V 
 
. .2 
 
 NO 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2014 
 
 http://archive.org/details/baronialecclesia01bill_0 
 
J 
 
 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 Scotland has been invariably described as a poverty-stricken field as regards architectural 
 illustration ; and the writer, when he commenced his labours as a stranger to the country, 
 of course shared in the general opinion. But he was speedily undeceived, and at once 
 extended his labours very considerably beyond his original intentions. In spite of these 
 additions, however, the results of his travels so multiplied the subjects for delineation, that 
 some of those issued at the commencement of the work would have been withheld, to be 
 replaced by others of higher merit, could the extent of the field have been from the first 
 foreseen. This, however, was impossible ; and, in consequence, the limits originally 
 assigned to the publication have been reached, while many subjects, which may appear to 
 some of sufficient extent, and sufficiently in harmony with its general scope, to have claimed 
 a place in it, remain entirely untouched. 
 
 At the same time it must be remembered, that the intention of this Work was not to 
 represent all the Antiquities of Scotland, but such a selection as should combine the spirit 
 of the whole, by the features conveyed in those delineated. Hence many edifices, 
 singularly plain in their character, have found places in it ; while others, embracing both 
 elaborate design and constructive merit, have been omitted, simply to avoid repetition. 
 Thus a sketch was made of the elaborate hall-ceiling at Muchalls, which docs not appear 
 in our book, because its design proved to be fairly indexed by the examples at Craigievar, 
 Glammis, and Winton. Muchalls, therefore, only appears in its less ornamental features ; 
 but it has distinct peculiarities to warrant its delineation — ?. e., the subordination of the 
 turret to the line of the crow-stepped gable, and the (supposed) only specimen of the 
 bartizaned courtyard wall remaining in Scotland. 
 
 Again, many persons have pleaded that the interesting Chapel in Edinburgh Castle 
 
 43736 
 
2 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 should be illustrated in this collection. They are referred to the interiors of Dalmeny and 
 Leuchars as embodying its general features, for it is but their designs in miniature ; 
 and are reminded distinctly, that our object has been to seize the distinctive features, 
 rather than to present multiplied examples. Thus, again, Kelburne, near Largs, would, 
 as an architectural design, nardly be admissible into the series ; but it cannot be too 
 strongly urged upon the notice of Scotchmen, that it is in the secondary examples of 
 their architecture that they will find the points of detail generally preserved. We see iu 
 Kelburne the only ancient metallic termination to the turret which the writer has met 
 with ; and this distinctly shows the finishing personality and nationality of Scotch 
 architecture — the crest of the Laird surmounted by the Thistle. Then there is the 
 ingeniously ornamented sun-dial, where every inch of surface is made to tell the story of 
 time, under every possible contortion of form and position ; and where its pinnacle, by 
 a series of nomes, imitates the crocketing of Gothic architecture. 
 
 During his journeyings through Scotland, so many places, unknown to fame, presented 
 themselves to his notice, that the writer determined, should other circumstances seem to 
 warrant a work supplementary to the present publication, to remain in the field until 
 every architectural vestige was made known in a form, and at a price, that would have 
 insured its introduction even to the cottage. He considers that were a respect for 
 Antiquities once created among the labouring population, it would do more, by tenfold, for 
 their preservation than any means which could be devised short of actual restoration. 
 This idea, however, he has now been compelled to abandon. 
 
 The labours of another gentleman must not pass without mention here — those of John 
 Hill Burton, advocate, whose name stands honourably connected with the paths of litera- 
 ture. To his local knowledge of Scotch History and Antiquities, this work is very con- 
 siderably indebted in the historical notices and descriptions. 
 
 There yet remains a strong claim to be acknowledged by the writer. In lonely 
 wanderings from beaten tracks, and where travellers would seek in vain for inns, he has 
 invariably found a warm welcome in the manse, and much valuable guidance and aid 
 with regard to the objects of his researches. To these ministers of the Presbyterian 
 Church he offers acknowledgments, for their readiness both in ministering to his personal 
 wants, and in adding to his knowledge of their local antiquities. He recalls with unmiti- 
 gated pleasure the time passed in their society, and by the experience thus gained has 
 readily perceived their hold upon the affections of their flocks, by uniting the character 
 of the temporal friend with that of the Christian monitor and instructor. But for their 
 active help, these volumes would, indeed, have had a toilsome addition to the labour they 
 have required. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 Finally, his thanks must be given to those gentlemen, in front of whose names he has 
 prefixed a mark in the List of Subscribers, for their active and kindly personal aid in 
 behalf of his labours. 
 
 It has, perhaps, never before occurred that the Antiquities of a country have been so 
 carefully collated, as those of Scotland have now been, by one individual. In the mass 
 of previous antiquarian publications, miscellaneous contributions, from artists who too 
 often translated nature as they thought she should appear, frequently show the same sub- 
 ject under the most extraordinary changes ; and hence the cause of their want of value is 
 the absence of truth. 
 
 To show how architectural works were formerly produced, the writer may, without 
 injurious or invidious comparisons, instance the case of Captain Grose, who followed in 
 the wake of Adam de Cardonell as an illustrator of Scotch Antiquities. Burns's " chiel' 
 amang ye taking notes" is really entitled to great credit as one of the originators of 
 illustrated antiquarian works ; and to his honour it is to be said, that, unlike most modern 
 editors, he does give the artists credit for their productions — he does not fancy that their 
 combined works are his own. 
 
 Grose's preface to the Antiquities of Scotland is singularly illustrative of the ancient 
 " getting up " of works. He begins by acknowledging with marked distinction the 
 higher class, who, coming first in the shape of an artillery officer, supplied " elegant 
 drawings." His compliments gradually cool down to the parties who executed drawings, 
 who are termed " worthy friends," and " friend." Then he is coldly " obligated " to 
 others, of humbler worldly position, and the freezing-point comes at last in the mention 
 of his own footman's contributions ! " It is necessary to inform the reader that the 
 following views were drawn by my servant, Thomas Cocking, who promises to make an 
 accurate draughtsman." And then Grose adds, " I likewise reduced and finished up 
 every drawing but one for the engraver " — a sentence conveying a most significant admis- 
 sion as to the ultimate resemblance of the engravings to the buildings. His artists first 
 corrected nature, and he added to their inaccuracies by correcting them. 
 
 Whatever may be the lack of artistic merit in the present collection, Scotland at least 
 possesses in its pages that which no other country can show. Her Antiquities, instead of 
 passing, in their representation, through a variety of hands, have been carefully delineated 
 on the spot, M'ith the object of correctness held as paramount ; and constant has been the 
 watch against fancy, either on the part of the delineator or the engraver. All other con- 
 siderations have been sacrificed to the attainment of accuracy ; and, on this account, 
 even improbable effects of light and shade have been admitted. Light upon all features 
 requiring delineation has been the rule ; for it would have been inconsistent with the 
 
4 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 object of affording an accurate representation of interesting details, to present them in 
 the obscurity of shade. The consequence of maintaining a system so fatal to Pictorial 
 effect as this, has rendered the engravings frequently crude, and there is not the polish 
 necessary to carry the multitude in their favour ; but there is the native vigour of the 
 originals — there is the truth, as far as the ability of the draughtsman could translate it ; 
 and this is their real value. 
 
 John Knox and his followers have the credit of destroying or damaging the ancient 
 churches of Scotland generally — a credit most unfairly and unjustly awarded. Doubt- 
 less there is much truly laid to the charge of that great star of the Reformation, and to 
 his satellites ; but their wrath was not against the Church — it was against what they 
 considered the idolatrous part of her doctrines. J ohn Knox was not the destroyer he is 
 represented. To the last hundred years Scotland can trace more destruction among her 
 Antiquities than ever occurred before ; and her own children, from no religious or party 
 prejudices, but from sheer motives of gain, have been the despoilers. Did the magnates 
 of the burgh want a few good feasts 1 — the funds were at hand, by an appropriation of 
 dressed stone from the ready-made quarry presented by the old cathedral or abbey. 
 Did the baronial leader, or the laird descended from him, want farmsteadings, stone-walls, 
 or cottars' houses built 1 — the old abbey or castle wall was immediately made use of. 
 Those who wish proof of this assertion may see its evidences either at the village of New 
 Abbey, near Dumfries, or in the dikes about Kildrummie, in Aberdeenshire. So strong, 
 indeed, was the desire for appropriating such precious spoils in Scotland, that even in a 
 report from a surveyor to the Government, some few years back, upon the cost of 
 some repairs to another building, the destruction of one of the most interesting Baronial 
 remains in the country was suggested, on account of the saving to be effected by using its 
 materials.* 
 
 The admirers of these corporate bodies are specially invited to examine any of the great 
 ruins in the ancient burghs. Do they present any masses of fallen or ivy-covered ruins % 
 We answer, No. There they are — fresh made, clean -picked, and naked skeletons — 
 standing rugged against the sky ; having all the hideousness of destruction, instead of the 
 picturesque beauty which invariably accompanies natural decay. They are, in fact, thus 
 mostly sham ruins ; and hence Scotland has more cockneyism in her old buildings than 
 all the rest of the United Kingdom, even if we place modern antiquities in the opposite 
 scale. 
 
 In reflecting upon these destructive acts of the higher powers, it is melancholy to observe 
 how completely the lesson has been learned by the peasantry. The former generally took 
 
 * We allude to the Earl's Palace at Kirkwall. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 the main buildings away, to build houses for the latter ; and these, in their turn, destroyed 
 the remainder, stone by stone, to sand the floors laid down by their landlords. Had a 
 better example been set, many a noble pile, too recently destroyed piecemeal in this 
 way, would have remained to swell the Antiquities of Scotland. But who can blame 
 the general population % They but followed the example which their superiors had 
 already set them. 
 
 We return for one moment to John Knox and his followers. Their destructive 
 instructions are clear, their motives unquestionable. The actions went beyond their 
 intentions ; but what reformer could ever stop the career of his followers 1 — could stem 
 the torrent at a moment's notice 1 Doubtless the powers set in motion by the Scottish 
 Reformation leaders went rapidly beyond their control, and ended in destruction. But 
 with this we have no concern. Let us look at the precise extent of the objects which the 
 leaders had in view. In our description of Dunkeld, the order for demolition is quoted ; 
 and now we ask attention to the preservative clause, which in all cases followed the order 
 — " And fail not, but ye tak gude heed that neither the desks, winnocks, nor doors, be any 
 ways hurt or broken, either stane wark, glassin wark, or iron wark." 
 
 In spite of Knox and his followers, of fire and sword, and of these yet more exten- 
 sive and modern devastations from the rapacity or the general indifference of the 
 population, from the earliest ages down to the present day, Scotland has many a mine 
 of architectural wealth remaining uuwrought, and literally day by day falling to waste. 
 Many edifices, of both historical and architectural interest, are silently disappearing from 
 the land, without even the existence of a drawing to recall their features in times to 
 come, when it will become, not a mere fashion, but a matter of deep interest and pride, 
 to preserve the only tangible objects which as visibly connect men with their prede- 
 cessors while living, as the kirkyard does invisibly when they mingle in death. 
 
 Scotland is not a poor country, although the general assertion is to the contrary. She 
 is rich in Antiquities, rich in the energy of her population, and rich in money too. Where 
 is the land whose acres bring a higher rental ? Where is the land whose sons realise 
 larger fortunes'? We, therefore, warn Scotland of the everlasting disgrace which the 
 neglect of her Stone Records is bringing, whether they be of ancient date or modern, 
 whether they consist of the dismembered remains of the old Trinity College Church 
 at Edinburgh, or the Partheuonical ruins which frown upon them from the summit 
 of the Caltou Hill. 
 
 Surely the mention of these matters should lead to a movement for results differing 
 from the ruinous course still proceeding. Surely there should be patriotism enough in 
 Scotland to effect something for preservation ; and those Scotchmen who originate the 
 
6 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 movement may be sure that they will raise monuments to themselves more enduring than 
 the National one which graces their capital. 
 
 The student of Scotch architecture will find, in the very outset of his inquiries, that he 
 can draw no conclusions as to dates from the form of the arch, because that feature is not 
 universally changed with the succeeding styles. Thus the semicircular arch, which else- 
 where is almost confined to the Norman period, (from 1050 to 1180, or thereabouts,) 
 exists in Scotland abundantly during all styles, whether we take the Norman door of 
 Dunfermline, or the late perpendicular example of the Melrose cloisters. Generally 
 speaking, then, it must be by attention to the detail of mouldings and foliated ornament 
 that the later period of Scotch buildings can be traced, although even this test must be 
 taken with caution, as the writer once met with the dog-tooth ornament — common during 
 the late Norman period — upon a castellated turret built after the year 1600. 
 
 For the earlier periods — that is, before the wars of the Bruce and Baliol commenced — 
 it may be taken as a rule that English and Scotch architecture were identical; that after 
 the commencement of hostilities, (which desolated both kingdoms, and ended only by the 
 accession of the " Scottish Solomon" to the English crown in 1603,) Scotch architecture, 
 Scotch alliances, nay, the very language, became deeply tinged by foreign imitation, or 
 rather adaptation, for in no instance were mere servile copies produced. From the year 
 1500 to 1660, or thereabouts, Scotland adopted the sterner features of French and 
 Flemish residences, and so cleverly mingled their peculiarities with the castellated archi- 
 tecture of her own growth, as to produce a Baronial style peculiar to the country. We 
 say, without fear of contradiction, that there is no mistaking a Scotch house of the period 
 named, for that of any other nation. 
 
 During the same time, the architecture of England, from the travels of her architects, 
 took its mixture of styles from Italian buildings ; and the styles of that country, mingled 
 with the ancient domestic architecture of England, produced the combination kuown as 
 Elizabethan — a style undoubtedly as original to the South, as the other adaptations are 
 to the North. 
 
 Scotland, most probably from its French affinities, retained the flowing tracery forms of 
 French architecture until the extinction of Gothic during the Reformation. Hence the 
 perpendicular style — known only in England generally, and so wonderfully wrought out in 
 the design of Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and King's College Chapel at 
 Cambridge' — really finds no parallel in Scotland, although the style exists there most 
 decidedly. If Melrose displays the flamboyant curves more immediately common to 
 France than England, it is equally interesting for perpendicular features ; and the 
 architect will look with especial admiration uoon the decorations of the great east window, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 whose mullions are unbroken from the base of the building to the arch above. The 
 eastern ends of Linlithgow and Stirling Churches are also undoubted examples of the 
 perpendicular style. 
 
 Singularly enough, however, none of the specimens of this style in Scotland exhibit its 
 main feature in England; i. e., the four-centred arch, which to all appearance never 
 crossed the Tweed, nor even the Border, though approaching it at Carlisle, where it exists 
 most decidedly. 
 
 Besides the peculiarities already named, there is one which must be closely watched, 
 to avoid deception. We allude to comparatively recent imitations of older styles. For 
 instance, what designs can be more in the spirit of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
 than the examples of Dairsie and Michael Kirk 1 ? Yet an inspection of their detail 
 shows that the family likeness is only preserved by " the lang pedigree," for both were 
 built after the year 1620. 
 
 A fruitful and interesting source of information on Scotch architecture lies in an 
 examination of changes of design and execution, resulting from the geological disposition 
 of materials in the different districts. Where the fine sandstone exists, as in Edinburgh 
 or Glasgow, nothing can exceed the beauty and extreme minuteness of execution resulting 
 from the chisel. In the whinstone districts, again, we see the ingenuity of the workman's 
 hammer displayed, and the bold masses of composition fully atone for the absence of 
 finish. Again, the effect produced in the granite country upon the stubborn material 
 with which the mason had to deal, by means of a tool combining those of both the former 
 workers, (a series of chisels screwed together,) is equally ingenious ; and the detail of the 
 Aberdeen buildings must be carefully examined, before the patient merits, showing such 
 results, can be appreciated. 
 
 As was said in opening this Introduction, subject after subject presses on the writer for 
 notice ; but he cannot even entertain them, for the limits assigned to him have now- 
 been reached. He therefore draws to a forced, and an unwilling conclusion. It would, 
 perhaps, have been well for the writer's personal position, had his labours for Scotland 
 stopped long since ; but he could not peril his own name, or the names of those who 
 were connected with him, by any violation of the pledge under which he and they had 
 originally come. And now, having accomplished to the full extent, both in fact and 
 m spirit, the task jointly undertaken, he quits the path he has so long been traversing, 
 and reluctantly bids the field of his labours farewell. 
 
 3 St Mary's Road, Canonbury, London, 
 February 29, 1852. 
 
3kratrial nt (Brrlesiostiral SUtit|ttitu0 nf ^rotlattii. 
 
 CONTENTS OP VOLUME I. 
 
 Plates. 
 No. 
 
 1. 
 
 3. 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 6. 
 7. 
 
 8. 
 
 9. 
 10. 
 11. 
 12. 
 13. 
 14. 
 
 15. 
 16. 
 17. 
 18. 
 19. 
 20. 
 
 21. 
 22. 
 23. 
 24. 
 
 25. 
 26. 
 27. 
 
 28. 
 29. 
 30. 
 31. 
 
 Abeebeothock Abbey, Forfar. — The Western Doorway 
 
 Interior of the West End 
 , ... ... ... Arcade above the Western Doorway 
 
 The South Transept. — Internally 
 
 , ... ... ... Woodcut: The Abbey Gateway 
 
 Abeedeen. — Old House on the School HQ1 . 
 
 King's College. — External View of the Lantern Tower, and Chapel 
 „ ... Interior of the Chapel, and Stallwork 
 „ ... Interior of the Library 
 
 „ ... Woodcut: Geometric Tracery Paneling of the Stalls 
 Cathedeal. — Western Towers . 
 
 „ ... Monuments in the North Transept 
 „ ... Interior of the Nave 
 Abeedottb House, Fife .... 
 Aibth Castle, Linlithgow 
 
 St. Andeew's Cathebeal, Fife. — The West Pront 
 
 „ ... ... Woodcut: Portion of the Nave 
 
 „ The Church of St. Eegulus 
 
 College Chubch. — External View. St. Salvator 
 
 „ ... Bishop Kennedy's Tomb 
 Attchan's Castle, Ayr. (For description, see Aberdour.) 
 Balveny Castle, Banff. — External View 
 „ ... Court Yard 
 
 „ ... Woodcut : Circular Window at Elgin 
 
 Boethwick Castle, Edinburgh. — External View 
 
 „ ... ... Interior of the Hall . 
 
