286 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Infirmary Street.
._
Freirs xx li. owing to them, at this last Fasterns
evin, for thair bell, conform to the act maid thairupon
? (Burgh Records).
In 1553 another Act ordains ?John Smyson? to
pay them the sum ?of xx li compleit payment of
thair silver bell;? and in 1554-5 in the Burgh Accounts
is the item-?To the Blackfriars and Greyfriars,
for their preaching yeirlie, ilk ane of thame
:elf ane last of sownds beir; price of ilk boll
xxviij s. summa, xvj li. xvj s.?
When John Knox, after his return to Scotland,
began preaching against the Mass as an idolatrous
worship, he was summoned before an ecclesiastical
judicatory held in the Blackfriars? church on the
15th May, 1556. The case was not proceeded
with at the time, as a tumult was feared j but the
summons so greatly increased the power and popularity
of Knox, that on that very 15th of May he
preached to a greater multitude than he had ever
done before. In 1558 the populace attacked the
monastery and church, and destroyed everything
they contained, leaving the walls an open ruin.
In 1560 John Black, a Dominican friar, acted
as the permanent confessor of Mary of Guise,
during her last fatal illness in the Castle of Edmburgh,
and Knox in his history indulges in coarse
innuendoes concerning both. His name is still
preserved in the following doggerel verse :-
? There was a certain Black friar, always called Black,
And this was no nickname, for bluck was his work ;
Of all the Black friars he was the blackest clerk,
Born in the Black Friars to be a black mark.??
This Dominican, however, was a learned and
subtle doctor, a man of deep theological research,
who in 1561 maintained against John Willox the
Reformer, and ex-Franciscan, a defence of the
Roman Catholic faith for two successive days, and
gave him more than ordinary trouble to meet his
arguments. He was. afterwards stoned in the
streets ?by the rabble,? on the 15th December,
or, as others say, the 7th of January.
By 1560 the stones of the Black Friary were
used ? for the bigging of dykes,? and other works
connected with the city. The cemetery was latterly
the old High School Yard, and therein a battery
of cannon was erected in 157 I to batter a house in
which the Parliament of the king?s men held a
meeting, situated somewhere on the south side of
the Canongate.
The Dominican gardens, in which the dead
body of Darnley was found lying under a tree, and
their orchard, lay to the southward, and in 1513
were intersected, or bounded by the new city wall,
in which there remained-till July, 1854, when some
six hundred yards of it were demolished, and a
parapet and iron railing substituted-an elliptically
arched doorway, half buried in the pavement, three
feet three inches wide, and protected by a round
gun-port, splayed out four feet four inches wide.
Through this door the unscathed body of Darnley
must have been borne by his?murderers, ere they
blew up the house of the Kirk-of-field. It was
an interesting relic, and its removal was utterly
wanton.
The next old ecclesiastical edifice on the other
side of the street was Lady Yester?s church, which
in Gordon?s map is shown as an oblong barn-like
edifice surrounded by a boundary wall, with a large
window in its western gable.
Lady Yester, a pious and noble dame, whose
name was long associated with ecclesiastical chGties
in Edinburgh, was the third daughter of Mark
Kerr, Commendator of Newbattle Abbey, a Lord of
Session, and founder of the house of Lothian. Early
in life she was married to James Lord Hay of Yester,
and hac! two sons, John Lord Yester, afterwards
Earl of Tweeddale, and Sk William, for whom she
purchased the barony of Linplum After being a
widow some years she married Sir Andrew Kerr
younger of Fernyhurst.
In 1644 she built the church at the south-east
corner of the High School Wynd, at the expense of
LI,OOO of the then money, with 5,000 merks for
the salary of the minister. It was seated for 817
persons, and in August, 1655, the Town Council
appointed a district of the city a parish for it.
Shortly before her death, Lady Yester ?caused
joyne thereto an little isle for the use of the
minister, yr she lies interred.? This aisle is
shown by Gordon to have been on the north side
of the church, and Monteith (1704) describes the
following doggerel inscription on her ?? tomb on the
north side of the vestiary? :-
? It?s needless to erect a marble tomb : .
The daily bread that for the hungry womb,
And bread of life thy bounty hath provided
For hungry souls, all times to be divided ;
World-lasting monuments shall reare,
That shall endure, till Christ himself appear.
Posd was thy life, prepared thy happy end ;
Nothing in either was without commend.
Let it be the care of all who live hereafter,
To live and die, like Margaret Lady Yester.?
Who dyed 15th Match, 1647. Her age 75.
?Blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord ; they rest
from their labours, and their works do follow them.?-
Rev. xiv. 13.
