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