 Beechin Cathedeal and Bound Towee, Forfar 
 Buegie Castle, Elgin, — Two Views 
 
 „ ... Woodcut : Termination of Staircase 
 
 Caerlaveeock Castle, Dumfries. — General View 
 
 „ ... ... Entrance Towers 
 
 „ The Court Yard . 
 
 „ ... .. Woodcuts: 1. Interior of Entrance Tower 
 
 „ ... ... „ 2. The Portcullis Eoom 
 
 Cambuseenneth Towee, Stirling .... 
 
 Castle Campbell, Clackmannan. — Distant View 
 „ The Court Yard 
 
 „ ... ... Interior of the Hall . 
 
 C stle Peasee — see Peaser Castle, Aberdeen. 
 Castle Stewaet — see Stewaht Castle, Inverness. 
 
 Pages of 
 Description. 
 
 } 
 
 y 2 
 
Slntipitita nf Itntlnni. 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1.— {continued.) 
 
 Plates. 
 No. 
 
 32. Cawdor Castle, Nairn. —The Entrance with Drawbridge 
 
 33. ... „ ... Back View .... 
 
 „ ... Woodcut: Vault with the Thorn stem, and Ancient Chest 
 
 34. Clackmannan Tower. — Principal Eront .... 
 
 „ ... Woodcut: Turrets and Battlements 
 
 35. Coldinghaii Priory, Berwick.— East End .... 
 
 36. ... ... „ ... ... Interior of the Clere Story . , 
 
 37. CoRSTORpniNE Church, Edinburgh. — 1. External View . 
 „ 2. The Forester's Tomb 
 
 38. Coxton Tower, Elgin. — View of the Principal Front . 
 
 „ ... ... Woodcut: The opposite side of the Tower 
 
 39. Craigietar Castle, Aberdeen. — North West View 
 
 40 , South West View 
 
 41 „ The Great Hall 
 
 42. ... ... „ ... ... Bed Boom, and Plans of Two Ceilings 
 
 ,. ... ... Woodcut: Termination of Tower and Turret 
 
 43. Craigmillar Castle, Edinburgh. — External View 
 
 44 „ The Great Hall 
 
 45. Craigstone Castle, Aberdeen ..... 
 4(3. Crathes Castle, Kincardine. — 1. External View. South West . . 
 
 47 „ 2. Court Yard View. North East 
 
 48 „ East Gable (Details) . 
 
 ■19. Crichton Castle, Edinburgh. — Distant View 
 
 50 „ The Court Yard 
 
 51. ... ... „ ... ... Ditto, with Arcade and Chequered wall 
 
 52. Crichton Church (View) with Border of Details from the Castle 
 
 53. Crossraguel Abbey, Ayr. — Exterior, South East 
 
 54 „ Interior of the East End . 
 
 55 „ The Chapter House, Interior 
 
 56 „ Entrance Tower to the Castle . . 
 
 „ Woodcut : Compartment of the Choir 
 
 57. Dairsie Church, Fife. — South East View .... 
 
 „ ... Woodcut: Corbelling of the Tower 
 
 58. Dalmeny Church, Linlithgow. — South East View 
 
 59 , The Porch .... 
 
 60. ... ... „ ... ... Interior View, looking East . 
 
ABBEY OF ABERBROTHOCK. 
 
 The traveller by sea, along the east coast of Scotland, is liable to be reminded with startling 
 emphasis of the demolition to which the ecclesiastical architecture of the country has been subjected. 
 Leaving behind him on his northward course the fragments of the metropolitan cathedral of St 
 Andrews, he crosses a wide arm of the sea, and when he again approaches the shore, the objects 
 most prominent against the sky are the still more disastrously shattered remnants of the great 
 abbey of Aberbrothock. One lofty fragment presents in its centre a circle, doubtless once filled with 
 richly moulded mullions and stained glass, but through which the blue sky is now visible. This 
 vacant circle is the only symmetrical form in these lofty masses that at a distance strikes the eye 
 — all else is shapeless and fragmentary. Around these huge unsightly vestiges of ancient mag- 
 nificence the types of modern comfort and commercial wealth cluster thickly, in the shape of a 
 small but busy manufacturing town, with its mills, tall chimneys, and rows of substantial houses. 
 
 The ruins, which are interesting only in their details, scarcely present a more inviting general 
 aspect as they are approached. Nearing them from the High Street of the burgh, the first promi- 
 nent object is a grim, strong, square tower, the sole remaining complete edifice of the great 
 establishment, now used as a butcher's shop. It was not perhaps without design that this formidable 
 building was so placed as to frown over the dwellings of the industrious burghers — it was the prison 
 of the regality of the abbey — the place of punishment or detention through which a judicial power, 
 scarcely inferior to that of the royal courts, was enforced by this potent brotherhood ; and thus it 
 served to remind the world without, that the coercive power of the abbot and his chapter was 
 scarcely inferior to their spiritual dignity and their temporal magnificence. Passing onward, the 
 whole scene is found to be a chaos of ruin. Fragments of the church, with those of the cloisters 
 and other monastic edifices, rise in apparently inseparable confusion from the grassy ground ; but, 
 with a little observation, the cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and then its disjointed 
 masses reduce themselves into connected details. The dark-red stone of which the building 
 was constructed is friable, and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary 
 winds of the north-east coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus wofully obliterated, and 
 the facings are so much decayed as to leave the original surface distinguishable only here and there. 
 At comparatively late periods large masses of the ruins have fallen down ; and Pennant mentions 
 such an event as having taken place just before he visited the spot. This palpable progress towards 
 the complete extinction of the relics of one of the finest Gothic buildings in Scotland, certainly ren- 
 dered it not only justifiable but highiy praiseworthy that the Exchequer should make some effort for 
 preserving so much of the pile as was preservable. Restoration was not to be expected — the pre- 
 servation of the existing fragments was all that could be reasonably looked for. It must be con- 
 fessed, however, that the operations, by means of which this service was accomplished, have given 
 no picturesque aid to the mass of ruins, but have rather introduced a new element of discordance 
 and confusion, in the contrast between the cold, flat, new surfaces of masonry and the rugged, 
 weathcrbeaten ruins in which they are embodied. 
 
 Abbey ov Abebbroteock. 1 — 6. 
 
 REFERENCE 
 
2 
 
 ABBEY OP ABEEBROTHOCK. 
 
 There are few buildings in which the Norman and the early English are so closely blended, and 
 the transition so gentle. The great western door has the Norman arch, with an approach to the 
 later types in some of its rather peculiar mouldings, while the broad and equally peculiar gallery 
 above it — the only interior portion of the church remaining in a state of preservation — shows the 
 pointed arch, with all the simplicity of the Norman pillar and capital. All the material fragments 
 of the church now remaining are represented in the four accompanying plates, from which as full an 
 idea of the shape and character of the remains may be derived as the visitor could acquire on the 
 spot. It will be seen that over the gallery, at the western end of the nave, there widens the lower 
 arc of a circular window, which must have been of great size. The only portions of the aisle win- 
 dows still existing are on the south side of the nave. None of the central pillars remain, but their 
 bases have been carefully laid bare : and it is supposed, from the greater size of those at the meeting 
 of the cross, that here there had been a great central tower. 
 
 Among the tombs of more modern date, in the grave-yard near the church, there are many 
 which bear sculptural marks of a very remote antiquity ; and among the ornaments they present, 
 the primitive form of the cross is conspicuous. During the operations for cleaning out the ruins, 
 which were conducted under the authority of the Exchequer in 1815,* some pieces of monumental 
 sculpture were discovered, two of which are curious and remarkable. The one is the mutilated 
 figure of a dignified churchman — probably an abbot. The head, the hands — which appear to have 
 been clasped — and the feet, are broken off and lost ; but the fragment thus truncated has much 
 appearance of grace in the folds of the drapery and the disposition of the limbs, while a series of 
 rich ceremonial ornaments appear to have been brought out with great force and minuteness. The 
 other figure, still more mutilated, is simpler in the ordinary details, but has attached to it some 
 adjuncts which have perplexed the learned. The feet appear to have rested on the effigy of a beast, 
 the remains of which indicate it to have represented a lion. It has, from this circumstance, been 
 inferred that the statue was that of William the Lion, the founder of the abbey. The figure has, 
 however, been attired in flowing robes, and a purse hangs from the girdle. But the portions of this 
 fragment which chiefly contributed to rouse curiosity, are some incrustations, which had at first the 
 appearance of the effigies of lizards crawling along the main figure. It was supposed that these 
 reptiles were intended to embody the idea of malevolent spirits, and that the piece of sculpture 
 might have been designed to represent a myth, probably in reference to the machinations of the 
 infernal world. But, upon a closer inspection, it was found that these tiny figures represented 
 pigmy knights in armour, scrambling, as it were, up the massive figure. One appears to be strug- 
 gling with the drapery below ; another has reached the waist ; and the fracture, which is across the 
 shoulder, leaves dangling the mailed heels of two others, which must have reached the neck. Is it 
 possible that there can be here any reference to the slaughter of Becket, to whom the abbey was 
 dedicated ? 
 
 * New Stat Account, t'orfar, p. 8u. 
 
ABBEY OF ABERBROTHOCK. 
 
 3 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The historical circumstances connected with the foundation of this monastic institution arc 
 remarkable. It was founded and endowed by William the Lion, King of Scots, in the year 1178, 
 and dedicated to St Thomas a Becket, the martyr of the principle of ecclesiastical supremacy, whose 
 slaughter at the high altar of Canterbury cathedral occurred in 1170, and who was canonised in 
 1173. This great establishment, richly endowed, was thus a magnificent piece of homage by the 
 Scottish King to a principle which, especially under the bold and uncompromising guidance of its 
 great advocate, had sorely perplexed and baffled his royal neighbour on the English throne, and 
 boded future trouble and humiliation to all thrones and temporal dignities. Much antiquarian 
 speculation has been exerted, but without very obvious success, to fathom the motives for this act 
 of munificence. William had invaded those parts of the north of England which were previously 
 held in a species of feudality by the Kings of Scotland, and was disgracefully defeated at Alnwick, 
 and committed to captivity, just at the time when the English monarch, whose forces accomplished 
 the victory and capture, was enduring his humiliating penance at the tomb of the canonised arch- 
 bishop. Lord Hailes, who says that " William was personally acquainted with Becket, when there 
 was little probability of his ever becoming a confessor, martyr, and saint," endeavouring to discover 
 a motive for the munificence of the Scottish King, continues to say — " Perhaps it was meant as a 
 public declaration that he did not ascribe his disaster at Alnwick to the ill-will of his old friend. He 
 may, perhaps, have been hurried by the torrent of popular prejudices into the belief that his disaster 
 proceeded from the partiality of Becket towards the penitent Henry ; and he might imagine that if 
 equal honours were done in Scotland to the new saint as in England he might, on future occasions, 
 observe a neutrality."* It is remarkable that several of the early chroniclers allude to this friend- 
 ship between the Scottish monarch, who was a resolute champion of temporal authority, and the 
 representative of ecclesiastical supremacy. On this subject the learned editor of the muniments 
 of the Abbey says : — 
 
 " Was this the cause, or was it the natural propensity to extol him who, living and dead, had 
 humbled the crown of England, that led William to take Saint Thomas as his patron saint, and to 
 entreat his intercession when he was in greatest trouble ? Or may we consider the dedication 
 of his new Abbey, and his invocation of the martyr of Canterbury, as nothing more than signs of 
 the rapid spreading of the veneration for the new saint of the high church party, from which his 
 old opponent himself was not exempt ? " f 
 
 Princes maybe induced, by personal circumstances, to change their views, and in the times when 
 they were not controlled by responsible ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. 
 It is quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was partial to church 
 ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. 
 This King's disputes with the church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of his own 
 dominions had a spiritual war against the English hierarchy, who asserted a claim to exercise 
 metropolitan authority over them ; and it might have been supposed that William, if he sought to 
 
 * Annals, 1178. 
 
 t Preface to Itegistrum dc Abcr-Brothoc, edited for the Bannatyne Club, by Cosmo Innes, Esq. 
 
4 
 
 ABBEY OF ABERBROTHOCK. 
 
 humble Ills own clergy, would have found it politic to favour the pretensions of those of England. 
 But the interests of the two clerical bodies became in the end united. Thus the war which had so 
 long raged in England, passed towards the north, with this difference, that the King of Scots had 
 to encounter not only his own native hierarchy, but the victorious church of England, just elated 
 by its triumph over Henry. The Chapter of St Andrews had elected a person to be their 
 bishop, not acceptable to William, who desired to give the chair to his own chaplain. The King 
 seized the temporalities, and prevailed on the other bishops to countenance his favourite. The 
 bishop- elect appealed to Rome. Pope Alexander III. issued legatine powers over Scotland to the 
 Archbishop of York, who, along with the Bishop of Durham, after an ineffectual war of minor 
 threats and inflictions, excommunicated the King, and laid the kingdom under interdict. At this 
 point Alexander III. died, and the new pope thought it wise to make concessions to an uncompro- 
 mising adversary in a rude and distant land, who had shown himself possessed of an extent of 
 temporal power sufficient to counteract the power of Rome, even among the ecclesiastics them- 
 selves. 
 
 It was before this great feud commenced that the Abbey was founded ; but during its continuance 
 the institution received, from whatever motives, many tokens of royal favour, as well as precious 
 gifts from the great barons. Among the list of benefactors we find many of those old Norman 
 names, which cease to be associated with Scottish history after the war of independence. It is a 
 still more striking instance of the community of interest between the two kingdoms anterior to this 
 Avar, that while we find a Scottish king devoting a great monastic establishment to the memory 
 of an English prelate, we should find an English king conferring special privileges and immunities 
 within his realm on the Scottish brotherhood. The Charter of Privileges, of which the following is 
 a translation, was granted by King John in 1204. It will be seen that it has been drawn so as 
 carefully to evade the vexed question of the independence of Scotland. 
 
 " John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine and of Anjou, 
 to the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciares, Sheriffs, Magistrates, Officers of 
 the Law, and all faithful subjects in our realm — happiness. Wit ye us, by the grace of God, and 
 on the application of the Lord William, King of Scotland, to have granted, and by this our 
 charter to have confirmed, to the abbots, monks, and citizens of Aberbrothock, that they may sell 
 their proper goods, and buy for their own proper uses, what they please, throughout our whole 
 territories, quit of all tax or any other custom which pertains to us, saving the privileges of the 
 city of London. Wherefore our will is, and we strictly command that the foresaid abbots, 
 monks, and citizens, may sell their own proper goods, and buy for their own proper use what 
 they please, through our whole territories, as aforesaid, freely and without molestation. Given 
 at Carlisle the 19th day of February, and of our reign the seventh year."* 
 
 The abbey was founded for Tyronesian monks, and the parent stock whence it received its 
 first inmates was the old abbey of Kelso. In the year of the foundation, Reginald, elected 
 " Abbot of the Church of St Thomas," was, with his convent, released of all subjection and 
 obedience to the abbot and convent of Kelso. The church was completed and consecrated under 
 the abbacy of Ralph de Lamley, in 1233. Aberbrothock was one of those ecclesiastical institutions 
 immediately connected with the spread of the Roman hierarchy, which gradually sucked up the 
 curious pristine establishment of the Culdees ; and the muniments of the Abbey thus afford some 
 traces of the character and history of this religious body, at least towards the period of their 
 
 * Registrum, p. 330. 
 
ABBEY OF ABERBROTHOCK. 
 
 5 
 
 extinction. Thus, while the church of Abernethy, an ancient seat of the Culdees, is granted by 
 King William to his new foundation, Ornie of Abernethy, who is also styled Abbot of Abernethy, 
 grants the half of the tithes of the property of himself and his heirs, the other half of which 
 belongs to the Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a strictly ecclesiastical character are 
 made by the same document. Thus we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs — a counter- 
 part to those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which frequently puzzle the anti- 
 quary in his researches through early Scottish ecclesiastical history. In reference to this the 
 editor of the Cartulary says — 
 
 " These charter evidences help out the obscure indications in our older chroniclers, of a race of 
 church nobles, hereditary heads of religious houses, and taking rank among the highest of lay 
 magnates. When we read that the ancient dynasty of our kings (before the wars of the Suc- 
 cession) sprang from the marriage of Bethoc, a daughter of Malcolm II. with Crinan, abbot of 
 the Columbite family of Dunkeld — that Ethelred, a son of Malcolm Canmore, Abbot of Dun- 
 keld, was also Earl of Fife, our best historians have evaded the embarrassment by questioning 
 the authority of the chronicler, and it has not hitherto been suspected that there were proofs 
 of another house of Culdees, even surviving St David's church revolution, having its hereditary 
 abbot, and styling himself and acting as Lord of the Abbey territory." 
 
 The Abbot of Aberbrothock possessed a peculiar privilege, the origin of which is in some 
 measure associated with the Culdees, — the custody of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner 
 of St Columba. The lands of Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to Adomnan the 
 biographer of Columba, were gifted for the maintenance of the banner. The privilege was conferred 
 on the Abbey by King William, but as it inferred the warlike service of following the banner to 
 the King's host, the actual custody was held by laymen, the Abbey enjoying the pecuniary 
 advantages attached to the privilege, as religious houses drew the temporalities of churches served 
 by vicars. 
 
 It will readily be believed that this, one of the richest and most magnificent monastic insti- 
 tutions in Scotland, numbered many eminent men among its abbots, who from time to time 
 connect it with the early history of Scotland. It is even associated with a literature that has 
 survived to the present day, in having been presided over by Gavin Douglas, the translator of 
 Virgil. The two Beatons, Cardinal David and Archbishop James, also successively its abbots, give 
 it a more ambiguous reputation. At the Reformation, the wealth of the Abbey was converted into 
 a temporal lordship, in favour of Lord Claude Hamilton, third son of the Duke of Chatelherault, 
 and the greater part of the temporalities came, in the seventeenth century, into the hands of the 
 Panmure family. 
 
 In a tradition immortalised by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said that the abbots of Aberbrothock, 
 in their munificent humanity, preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German 
 Ocean, which is supposed to have received its name of the " Bell Rock " from the peculiar charac- 
 ter of the warning machinery of which the abbot made use. 
 
