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The Saennes.] ST. KATHARINE?S CONVENT. 53 ?Papingo,? makes Chastity flee for refuge to the sisters of the Sciennes. The convent was erected under a Bull of Pope Lax., and also by a charter of James V. This Bull informs us that the convent was created hough the influence of the families of Seton, Lord Seton, refusing all offers of mamage, became a nun at the Sciennes, and dying in her seventyeighth year, was buried there, according to the history of her house. The chapel of St. John the Eaptist became that of the new convent, which, up to the middle MR. DUNCAN MCLAREN. (Froma Pkofo~roph &y/. G. Tunny.) Douglas of Glenbervie, and Lauder of the Bass, the land being given by the venerable Sir John Crawford. The first prioress was the widowed Lady Seton ; ? ane nobill and wyse Ladye,? says Sir Richard hlaitland, ?sche gydit hir sonnis leving quhill he was cumit to age, and thereafter she passit and remainit at the place of Senis, on the Borrow Mure.? There she died in 1558, and was buried in the choir of Seton church, beside her husband, whose body had been brought from Flodden. Katharine, second daughter of George, fourth of the skteenth century, received various augmentations- among others, a tenement in the Cowgate. The nuns made annual processions to the altar of St. Katharine in St. Margaret?s Chapel at Liberton; and it was remarked, says- the editor of ArcAauZqia Scutica, that the man who demolished the latter never prospered after. In 1541 the magistrates took in feu from the nuns their arable land, lying outside the Greyfriars? Port, and, curious to say, it is on a portion of this that the new Convent of St. Katharine was founded, about 1860. Within the grounds on the north side
Volume 5 Page 53
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