After Cromwell?s troops rendered themselves
houseless in 1650 by burning Holyrood, quarters
were assigned them in the city churches, including
Lady Yester?s; and in all of these, and part of the
The Old High S:hoo!.l THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 287
college, the pulpits, desks, lofts, and seats, were;
says Nicol, (( dung down by these English sodgeris,
and burnt to asses.?
When the congregation of the abbey church
were compelled by James VII. to leave it in 1687,
they had to seek accommodation in Lady Yester?s
till another place of worship could be provided
for them. A small cemetery adjoined the church ;
it is now covered with buildings, but was still
in use about the close of the last and beginning
of the present century, and many seamen of the
Russian fleet, which lay for a time at Leith, and
who died in the infirmary, were buried there.
In 1803 the old church was taken down, and a
new one erected for 1,212 sitters, considerably to
the westward of it, was opened in the following
year. Though tasteless and nondescript in style,
it was considered an ornament to that part of
the city.
The tomb of the foundress, and the tablet recording
her good works, are both rebuilt into
this new fane ; but it seems doubtful whether her
body was removed at the same time. The parish
is wholly a town one, and situated within the city;
it contains 64,472 square yards
With diffidence, yet with ardour and interest, we
now approach the subject of the old High School
of Edinburgh-the famous and time-honoured
SchZa Regia Edineprsis-so prominently patronised
by James VI., and the great national importance of
which was recognised even by George IV., who
gave it a handsome donation.
Scott, and thousands of others, whose deeds and
names in every walk of life and in every part of
the globe have added to the glory of their country,
have conned their tasks in the halls of this venerable
institution. In the roll of its scholars,?
says Dr. Steven, ?are the names of some of the
most distinguished men of all professions, and who
have filled important situations in all parts of the
world, and it is a fact worth recording that it includes
the names of three Chancellors of England,
all nafives of Edinburgh-Wedderbum, Erskine,
and Brougham.?
Learning, with all the arts and infant science
too, found active and munificent patrons in the
monarchs of the Stuart line ; thus, so early as the
sixth Parliament of James IV., it was ordained
that all barons and freeholders of substance were
to put their eldest sons to school after the age of
six or nine years, there to remain till they were
perfect in Latin, ?( swa that they have knowledge
and understanding of the lawes, throw the quhilks
justice may remaine universally throw all the
tealme.? Those who failed to conform to this
Act were to pay a fine of twenty pounds. But
Scotland possessed schools so early as the twelfth
century in all her principal towns, though prior
to that period scholastic knowledge could only
be received within the walk- of the monasteries.
The Grammar School of Edinburgh was originally
attached to the abbey of Holyrood, and as the
demand for education increased, those friars whose
presence could be most easily dispensed tvith at the
abbey,were permitted by the abbot and chapter
to become public teachers within the city.
The earliest mention of a regular Grammar
School in Edinburgh being under the control of
the magistrates is on the 10th January, 1519, ?the
quhilk day, the provost, baillies, and counsall
statutis and ordains, fot resonabie caussis moving
thame, that na maner of nychtbour nor indwe!ler
within this burgh, put thair bairins till ony particular
scule within this toun, boi to fhe pnircipal
Grammw Smlc of the samyn,? to be taught in
any science, under a fine of ten shillings to the
master of the said principal school.
David Vocat, clerk of the abbey, was then at
the head of the seminary, enjoying this strange
monopoly; and on the 4th September, 1524,
George, Bishop of Dunkeld, as abbot of Holyrood,
with consent of his chapter, appointed Henry
Henryson as assistant and successor to Vocat,
whose pupil he had been, at the Grammar School
of the Canongate.
Bya charter of James V., granted under the
great seal of Scotland, dated 1529, Henryson had
the sole privilege of instructing the youth of
Edinburgh; but he was ?also to attend at the
abbey in his surplice on all high and solemn
festivals, there to sing at mass and evensong, and
make himself otherwise useful in the chapel.
According to Spottiswood?s Church History,
Henryson publicly abjured Romanism so early .as
1534, and thus he must have left the High School
before that year, as Adam Melville had become
head-master thereof in 1531. The magistrates of
the city had as yet no voice in the nomination of
masters, though the whole onus of the establishment
rested on them as representing the citizens ; and
in 1554, as we have elsewhere (VoL I. p. 263)
stated, they hired that venerable edifice, then at
the foot of Blackfriars Wfnd-once the residence
of -Archbishop Ekaton and of his nephew the cardinal-
as a school; but in the following year they
were removed to another house, near the head of
what is named the High School Wynd, which had
been built by the town for their better accommodation.
The magistrates having obtained from Queen