 " The Abbot of Aberbrothock 
 
 Had placed that bell on the Inchcapc rock, 
 On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, 
 And over the waves its warning rung. 
 
 When the rock was hid by the surge's swell, 
 The mariners heard the warning bell ; 
 And then they knew the perilous rock, 
 And bless'd the Abbot of Aberbrothock.." 
 
6 
 
 ABBEY OF ABERBROTHOCK. 
 
 The tradition represents a rover, in the recklessness of prosperity and sunshine, cutting the bell- 
 rope, and afterwards returning in foul weather to be shipwrecked on the rock from which he had 
 impiously removed the warning beacon. No evidence of the existence of the bell is found in the 
 records of the Abbey ; and on the subject of its wanton removal, the sagacious engineer of the 
 Northern Lights says, " It in no measure accords with the respect and veneration entertained by 
 seamen of all classes for landmarks; more especially as there seems to be no difficulty in accounting 
 for the disappearance of such an apparatus, unprotected, as it must have been, from the raging ele- 
 ment of the sea." * 
 
 * Stevenson on the Bell Rock Lighthouse, 69. 
 
Mirum by AM 
 
INTERIOR 01" THE WEST END. 
 
GALLERY OVKK THK WESTERN ENTRANCE. 
 
ABERDEEN:— STREET ARCHITECTURE IN THE 
 
 SCHOOLHILL. 
 
 The street architecture of the Scottish towns has not obtained so much attention as its peculia- 
 rities and merits entitle it to. It has often been remarked, that if the tide of prosperity were to 
 desert London, and the population to leave it, in a very few years it would present nothing but a 
 huge heap of brick-dust, with here and there a stone ruin rising through the mass. If the same fate 
 should overtake all our cities together, the very last to lose its original shape and structure would 
 be Aberdeen, where all the domestic as well as the public edifices are built of that indestructible 
 material, granite, which has left us the edifices of the ancient Egyptians fresh and clean after 
 three thousand years have passed over them. The brick and timber towns of England undergo 
 a perpetual reproduction, which sweeps away the vestiges of early domestic architecture, and 
 adjusts everything to the tastes and habits of the time being. The very oldest streets of London 
 have an air of yesterday about them — a brick-and-plaster newness that tells of recent origin, and 
 points to quick decay. In the Northern towns, on the other hand, many of the streets and lanes 
 are old fortifications — living memorials of the day when the Scotsman's house was literally his 
 castle. Modernisation may be more useful for domestic ease and for sanitary purposes, but our 
 old stone streets have the decided superiority in picturesqueness and interest. 
 
 The gloomy masses of the Old Town of Edinburgh are well known ; but they derive their interest 
 almost entirely from their size and remarkable position : very few of them have architectural 
 merits. It would seem as if the extraordinary height of the houses, caused by the necessity of 
 keeping within the walls, interfered with any attempts at ornament. In the architecture of the 
 time the decoration was nearly all on the top of the building ; and as the highest flat or 
 house, in the upright street called a common stair, was generally occupied by the poorest family 
 of the group, it was not likely that much needless expense would be laid out on it. In the other 
 towns, however, where the neighbouring gentry had separate edifices for their town-houses or 
 hotels, they were often as richly decorated with masonry as their country mansions. Of such 
 buildings we have specimens in Stirling, Dundee, Greenock, Maybole, Elgin, and especially in 
 Aberdeen. In other places the town-house or tolbooth may be the only specimen, on a considerable 
 scale, of this interesting national system of architecture ; and the numerous decayed villages — 
 especially those which skirt Fifeshire — present a variety of such lightly castellated edifices as are 
 seen in the illuminated illustrations of Froissart. Though most of them are derived from the 
 French school, yet they follow a variety of foreign types : for instance, there is an old belfry on the 
 town-house of Inverkeithing of very pure Palladian. 
 
 Aberdeen is remarkable for the number of private dwellings ornamented by that light, 
 graceful, angular turret which was adapted from the French chateau architecture ; and they are 
 a lasting and striking memorial of the extent to which, before the union of the Crowns, the 
 habits and ideas of our Continental allies were finding their way into the most distant parts of 
 Scotland. The house in the accompanying Plate is a very pleasing and picturesque specimen of 
 this style. There are several others in the old parts of the town,— as in the Gallowgate, the 
 
 Aberdeen ; — Street Architecture in tub Scuoolhill, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 ABERDEEN: — STREET ARCHITECTURE IN THE SCHOOLIIILL. 
 
 Castlegate, the Shiprow, and the Nether Kirkgate, with a large quadrangular edifice in the Guest- 
 row, supposed to have been the bishop's town residence. The disposal of these old streets shows 
 that our ancestors were not so utterly ignorant as they are supposed to have been of the art of 
 congregating numbers into towns with the smallest sacrifice of health and convenience. The 
 place chosen for a town was generally the ridge of a hill. The main street might be narrow 
 enough, but its houses had the open country and free air on the other side, and the central market- 
 place — the only street surrounded by others — was generally broad and airy. On the slopes of 
 the hill, usually outside the wall, the citizens had their gardens, with large summer-houses at 
 their extremities. Of this disposal specimens may yet be seen in Aberdeen. The Gallowgate 
 is sufficiently crowded and filthy, to be sure ; but on either side its inhabitants had — as many of 
 them still have — gardens stretching into the country. 
 
 The inquiries of local antiquaries have failed to throw any light on the old mansion in 
 the Schoolhill, the object of the accompanying engraving; and there remains nothing but a 
 tradition — probably founded on its vicinity to the church and Kirkgate — that it was the manse 
 of St Nicholas. Over the arched doorway there is a Latin inscription — Domus optima cosh. 
 Its elliptical form is a sore puzzle to the junior students of the neighbouring grammar-school, 
 where Byron first imbibed Latin ; and the venerable building has been, to the successive 
 generations of schoolboys who have trooped passed it, an object of admiration and mysterious awe. 
 The corners produced by the projecting tower afforded, of old, snug accommodation to certain well- 
 known mendicants ; and one of these recesses was the favourite resort of a brawny, bawling, old blind 
 sailor, who was known by the formidable title of " Thunder and Lightning." He obtained this 
 designation from a never-failing feature in a tale of horrors and misfortunes, which he roared forth 
 from his favourite corner in a manner that left few passers-by the excuse of remaining ignorant of 
 them. The invariable climax of his statement was, that he had lost his " precious eyesight at 
 Kingston, in Jamaica, with a heavy flash of thunder and lightning." The old man had a failing 
 which, like the infirmities of mendicants in general, contributed in a great measure to his income : 
 If interrupted in any part of his narrative, he would resume it precisely where he had left off. 
 The schoolboy's great hit was to interrupt him by tossing a coin into his hat just as he came to his 
 climax, so that it might immediately follow the intercalary blessing, thus : " Heaven bless and 
 reward you, my dear young friend — with a heavy flash of thunder and lightning." Whether the 
 old man knew what he was about in all this, it might be hard to say ; but many an urchin sacrificed 
 the coin, which purer principles of charity would not have extracted, to procure this equivocal 
 benediction. 
 
IT El IE OCEI©©]L EIEJL.IL., AraiElR]D)IElRH 
 
i 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. 
 
 No other building in Scotland exhibits the same cloister-like repose as this old college, whether 
 its pinnacles be seen from a distance clustering over the trees, or the footsteps tread its echoing 
 court. For five months of the year it is indeed the noisy resort of a student crowd, whose scarlet 
 robes, worn with more ease than dignity, give a fantastic gaiety to the scene, strangely in contrast 
 with its original solemnity ; but when this mob has taken flight early in spring, nothing can be 
 more sweetly silent than the old carved chapel and the deserted courtyard. The architecture is 
 peculiar. A line of buildings, adjoining to the tower and facing the streetj is a modern addition, 
 which, unfortunately, has been raised in the English perpendicular style, instead of that which 
 was common in Scotland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The features of the original 
 building have been derived from an observation of French architecture, yet are decidedly national. 
 The retention of the semicircular arch, observable in Scotland at the time when the pointed or 
 ogee form was almost exclusively used in England, is here a remarkable characteristic. The 
 lantern of crossed rib arches, springing from a tower, which the northern architects appear to have 
 derived from edifices in the style and character of the tower of Antwerp Cathedral, is here exhi- 
 bited in more marked and stern simplicity than either at Newcastle or Edinburgh, where the 
 specimens partake more of the spiral character. The royal crown perched on the meeting key- 
 stones adjusts an imitation of reality with great felicity to the tone of Gothic architecture. But 
 the interest of this building is not entirely confined to the more conspicuous parts. In wandering 
 about its precincts, one enters mouldering courtyards or old cloistered neuks, which more forcibly 
 bring us back to the Scotland of the Stuarts, than they would were they either more ruinous, 
 or kept in more distinctly high repair. 
 
 The great glory of King's College, however, is the wood-work of its chapel. Its main features 
 are a double row of canopied stalls, with miserere seats and a lofty open screen, now somewhat 
 injured in its effect by a wall which partitions off the nave of the chapel as a library. The carving 
 throughout is of the most gorgeous and delicate kind, and it is as clean and sharp as if it were 
 fresh from the knife. The diversities of the traceried panels are infinite in variety, and 
 their extreme delicacy is relieved not inharmoniously by the massiveness and boldness of the 
 projections. The predominating tone of the designs is architectural, and they all tend to support 
 the observations made in connexion with the tomb of Archbishop Kennedy at St Andrews about 
 the predominance of architecture over the other arts of the middle ages, and the mere ancillary 
 character of carving, painting, and other decorative arts. In fact, these panels contain a multi- 
 tude of rich designs for Gothic windows, the French flamboyant style chiefly preponderating 
 through them. A pulpit of the seventeenth century, not in itself a discreditable piece of work, 
 shows how wood-carving degenerated when the Gothic models were abandoned. On the whole, it 
 may be stated that there is no wood-work in Scotland capable of a moment's comparison with the 
 stalls of King's College, nor will many English specimens rival them. Such productions are 
 chiefly to be seen in the Flemish churches ; and perhaps the excellence of the wood-work in Aberdeen 
 and in Belgium may be attributed to one and the same cause — the costliness of stone decorations. 
 King's College, Aberdeen, 1—4. 
 
2 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. 
 
 This arises, in Aberdeen, not from the absolute, but the relative want of material. There is abun- 
 dance of granite in the district ; but, at the time when the college was built, it was not considered 
 capable of being applied to decoration, though it had been so used a century or two earlier, and has 
 been very richly worked within the past few years. Freestone, which must have been conveyed 
 from a considerable distance, is the material of the chapel and tower ; and it is probable that its 
 absence on the spot made the Aberdeen workmen less capable of its decoration than those who 
 raised Roslin or Melrose. 
 
 The general state of the preservation of this fine carved work is creditable to the district, when it 
 is remembered that the edifice has, for more than three hundred years, been devoted to the services 
 of a considerable body of young men. One observes, however, with regret, that the beautiful 
 crossed tracery on the roof is suffering from damp, especially that portion of it which covers the 
 library. Unless those in charge be successful in obtaining funds to meet the expense of an 
 effective repair, it is clear that a considerable collection of books, and some fine specimens of medi- 
 eval art, will be exposed to great danger. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 This university and college was erected in 1494 by a bull of Pope Alexander VI., and partly 
 owed its erection to the worthy zeal of James IV. for the enlightenment of the northern part of his 
 dominions. The bull, in the usual terms, instituted a general study, or university, for teaching 
 theology, canon and civil law, medicine, and polite literature, with all the privileges enjoyed by the 
 Universities of Paris and Bologna. It was not, however, until the year 1505 that the foundation 
 or constitution was drawn up by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, an enlightened patron 
 of learning. It was dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary. " It was to compre- 
 hend thirty-six ordinary members, the chief of whom was to be a master of theology, if one 
 could be obtained, or, failing this, a licentiate of that faculty, who within a year was to take 
 his degree, and who was to be styled principal, all the members of the university yielding 
 obedience to him. After him were the doctors of canon and civil law, and of medicine, or 
 licentiates in these respective faculties. The fifth member was to be a master of arts, to be 
 called a regent, and constituted sub-principal ; and the sixth was another master of arts, whose 
 province it was to teach the elements of literature. These seem to have been the permanent 
 members of the college ; and, with the exception of the doctor of medicine, they were to be eccle- 
 siastics. Five masters of arts, who were to study theology, and who were also in holy orders, 
 were appointed, but they were to hold their situations only for a certain number of years ; as 
 were also, although for a different period, thirteen poor scholars of respectable talents and pro- 
 ficiency in the speculative sciences, who were to be elected as students of arts."* Such was the 
 meagre commencement of the system intended to enlighten the intellectual darkness of the distant 
 and barbarous north. It is worthy of remark that, to this day, although there is a parallel 
 institution, only a mile distant, in Marischal College, Bishop Elphinstone's foundation per- 
 forms its original function of diffusing education through distant and semi-barbarous districts. 
 While the young men of Aberdeen and its vicinity chiefly frequent Marischal College, those who 
 
 * Keport of Commissioners on the Scottish Universities, p. 305. 
 
KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. 
 
 3 
 
 come for education from the distant recesses of the Highlands are almost invariably attracted to 
 the old gray walls of its elder brother. In 1529 the foundation was considerably increased under 
 the auspices of its munificent endower. 
 
 This university seems to have partaken of the partly monastic partly eleemosynary character 
 which pervaded the educational institutions of the age. Much scandal has been thought to attach 
 to the state of education in Scotland by a clause in an old act of parliament classing among 
 illegal and sturdy mendicants " all vagabond scholars of the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, 
 and Aberdeen, not licensed by the rector and dean of faculty of the university." But the same 
 characteristics pervaded the other universities of the day, and were not foreign even to the 
 magnificent institutions of England. An article in the regulations, prohibitory of public inde- 
 corums and of armed encounters, is, at the same time, as curiously descriptive of the manners 
 of all such institutions as of this particular one.* A Scotsman of the early part of the 
 seventeenth century, named David Camerarius or Chambers, has left a very magnificent account 
 of the wealth of the establishment and its fine discipline ; but it is evident that he was actuated 
 more by the desire of national glory than a strict regard to truth, for he tells us that there are six 
 colleges, of which King's — which he not inaccurately describes — is but one, and he evidently fills up 
 the list by enumerating the several classes, or departments of instruction there pursued, which give 
 him the Physician's College, the College of Jurisprudence, &c. His appreciation of what must 
 have been his native seat of learning is very different from that of his foreign contemporary, 
 Freher, who, in his Theatrum Clarorum Virorum, introduces Aberdeen as a place celebrated for 
 its two universities and the multitude of its salmon. And yet all its glory must have been sadly 
 dimmed in the eyes of Camerarius, who, being a vehement Roman Catholic, had to record 
 of what he calls its magnificent library — Sed (quod dolendum est) cum hceresi furente, religiosa 
 omnia profanata suit, et ilia etiam, a Sathance, ministellis, paftim combusta, partim in cloacas injecta 
 cernitur.^ 
 
 Bishop Elphinstone left considerable estates to his favourite institution, and at the period of the 
 Reformation it was rich in houses and lands. It might, perhaps, have at this day vied with the 
 great colleges of England, but it was deprived of much of its property through the grasping spirit 
 of Queen Mary's courtiers. It received some countenance and protection from Charles I. In the 
 year 1641 he granted a charter incorporating with it the Marischal College, and appointing both 
 to form part of " the Caroline University," a title adopted from his own name. This arrangement 
 was confirmed by act of parliament. Cromwell, who was munificent to learning, confirmed the 
 incorporation, and largely increased the revenues of the university. But after the Restoration, 
 not only were the Protector's proceedings generally annulled, but all acts of the last few years of 
 Charles the First's reign were rescinded, as granted under the pressure of unlawful power ; and the 
 colleges were thus again disunited, the older taking the name of King's College, from the counte- 
 nance given to it by Charles I. J 
 
 A curious painting preserved in the college, with other delineations, show us the appearance it 
 
 * " Item volumus et ordinamus ut omnes in dicto collegio, tarn majores quam minores, boncste vivant. Prohibimua 
 ac interdicimus, in virtute sanctse obediential ut non babcant publicas concubinas, ncc, iufradictum collegium aut univer- 
 sitatem antedictam, anna gladios sou digas portent, clam seu palam. Non sint noctivagi, lenoncs, aut scurri vagabundi, 
 sed bonis moribus et studiis optimis dediti et occupati."— Report of Commissioners on the Scottish Universities, p. 307. 
 
 + De Scotorum Fortitudine, Doctrina, et Pietate, p. 57. 
 
 % Ibid., New Statistical Account, Aberdeen, p. 1141. 
 
4 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. 
 
 had in the seventeenth century. Its form was a complete quadrangle, with two additional towers, 
 part of one of which still remains. These towers appear to have been surmounted by pinnacles of 
 a very curious kind, more like Oriental than British architecture, and it is to be regretted that they 
 have not been preserved. The painting is traditionally attributed to George Jameson, "the 
 Scottish Vandyke," who studied with that great painter under Rubens, and it is the only landscape 
 with which his name is connected. The walls of both King's and Marischal College display many 
 specimens of his skill as a portrait-painter ; and a set of female heads from his brush, called « The 
 Sibyls," hanging in a row in the hall of King's College, attract the notice of every observer by a 
 certain sweet, fantastic airiness in the ideas, and a delicacy in the touch. 
 
. Drvxmby RWBHUngs . Engraved by GB Smith. 
 
 JONGS C©L1LIB<S$ , AJBJMSIDJIOGN 
 
THE CATHEDRAL OF ST MACHAR, ABERDEEN. 
 
