Corstorphine.] CORSTORPHINE CHURCH.
I18 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Corstorphine.
of the House of Orkney. He is represented in
armour of the fifteenth century (but the head has
been struck OK); she, in a dress of the same
period, with a breviary clasped in her hands. The
other monument is said to represent the son of
the founder and his wife, whose hands are represented
meekly crossed upon her bosom. Apart
lies the tomb of a supposed crusader, in the south
transept, with a dog at his feet. Traditionally this
is said to be the resting-place of Bernard Stuart,
Lord Aubigny, who came from France as Ambassador
to the Court of James IV., and died in the
adjacent Castle of Corstorphine in 1508. But the
altar tomb is of a much older date, and the shield
has the three heraldic horns of the Forresters duly
stringed. One shield impaled with Forrester, bears
the fesse cheque of Stuart, perhaps for Marian
Stewart, Lady Dalswinton.
It. has been said there are few things more
impressive than such prostrate effigies as these-so
few in Sdotland now-on the tombs of those who
were restless, warlike, and daring in their times;
and the piety of their attitudes contrasts sadly with
the mockery of the sculptured sword, shield, and
mail, and with the tenor of their characters in life.
The cutting of the figures is sharp, and the
draperies are well preserved and curious. There
are to be traced the remains of a piscina and of a
niche, canopied and divided into three compartments.
The temporalities of the church were dispersed
at the Reformation, a portion fell into the
hands. of lay impropriators, and other parts to
educational and other ecclesiastical institutions.
In 1644 the old parish church was demolished,
? and the collegiate establishment, in which the
, minister had for some time previously been accustomed
to officiate, became from thenceforward the
only church of the parish.
In ancient times the greater part of this now fertile
district was 8 Swamp, the road through which
was both difficult and dangerous; thus a lamp
was placed at the east end of the church, for the
double purpose of illuminating the shrine of the
Baptist, and guiding the belated traveller through
the perilous morass. The expenses of this lamp
were defrayed by the produce of an acre of land
situate near Coltbndge, called the Lamp Acre to
this day, though it became afterwards an endowment
of the schoolmaster, At what time the kindly
lamp of St. John ceased to guide the wayfarer
by its glimmer is unknown ; doubtless it would be
at the time of the Reformation; but a writer in
1795 relates ? that it is not long since the pulley
for supporting it was taken down.?
Of the Forrester family, Wilson says in his
? Reminiscences,? published in 1878, ? certainly
their earthly tenure, outside? of their old collegiate
foundation, has long been at an end. Of their
castle under Corstorphine Hill, and their town
mansion in the High Street of Edinburgh, not
one stone remains upon another. The very wynd
that so long preserved their name, where once
they flourished among the civic magnates, has
vanished.
?Of what remained of their castle we measured
the fragments of the foundations in 1848, and
found them to consist of a curtain wall, facing the
west, one hundred feet in length, flanked by two
round towers, each twentyone feet in diameter
externally. The ruins were then about seven feet
high, except a fragment on the south, about twelve
feet in height, with the remains of an arrow hole.?
Southward and eastward of this castle there lay
for ages a great sheet of water known as Corstorphine
Loch, and so deep was the Leith in those
days, that provisions, etc., for the household were
brought by boat from the neighbourhood of Coltbridge.
Lightfoot mentions that the Loch of Corstorphine
was celebrated for the production of the
water-hemlock, a plant much more deadly than the
common hemlock,
The earliest proprietors of. Corstorphine traceable
are Thomas de Marshal and William de la
Roche, whose names are in the Ragman Roll
under date 1296. In the Rolls of David 11.
there was a charter to Hew Danyelstoun, ? of the
forfaultrie of David Marshal, Knight, except
Danyelstoun, which Thomas Carno got by gift,
and Llit lands of Cortorphing whilk Malcolm Ramsay
got? (Robertson?s ? Index.?)
They were afterwards possessed by the Mores of
Abercurn, from whom, in the time of Sir William
More, under King Robert II., they were obtained
by charter by Sir Adam Forrester, whose name
was of great antiquity, being deduced from the
office of Keeper of the King?s Forests, his armorial
bearings being three hunting horns. In that charter
he is simply styled ?Adam Forrester, Burgess of
Edinburgh.? This was in 1377, and from thenceforward
Corstorphine became the chief title of
his family, though he was also Laird of Nether
Liberton.
Previous to this his name appears in the Burgh
Records as chief magistrate of Edinburgh, 24th
April, 1373 ; and in 1379 Robert 11. granted him
?twenty merks of sterlings from the custom of
the said burgh, granted to him in heritage by our
other letters . . . , until we, or our heirs,
infeft the said Adam, or his heirs, in twenty merks
