Corstorphine.] CORSTORPHINE CHURCH. 115
was no side road into which he could have disappeared.
He returned home perplexed by the
oddness of the circumstance, when the first thing
he learned was, that during his absence this friend
had been killed by his horse falling in the Candlemakers
Row.??
The church of Corstorphine is one of the most
interesting old edifices in the Lothians. It has
been generally supposed, says a writer, that Scotland,
while possessed of great and grand remains
of Gothic architecture, is deficient in those antique
rural village churches, whose square towers and
ivied buttresses so harmonise with the soft landscape
scenery of England, and that their place is
too often occupied by the hideous barn-like structure
of times subsequent to the Reformation. But
among the retiring niinor beauties of Gothic architecture
in Scotland, one of the principal is the
picturesque little church of Corstorphine.
It is a plain edifice of mixed date, says Billings
in his ?? Antiquities,? the period of the Decorated
Gothic predominating. It is in the form of a cross,
with an additional transept on one of the sides;
but some irregularities in the height and character
of the different parts make them seem asif they
were irregularly clustered together without design.
A portion of the roof is still covered with old-&ey
flagstone. A small square belfry-tower at the west
end is surmounted by a short octagonal spire, the
ornate string? mouldings on which suggest an idea
of the papal tiara
As the church of the parish, it is kept in tolerably
decent order, and it is truly amazing how it
escaped the destructive fury of the Reformers.
This edifice was not the original parish church,
which stood near it, but a separate establishment,
founded and richly endowed by the pious enthusiasm
of the ancient family whose tombs it contains,
and whose once great castle adjoined it.
Notices have been found of a chapel attached to
the manor of Corstorphine, but subordinate to the
church of St. Cuthbert, so far back as 1128, and
this chapel became the old parish church referred
to. Thus, in the Holyrood charter of King DavidI.,
1143-7, he grants to the monks there the two
chapels which pertain to the church of St. Cuthbert,
?? to wit, Crostorfin, with two oxgates and six
acres of land, and the chapel of Libertun with two
oxgates of land.?
In the immediate vicinity of that very ancient
chapel there was founded ancther chapel towards
the end of the fourteenth century, by Sir Adam
Forrester of Corstorphine; and that edifice is sup
posed to form a portion of the present existing
church, because after its erection no mention whatever
has been found of the second chapel as a
separate edifice.
.The building with which we have now to do
was founded in 1429, as an inscription on the wall
of the chancel, and other authorities, testify, by Sir
John Forrester of Corstorphine, Lord High Chamberlain
of Scotland in 1425, and dedicated to St.
John the Baptist, for a provost, five prebendaries,
and two singing boys. It was a collegiate church,
to which belonged those of Corstorphine, Dalmahoy,
Hatton, Cramond, Colinton, &c. The tiends
of Ratho, and half of those of Adderton and Upper
Gogar, were appropriated to the revenues of this
college.
?Sir John consigned the annual rents of one hundred
and twenty ducats in gold to the church,? says
the author of the ?New Statistical Account,? ?on
condition that he and his successors should have the
patronage of the appointments, and on the understanding
that if the kirk of Ratho were united to
the provostry, other four or five prebendaries
should be added to the establishment, and maintained
out of the fruits of the benefice of Ratho.
Pope Eugenius IV. sanctioned this foundation by a
bull, in which he directed the Abbot of Holyroodhouse,
a$ his Apostolic Vicar, to ascertain whether
the foundation and consignation had been made in
terms of the original grant, and on being satisfied
on these points, to unite and incorporate the church
of Ratho with its rights, emoluments, and pertinents
to the college for ever.?
The first provost of this establishment was
Nicholas Bannatyne, who died there in 1470, and
was buried in the church, where his epitaph still
remains.
When Dunbar wrote his beautiful ? I Lament for
the Makaris,? he embalmed among the last Scottish
poets of his time, as taken by Death, ? the gentle
Roull of Corstorphine,? one of the first provosts of
the church-
?( He has tane Rod1 of Aberdeen,
A d gentle Rod1 of Corstorphine ;
Twa better fellows did nae man see :
Timor mortis conturbat me.?
There was, says the ? The Book of Bon Accord,?
a Thomas Roull, who was Provost of Aberdeen in
1416, and it is conjectured that the baid was of the
same family ; but whatever the works of the latter
were, nothing is known of him now, save his name,
as recorded by Dunbar.
In the year 1475, Hugh Bar, a burgess of Edinburgh,
founded an additional chaplaincy in this
then much-favoured church. ? The chaplain, in
addition to the performance of daily masses for
the souls of the king andqueen, the lords of the
manor, and the founder?s own mother and wife, and
of all the faithful dead, was specially directed, at
the commencement of each season of Lent, to exhort
the people to say one Pater Noster and the
salutation of the angel to the blessed Virgin Mary
for the souls of the same persons.? (? New Stat.
Account.?)
The provostry of Corstorphine was considered
a rather lucrative office, and has been held by
several important personages. In the beginning of
the sixteenth century it was held by Robert Cairn-
CORSTORPHINE CHURCH, 1817. (After a# Efcking 6 /a?nes SRnv of Rdishw.)
present state of affairs.? Cairncross was Treasurer
of Scotland in 1529 and 1537.
In 1546, John Sandilands, son and heir of Sir
Janies Sandilands, knight of Calder (afterwards
Preceptor of Torphichen and Lord $t. John of
Jerusalem), found surety, under the pain of ten
thousand pounds, that he would remain ?in warde,
in the place of Corstorphine, colege, toun, and
yards yairof, until he passed to France.? His
grandmother was Mariotte, a daughter of Archibald
Forrester of Corstorphine.
cross, whose name does not shine in the pages of
Buchanan, by the manner in which he obtained the
Abbacy of Holyroed without. subjecting himself to
the law against simony.
one meanly
descended, but a wealthy man, bought that preferment
of the king who then wanted money, eluding
the law by a new sort of fraud. The law wasthat
ecclesiastical preferments should not be sold j
but he laid a great wager with the king that he
would not bestow upon him the next preferment
of that kind which fell vacant, and by that means
lost his wager but got the abbacy.? This was in
September, 1528, and he was aware that the Abbot
William Douglas was, as Buchanan states, ? dying
of sickness, trouble of mind, and grief for the
Robert Cairncross,? he states,
In March, 1552, the Provost of Edinburgh, his
bailies, and council, ordered their treasurer, Alexander
Park, topay the prebendaries of Corstorphine
the sum of ten pounds, as the half of twenty owing
them yearly (? furth of the commoun gude.?
In 1554, James Scott, Provost of the Church of
Corqtorphine, was appointed a Imd of Session,
and in that year he witnessed the marriage contract
of Hugh Earl of Eglinton and Lady Jane Hamilton
daughter of James Duke of Chatelherault.
Conspicuous in the old church are the tombs of
the Forrester family. TEe portion which modem
utility has debased to a porch contains two altar
tombs, one of them being the monument of Sir
John Forrester, the founder, and his second lady,
probably, to judge by her coat-of-arms, Jean Sinclair