 In the bustling manufacturing town which has lately become, and is likely for some time to 
 remain, the extreme northern point of our great system of railway communication, a venerable 
 cathedral, surrounded by trees, with a pleasant river sweeping past it, is scarcely an expected 
 sight. But the two divisions of Aberdeen — the old and the new town — are as unlike each other 
 as Canterbury and Manchester. The old town, or " Alton," as it is locally termed, is not the 
 most ancient part of a city of different periods, around which its modern streets and squares have 
 ramified. It is a distinct hamlet or village, at some distance from the city, and edged away in 
 privacy apart from the great thoroughfares connecting the manufacturing centre with other districts 
 of the country. Its houses are venerable, standing generally in ancient gardens ; and save that 
 the beauty and tranquillity of the spot have led to the erection of a few pleasant modern villas, 
 dotting it here and there, whoever treads the one echoing street of the Alton for the first time, 
 feels that two centuries must have brought very little external change to the objects by which he 
 is surrounded. In this pristine place, the short-spiked steeples, and the broad-slated roof, of the 
 old cathedral of St Machar may be seen rising over a cluster of fine old trees which top the sloping 
 bank of the winding Don, from the opposite shore of which the whole scene — comprehending the 
 river, the sloping banks, the trees, and the grey old church — makes a very perfect landscape, rather 
 English than Scottish in its aspect. 
 
 A near approach develops something very peculiar in the character of this edifice. It bears 
 throughout unmistakeable marks of age, but none of decay. It is grey with the weather-wearing 
 of centuries, but it displays none of the mouldering vestiges of Time's decaying fingers; nor yet has 
 it that prim air of good keeping which shows, in treasured antiquities, that careful hands have 
 sedulously restored each feature that age may have injured. It is clear that the completeness of 
 detail — the clean outlines — the hard, unworn surfaces — are characteristics of innate strength, and 
 connect themselves with the causes of a certain northern sternness and rigidity in the general 
 architectural design. 
 
 The secret of all these peculiarities is to be found in the nature of the material, which is gra- 
 nite — the same that has handed down to us, through thousands of years, the cold stony eyes of the 
 sphynx, precisely as the chisel last touched them — and retains, to the wonder of the Londoners, 
 the glittering lustre of the polished cheeks of Rameses. The stern nature of the primitive rock — 
 obdurate alike to the chisel and to time — has entirely governed the character of the architecture ; 
 and, while it has precluded lightness and decoration, has given opportunities for a certain gloomy 
 dignity. About the porch, one or two niches, and other small details, have been decorated ; but, 
 as if the artist had abandoned the task of chiselling his obdurate materials as a vain one, ornament 
 goes no farther, and all the architectural effects are the fruit of bold design. Such, for instance, is 
 the great west window — not mullioned, but divided by long massive stone shafts into seven arched 
 compartments ; such, too, is the low-browed doorway beneath, with its heavy semicircular arch. 
 The upper tier of windows — here called storm windows, perhaps as a corruption of dormer — are 
 The Cathedral of St Machar, Aberdeen, 1—4. 
 
2 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ST MACHAE, ABEEDEEN. 
 
 the plain unmoulded arch, such as one sometimes sees it in unadorned buildings of the earlier 
 Norman period. Indeed, though the building dates from the second age of the pointed style, it 
 associates itself, in some of its features, very closely with the relics of the Norman age, especially 
 in the short massive round pillars which support the clerestory. The roof, with its carving, gilding, 
 and bright heraldic colours, is in thorough contrast with the rest of the architecture, and the eye 
 gratefully relieves itself from the gloom below, by wandering over its quaint devices and gaudy 
 hues. It is divided into three longitudinal departments, pannelled with richly carved oak ; and at 
 each intersection of the divisions of the compartments with the cross-beams, there is emblazoned a 
 shield armorial, with an inscription. 
 
 It is an uncommon thing to find, as in this instance we do, the nave only of a church remain- 
 ing, for the chancel was generally the part first erected, and sometimes the only part. The 
 remains of the central and eastern portions of St Machar's tell how the western compartment 
 braved the causes of destruction which to them had been fatal : they were built of freestone. 
 Incrusted, as it were, in the eastern wall, are the clustered freestone pillars, with richly flowered 
 capitals, which of old supported the central square tower ; and on either side are the vestiges of the 
 transept, with the remains of the richly sculptured tombs, represented in the accompanying plate, 
 embedded in the wall. In Slezer's, and some other representations of this building in the seven- 
 teenth century, the tower — a simple square mass, with a roof — appears to have been still standing, 
 but the choir had disappeared. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 Machae, who is not to be confounded with the St Macarius of Wirtzberg, was one of the ear- 
 liest Scoto-Irish missionaries and saints. The legends of the church, indeed, bear that he was a 
 contemporary of St Columba, by whom he was directed to proceed northward, preaching and con- 
 verting, until the appointed place for his fixing his abode, and erecting a temple, should be indi- 
 cated to him by the phenomenon of a stream forming in its windings the likeness of a crosier. It 
 would not be very difficult to find a spot to which this description could apply : the missionary 
 rested on the bank of the river Don ; and the spot which he thus sanctified was, after the fashion 
 of the district, called Aberdon.* Some followers of St Columba, passing into places still farther 
 remote, erected a church in the yet obscure valley of Mortlach. It is usually said that a bishopric 
 was here founded by Malcolm II., and that it was afterwards transferred to Aberdeen ; but there 
 are grave reasons for doubting the truth of this statement, and the authenticity of the documents 
 by which it may have been supported.! The bishopric of Aberdeen was at all events founded by 
 David I. lie endowed it with many of the estates of the Culdees; and indeed its erection was 
 one of the operations by which he subjected those primitive communities to the authority of Rome. 
 In 1150, Edward, probably the first bishop, is found endowed with the church of Mortlach, and its 
 town and monastery.^ The early wealth of this remote see is shown by Bishop Alexander Kyn- 
 ninmond, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, raising episcopal residences at Mortlach, 
 Fetternear, and Nairn. His successor, of the same name, entered on his dignity in evil days. In 
 
 * Brcviar. Abred., 12 Nov. Registrum Episcopal. Abred., x. 
 t See the subject ably examined in the Preface to the Registrum. J Registrum, &c, xiv. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL OF ST MACHAR, ABERDEEN. 
 
 3 
 
 the course of the English war of invasion, the cathedral, like so many other Scottish ecclesiastical 
 edifices, had been laid in the dust. Its reconstruction began in 1357.* An indenture between the 
 bishop and the chapter is still extant, where, for the conducting of the works, the former resigns all 
 the second tithes, with the revenue of St Nicholas Church, its fishing excepted, and the chapter obliges 
 itself to pay to the master of works sixty pounds sterling annually for ten years.f In 1380, the 
 same zealous bishop obtained bulls granting indulgences in favour of all who might visit his cathedral 
 in devotional pilgrimage, and contribute to the erection of the nave, so that the choir would appear to 
 have been then completed.^: It appears that a stone roof and a pavement were furnished by Bisbop 
 Ingleram, in the middle of the fifteenth century. § The west front and the small towers had been 
 begun by Bishop Leighton, who was translated from the see in 1424, but were not finished till the 
 episcopacy of Gavin Dunbar, which began in 1518. || The north transept was attributed to 
 Leighton, whose tomb, in a richly decorated freestone niche, still contains a poor fragment of the 
 pontifical statue : it is represented in the accompanying plate. The north transept was built by 
 Bishop Dunbar, and also contained his tomb, a fragment of which still exists. 
 
 But the great ornament and benefactor of the see was the good Bishop William Elphinstone, 
 whose pontificate commenced in 1484 — a statesman and patron of letters, who served in the offices 
 of Lord Chancellor and Privy Seal, and deserved still better of his country by founding the Uni- 
 versity of King's College. We are told that he finished the tower, and covered in the whole roof 
 with lead ; but that, unfortunately, he was cut off ere he completed the projected erection of a new 
 choir. Much is said also by his enthusiastic biographer of his gifts to the vestry, reliquary, and 
 treasury — of copes of white linen embroidered with gold, two mitres, certain chalices and precious 
 jewels. ^[ Evidence of the still earlier accumulation of treasures, in this remote cathedral, may be 
 found. As for instance, when, in 1403, Robert III. presents it with a silver shrine containing a 
 fragment of the cross of St Andrew, a piece of arras hanging representing the three kings of 
 Cologne, &c.** The traditional and contemporary accounts of the great riches of this cathedral, 
 of the magnificent vestry, the precious jewels and the abundance of bullion, would seem to be 
 fabulous were they not attested by existing inventories, which make us wonder at that moral 
 strength which enabled feeble priests to preserve such objects in the midst of a starving, ravenous, 
 and ferocious aristocracy. The following are of the kind of entries, which make a long 
 inventory : — 
 
 Item, a great Eucharist, double over gilt, 14 pound 2 ounce, artificiall wroght. 
 Item, a holy water fount, with stick of silver, 6 pound 12 ounces. 
 
 Item, a chalice of pure gold, with the pattern therof, 3 pointed diamonds in the foot therof, 
 and 2 rubies of B. Dunbar's gift, of 52 ounces.tf 
 
 The fate of all this wealth is thus recorded by the indignant Father Hay. " In 1560, the Barons 
 of Mernes, accompanied with some of the townsmen of Aberdeen, having demolished the monas- 
 teries of the black and grey friars, fell to rob the cathedrale, which they spoiled of all its costly 
 ornaments and jewels, and demolished the chancell : they stripped the lead, bells, and other utensils, 
 intending to expose them to sale in Holland ; but all this ill gotten wealth sunk, by the just judge- 
 ment of God, not far from the Girdleness. The body of the cathedrale," he continues, " was pre- 
 
 * Orem — Description of the Chanonry, p. 40. 
 || Orem, p. 40. 
 
 ** Registrant, xxxv. 
 
 t Registrum, &c, xxi. J lb. xxii. § lb. xl. 
 
 ^1 Boetius, Episcoporum Murth. et Aberdonen. Vitac, fol. 30. 
 ft Registrum, &c., Lxxviii. 
 
4 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ST MACHAR, ABERDEEN. 
 
 served from utter ruine by the Earle of Huntly, and in 1607 repaired and covered with slate at 
 the charge of the parish."* 
 
 It would appear probable, that the bare effect of the undecorated stonework of the interior had 
 been formerly relieved by profuse decorations in wood. A finely carved pulpit, representing some 
 curious heads, not unlike those found at Stirling, is, with the roof, the only relic of this old mag- 
 nificence. The carved work is said to have stood out the Reformation, and to have suffered in 
 the civil wars of the seventeenth century. An author, not generally very animated in style or 
 felicitous in narrative, has given, on what authority we are not aware, the following rather vigorous 
 account of the destruction of a portion of the carved work : " The high altar, a piece of the finest 
 workmanship of anything of the kind in Europe, had to that time remained inviolate, but in the 
 year 1649 was hewed to pieces, by order and with the aid of the parish minister. The carpenter 
 employed for this infamous purpose, awed by the sanctity of the place, and struck with the noble 
 workmanship, refused to lay a tool on it, till the more than Gothic priest took the hatchet from his 
 hand and struck the first blow. The wainscotting was richly carved and ornamented with different 
 kinds of crowns at top, admirably cut ; one of these, large, and of superior workmanship, even 
 staggered the zeal of the furious priest ; he wished to save it, perhaps, as a trophy over a fallen 
 enemy. Whatever his motives may have been, his hopes were disappointed ; while the carpenter 
 rudely hewed down the supporting timbers, the crown fell from a great height, ploughed up the 
 pavement of the church, and flew in a thousand pieces." f 
 
 * Registrum, &c, lxvi. 
 
 t Douglas's Account of the East Coast of Scotlard, 1 85 6. 
 
ABERDOUR HOUSE, Fifeshire; AJRTH CASTLE, Stirlingshire; 
 
 AUCHANS HOUSE, Ayrshire. 
 
 The buildings we have here brought together do not possess either elaborate design or great 
 historical interest ; but they are at least sufficiently attractive to warrant our notice, because their 
 peculiarities form so many links in the chain which essentially constitutes the picturesque in 
 Scottish architecture, — that architecture whose merits are the results of natural adaptation, 
 taking internal requirements as the groundwork of external feature. We do not here state that 
 Scotland alone possesses this merit in her ancient structures, because it is palpable generally in 
 the architecture of past ages, and it forms one great element of almost universal success — just in 
 the same degree that the modern system of sticking up external features and gaudy ornamentation, 
 without internal meaning, is the evidence of universal failure. 
 
 Airth Castle — or rather its modern northern front — completely justifies our conclusion. 
 This feature, about a dozen years ago, was described as " elegant." But, in a short time, advancing 
 knowledge has changed that notion; and now, instead of admiring, we see the palpable falsification 
 of great features by little imitations, added to the meagre ornamentation which marked the revival 
 of native architecture in the beginning of the present century. 
 
 Airth owes much to its situation for effect. It stands on the summit of a hill rising about ninety 
 feet above the low ground in the immediate neighbourhood of the Firth of Forth. To the north 
 and west of the castle the hill-sides are richly wooded — so, indeed, is the eastern slope; but its side 
 is varied by having placed upon it the secluded, and now deserted, ancient church of the castle 
 and parish. This building does not date three centuries back, nor does it possess peculiar archi- 
 tectural expression, but it is interesting as one of the few existing churches in Scotland which 
 remain under the shadow of the baronial residence. 
 
 To the south of the castle, a somewhat abrupt descent is distinctly marked by the master hand 
 of the designer, — and the well-considered terrace garden ornamenting the hill-side, as well as its 
 base, adds most undoubtedly to the general effect. Our representation, however, is confined to 
 the building itself, and delineates its south and eastern fronts. Its prominent feature (the tower 
 placed in the angle) is remarkable, for here it appears as an external, feature, instead- of being 
 placed, as it almost universally is, upon the inner angle of the building. The tower, and the 
 adjoining building to the left, ornamented by four gabled dormer windows, are the oldest external 
 portions of the castle, and date between 1550 and 1600. The parts attached to this block may 
 have been built soon after the year last named ; and one of the window-heads of the eastern front, 
 with its starry-fielded tympanum, (represented in the corner of our plate,) belongs to the more 
 recent parts. 
 
 Two peculiarities mark the design of the tower. First, On the east side is a bold corbelling, 
 carrying the battlements and their cannon gurgoyles, while the south side has the two last named 
 features without the first, and the wall face remains unbroken. But this infraction of the law of 
 mere uniformity originates in utility ; and we are satisfied with it, because the external feature is 
 caused by internal requirement. Briefly, then, the termination of the turret staircase is the cause 
 
 Abeudour House, &c, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 ABERDOUR HOUSE, AIRTH CASTLE, AND AUCHANS HOUSE. 
 
 of the corbelling, for the doorway to the summit of the tower is immediately behind the over- 
 hanging battlement. 
 
 Second, There appears in immediate contiguity the conically-covered turret (said to be of 
 French or Flemish origin) and the open corbelled bartizan, the invariable foundation of the 
 covered turret. We may here state that the battlemented bartizan was a decided feature both of 
 English * and Scotch architecture, before any connection existed between Scotland and the 
 Continent ; and this peculiarity of Airth forms matter for the consideration of those who contend 
 that Scotch " pepper-box " turrets were entirely borrowed from the foreigner, — for, whatever their 
 head may be, it is certain that their body is of native origin, — and there are several instances where 
 the old open battlemented bartizan has had a more recent covering, transforming it into a turret. 
 
 Aberdour House — " Castle " would be a more appropriate name for the main building, to 
 which those we have represented are mere adjuncts of a late date — is a huge keep-tower of very 
 considerable antiquity. Modern indifference is fast working the destruction of this once interesting 
 pile, — for not only is it deserted, but it forms a ready-made quarry for the whole neighbourhood. 
 Its more ancient and principal portion is, like the generality of Scottish castles, chiefly constructed 
 of rough rubble- work, with dressed quoins and windows ; but at a later period highly finished 
 masonry came into general fashion, and the subject of our representation is an example of that 
 class of work, for the perfection of which Scotland is still justly celebrated. 
 
 The design of Aberdour marks the change which took place during the seventeenth century, 
 from Gothic forms to the unbroken lines of Italian composition. Thus the dormer window no 
 longer appears as breaking the line of the roof, but the pedimented window appears as a panel 
 in the wall face below. Another point of interest here, is the continuation of the eaves-string 
 course round the upper windows, giving to them the effect of being projected from the wall front. 
 
 AuCHANS HOUSE has considerable variety of outline, and is undoubtedly a very picturesque 
 mass. Thus the square balustraded tower is in direct opposition to the cone-covered staircase, 
 which breaks the monotony of the main wall face of the mansion in its centre.f But the 
 picturesque is more particularly evinced in the arrangement of the crow-stepped gables, and 
 especially of that one surmounting the round tower to the right in our representation. The flank 
 wall of this gable continues the line of the house, instead of being corbelled upon the tower, 
 which is finished by being simply sloped off to the wall, leaving as a questionable feature what 
 has evidently been a change from the original design. \ Auchans is about four miles from 
 Troon, and stands in the parish of Dundonald. It has upon its walls the date of erection, 1644; 
 but its materials were in use long before that period, having been removed from the old castle df 
 Dundonald, whose shapeless ruins, in the immediate vicinity, still attest a once extensive and 
 interesting fortress, — the more interesting as belonging to a class of which Coxton, near Elgin, 
 is now the somewhat diminutive type; for the fire-proof castle we now speak of as in ruins 
 must have been six times the extent of the more northerly and complete fortification. 
 
 K. W. B. 
 
 * The city gateway of York, ami the castles of Hytton and Lumley, in the county of Durham, are well known examples, 
 t A similar arrangement exists in the inner courtyard of Glasgow University. 
 
 X Even when the old architects made actual mistakes they were not ashamed, but left them distinctly visible. They 
 knew the power of general effect too well to care much about minor faults. 
 
CATHEDRAL OF ST ANDREWS. 
 
 No portions of the great central tower, or of the main departments of this once majestic edifice 
 are visible at a distance. Secondary pinnacles, or broken fragments of wall only raise their heads ; 
 vet even these run high up into the sky over the town, and give it, to a distance at sea, or from 
 the surrounding hills, a spired and towered appearance, corresponding with its character as a 
 cathedral city. The great proportions of these fragments forcibly remind one how vast and stately 
 must have been the complete fane of which they were the secondary adjuncts, and how terrible 
 must have been the popidar whirlwind that swept the still greater masses into undistinguishable 
 dust. The nearer we approach, the fragments become more ghastly, the scene more desolate. The 
 town itself is becoming every day less in harmony with its ruinous neighbour. Not many years 
 ago, edifices of mixed ancient architecture, projecting here and there into the streets, gave a 
 decayed, almost obsolete air to all parts of the venerable city, which thus served better as an 
 approach to the solemn ruins, than the modem houses for which they have been doomed to give 
 way. 
 
