374 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Greyfriars Church.
and, forming a part of her volunteer forces, six
battalions of infantry, two of artillery, and a corps
of cavalry.
On the night of the False AZam, on the evening
of the 31st January, 1804, Scotland was studded
with beacons-something on the system ordered by
the twelfthparliament of JamesII. By mistake, that
on Hume Castle was lighted ; other beacons blazed
up in all directions ; the cry was everywhere that
the I;rench had landed! All Scotland rushed to
arms, and before dawn the volunteers were all on
the march, pouring forward to their several rendezvous
; in some instances the Scottish Border
men rode fifty miles to be there, without drawing
bridle, says Scott ; and those of Liddesdale, fearing
to be late at their post, seized every horse they
could find, for a forced march, and then turned
thein loose to make their way home.
When, in 1806, new regulations were issued,
limiting the allowance to volunteers, the First
Edinburgh Regiment remained unaffected by them.
?I wish to remind you,? said the spirited Lieutenant-
Colonel Hope, one day while on parade,
?that we did not take up arms to please any minister,
or set of ministers, but to defend our native
land from foreign and domestic enemies.?
In 1820, when disturbances occurred in .the West
Country, the volunteers garrisoned the Castle, and
offered, if necessary, to co-operate with the forces
in the field, and for that purpose?remained a whole
night under arms. SOOA after the corps was disbanded,
without thanks or ceremony.
Northward of the hospital, but entering from the
Grassmarket, we find the Heriot brewery, which
we must mention before quitting this quarter, a
being one of those establishments which have long
been famous in Edinburgh, and have made the
ancient trade of a ?brewster? one of the mosl
important branches of its local manufacturing in.
dustry.
The old Heriot brewery has been in operation
for considerably over one hundred years, and foi
upwards of forty has been worked by one firm, the
Messrs. J. Jeffrey and Co., whose establishmeni
gives the visitor an adequate idea of the mode in
which a great business of that kind is conducted,
though it is not laid out according to the more
recent idea of brewing, the buildings and work:
having been added to and increased fmm time tc
time, like all institutions that have old and small
beginnings; but notwithstanding all the nurnerou:
mechanical appliances which exist in the diiTeren1
departments of the Heriot brewery, the manu?
services of more than 250 men are required then
daily.
In Gordon?s map of 1647, the old, or last, Greynars
Church is shown with great distinctness, the
,ody of the edifice not as we see it now on the
outh side, but with a square tower of four storeys
.t its western end. The burying ground is of
ts present form and extent, surrounded by pleasant
ows of trees j and north-westward of the church is
species of large circular and ornamental garden
#eat.
Three gates are shown-one to the Candlenaker
Row, where it still is ; another on the south
o the large open field in the south-east angle of the
:ity wall ; and a third-that at the foot of the ROW,
ofty, arched, and ornate, with a flight of steps
zscendiq to it, precisely where, by the vast accumuation
of human clay, a flight of steps goes downward
Over one of these two last entrances, but which
le does not tell us, Monteith, writing in the year
1704, says there used to be the following inscripion
:-
low.
?? Remember, man, as thou goes by :
As thou art now, 50 once was I.
As I am now, so shalt thou be ;
Remember, man, that thou must die (a?ee).?
The trees referred to were very probably relics
Df the days when the burial-place had been the
Sardens of the Greyfriary in the Grassmarket, at
the foot of the slope, especially as two double rows
of them would seem distinctly to indicate that
they had shaded walks which ran soutli and
north.
Writing of the Greyfriq, Wilson says, we think
correctly :-? That a church would form a prominent
feature of this royal foundation can hardly be
doubted, and we are inclined to infer that the existence
both of if, and of a churchyard attached to
it, long before Queen Mary?s grant of the gardens
of the monastery for the latter purpose, is implied in
such allusions as the following, in the ? Diurnal of
Occurrents,? July 7th, 157 I. ? The haill merchandis,
craftismen, and personis renowned within Edinburgh,
made thair moustaris in the Grey Frear
Kirk Yaird;? and again, when Birrel, in his diary,
April ~ 6 t h ~ 1598, refers to the ?work at the Greyfriar
Kirke,? although the date of the erection of
the more modem church is only 1613.?
In further proof of this idea Scottish history tells
that when, in 1474, the prince royal of Scotland,
(afterwards James IV.) was betrothed, in the second
year of his age, to Cecilia of England, and when on
this basis a treaty of peace between the nations
was concluded, the ratification thereof, and the
betrothal, took place in the church of the Greyfriars,
at Edinburgh, when the Earl of Lindesay
Greyfrian Church.] THE COVENANT. 375
and Lord Scrope represented their respective
monarchs.
