I34 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [West Church.
When peace came, Messrs. McVicar and Pitcairn,
his coadjutor, continued faithfully and successfully
to discharge the duties of the ministry.
In 1247 Mr. McVicar, when about to deliver
one of the old Thursday sermons, suddenly dropped
down dead ; and amid a vast concourse of sorrowing
parishioners was deposited in his tomb, which
has a plain marble monument. A well-painted
portrait of him hangs in the vestry of the present
church.
His colleague, the Rev. Thomas Pitcairn, followed
him on the 13th of June, 1751, and a pyramidal
stone, erected to his memory by his youngest
daughter, stands in the ancient burying-ground.
So early as 1738 attempts were made to violate
graves, for surgical purposes, in the churchyard,
which, of course, was then a lonely and sequestered
place, and though the boundary walls were raised
eight feet high, they failed to be a protection, as
watchers who were appointed connived at, rather
than prevented, a practice which filled the parishioners
with rage and horror.
Hence, notwithstanding all the efforts of the
Session to prevent such violation of tombs, several
bodies were abstracted in 1742. George Haldane,
one of the beadles, was suspected of assisting in this
repulsive practice; and on the 9th of May his
house at Maryfield was surrounded by an infuriated
mob, and burned to the ground.
The old church, which stood for ages,and had been
in succession a Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian,
and finally a Presbyterian place of worship again,
and which had been gutted and pillaged by Reformers
and Cromwellians, and cannon-shotted in
civil wars, was found to be dangerous, and condemned
to be taken down. Although the edifice
was insufficient, and in some parts dangerous, there
was no immediate cause for the growing terror
that pervaded the congregation, and culminated in
a general alarm on Sunday, the 27th September,
1772. Part of a seat in one of the galleries gave
way with a crash, on which the entire assembled
mass rushed to the doors, and in an instant the
church was empty.
A jury of tradesmen met to inspect the church,
which they were of opinion should be taken down
without delay; but this verdict had hardly been
drawn up and read, than a fear seized them that
the old church would fall and bury them in its
ruins, on which they fled to the adjacent charity
work house.
The work of demolition was begun forthwith, and
when removing this venerable fane, the interior of
which now, ? formed after no plan, presented a multitude
of petty galleries stuck fip one above another
to the very rafters, like so many pigeons?-nests,? a
curious example of what is namqd heart-burial came
to light.
The workmen, says the .!!ots Migazine for September,
1773, discovered ? a leaden coffin, which
contained some bones and a leaden urn. Before
opening the urn, a most fragrant smell issued out ;
on inspecting the cause of it, they found a human
heart finely embalmed and in the highest state of
preservation. No inscription was upon the coffin
by which the date could be traced, but it must
have been there for centuries. It is conjectured
that the heart belonged to some person who, in the
time of the Crusades, had gone to the Holy Land,
and been there killed, and the heart, as was customary
in those times, embalmed and sent home
to be buried with some of the family.?
Prior to the erection of the new church, the congregation
assembled in a Methodist Chapel in the
Low Calton.
In 1775 it was completed in the hideous taste
and nameless style peculiar to Scottish ecclesiastical
irchitecture during the times of the first three
Georges. It cost A4,231, irrespective of its equally
hideous steeple, and is seated for about 3,000 persons,
and is now the mother church, associated with
ten others, for a parish which includes a great part
of the parliamentary burgh of the capital, and has
a population of more than 140,000. The church,
says a writer, ? apart from its supplemental steeple,
looks so like a huge stone box, that some wags
have described it as resembling a packing-case, out
of which the neighbouring beautiful toy-like fabric
of St. John?s Church has been lifted?
At the base of the spire is a fine piece of monumental
sculpture, from the chisel of the late Handyside
Ritchie, in memory of Dr. David Dickson, a
worthy and zealous pastor, who was minister of the
parish for forty years.
Some accounts state that Napier of Merchiston,
the inventor of logarithms, was interred in the
cemetery; but from an essay on the subject read
before the Antiquarian Society by Professor William
Wallace in 1832, there is conclusive evidence
given, from a work he quoted, ? that Napier was
buried without the West Port of Edinburgh, in the
church of St. Cuthbert,? and in a vault, in the
month of April, 1617.
The baronial family of Dean had also a vault
in the old church, which still remains under the
new, entering from the north. Above it is a
monumentaI stone from the old church, fo the
memory of Henry Nisbet of that ilk, by whom
we thus learn the vault was built. The arms
of the Dean family are still above this black
West Churqh. SIR HENRY WELLWOOD MONCRIEFF. I35
and gloomy vault ; ?a memorial alike of the demolished
fane and the extinct race,? says Wilson
in 1847. ?When we last saw it the old oak
door was broken in, and the stair that led down
. to the chamber of fhe dead was choked up with
rank nettles and hemlock-the fittest monument
that could be devised for the old barons of Dean,
the last of them now gathered to his fathers.?