 Within the area of the cathedral grounds nothing has been done but what deserves com- 
 mendation. The disjointed position of the fragments having made all attempts at restoration 
 hopeless, the operations, conducted under the auspices of the Exchequer, were confined to 
 the removal of earth and rubbish, and the strengthening of impending masses. Thus, instead 
 of protruding from unseemly rubbish, the ruins rise out of a beautiful expanse of greensward, 
 which the inhabitants of the town enjoy as a pleasure-ground. It is bounded towards the city by 
 a new wall with cast-iron gates, but towards the sea the venerable fortified rampart of Prior Hepburn 
 forms a more suitable protection. Within this cincture are the remains not only of the cathedral, 
 and of the older church of St Eegulus, but those of the affluent priory, which almost rivalled the 
 archiepiscopal establishment in splendour. The remains of this edifice are scattered near the 
 south transept and chapter-house of the cathedral. The clearing away of rubbish, which was 
 not accomplished until the year 1826, has laid bare the bases of the pillars, and the traces of 
 the foimdation; so that, though only a very small portion of it rises to any great height, the 
 general outline of the plan may be traced. 
 
 " It consisted," says an industrious local inquirer, <£ of a nave two hundred feet long, anil 
 sixty-two wide, including the two lateral aisles ; a transept, with an eastern aisle, one hundred 
 and sixty feet long ; a choir, with two lateral aisles, ninety-eight feet long ; and, at the eastern 
 extremity, a Lady chapel thirty-three feet in length. The extreme length of the whole structure, 
 measured inside the wall, is three hundred and fifty-eight feet. All that remains of the edifice 
 is the east gable, part of the west front, the wall on the south side of the nave, and that of 
 the west side of the south transept. In this last may still be seen the remains of some inter- 
 laced arches, and the ruins of the steps by which the canons descended from the dormitory to 
 the church to perform their midnight services."* 
 
 Eastward of the doorway represented in our view of the Western Front, the lines of pillars 
 of the nave may be traced upon the grass, and a considerable fragment nf the wall of the 
 
 * Lyon's History of St Andrews, ii. 153. 
 
 Cathedral of St Andukus. 1 — \ 
 
2 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF ST ANDREWS. 
 
 south aisle remains, showing the shape and dimensions of the windows, two of which our wood 
 engraving represents. The six westmost windows of the row are pointed, but the remaining four 
 are arched semicircularly ; and towards the eastern end of the ruins, as being the earliest built, the 
 characteristics of Norman architecture prevail. Two turrets, with windows of the same rounded 
 character between them, mark the extremity of the choir ; and here may be seen the terminations 
 of the galleries, which passed through the triforium and clerestory. Since its destruction, extra- 
 vagant notions appear to have been entertained of the magnificence of this edifice ; and Slezer, in 
 his " Theatrum Scotise," where he represents the ruins nearly in their present condition, states 
 that it was reckoned the largest metropolitan church in Christendom — " Seven feet longer, and 
 two feet broader than that of St Peter's at Rome, — and was one of the best Gothic structures 
 in the world, for its height, beautiful pillars, and the symmetry of the whole." 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The foundation of the cathedral church was laid in the reign of Malcolm III., and the 
 episcopate of Bishop Arnold, which lasted from 1159 to 1163. It is probable that during his 
 life little progress was made in the work, which was not completed until a subsequent 
 era in Scottish history. The earlier bishops of the see were connected by election with one 
 of those communities of Culdees, whose doctrines and polity, and especially their connexion 
 with a hierarchical system, are so much matters of bitter controversy that they can hardly be 
 suitably discussed in a work like the present. Whether it be true or not that they derived their 
 Christianity and their polity through a source different from that of Rome, their small communities 
 were undoubtedly by degrees superseded or absorbed by the hierarchical and monastic institutions 
 directly connected with the Popedom, which spread over the Christian world. The connexion 
 of the Culdees with St Andrews became fainter and fainter, until the election of Bishop Abel 
 in 1253, when it would appear that they were for the first time entirely excluded from voting. 
 In 1298, they made an unsuccessful effort to regain their influence.* The episcopate of William 
 Fraser, which commenced in 1279, saw the beginning of Scotland's troubles in the wars with 
 England, and the apparent extinction of national independence. We find that the last king before 
 these events, Alexander III., standing before the high altar of the church, granted or confirmed to 
 the bishop the right of coining money.f His successor, Lamberton, lived in times when the 
 faith of ambitious men was subject to severe ordeals. He had given fealty to Edward, yet he 
 secretly aided Bruce in his first attempts to raise a reaction in Scotland. On the 27th March 
 1306, he crowned the bold adventurer with a fillet of gold, hastily made for the occasion. But 
 the hour of deliverance had not yet come; and the bishop was seized and imprisoned. He 
 subsequently again made his allegiance to England, in satisfactory terms : and soon afterwards 
 presided at an assembly of the clergy in Dundee, where the right of Bruce was asserted. 
 
 When the battle of Bannockburn concluded the war, the moment of triumph and national 
 regeneration was deemed a suitable one for the consecration of the cathedral, which appears 
 to have been then just completed, after the lapse of 150 years from its commencement. The 
 ceremony took place on the 5th of July 1318, in presence of the great popidar monarch and his 
 chief nobility, accompanied by seven bishops and fifteen abbots. 
 
 The king endowed the cathedral with one hundred merks annually, subsequently redeemed 
 by a gift of the church of Fordun, as an oblation for the great victory with which the patron 
 
 • Lyon's Hist. i. 142. 
 
 t Wyntoun, b. vii. c. 10. 
 
CATHEDRAL OF ST ANDREWS. 
 
 3 
 
 saint of his country had blessed his arms. Some of the nobles, and along with them the 
 unstable bishop himself, liberally followed the royal example. Of the gifts made to the church by 
 Bishop Trail, whose episcopate ended at the close of the fifteenth century, Wyntoun gives a more 
 exact inventory than most readers will be inclined to peruse; beginning with "twa lang coddis " or 
 cushions " of velvet," and ending with — 
 
 " Of sylvyr the haly wattyr fate, 
 The styk of sylvyr he gave to that, 
 An ewar of sylvyr than gave he, 
 Of gold bawdekynnys he gave thre ; 
 Twa brade ewaris of sylvyr brycht, 
 And owrgylt all welle at sycht." 
 
 Of Prior Haldenstane, who died in 1443, it is said, " He adorned the interior, as well with 
 carved stalls, as with the images of the saints. The nave, which before had been covered in by James 
 Bisset, his predecessor of good memory, but was still bare and unfurnished, he beautified throughout 
 with glass windows and polished pavement ; as also by supplying altars, images, and ornaments. 
 He furnished the vestry with relics at great expense, repaired the former ones, and erected presses 
 for containing them. The whole choir of the church, the two transepts, two sides of the square 
 cloister, and the entrance to the chapter-house, he laid with polished pavement."* 
 
 About the year 1472, the see of St Andrews was made metropolitan. It is singular that the 
 precise date of this event is only approximated. No copy of the bull conferring the precedence is 
 known to exist ; and the circumstance that the honour was sought rather to satisfy the personal 
 ambition of the bishop for the time — Patric Graham, than from any desire on the part of his order 
 to possess a metropolitan, appears to have prevented the event from obtaining much public- 
 contemporary notice.f Yet it obviated the possibility of interference by the Archbishop of York, 
 which, in the absence of a metropolitan of their own, was a grievance to which the Scottish clergy 
 had been often subjected. Henceforth the history of the cathedral of St Andrews, so long as the 
 episcopal polity prevailed, is in a great measure that of the Church of Scotland. 
 
 St Andrews is intimately associated with many of the eventful and tragical scenes of the Refor- 
 mation. The last archbishop but one, before the extinction of the Romish hierarchy, was the 
 celebrated, and perhaps it may be said the notorious, Cardinal David Beatoun, whose execution of 
 Wishart the martyr was so savagely avenged by his own slaughter in the capture of his castle. 
 Those who had performed this deed sought to avert the consequences by defending themselves in 
 the cardinal's stronghold, in which they stood a long siege, which gave few promises of success, 
 until French engineers came to the assistance of the Scots, still very inexpert in the capture of 
 places of strength. Prior John Hepburn, an ambitious ecclesiastic of the early part of the sixteenth 
 century, who had straggled vigorously for the archiepiscopal chair, built the magnificent wall 
 already mentioned, which protects the cathedral towards the sea, and sweeps round the area of 
 the priory. This wall is strongly built, and its many towers, along with its niches for the images 
 of saints, give it a partly defensive, partly ecclesiastical character. Surmounting a rock which lay 
 opposite to the castle, on the other side of an indentation of the shore, it afforded, along with some 
 of the surrounding steeples, a position from which the French gunners could point their cannon. 
 They thus succeeded in a few hours in mastering the castle. 
 
 On the 11th of June 1559, Knox preached in the cathedral church. He had made a circuit, 
 
 * Lyon's Hist., i. 217. + Ibid., 233. Marthie, Reli<niix> Divi Andrea;, 43. Keith's Catalogue, 31. 
 
1 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF ST ANDREWS. 
 
 accompanied by the Earl of Argyle and the Lord James Stuart, afterwards the Regent Murray, 
 through the towns in Fifeshire, and a considerable number of people followed him to St Andrews. 
 The archbishop, John Hamilton, who was subsequently executed on a charge of accession to 
 Darnley's murder, proposed to resist Knox's occupation of the pulpit with one hundred armed men. 
 The Reformer was besought by his friends to desist from his intention ; but hesitation and timidity 
 were not among the defects of his character, and he accordingly preached, and, as he informs us, 
 " did entreat of the ejectioim of the byaris and the sellaris furth of the tempill of Jerusalem, as it 
 is writtin in the evangelistis Mathow and Johne ; and so applyed the corruptioun that was thair to 
 the corruptioun that is in the papistrie, and Christe's fact to the dewetie of those to whome God 
 geveth power and zeall thairto, that alsweill the magistrates, the provest and bailies, as the com- 
 munaltie for the most parte, within the toun, did agree to remove all monumentis of idolatrie, 
 which also thay did with expeditioun."* Whether this " expeditioun" applied to the destruction 
 of the cathedral building, as well as to the images and desecrations, is uncertain, and we have no 
 distinct account of the manner, or even the precise time, in which it was destroyed. 
 
 * Works of John Knox, Wodrow Ed., i. 349. 
 
I/rtuvn by Jt W Bdbsigs 
 
ST REGULUS' CHURCH AND TOWER, ST ANDREWS. 
 
 Close to the vast fragments of the metropolitan cathedral of Scotland stand the ruins — if so a 
 building can be termed of which the stone-work is still nearly entire — of the more ancient Church 
 of St Regulus. Beside the red crumbling remains of the great fabric, this small simple church, 
 so nearly complete, would, to a person who saw them both for the first time, without any guides 
 from history or the progress of architecture, convey a distinct idea that it is a more modern 
 building than its majestic companion, which, built no one can tell precisely how many years later, 
 has advanced much farther in decay, and may perhaps be level with the earth when the small relic 
 of an older and simpler ecclesiastical system shall still subsist, to show how substantially, yet how 
 simply, early Christianity took root in Scotland. It is a disputed question whether the Culdees, 
 tor whom the Church of St Regulus is reported to have served as a place of worship, were under 
 a hierarchical or a presbyterian polity ; but if architectural analogies were allowed to influence 
 such an inquiry, whoever looked upon this old Church would pronounce that the simplest forms of 
 worship alone were pursued within its walls; and he might thus perhaps find a common simplicitv, 
 if not meagreness, characterising alike the structures which preceded and those which followed 
 the ages during which Gothic architecture and the Roman Catholic Church together triumphed. 
 
 This building, which with all its plainness is singularly interesting, contrasts in every way with 
 the cathedral. It is built with a cold gray stone, while the latter consists of a warm red. The 
 w ails of the cathedral have been massive, but ill built, of ruble work ; those of the old church 
 are thin, but remarkably well built, with courses of square hewn stone. The cathedral exhibits 
 some scanty traces of ornaments ; the old church retains all the decorations it seems to have ever 
 possessed, and they are of the simplest and most unpretending character. The superior style of 
 the mason-work accounts for the state of preservation in which this edifice has reached us. The 
 body of the church is a simple parallelogram, with neither transept nor aisle. It has a wide arch 
 over the doorway — simply circular, but without the massiveness of the Norman, and possessing a 
 slightly nearer approach to the character of the pure Roman. It has been lighted by very small 
 round-arched windows, which, probably having been unglazed, are pitched high in the wall, to 
 prevent as much as possible the sufferings of the congregation from the cold east winds which 
 seldom cease to blow ou tms exposed rock. The wnoie imparts, in the tmnness of the walls, the 
 want of ornament, and even the clean, regular character of the masonry, a cold and comfortless 
 sensation, very different from the mingled feelings of solemnity and mysterious awe usually expe- 
 rienced within Gothic ecclesiastical edifices. Yet every lover of antiquity must feel gratified that 
 this valuable relic has been allowed to remain in its present state ; and that a dread, some time ago 
 entertained, of the possibility of its being fitted up within in modern comfortable style was not 
 realised. 
 
 The square tower, fully represented in the plate, is a very conspicuous feature of this building, 
 and its disproportioned size adds by contrast to the thinness and meagreness of the body of the 
 church. Like the rest of the edifice, it is built in courses of finely hewn stone ; and in this feature, 
 along with some other details, it resembles the celebrated round towers of Scotland and Ireland, 
 and at the same time has a good deal in common with those towers which in England are generally 
 St Regulus' Church and Tower. St Andrews. 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 ST REGULUS 1 CHURCH AND TOWER, ST ANDREW'S. 
 
 supposed to be of Saxon origin. The small windows, divided by shafts, have considerable resem- 
 blance to some like details in the round tower at Abemethy ; and it is difficult to compare the two 
 together without feeling the likelihood that they belong to the same age and class of architecture. 
 Like the round towers, it was constructed without any internal stair or means of ascent — a want 
 common also to the Saxon towers ; but a substantial flight of stone steps has lately been made 
 within the Tower of St Regulus, from the top of which a noble view of the ancient archiepiscopal 
 city and the surrounding country may be enjoyed. 
 
 Like that of its circular brethren, the age of the foundation of this tower, and the accompanying 
 church, is matter of pure conjecture. Its legendary history, which has been embodied in the 
 monkish chronicles, is, that in the year 307, Regulus, a monk of Achaia, being warned in a dream 
 or vision that the Emperor Constantine intended to translate the relics of St Andrew the Martyr 
 then deposited in Patra?, to Constantinople, removed a portion of them, with which he sailed west- 
 ward, until he landed and found shelter on the barren rocks of the east coast of Scotland, where 
 the metropolitan city subsequently reared her towers and spires. Between the cathedral and the 
 castle there is a cave, entered from the sea, which has either been made or altered artificially, 
 containing on one side a rude altar, and on the other an opening to an inner cavity. This was the 
 first place of the saint's refuge, and subsequently became an object of pilgrimage, as described by 
 Scott, in his Marmion : — 
 
 " But I have solemn vows to pay, 
 And may not linger by the way, 
 
 To fair St Andrews bound ; 
 Within the ocean-cave to pray, 
 Where good St Rule his holy lay, 
 From midnight to the dawn of day, 
 
 Sung to the billows' sound. 
 
 The legend, in continuation, imports that Regulus built the tower and church, now known by his 
 name.* This account takes the date of the edifice to a period probably 400 years earlier than that 
 of any building in Scotland of w r hich the age is satisfactorily ascertained. There are no early 
 authentic memorials of this church ; but there is all reason to believe that it was the cathedral of 
 the early bishops, until a sufficient portion of the greater edifice, begun in the middle of the twelfth 
 century, was completed for public worship. 
 
 * Slartine, Reliquia; Dm Andieft. 18. Lyon's .exist, of at Andrews. L l7. 
 
/ 
 
CHtTRCH OF ST RJ5fitIT.FS fc RUTHS OF THTK CAT HE D RAL 
 
ST SALVATOR'S CHURCH, ST ANDREWS. 
 
 The Church of St Salvator, or the Holy Saviour, more generally known as the College Church, 
 runs along the north side of the main street of St Andrews, having at its west end a tall square 
 tower, surmounted by a hexagonal spire, resembling that of Glasgow, but smaller and simpler, and 
 at the east end an oriel of three lights. Though kept in a serviceable condition, it is a sad wreck 
 of what it must at one time have been. The stone mullions of the windows, which, from the character 
 of some of the remaining details of other parts, Ave may suppose to have been rich and beautiful, are 
 all gone, and the arches are filled with panes of glass, held together by narrow wooden sockets, 
 according to the practice of domestic architecture. Some niches and mouldings along the southern 
 side still show defaced remains of old richness and beauty. 
 
 The great progress which architecture had achieved in the western states of Europe, beyond 
 all the other arts, which — after the work of the mason had come to a state of perfection vainly 
 attempted to be imitated in later times — were merely struggling into existence and shape, gave the 
 forms of architectural objects and devices a natural predominance in the other branches of textile 
 art. The shape to which the edifice owed its strength and its surpassing beauty, was thus naturally 
 adapted to many other purposes. The statue of the saint was surmounted by miniature emblems 
 of the same pillars and groined arches which covered the lofty choir, and sculpture never appeared 
 without being nearly buried in architecture, of which it was but a mere adjunct. On the sepulchral 
 monuments, and on the fonts and other ecclesiastical utensils, the same forms were repeated. The 
 devices were adapted to shrines, to gold and silver plate, to jewels, and other ornaments of attire — to 
 chairs and tables, and other domestie furniture ; and the illuminator of hour-books or saints' legends, 
 having no better choice, transferred the tracery, by which he was on all sides surrounded, in gold 
 and bright colours to his parchment. 
 
