution,? says Hawthornden, and
came attended by a splendid train of knights and
nobles from France and Burgundy, including tlie
Archduke Sigisniund of Austria, the Duke of
Brittany, and the Lord of Campvere (the three
brothers-in-law of the King of Scotland), togetho
Holyrood.] ROYAT, MARRIAGES. 55
with the Dukes of Savoy and Burgundy. She
landed at Leith amid a vast concourse of all
classes of the people, and, escorted by a bodyguard
of 300 men-at-arms, all cap-d+e, with
the citizens also in their armour, under Patrick
Cockburn of Nevtbigging, Provost of Edinburgh
and Governor of the Castle, was escorted to the
monastery of the Greyfriars, where she was warmly
welcomed by her future husband, then in his
twentietb year, and was visited by the queenmother
on the following day.
The week which intervened between her arrival
and?her marriage was spent in a series of magnificent
entertainments, during which, from her great
beauty and charms of manner, she won the devoted
affection of the loyal nobles and people.
A contemporary chronicler has given a minute
account of one of the many chivalrous tournaments
that took place, in which three Burgundian nobles,
two of them brothers named Lalain, and the thud
HervC Meriadet, challenged any three Scottish
knights to joust with lance, battle-axe, sword, and
dagger, a defiance at once accepted by Sir James
Douglas, James Douglas of Lochleven, and Sir
John Ross of Halkhead, Constable of Renfrew.
Lances were shivered and sword and axe resorted
to with nearly equal fortune, till the king threw
down his truncheon and ended the combat.
The royal marriage, which took place in the
church at Holyrood amid universal joy, concluded
these stirring scenes. At the bridal feast the first
dish was in the form of a boar?s head, painted and
stuck full df tufts of coarse flax, served up on an
enormous platter, with thirty-two banners, bearing
the arms of the king and principal nobles ; and the
flax was set aflame, amid the acclamations of the
numerous assembly that filled the banquet-hall.
Ten years after Holyrood beheld a sorrowful
scene, when, in 1460, James, who had been slain
by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh
on the 3rd August, in his thirtieth year, was
laid in the royal vault, ?with the teares of his
people and his hail1 army,? says Balfour.
In 1467 there came from Rome, dated zznd
February, the bull of Pope Paul II., granting, on
the petition of the provost, bailies, and community
of the city, a con~mission to the Bishop of Galloway,
?et dilectojZio Abbafi Monasterii Sancta Cmcis mini
viuros de Rdynburgh,? to erect the Church of St.
Giles into a collegiate institution.
Two years afterwards Holyrood was again the
scene of nuptial festivities, when the Parliamen!
met, and Margaret of Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden, escorted by the Earl of Arran and a
gallant train of Scottish aad Danish nobles, landed
at Leith in July, 1469. She was in her sixteenth
year, and had as her dowry the isles of Orkney
and Shetland, over which her ancestors had hitherto
claimed feudal superiority. James III., her
husband, had barely completed his eighteenth
year when they were married in the abbey church,
where she was crowned queenconsort. ?? The marriage
and coronation gave occasion to prolonged
festivities in the metropolis and plentiful congratulations
throughout the kingdom. Nor was the
flattering welcome undeserved by the queen ; in the
bloom of youth and beauty, amiable and virtuous,
educated in all the feminine accomplishments of
the age, and so richly endowed, she brought as
valuable an accession of lustre to the court as of
territory to the kingdom.?
In 1477 there arrived ?heir in grate pompe,?
says Balfour, ?Husman, the legate of Pope
Xystus the Fourth,? to enforce the sentence of
deprivation and imprisonment pronounced by Hjs
Holiness upon Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St.
Andrews, an eminent and unfortunate dignitary of
the Church of Scotland. He was the first who
bore that rank, and on making a journey to Rome,
returned as legate, and thus gained the displeasure
of the king and of the clergy, who dreaded his
power. He was shut up in the monastery of Inchcolm,
and finally in the castle of Lochleven. Meanwhile,
in the following year, William Schivez, a
great courtier and favourite of the king, was
solemnly consecrated in Holyrood Church by the
papal legate, from whose hands he received a pall,
the ensign of archiepiscopal dignity, and with great
solemnity was proclaimed ?? Primate and Legate of
the realm of Scotland.? His luckless rival died
of a broken heart, and was buried in St. Serf?s
Isle, where his remains were recently discovered,
buried in a peculiar posture, with the knees drawn
up and the hands down by the side.
In 1531, when Robert Cairncross was abbot,
there occurred an event, known as ? the miracle of
John Scott,? which made some noise in its time.
This man, a citizen of Edinburgh, having taken
shelter from his creditors in the sanctuary of Holyrood,
subsisted there, it is alleged, for forty days
without food of any kind.
Impressed by this circumstance, of which some
exaggerated account had perhaps been given to
him, James V. ordered his apparel to be changed
and strictly searched. He ordered also that he
should be conveyed from Holyrood to a vaulted
room in David?s Tower in the castle, where he was
barred from access by all and closely guarded.
Daily a small allowance of bread and water were
placed before him, but he abstained from both for