One of the most interesting tombs here is that
of Thomas de Quincey, the eccentric ?English
opium-eater,? who was the friend of Prqfessor
Wilson, and died at Edinburgh on the 8th of
December, 1859. It is reached by taking the first
pathway upward to the right at the Lothian Road
entrance.
On one of the south walls here, where for more
than fifty years it hung unnoticed and forgotten,
is a piece of monumental sculpture, by Flaxman,
of very rare beauty-a square architectural mural
monument, of a mixed Roman and Grecian style,
of white and black marble, which was erected to
commemorate the death of three infant children.
Two families-the Watsons of Muirhouse, and
the Rocheids of Inverleith-retained the right
of burial within the new church, under the steeple,
which is 170 feet in height. Its bell, which is
inscribed ?George Watt fecit, St. Ninian?s Row,
Edin : 1791,? was hung in that year.
In the west lobby of the church a handsome
tablet bears the following inscription, removed, probably,
from the older edifice :-? Here lyes the
corpse of the Honble. Sir James Rocheid of Inverkith,
who died the 1st day of May, 1737, in the
7 1st year of his age.?
The last incumbent of the ancient church, Mr.
Stewart, having died in April, 1775, was succeeded
by the famous Sir Henry Wellwood Moncrieff, D.D.,
who for more than half a century was one of the
greatest ornaments of the Scottish Church.
At St. Cuthbert?s he soon became distinguished
for his devoted zeal and fidelity in the discharge of
his ministerial duties, for the mildness and benevolence
of his disposition, for his genius, eloquence,
and great personal worth. He soon became the
leader of the Evangelical section of the church,
and in 1785 was unanimously chosen Moderator
of the General Assembly. He was appointed
collector of the fund for the widows and children
of the clergy, and filled that important situation
till his death, and received annually the thanks
of the Assembly for forty-three years. He was
author of several sermons, and the funeral oration
preached at his death by Dr. Andrew Thomson, 01
St. George?s, was long remembered for its power
pathos, and tenderness. He died in 1827 of a
lingering illness, in the 78th year of his age and
57th of his ministry.
In its greatest length, quoad civiZia, in 1835, the
parish measured upwards of five miles, and in its
yeatest breadth three and a half. But in 1834
territories were detached from it and formed into
ihe quoad sacra parishes of Buccleuch, St. Bemard?s,
Newington, and Roxburgh. It was partly landward
and partly town ; but, as regards population,
is chiefly the latter now. Each of its two ministers
has a manse.
Before quitting the church of St. Cuthbert a
reference must be made to its old poor-house, a
plain but lofty edifice, with two projecting wings
:standing on the south side of what was latterly
:alled Riding School Lane), and now removed.
At an early period a tax of LIOO sterling hac
been laid on the parish to preclude begging, ? and
maintain those who had been ?accustomed to live
3n the charity of others.? In 1739, at a meeting
3f heritow and the Session, the former protested
against the levy of this old impost, on the plea
?that the poor?s funds were sufficient to maintain
the poor in the landward part of the parish, with
whom only the heritors were concerned ; while the
poor living in Pleasance, Potter Row, Bristo, West
Port, &c., fell to be maintained by the town in
whose suburbs they were.?
The assessment was thus abandoned, and an
ancient practice was resorted to : the mendicant
poor were furnished with metal badges, entitling
them to solicit alms within the parish. The
number furnished with this unenviable distinction
amounted to fifty-eight in 1744, and the number
of enroIled poor to 220, for whose support A200
sterling were expended. In 1754 the Kirk Session
presented a nikmorial to the magistrates, craving a
moiety of the duty levied on ale for the support of
their poor, whereupon a wing was added to the
city workhouse for the reception of St. Cuthbert?s
mendicants.
In June 1759 a subscription was opened for
building a workhouse in the West Kirk. parish j
the money obtained amounted to A553 sterling
for the house, and A196 8s. of annual subscrip
tions for the support of its inmates-a small proof
that the incubus or inertia which had so long
affected Edinburgh was now passing away ; and the
building was commenced on the south side of a
tortuous lane, St. Cuthbert?s, that then ran between
hedgerows from opposite the churchyard
gate towards the place named the Grove. It was
completed by the year 1761, at a cost of about
L1,565 sterling. The expenses of the house were
defrayed partlv hv collections at the church doors