 But in very few such works have architectural forms and devices been so profusely and gorgeously 
 heaped together as in the rich monument of black marble, erected to the memory of Bishop Kennedy. 
 Towers, pinnacles, crockets, canopies, arches, pillars, mimic doors and windows — all have been thrown 
 together in rich yet symmetrical profusion, at the will of some beautiful and fantastic fancy, as if 
 a fairy palace had been suddenly erected out of the elements of feudal castles, of minsters, abbeys, 
 cloisters, and vaults. So it will appear to the eye in the accompanying engraving, which yet could 
 not give the whole ; for on either side within the arch is a deep lateral recess, where a tiny flight 
 of steps descends, as it were, from the airy regions above, to a ground crypt. The entrance of the 
 recess on the right hand is just visible in the engraving. The window traceiy on the upper parts 
 is hollow, and has that indescribable lightness so beautifully exemplified on the pinnacles of Stras- 
 burg, where it has the effect of ductile lace hung over the solid stone. 
 
 A gorgeous silver mace is preserved in the College of St Salvator, which is traditionally said to 
 have been discovered in this tomb in the year 1683, along with five others of inferior workmanship, 
 two of which are preserved in the Divinity College of St Mary's, at St Andrews, while the other 
 three were respectively presented to the Universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. 
 This species of corporate generosity is not a common occurrence, and would require some confirm- 
 ation ; but whatever may be the real history of the six maces collectively, that preserved in St 
 
 St Salvador's Church, St Andrews. 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 ST SALVATOR'S CHURCH, ST ANDREWS. 
 
 Salvator's at once attests its intimate connexion with the tomb by a remarkable similarity of 
 design — towers, pinnacles, crockets, niches, and other architectural devices, bristling in the silver 
 as they do in the marble, with the advantage that a portion of the statuary, which must have 
 given grace and variety to both, still remains to the mace. Among these little silver figures, mixed 
 with others of the most solemn character, there are some, probably intended to be demoniacal, which 
 exemplify the singular propensity of the decorators of Gothic work to lapse into tne ludicrous. An 
 inscription attached to this mace bears that it was constructed in 1461, for Bishop Kennedy, by a 
 goldsmith of Paris named Mair. 
 
 James Kennedy, the founder of St Salvator's College, was Bishop of St Andrews from 1440 to 
 1466. He was the last who died with the title of bishop, the see having been made metropolitan under 
 his successor. He was a zealous and able churchman, devoted to his order, and unmindful of his own 
 immediate interests. He lived simply in his own person, but arrogated power, wealth, and grandeur 
 to the church, exemplifying his principles in many munificent donations. He founded and richly 
 endowed the college and church of St Salvator in 1456.* In erecting for himself his costly monu- 
 ment, he appears to hav e thought that the pomps and vanities which he achieved during life might 
 not unbecomingly await the reception of his mortal remains. His tomb is thus quaintly men- 
 tioned by Pitscottie, as his " lear " or lair. " He foundit ane triumphand colledge in Sanct Androis, 
 called Sanct Salvitouris Colledge, quharin he made his lear verrie curiouslie and coastlie, and also 
 he biggit ane schip called the Bischopis barge, etc. ; and when all thrie were compleit, to witt, the 
 colledge, the lair, and the barge, he knew not quhilk of thrie was costliest ; for it was rekoned 
 for the tyme, be honest men of consideratioun, that the least of thrie cost him ten thousand pund 
 sterling." f 
 
 Besides their share of damage at the Reformation, the bishop's church and mausoleum suffered 
 from an untoward incident, little more than eighty years ago. From the massive character of the 
 roof, some wise people began to dread that it would fall by its own weight, and proposed to antici- 
 pate such a catastrophe by taking it down. They found, however, after it was too late to preserve 
 it, that it was too compact to be taken to pieces; and they were compelled, by severing its juncture 
 with the wall plates, to let it fall in one mass. The effect on the monument, and all the interior 
 decorations, can easily be conceived.}: 
 
 * Tyt.ler's Scotland, 3d edit, iii. 331. Lyon's History of St Andrews, i. 219. t Cronicles. 
 
 t Lyon's History of St Andrews, ii 1 95. 
 
• 
 
THBLB (M»JLM©)E CTlfllMiBr ST ATT 1H) ]KUIW S „ 
 
/ 
 
BALVENY CASTLE. 
 
 This massive and quaint ruin stands on a high bank overlooking the Fiddoch — a stream 
 unknown to fame, which tumbles from the mountains down to the lowlands of Banffshire. 
 The parish of Marnoch, in which it stands, has many curious antiquities, traditionally connected 
 with the Danish wars. These ancient, and mostly fabulous legends, have even embraced the 
 object of these remarks, though the oldest portion of the building can be no older than the 
 fifteenth century. A writer of the early part of the eighteenth says — " Balvanie (in Irish Bal- 
 Beni-Mor, the house of St Beyne the Great, the first bishop of Murthlack,) the old castle of which, 
 (though rebuilt by the Stewarts, Earls of Atholl, Lords of Balvenie,) having been built ('tis said) 
 by the Danes, has a large parlour in it now called the Danes Hall." * In the plate, and between 
 two of the quaint projecting windows,f can be read the motto of the Atholl family, which, in its 
 modernised shape, is " Furth fortune and fill the fetters." 
 
 When this estate came, as it must have done very soon after the castle was built, into the 
 hands of a branch of the family of Innes, they took first the territorial title of Innermarkie from a 
 portion of the territory acquired from the Atholl family, and subsequently changed it for Balveny. \ 
 From their alliances and their acquisitions, the Balveny branch of the family of Innes became so 
 powerful that they aspired to the chiefship of the house. The method adopted for the accomplish- 
 ment of this object involves a complex tragic history, worthy to be told at fuller length than these 
 pages admit of. The Laird of Innes was advanced in years, and childless. He had executed an entail 
 of his estates in favour of the nearest hereditary branch of the family — Innes of Cromy. Robert 
 Innes, of Innermarky and Balveny, endeavoured to make a party among his kindred in opposition 
 to this project ; but they all approved of the entail ; and the intriguer, sent back disappointed and 
 baffled, in the bitterness of his heart resolved to revenge himself, and accomplish his original end 
 by murdering Cromy, and getting possession of the deed of entail. A person situated as Cromy 
 was had to keep his eyes about him, and when he left his fortalice seldom did so without an 
 ample armed retinue. It chanced, however, that having a son attending college in Aberdeen, the 
 youth fell sick, and his father went thither affectionately to attend his couch. In the sick-chamber 
 the murderer resolved to accomplish his intention. He entered the town with his followers at 
 dead of night. Cromy's house was within a close or court, the gate of which had been carelessly 
 left open. When the murderers entered the cul-de-sac, however, they found that the house itself was 
 shut up, and pretty strongly barred, so that they could not have stormed it without a more serious 
 disturbance than it was expedient to raise in the heart of a town. There were then great feuds 
 between the Gordons and their hereditary enemies, and as Cromy was a partisan of the Gordons, 
 Balveny adopted the device of shouting their war-cry. The trick succeeded : the victim 
 descended half-dressed, with his sword in his hand, and opened the door, when he was immediately 
 shot by his enemy. There were some kinsmen of the assassin present who, probably, did not 
 anticipate this tragical conclusion of the proceedings, for he took the brutal precaution of 
 compelling them to bury their dirks in the body, that they too might be partners to the trans- 
 action. The efforts made to recover possession of the entail are another chapter in the romance. 
 
 * View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, p. G49. 
 
 t It is right to mention that the accompanying woodcut does not represent a window of Balvenie, but ono less dilapidated 
 in a corner house of a street in Elgin. It shows what these small oriels were in their more complete state. 
 
 X Historical Account of the Origine and Succession of the Family of Innes, collected from Authentick Writs in the 
 Charter Chist of the samen. — From an original manuscript in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Roxburghe, p. 47. 
 
 Balven y Castle, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 BALVENY CASTLE. 
 
 It can only be here said that the plotter succeeded in being, for a short time, the ostensible head of the 
 house ; but the son of the murdered man pursued him with hereditary hatred. He was forced to 
 conceal himself ; but his lurking-place was discovered. He was put to death without trial, and 
 his head was cut off and sent to court. 
 
 Nearly a century later, the descendant of the murderer bad a contest with the head of his family 
 conducted in the courts of law, which had then begun to supersede the old methods of " speedy 
 justice." The devices he adopted to strengthen his hands were, however, curious enough of their 
 kind. The plan for the creation of Baronets of Nova Scotia having been started, Balveny 
 endeavoured to obtain one of the patents, that he might have higher rank, and consequently 
 greater influence than his chief ; or, as the family historian expresses it, " having law for it, he 
 would baffle his cheiff, and take the door of him, or put him to the necessity of being lord, which 
 his circumstances could ill bear."* He was, however, defeated by the equal, if not superior 
 cunning of his rival, and became what was generally called a broken man — the ruiner of his house. 
 " And to follow it out to the close," says the historian, " Sir Robert Innes of Balvenny, who broke 
 his own estate, had a son, Sir Walter, who succeeded him to the name, but not to the land. Sir 
 Robert's circumstances were but mean, he left no heirs, and in his death the family extinguished, 
 he being the eighth generation from the first Walter who founded it." And, mentioning some 
 cadets of the family, he says, — " The last come of the house of Balveny, and nearest that family, 
 (were there anything to represent) is Mr George Innes, a priest, who possesses a small interest in 
 Angus called Dunnoine : what lawful heirs-male he can have I know not."f 
 
 * Historical Account of the Origine and Succession of the Family of Innes, collected from authentick Writs in the Char tor 
 Cliist of the samen. — From an original MS. in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Roxburghe, p. 62. 
 + Ibid. p. 63, 64. 
 
BORTHWICK CASTLE. 
 
 This gigantic square tower, a marked object in the surrounding landscape, stands close to the 
 small stream of the Gore, about thirteen miles from Edinburgh, near the Melrose and Jedburgh 
 road. It is on the top of an eminence, only high enough to make it conspicuous to the surround- 
 ing country, and not of itself sufficiently large to divert attention from the huge proportions of the 
 mason work. In the neighbourhood stand some venerable trees, from which a few cheerful 
 cottages peep forth ; but these, like the remains of the Church and some outworks of the Castle, 
 are only noticed on a near approach, and from a distance, the stately bulk of the tower absorbs 
 the eye. Eastward from Borthwick, and in the direction of the neighbouring castle of Crichton, 
 runs a narrow valley, with grassy banks interspersed with coppice wood. It has heretofore 
 been remarkable for its pastoral loneliness, but it is doomed to possess that character no longer. 
 A railway is now in progress, a short way eastward of the Castle, and from the inequalities of the 
 ground, the cuttings, embankments, and viaducts are to be on a scale peculiarly large. Thus 
 will the less dreaded but more powerful wonders of modern science be brought in close rivalry 
 with this memorable monument of the power and resources of the age of turbulence and violence. 
 
 The Castle, though its walls are in pretty good preservation, has not been occupied for upwards 
 of a century, and of its present inhabitants the Rev. Thomas Wright, in his Statistical Account 
 of the parish, gives the following sketch. 
 
 " The Castle is the seat of a colony of jackdaws, whose flights and chatterings take something from its loneliness during the 
 day-time. Like all other colonies of the same bird, they contrive to keep up their number, but never are observed to have 
 increased it. No person remembers them to have been more or less than at present. The white owl regularly issues towards 
 evening, with a triumphant scream, from the upper windows of the Castle, and hunts for mice and other food of a similar kind, 
 over the glebe and the adjoining fields. It flies, when on this search, so low, that I was once almost struck by it, when circling 
 the base of a green knoll, from the other side of which it was coming, without having observed me. I had full time to observe 
 the brilliant and ruby-like lustre of its large eyes, as it keenly surveyed the ground for its prey."* 
 
 The effect of its great bulk, which every one feels in contemplating Borthwick, is owing to the 
 simplicity of its plan. It is little more in outline than the old border keep or square tower, but, 
 though on this simple design, it was raised at a period when the owners of these keeps were, in 
 general, like the neighbouring Lord of Crichton, clustering new masses of building round the 
 old tower. The object of the Lord of Borthwick seems to have been, to have all the space and 
 accommodation of these clusters of edifices within the four walls of his simple square block ; and 
 thus the building is believed to be the largest specimen of that class of architecture in Scotland. 
 As so wide a surface of fiat wall might be liable to be deficient in strength, the tower is inter- 
 nally built in two, or properly, three divisions. There is in front a square recess, represented in 
 the accompanying plate, running from the foundation to the top. The main building, in which 
 stand the hall and the larger apartments, occupies the space between the other or eastern side of the 
 square tower, and the inner bounding wall of this recess. The portions of the tower projecting 
 on either side are internally separate buildings, containing the smaller apartments. Two staircases 
 are contained in wells, passing from the foundation to the roof, at the corners of the square recess. 
 They had separate conical roofs, or turrets, one of which still remains, and is visible in the 
 
 * New Statistical Account, Edinburgh, 159. 
 
 Borthwick Castle, \ — 2. 
 
2 
 
 BORTHWICK CASTLE. 
 
 accompanying engraving. Both externally and internally, the Castle is remarkable for the 
 regularity of its architecture, and the fine finish of the work. Although there is nothing orna- 
 mental in its general character, there are here and there, in the interior, small encrustations of 
 gothic tracery and moulding, of extreme beauty and delicacy, and singularly in contrast with the 
 huge proportions of the general design. In the large and stately stone hall, there is a great fire- 
 place, of fine proportions and richly ornamented, and at the opposite extremity there is a 
 canopied niche of great beauty. On the vault work of this hall, there can still be traced the 
 remains of some old fresco painting, evidently of a gothic character. The hall has contained 
 memorable guests, for it was here that Queen Mary spent her latest days, not, properly speaking, of 
 peace, for already had her worst mental conflicts begun, but of freedom from captivity and pursuit. 
 The Queen and Bothwell were, after their fatal marriage, sojourning in the Castle, as guests of the 
 Lord Borthwick, when the insurrection of 1567 broke out. On the 11th of June, Morton and 
 other Barons, attended with several hundreds of horsemen, surrounded the tower. Bothwell, 
 who, conscious of guilt and impending peril, had got early notice of their intention, made his 
 escape with a few attendants before their arrival. The insurgents had not yet apparently resolved 
 to seize the Queen's person, for she did not fly with Bothwell ; but two days later, the rumours 
 afloat induced her to escape secretly from the Castle " in men's clothes, booted and spurred." 
 When she turned her back upon the hospitable mansion of one of the most worthy and honest of 
 her retainers, she bade farewell for ever to freedom, safety, and repose. An isolated chamber of 
 very small dimensions is still shewn as the apartment which tradition assigns to the Queen. 
 
 The date of the erection of Borthwick Castle is pretty precisely known. Though the Scottish 
 Barons were not in the practice of acknowledging the right of the Crown to interfere with their 
 private fortifications, a license to build this tower was obtained by Sir William de Borthwick from 
 James I., dated 2nd June 1430, which is still preserved. There are few historical incidents 
 connected with the building, save those already mentioned, down to the time of the Protectorate. 
 The Lord of so massive a structure thought he might safely bid defiance to artillery, and refused 
 to open his gates to Cromwell. The Protector, in a very laconic letter, dated 18th November, 
 1650, told him, " If you necessitate me to bend my cannon against you, you must expect what I 
 doubt you will not be pleased with."* The artillery had not long played on the walls from 
 the rising grounds on the south-east, when the unfitness of the old strongholds to resist the new 
 instruments of destruction was fully felt, and the castle was surrendered. To this day, while all 
 the rest of the tower is of smooth, clean ashler work, the portion on which Cromwell's artillery 
 played shews a large mass of the surface stone work peeled off. The title of Borthwick has 
 remained in abeyance since the seventeenth century. The Castle is the property, by purchase, of 
 Mr. Borthwick of Crookston, a gentleman connected by descent with its former owners. 
 
 * Scott's Provincial Antiquities, Prose Works, vii. 311. 
 
INTERIOR OP TOE ORliAT HALL. 
 
CATHEDRAL AND ROUND TOWER OF BRECHIN. 
 
 This fragment of one of the smaller Scottish cathedrals, with its broad square tower surmounted 
 by an octagonal stone steeple, and its still more interesting round tower, stands on the north- 
 west side of the town of Brechin, in Forfarshire, on the north verge of a narrow picturesque cleft. 
 These remains, along with the well-kept mansion of Brechin Castle, in their close vicinity, form the 
 most conspicuous objects on the wooded banks of the North Esk — here a considerable stream — and 
 give variety to a range of scenery otherwise uninteresting. But the reader of Scottish history will 
 be disappointed if, in the aspect of the baronial dwelling, he expect to see a fortalice worthy of the 
 memorable siege, in which Sir Thomas Maule, for three weeks, resisted the force of Edward. Though 
 some ancient features of the edifice still remain, they are to be seen only in detail, and are absorbed 
 in the reconstructions, which make the castle appear an irregularly built mansion, about a century 
 old. The ecclesiastical edifices have been modernised, too, but not in a manner so distinctly conspicuous. 
 The nave — the only roofed portion of the body of the Cathedral — has suffered the usual calamities 
 incident to its being converted into a commodious galleried, unadorned parish church. In Grose's view, 
 some buildings of a mixed character — rather abutments than transepts — appear to have been attached 
 to the sides of the nave. But we have the history of their fate in the statement that, " in 1806, 
 the north and south transepts were removed, new aisles were built on each side of the 
 nave, and one roof made to cover the whole, thus totally eclipsing the beautiful windows in 
 the nave, and covering up the handsome carved cornice of the nah-neaded quatrefoil description, 
 which ran under the eaves of the nave." * Some fragments of the choir, with the remains of lancet- 
 shaped windows, still remain, apparently in no more advanced state of decay than that in which 
 they appear in Grose's "Antiquities." The square tower is a somewhat heavy specimen of the early 
 English style, and the octagonal stone turret tops of both the towers, with their small dormer 
 windows, as well as the crow-steps in the gavil, are peculiarities of the more modern developments of 
 ecclesiastical architecture in Scotland. The richly-decorated western window — slightly flamboyant, 
 which is the chief remaining ornament of the church — also bears the character of an age later than 
 that in which even the square tower was built. The round tower slightly tapers upwards ; but it has 
 a decided inclination in one direction, so that, while the side towards the church is perpendicular, the 
 other forms an obtuse angle with the horizontal line. It is on good authority reported that, in 
 storms of wind, the huge mass is seen visibly to sway from side to side.f The original doorway, 
 raised several courses from the ground, has been long built up, the stones having been removed to 
 admit of the excavation noticed further on. The usual entrance to the tower is by a covered passage 
 through the church. 
 