The number of the inhabitants having greatly
increased, and the churches of the city being insufficient
for their accommodation, the magistrates,
in 1612, says Ariiot, ordered a new one to be
built on the ground formerly belonging to the Greyfriars,
and bestowed on them by Queen Mary for
a public cemetery; but he makes no mention of
any preceding church, on which the present edifice
might have been engrafted.
The eastern entrance from the Candlemaker
Row was formed at some time subsequent to the
erection or opening of this church.
On the 28th of February 1638, the National
Covenant was first subscribed at the Greyfriars
Church, when the aggressive measures of Charles I.
roused in arms the whole of Scotland, which then,
happily for herself, was not, by the desertion of her
nobles and the abolition of her officers of state, unable
to resist lawless encroachment ; and her sons
seemed to come forth as one man in defence of
the Church, which had then no more vigorous u p
holder than the future Marquis of Montrose. ?? In
the old church of the Greyfriars,? to quote his
memoirs (London, 1858), ?? which stands upon an
eminence south of the ancient capital, and within
the wall of 1513, amid quaint and smoke-encrusted
tombs, and many headstones sunk deep in the long,
rank grass-where now the furious Covenanter,
Henderson, and Rosehaugh, ? that persecutor of
the saints of God,? as the Whigs named him, are
lying side by side in peace among the dead of ages,
the Covenant, written on a sheet of parchment one
ell square, and so named because it resembled
those which God is said to have made with the
children of Israel, was laid before the representatives
of the nation, and there it was signed by a
mighty concourse, who, with uplifted hands, with
weeping eyes, and drawn swords, animated by the
same glorious enthusiasm which fired the crusaders
at the voice of Peter the Hermit, vowed, with the
assistance of the supreme God, to dedicate life and
fortune to the cause of Scotland?s Church and the
maintenance of their solemn engagement, which
professed the reformed faith and bitterly abjured
the doctrines and dogmas of the Church of Rome
-for with such they classed the canons and the
liturgy of Laud.?
It was first subscribed by the congregation of the
Greyfriars ; but the first name really appended to it
was that of the venerable and irreproachable Earl
of Sutherland. Montrose and other peers followed
his example, and it afterwards was sent round the
churches of the city; thus it speedily became sa
xowded with names on both sides, says Maithd,
:hat not the smallest space was left for more,
It appears that when there was so little,room
;eft to sign on, the subscriptions were shortened by
inserting only the initials of the Covenanters? names,
3f which the margins and other parts were so full
that it was a difficult task to number them. By a
cursoryview Maitland estimated themat about 5,000.
By order of the General Committee every fourth
man in Scotland was numbered as a soldier.
In 1650 the church was desecrated, and all its
wood-work wasted and destroyed by the soldiers
of Cromwell. Nine years afterwards, when Monk
was in Edinburgh with his own regiment (now
the Coldstream Guards) and Colonel Morgan?s, ?
on the 19th of October, he mustered them in the
High Street, in all the bravery of their steeplecrowned
hats, falling bands, calfskin boots, with
niatchlocks and bandoleers, some time prior to his
march southward to achieve the Restoration, From
that street he marched them (doubtless by theRest
Bow) to the Greyfriars Church, where he told his
officers that he ? was resolved to make the military
power subordinate to the civil, and that since they
had protection and entertainment from the Parliament,
it was their duty to serve it and obey it
against all opposition.? The officers and soldiers
unanimously declared that they would live and die
with him.
In the year 1679 the Greyfriars Church and its
burying-ground witnessed a pitiful sight, when that
city of the dead was crowded, almost to excess, by
those unhappy Covenanters whom the prisons could
not contain, after the rising at Bothwell had been
quenched in blood. These unhappy people had
been collected, principally in the vicinity of Bathgate,
by the cavalry, then employed in ? dragooning,?
or riding down the country, and after being
driven like herds of cattle, to the number of 1,200,
tied two and two, to the capital, they were penned
up in the Greyfriars Churchyard, among the graves
and gloomy old tombs of all kinds, and there they
were watched and guarded day and night, openly in
sight of the citizens.
Since Heselrig destroyed the Scottish prisoners
after Dunbar (for which he was arraigned by the
House of Commons) no such piteous sight had
been witnessed on British ground. They were of
both sexes and of all ages, and there they lay five
long months, 1,200 souls, exposed to the suq by
day and the dew by night-the rain, the wind, and
the storm-with no other roof than the changing
sky, and no other bed than the rank grass that
grew in its hideous luxuriance from the graves beneath
them. All were brutally treatedby their