 The further description of this curious edifice naturally connects itself with an inquiry as to the 
 probable period of its erection. This is, indeed, a matter of very considerable archaeological 
 interest, for jio small portion of the great battle regarding the age and purpose of those mysterious 
 buildings, so plentiful throughout Ireland, but of which there are just two examples in Scotland, has 
 been fought around the tower of Brechin. The wildest theories of antiquarian speculation have, 
 
 * Black's History of Brechin, 254. 
 Cathedral anz Ror/TTD Tower of Brechin, 1 — 4. 
 
 + Ibid., 259. 
 
2 CATHEDRAL AND ROUND TOWER OF BRECHIN. 
 
 from the days of Giraldus Cambrensis to those of O'Brien, hovered round these singular buildings ; 
 and there is scarcely a strange purpose suggestible by the fertile brain of speculative mankind, to 
 which they have not been confidently devoted. Instead of the legitimate method of inquiry, — which, 
 from the necessary tendency of all the produce of human industry towards decay, attributes no 
 greater antiquity to a building than the latest period at which it can naturally and consistently be 
 supposed to have been erected, those who call it older requiring to show reasons for holding it to 
 be so, — the method adopted as to the Round Towers has generally been, to take at once some age 
 far beyond the period of ascertained history, and to call upon all impngners of their claims to so 
 remote an antiquity, for specific evidence of their non-existence in an age not within the reach of 
 archaeological evidence. The absence of inscriptions — the plainness of the edifices — and the paucity of 
 symbol or ornament — have afforded much opportunity for this kind of dogmatism. Upon one, at. 
 least, of the Irish towers, however, — that of Donaghmore, — there is a rude crucifix ; and it will be 
 seen that the Tower of Brechin exhibits a crucifix carved in low relief above the doorway, and two 
 lateral figures, still exhibiting through the decaying effect of time and weather, characteristics of their 
 having been originally images of saints. These undoubtedly Christian symbols have been treated 
 in different fashion by disputants of different temper. The bold have triumphantly adduced them 
 as evidence that the Christian symbols are older than Christianity, while the more timid have main- 
 tained that the ornaments are additions made to the buildings at a later period. The former 
 argument must be left to its own strength ; the latter is well answered by the architectural 
 appearance of the Brechin Tower, where every thing but the conical roof has the appearance ot 
 being part of one original design, and where it is but barely possible that, with great exertion, a part 
 of the lower range could have been removed for the incrustation of these Christian symbols, at a 
 cost which might have been sufficient to erect a separate tower. 
 
 Among the other purposes to which these stony cylinders have been attributed, we find respec- 
 tively the religious rites of the followers of Budha and the Druids, and the early worship of fire 
 and the sun. They have been identified with minarets for calling the people to prayer ; — they are 
 supposed by some to have been penitentiary prisons,and, by others, monumental tombs; while at least 
 one daring inquirer has scandalised them as representatives of the material object of Phalic worship, 
 while he attributes to Solomon's Temple a similar origin and purpose.* They have been found, under 
 the name of " Celestial Indices," to have been the observatories of ancient astronomers, whose 
 knowledge of the heavenly bodies was as far beyond that of later degenerate ages, as they were nearer 
 the first dawn of human knowledge.! Some writers have maintained that they were raised by the 
 Danes, others by the Phoenicians. The Brehon lawgiver was a kind of person with whom they could 
 not fail to be associated ; and the similarity of his title to the name of Brechin, was a coincidence too 
 valuable to be overlooked. The example of St Simeon Styletes naturally suggested that the 
 towers might have served the purpose of lifting ambitious anchorites above the unholy earth. 
 That they should have been used for the purpose which their appearance naturally indicates — that 
 of belfries — was too simple a theory to receive much toleration. It has been stated, that while 
 several of them have a row of four or six windows, of considerable size, near the top, others have 
 but small loopholes, through which the sound would have been imperfectly communicated ; and it has 
 been confidently maintained that they are all too narrow to admit of the swing of a bell. Unfortu- 
 nately for thi3 latter statement, the Bound Tower at Abernethy at present holds the bell of the parish 
 
 * The Round Towers of Ireland, or the Mysteries of Free Masonry, of Sabaism, and of Budhism, for the first time unveiled. 
 By Henry O'Brien, Esq. B.A. + See Moore's Hist, of Ireland, i 30. 
 
CATHEDRAL AND ROUND TOWER OF BRECHIN. 3 
 
 church, while that of Brechin contained, until about fifty years ago, the bells which now more conve- 
 niently hang in the neighbouring steeple.* Nor are we without evidence of their having been so used 
 in Ireland. One writer says, " There was no doubt but the Round Tower at Ardmore was used for a 
 belfray, there being, towards the top, not only four opposite windows to let out the sound, but also 
 three pieces of oak still remaining, in which the bell was hung ; there were also two channels cut 
 in the cill of the door where the rope came out, the ringer standing below the door on the outside."f 
 A passage in the Annals of the Four Masters, describing the destruction of the church of Doun, 
 with its campanilis or belfry, % is confidently said to apply to one of these towers, of which the 
 remains were removed in 1789. § 
 
 Human bones have been found in the earth, both within and close around these remnants of 
 ancient architecture, — a circumstance readily accounted for by the mere fact of their being ecclesias- 
 tical edifices. A rumour having, however, arisen, that sepulchral urns, and other indications of 
 ante-Christian sepulture, had been found connected with their foundations, it was resolved to ;nake 
 some investigations beneath the Tower of Brechin, which were not, however, conducted with any 
 such glittering expectations as those which prompted an enthusiast to dig beneath the foundation 
 of its neighbour at Abernethy, with the assurance of finding the golden cradle in which the children 
 of the Pictish kings were rocked. 
 
 Under the auspices of the intelligent historian of Brechin, an excavation took place, to a con- 
 siderable depth, within the area of the Tower ; very praiseworthy precautions being adopted for 
 keeping the building closed in the absence of the confidential workman employed in the operation, 
 " so as to prevent any person," says Mr Black, " introducing modern antiques for our annoyance." 
 The earth was carefully sifted and preserved. In his letter to Mr Petrie, of 13th April 1842, Mr 
 Black fully details every item of extraneous matter found in the earth, so far as it was travelled, 
 and the following conclusion contains a brief account, as well of the various articles discovered, as 
 of his opinion how they found their way thither. " My opinion is, the slates, glass, wood, and iron, 
 had been tossed in at what in Scotland is called the Reformation, when our Scotch apostle, John 
 Knox, drove your Roman Catholic apostles from what he called their rookeries ; — that the bones 
 and great part of the animal and vegetable matter had been carried to the top of the Tower by tne 
 rooks and jackdaws, for building their nests and feeding their young, and had tumbled from thence 
 to the bottom of the Tower ; — that the peats and various stuff had been thrown, at various times, 
 into the bottom of the Tower, as a general receptacle for all refuse ; — and that the fragments of 
 urns or jars are just the remains of ordinary articles belonging to the different kirk officers." || 
 
 Uniform as are the general features of these buildings, there are more perplexing varieties in 
 their details than could have been well anticipated in an architecture so simple. That they were 
 of great antiquity was not to be doubted. The description of Barri, commonly called Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, carries them back to the twelfth century. It has been remarked that Barri speaks of 
 them as if they were in use in his own day for ecclesiastical purposes ;U but it must be remembered 
 that he attributes their origin to the Danes, and makes other allusions which show that, even in his 
 day, many of them were antiquities. On the other hand, though in the instance of Brechin the 
 
 * New Statistical Account. Forfarshire. 133. 
 + Smith's Hist, of Waterford, — Quoted, Ledwich Antiq. of Ireland, 295. 
 t "Dununi combustum totum cum sua ccclesia lapidea et ciyn suo campanile, fulmine." — O'Connor. Rer. Hib. Scrip, iii. 559. 
 § Reeve's Eccles. Ant. 41, 230. |i Petrie's Round Towers, 95. 
 
 U "Turres ecclesiasticas qua; more patrio arcta; sunt et alta?, necnon et rotunda;." 
 
4 
 
 CATHEDRAL AND ROUND TOWER OF BRECHIN. 
 
 curve over the door is cut into a block of solid stone, others indicate an acquaintance with the struc- 
 ture both of the round and the pointed arch; and these types, along with the Christian emblems already 
 alluded to, show where a limitation must be sought to their age. On many of them, moreover, in- 
 cluding both the Scottish specimens, there are monumental details which, if not purely Norman, 
 have unequivocal symptoms of a cognate origin. All these matters having been fully and minutely 
 analysed by Mr Petrie, he came, in his instructive Prize Essay, published by the Royal Academy 
 of Dublin, to the following conclusions : — 
 
 " 1, That the towers are of Christian and ecclesiastical origin, and were erected at various periods 
 between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. 2d, That they were designed to answer, at least a two- 
 fold use, — namely, to serve as belfries, and as keeps or places of strength in which the sacred 
 utensils, books, relics, and other valuables, were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics to whom 
 they belonged could retire for security in cases of sudden predatory attack. 3d, That they were 
 probably also used, when occasion required, as beacons or watch-towers."* In support of the first 
 and main conjecture, he states that, — " The towers are never found unconnected with ancient ecclesi- 
 astical foundations." This argument is not insuperable, as it is known to have been the practice of 
 the first missionaries to plant their churches on the sites of Pagan temples; but it is farther stated 
 that — " Their architectural styles exhibit no features or peculiarities not equally found in the original 
 churches with which they are locally connected, when such remain." 
 
 When we keep in view the early progress of Christianity in Ireland, and connect it with the 
 circumstance that, in the twelfth century, a religious house of the Culdees, — who, having had their 
 origin there, radiated throughout Scotland from the central institution in Iona, — existed in Brechin,f 
 we are brought by natural steps to the simple fact, that the model of the ecclesiastical edifices of the 
 parent country was adopted by the colony. " There can be no hesitation," says a late writer, " in 
 fixing the middle of the twelfth century as nearly about the date of the Abernethy Tower, and a full 
 century nearer our own time as that of the Tower at Brechin. \ " But we have as little hesitation in 
 pronouncing the Tower of Brechin to be fully as old as the twelfth century. 
 
 The history of the See, which was founded about the year 1150, does not connect it with any 
 remarkable events.§ 
 
 * Petrie's Round Towers. Trans. R. Irish Ac. xx. 5. + Keith's Catalogue, 156. 
 
 X Descriptive Notices of Parochial and Collegiate Churches of Scotland, xxix. 
 § Keith's Cat., 156 et seq. Copies of many of the muniments of the Bishopric, including bulls and charters, are in the 
 Hutton MSS. Ad. Lib. 
 
mains cmioiacim & rotwje* t@webi at jbhoscjmkw.. 
 
BURGIE CASTLE. 
 
 The pedestrian between Elgin and Forres, who has a little time to spare, may probably visit 
 this quaint spectral-looking tower ; but, except by such a casual visitor, it is little known or appre- 
 ciated. Like its more important neighbour, Castle Stewart, to which, in some points, it exhibits a 
 considerable resemblance, it has several architectural peculiarities worth being preserved, and, 
 among others, a perfect horizontal railing of rain-spouts, must have given it a peculiarly formidable 
 aspect to those whose imagination or ignorance made them believe they were the actual wall- 
 pieces of which they are an imitation. The history of this old stronghold, except as to the mere 
 name and genealogy of its proprietor, is almost a pure blank. It was of old called Burgin. 
 Under this title it occasionally appears in the collection of documents connected with the See of 
 Moray, called the Registrum Moraviense ; but few readers would really care to know how its tithes, 
 which are the object of these notices, were allocated on each occasion, or would even feel much 
 interest in the most important of them all, which relates to a question whether the precentor or 
 sub-chanter of the cathedral church is the titular of certain revenues from the estate. We are told 
 that, in later years, the edifice belonged to the Dunbars of Grange, a branch of the Dunbars of 
 Mochrum. The domain was attached to the neighbouring Abbey of Kinloss, and it seems to have 
 passed to a private family, through a process of lay impropriation which it would neither be easy 
 nor interesting to investigate. It appears that it came into the possession of Alexander Dunbar, 
 who, in 1567, married Catherine Reid, niece of Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss.* Dunbar, who 
 was sub-chanter of Moray, was appointed a Judge of the Court of Session in the year 1560, 
 the epoch of the Reformation, and of the secularising of the ecclesiastical estates. Neither 
 his ecclesiastical nor his judicial office seems to have saved the owner of Burgie from being 
 compromised in the deadly feuds of his neighbours, and finding it necessary to keep within 
 the walls of his tower, instead of attending to his duties in the Court of Session. Thus it appears 
 on the record of that tribunal, that, in the year 1579, his fellow judges excused him " as now 
 absent, and dare not repair to thir partis throw deidlie feid and enmity standing betwein him and 
 his chief, the Laird of Cumnok, and utheris, the friendis of the surname of Innes, conform to his 
 supplication direct to the Lord President." t 
 
 The buildings of the ecclesiastical institution to which Burgie was attached, might have formed 
 an interesting feature in this work, had not rude hands been recently laid on them. The 
 Abbey of Kinloss was one of the magnificent endowments of King David. The abbot was 
 mitred, and sat in Parliament, and the brotherhood possessed broad domains in the fruitful 
 plains of Moray. We are told in the last century how a person who had purchased the abbey 
 lands, observing " that the buildings were far more extensive than were requisite for a kirk, and 
 that the stones were excellently squared, large, and well calculated for buildings of strength, 
 agreed to build a new place of worship for the parish, with which they were well pleased, and then 
 had full liberty to pull the abbey to pieces." \ Yet enough of the building remained, twenty 
 years ago, to make the ecclesiastical antiquary now regret the devastation of later times. A more 
 suitable spot for a monastic ruin cannot well be conceived. Everything around is soft and placid, 
 and rich in centuries of that cultivation which the monks, whose bones have long been mixed with 
 
 * Shaw's History of Moray, 114. f Brunton and Haig's History of the College of Justice, 104. 
 
 X Cordiiier's Antiquities. 
 
 Burgie Castle, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 BURGIE CASTLE. 
 
 the soil, began in days when all around them was idleness and barbarism. An octagon — probably 
 a chapter-house — of very graceful architecture, then remained to attest the original stateliness and 
 beauty of the abbey church. Like the many Gothic edifices scattered through York, when com- 
 pared with the Minster, it seemed but a secondary object to those who had just left the gorgeous 
 ruins of Elgin ; but it had its own peculiar beauties. Beside it stood a considerable cluster of 
 towers and turrets, the remains of the cloister. Among the fragments lying around might be 
 observed a stone coffin, evidence of the very early age at which the spot had been used as a place 
 of sepulture ; while a few pear-trees — venerable, yet bearing an ample load of fruit — seemed 
 startlingly to abbreviate the long ages that have passed since the provident monks tended their 
 fruitful orchard. The author of the Statistical Account, writing in 1842, may be left to tell the 
 subsequent fate of this interesting ruin : — " Violent hands have committed depredations on it 
 at various times ; and, in fact, it has formed a quarry for almost all the old houses and granaries 
 in the neighbourhood. Still, notwithstanding these attacks, the sides and gable wall of the 
 abbacy stood entire, until they were, within these few years past, recklessly levelled with the 
 ground, and disposed of for building dykes. Not one stone would have been left on another to 
 mark the spot, had not the trustee on the estate, a gentleman of antiquarian tastes and attainments, 
 interdicted the spoliation, and caused the east gable, that narrowly escaped destruction, to be 
 propped by a buttress of mason-work : and there it stands — the sad and solitary fragment of a 
 mansion, wherein the mitred abbot once held his sumptuous banquets, and even princes were 
 his guests." * 
 
 * Stat. Account. Elgin, 206. 
 
CAERLAVEROC CASTLE. 
 
 The Scottish reiver, or free-booter, usually perched his stronghold on the top of an isolated rock 
 or by the edge of a ravine; and he derived so much security from these natural peculiarities, that 
 they came to be considered indispensable to a real fortress. It must have been seen, however, that 
 in England, where a rocky foundation could more rarely be obtained, the great fens and morasses 
 afforded a means of protection from hostile invasion, as effectual as precipices or torrents; and 
 occasionally we find, in Scotland, defensible positions of this character successfully adopted. 
 Thus the flat sandy shores of Dumfriesshire could boast of at least one strong position which, 
 close to the junction of two rivers, had the swelling Solway on one side, and the pathless 
 wastes of Lochar Moss on the other. It was important that the peninsula thus guarded 
 from without should be internally commanded by a fortified place, and thus, from a very 
 early period rose the towers of Caerlaveroc, " not many feet above high-water mark."* 
 The extent to which the available materials of a flat site near abundance of water had been 
 adapted to defensive purposes, is indicated by the ample remains of the old moats, whence the 
 people of the country call the spot the Island of Caerlaveroc. The great gateway pierces a narrow 
 curtain between two machicolated round towers of old baronial architecture ; and one of the round 
 towers at the other two angles of the triangular plan to which the edifice was adjusted, still remains. 
 A considerable portion of the intervening buildings have the canopied and sculptured window cases 
 of the domestic architecture of the reign of James VI., and remind one of Linlithgow Palace and 
 Heriot's Hospital. 
 
 The site of this castle has been identified by antiquaries with the Carbantorigum of Ptolemy's 
 Geography. A tradition relating to a period four centuries later than the era of the geographer, 
 with far less probability, states that the castle was founded by Lewarch Og, son of Lewarch Hen, 
 a poet of celebrity, from whom it was tenned Caer Lewarch -Ogg, signifying, in Cambro- 
 Celtic, the city or fortress of Lewarch Ogg.f Passing over a period of six centuries, we come 
 within the range of authentic records, which, in showing that the barony was acquired by Sir John 
 Macuswell about the year 1220, and that it has, since that time, remained in possession of the 
 Maxwell family, prove it to be one of the oldest of the well-authenticated hereditary family posses- 
 sions in Scotland. \ The fortress became afterwards memorable in the national war against 
 Edward I., who, when he overran Galloway with his invading army in June 1300, laid formal siege 
 to Caerlaveroc Castle, which yielded after a long resistance, against which the highest engineering 
 science of the age appears to have been directed. Although but briefly recorded by the ordinary 
 annalists, this siege has been resuscitated in later times as a memorable event, by the discovery in 
 the British Museum of a contemporary rhythmic narrative of the conflict, minutely set forth in Nor- 
 man French. It is attributed, by its editor, to Walter of Exeter, a Franciscan friar, who, about 
 the year 1292 wrote the history of Guy of Warwick. This production, like most narrative poems 
 of a rude literary age, is in a great measure a descriptive catalogue of the several leaders in the 
 attack, and it greatly excited the hcraldric enthusiasm of its editor, Sir Harris Nicolas, who says, 
 " It contains the accurate blazon of about one hundred knights or bannerets of the reign of Edward 
 
 * New Statistical Account — Dumfries, 351. + Grose's Antiquities, i., 159. J Douglas's Peerage, ii., 312. 
 
 Caerlaveroc Castle, 1 — 4. 
 
2 
 
 CAERLAVEROC CASTLE. 
 
 tlie First, among whom were the King, the Prince of Wales, and the greater part of the peers of 
 the realm. At the same time that this production may, perhaps, be considered the earliest blazon 
 of arms which is known, it affords evidence of the perfect state of the science of heraldry at that 
 early period, and from which it is manifest that it was reduced to a science, when it is generally 
 considered to have been but in its infancy." * The narrative affords us this picturesque description 
 of the besieged fortress : — " Carlaverock was so strong a castle that it did not fear a siege, therefore 
 the king came himself because it would not consent to surrender. But it was always furnished for 
 its defence whenever it was required, with men, engines, and provisions. Its shape was like that 
 of a shield, for it had only three sides all roimd, with a tower on each angle ; but one of them was 
 a double one, so high, so long, and so large, that under it was the gate, with a draw-bridge, well 
 made and strong, and a sufficiency of other defences. It had good walls and good ditches, filled to 
 the edge with water ; and I believe there never was seen a castle so beautifully situated, for at once 
 could be seen the Irish Sea towards the west, .and to the north a fine country surrounded by an arm 
 of the sea, so that no creature born could approach it on two sides without putting himself in danger 
 of the sea." f 
 
 We have a systematic and minute description of all the operations of the siege, which shows that, 
 if the science of heraldry was then at maturity, that of reducing fortified places was truly in its 
 infancy. Perhaps the worthy chronicler little dreamed that to a distant posterity these wonderful 
 operations would appear like a theatrical pageant, or some rough schoolboy game. Before the 
 
 * Preface to " The Siege of Carlaverock," by Sir Harris Nicolas. f Translation by Sir H. Nicolas, p. 61. 
 
CAERLAVEEOC CASTLE. 
 
 3 
 
 siege began " might be seen houses built without carpenters or masons, of many different fashions, 
 and many a cord stretched, with white and coloured cloth, with many pins driven into the ground, 
 many a large tree cut down to make huts." On the first attack the besieged seem to have done 
 some execution, whereon " when the men-at-arms saw that the footmen had sustained such losses who 
 had begun the attack, many ran there, many leaped there, and many used such haste to go, that 
 they did not deign to speak to any one. Then might there be seen such kind of stones thrown as 
 if they would beat hats * and helmets to powder, and break shields and targets in pieces ; for to kill 
 and wound was the game at which they played. Great shouts arose among them when they perceived 
 that any mischief occurred." \ " Many a heavy and crushing stone," we are told, " did he of Kirk- 
 bride receive, but he placed before him a white shield with a green cross engrailed. So stoutlv 
 was the gate of the castle assailed by him, that never did smith with his hammer strike his iron as 
 he and his did there. Notwithstanding there was showered upon them such huge stones, quarrels, 
 and arrows, that with wounds and bruises they were so hurt and exhausted, that it was with great 
 difficulty they were able to retire." \ 
 
 At last the garrison, desiring to surrender, showed a flag of truce ; " but he that displayed it was 
 shot with an arrow by some archer, through the hand into the face." The smallness of the garrison 
 seems to have astonished even the besiegers, and is a remarkable evidence of the preponderating 
 value in those days of even such rude fortifications, as the remains of ancient castellated architecture 
 exhibit. " And this is the number of those who came out of it ; of persons of different sorts and 
 ranks, sixty men, who were beheld with much astonishment, but they were all kept and guarded 
 till the king commanded that life and limb should be given them, and ordered to each of them a 
 new garment." § Such is the chivalrous spirit in which the Poet chronicler describes the conclusion ; 
 but the chronicle of Lanercost, in closer conformity with the character of the victor, states that 
 many of the captives were hanged. 
 
 The castle remained for some years in possession of the conquerors. It must, however, have 
 speedily again fallen into the hands of the Scots; for in the year 1312 it appears to have been in 
 the custody of Sir Eustace Maxwell, who, as a zealous supporter of Bruce, subsequently defended 
 his paternal possession against the English in a second siege. He successfully resisted them, but 
 deemed it wise to destroy or dismantle the fortress ; and there existed a charter of Robert the 
 Bruce "to Eustace Maxwell of ane annuall, for demolishing the castle of Carlaverock."|| The 
 destruction appears to have affected no part that could not be easily repaired, for amid the fluctua- 
 tions of that shifting time, we find Herbert, the son of Eustace, holding the castle as liege man <>t 
 Edward III., in 1347. Major briefly tells us that it was levelled to the ground by Rojcr Kir.k- 
 patrick in 1355. The older part of the present edifice is supposed to have been erected near the 
 conclusion of the fourteenth century. ^[ It is said that the site of the old castle, which stood the 
 sieges, was at some distance even from that of the present ruin ; but there are portions of the edi- 
 fice bearing the stamp of- an antiquity far beyond that of the majority of Scottish castellated 
 edifices ; and it is worthy of note, that the peculiarities mentioned by the chronicler of the siege 
 are still exhibited in the ruin as features of the original plan. 
 
 In 1424, Caerlaveroc became the prison of Murdoch, Duke of Albany,*- being probably considered 
 as safely distant from his retainers in Perthshire, and the nobles with whom he was in confederacy. 
 The round tower at the western angle is still traditionally called " Murdoch's Tower." The castle 
 was again besieged by the English in 1570, when the Earl of Essex passed the border with an 
 
 * In the original, chapeaus — meaning, of course, hats made of iron. f Translation by Sir H. Nicolas, 67. 
 
 % Ibid. 77. § Ibid. 87. || Robertson's Index to the Charters, p. 15. 
 
 U Nicolas*s Hist, of Caerlaveroc. ** Tytler's Hist., iii. 71. 
 
4 
 
 CAERLAVEROC CASTLE. 
 
 army, after the murder of the Regent Murray. The castle was repaired, and probably the more 
 modern part of it built, by the Earl of Nithisdale in 1638.* Two years afterwards, it was besieged 
 by the Covenanting army, and was yielded up to them by the King's instruction, in a capitulation 
 dated 1st October 1640. Lord Nithisdale, who was both governor and owner of the fortalice, in 
 which he commanded a garrison of 100 men, gave up possession to Colonel Home, after preparing 
 " a note of such things as were left in the house of Carlaveroc at my lord's departure," — like the 
 inventory of a furnished house given up to a tenant, f The Earl afterwards charged Home with 
 having " intromitted " with his goods and effects — an expression used by the Scottish law in refer- 
 ence to one who takes possession of property to which he has a questionable right. The list is 
 very specific, as the following specimen will show : — 
 
 " Item, He has intromitten with twa open trunks full of Holland shirts, and pillabers and dorock — 
 damask table-cloths, and gallons, and towells, to the number of forty pair of sheets or thereby, and 
 seventy stand of napery. Every pair of sheets consisting of seven ells of cloth at six shillings ster- 
 ling the ell, amounts to £5, 2s. ster. the pair. Inde, £704 sterling. 
 
 " Item, The stand of neprey, consisting of ane table-cloth, of twa dozen of nepkins, twa iang 
 towells, (estimate to xx pound ster.) 
 
 " Item, He has intromitten with ane knock that stands upon ane table, estimate to xx pound 
 sterling." 
 
 * Grose, i. 162 f See the Document. Grose, i. 164. 
 
C/klgJRlLAVl&IftOC CAST1L.B ... 
 
 }• NIKANC E GATEWAY FLANKING TOWERS 
 
CAMBUSKENNETH ABBEY. 
 
 The massive tower depicted in the accompanying plate is nearly the sole remaining vestige of 
 the great Abbey of St. Mary, Cambuskenneth, the power and ancient opulence of which have 
 no unapt representative in its massive and strong proportions, and simple yet dignified decora- 
 tions. Although only about two miles distant from Stirling Castle, it is situated within the 
 county of Clackmannan, close on the edge of the River Forth, which — 
 
 " in measured gyres doth whirl herself about, 
 
 That, this way, here, and there, back, forward, in and out ; 
 And like a sportive nymph, oft doubling in her gait 
 In labyrinth-like turns, and twinings intricate, 
 Through those rich fields doth run." 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a better description of the Forth at Cambuskenneth, than Drayton 
 has here given of the Ouse. Windings would be an improper term for a succession of circular 
 sweeps, in which two parts of the river, miles distant by the course of the stream, sometimes 
 come within not many yards of each other across the land. More descriptively they are termed 
 " links," or " loops," and in one of these stand the remains of the Abbey — the old tower with its 
 staircase nearly complete, the broken gothic arch of a gateway, some crumbling walls, and the 
 hoary remnants of an orchard, which in their green old age still annually recall to remembrance 
 the proverbial proficiency of the monks in the science of horticulture. For many miles up and 
 down, the loops of the river wind through a cake of deep rich alluvial mould, which must have 
 been one successive garden when the surrounding rocks, yielding to the pressure of a later culti- 
 vation, were a rugged wilderness. It is a popular rhyme of the district that " a loop of the Forth 
 is worth an Earldom in the north," and the heavy rich crops of those higher classes of grain 
 produce, for which only a limited portion of the land of Scotland is adapted, still in some measure 
 justify the comparison. The view from the tower is one of the finest mixtures of the grand in 
 nature, and the cultivated in art that British scenery can exhibit. Close around are the windings 
 of the river, and the rich abundant produce — farther off rise the rocks and towers of " Grey 
 Stirling, guardian of the North,'' and at greater distance to the west and north, the Highland 
 mountains and the bold chain of the Ochills. The style of architecture is fully developed in the 
 plate — it is the early English, with the slightest possible marks of a transition into the immediately 
 succeeding era, as in the cusped niche over the doorway. 
 
 This establishment was founded by King David, about the year 1147-* An attested copy of 
 the foundation charter is still extant, recommending itself to a belief in its authenticity by its com- 
 prehensive brevity — it occupies only one of the short pages of the Chartulary. The grant is 
 made by the King, with the consent of Henry his son, and the confirmation and attestation 
 (confirmatione et testimonio) of the Prelates, Counts and Barons of the kingdom, and is in favour 
 of the Church of St. Mary, of Striveling, and the Canons regularly residing there. The list of 
 temporalities begins with the lands of Cambuskenneth — whence the establishment subsequently 
 derived its name ; it includes the fishings between these lands and Polmain, and one net (spelt 
 rethc) in the water. It includes part of the royal revenue from the Burgh of Stirling. The 
 " cane" of one ship (canum unius navis) a salt pan, and some feudaties.f This document was 
 preserved in an authorised transcript with the other muniments of the institution, owing to an 
 application by the Abbot and fraternity of the monastery, to the King in council in 1535. They 
 complained that the place where their muniments were deposited was ill aired and damp, that 
 
 • Spottiswood's Religious Houses, 239. Macfarlane of Macfarlane prefixes to his transcript of the Foundation Charter in 
 Adv. Lib. "circa annum, 1147," and gives his reasons for assigning this date, see p. 319. 
 t Registrum Ccenobiide Cambuskenneth, M S. Adv. Lib. 
 Ca.miiuskenneth A.BBBY, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 CAMBUSKENNETH ABBEY. 
 
 the seals were decaying and the writing becoming obliterated, and they prayed that a copy of all 
 their title deeds might be made book-wise in parchment, and officially authenticated. A day was 
 appointed in which all parties interested, either as supporting or impugning documents, were 
 cited to appear, and the various writings were copied into a volume, which, being authenticated 
 by the great seal, was declared to bear the same faith with the originals. This parchment record, 
 consisting of 166 leaves, each perforated by a thick cord of silk, which, passing through the whole 
 volume, had the great seal formerly appended to it, is now in the Advocate's Library. It contains 
 data for a much fuller history of the institution than the present publication can afford room for. 
 
 The Abbey makes its earliest appearance in Scottish history in the year 1258. The choice of 
 a Bishop of Glasgow was then the point on which turned the predominance of the Scottish or 
 the English party in the councils of the kingdom, and being an ecclesiastical question, the Pope 
 interfered by excommunicating the opponents of Gamelin, the Bishop elect and representative of 
 the Scottish interest. The power of the other party rendered it difficult to publish the sentence, 
 but a favourable opportunity being found, the awful solemnity was performed with bell and candle 
 by the Abbots of Jedburgh and Melrose, in the Abbey Church of Cambuskenneth.* The next 
 mention of the establishment has not so patriotic an appearance — in 1296, we find the Abbot 
 Patrick doing fealty to Edward I.f In the ensuing year a scene of a very different character 
 occurred, when Wallace's troops, stationed close to the Abbey, gained the celebrated victory 
 over Cressingham, usually called the battle of Stirling. In 1326, history records an event within 
 these monastic walls totally distinct in character from either of those already mentioned, and 
 scarcely less important in its consequences even than the career of Wallace — the first ascertained 
 appearance of the representatives of the civic corporations as a constituent part of the Parliament 
 of Scotland. J The main purpose for which this Parliament was assembled, was the recording of 
 the national allegiance to David the son of Robert the Bruce, as the heir of that victorious 
 monarch : and a king who had acquired so strong a hold on the hearts of his people, would 
 naturally feel that any extension of the grand council of the nation, which he could safely create 
 for such an occasion, would only be a widening of the circle of the supporters of his dynasty. 
 This monastery shares with Iona, Dunfermline, Scone, and Holyrood, the distinction of being a 
 place of sepulture for members of the royal family, and in 1488 it received within its burial 
 vaults a corpse found in an open field hard by, which history faintly attests as that of the 
 murdered monarch James III., whose wife was buried within the same precincts. 
 
 Many of the Abbots of Cambuskenneth held high offices of state in Scotland. Patrick Panther 
 or Paniter, who was Abbot during the reign of James IV , was a celebrated scholar and practical 
 statesman. David Panther — a man whose name more frequently occurs in works of reference, 
 believed to have been his near relation, was commendator of the Abbey close on the verge of the 
 Reformation — he died in 1558. § The celebrated scholar Thomas Ruddiman, found some 
 diplomatic papers issued in the name of the Scottish monarchs, so elegant in their latinity, that 
 he deemed them, on that account, worthy of publication, and in 1722, they were issued in two 
 volumes, with the title " Epistolse Jacobi Quarti, Quinti et Mariae Reginae Scotorum eorumque 
 Tutorum et Regni Gubernatorum." The first volume of this collection is generally understood 
 to have been the work of Robert Panther, and the greater part of the second to have been that of 
 David, who was Secretary of State and a Privy Councillor during the latter part of the reign of 
 James V. and the infancy of Queen Mary. 
 
 The temporalities of Cambuskenneth were conveyed by James VI., along with those of some 
 other religious houses, to the Earl of Mar. The property continued in the possession of his 
 representatives, the Erskines of Alva, until the year 1709, " when it was purchased by the Town 
 Council of Stirling, for the benefit of Cowan's hospital, to which it still belongs." || 
 
 * Tytler's Hist. i. 18. t Macfarlane's MS. 317. t Tytler, i. 338, ii. 27G. 
 
 § Nimmo'a History of Stirlingshire, i. 122, 124. || Ibid. i. 134. 
 
CASTLE CAMPBELL. 
 
 Everybody admires Castle Campbell. It would be difficult, indeed, to discover a more 
 complete representative of the mountain chieftain's stronghold, as the romancists have described 
 it in the Abruzzi or the Vosges, and Salvator and Vernet have painted it. A high and 
 abrupt range of mountains — a precipitous rock covered with a vast and varied mass of 
 buildings — on either side roaring torrents, seen through mysterious gulfs of frightful depth, 
 while far off on either side stretches " a sable, silent, solemn forest," — scarcely any of the 
 attributes which can give interest to such a scene are wanting. The Ochils, on the slope of 
 which the Castle stands, are at a distance, shapeless and uniform, with long table-lands and 
 rounded summits ; but their sides are in many places scooped out into precipices and gulfs. 
 Of the wild inaccessible spots thus created, the very best has been selected for Castle Campbell. 
 On the front, facing the valley of the Devon, and the sides, there is perhaps no other Scottish 
 fortalice so well defended by nature ; and even on the rear, only approachable by crossing 
 a high range of mountains, the access is narrow and well defendable. On approaching the 
 Castle rock, we reach the streams which on either side tumble through the chasms at its 
 base, and meet in one, thus making the rock a peninsula. The adventurous tourist sometimes 
 endeavours to clamber up by the channel of the more southerly stream ; but the attempt is 
 a perilous one. If not carried beyond the bounds of prudence, however, it brings him into 
 magnificent scenery of precipice and waterfall, with the sweet overhanging trees which give 
 freshness and beauty to the dark fissure. Right in the face of the rock, and reaching from 
 the bottom of the defile to the Castle wall, there is an eccentric narrow cleft, smooth as if it 
 had been cut with a sharp knife in a soft substance. It is called Kemp's Score. Tradition 
 ascribes it, with other geological eccentricities, to art, and also asserts that it once afforded 
 a hiding-place for John Knox — a most unlikely service, since it is a place where a fugitive 
 would be exposed to multitudinous dangers. 
 
 We reach the Castle from the lower part of the torrent by a steep ascent on the surface 
 of the smooth grass, and then we find what a lordly eagle's nest, commanding a matchless 
 stretch of country, the great mountain chief had raised for himself. Besides the attributes 
 of great strength and security, the fortress is not without its amenities. The mixture of 
 symmetry with solidity in the arched roof of the hall, will be noticed in the accompanying 
 engraving. A gallery facing the rock, as well as the top of the great square tower, have 
 been places of open-air enjoyment ; and a small garden still shows an occasional crop of 
 apples hanging from venerable mossy trees Some of the lower parts of the building are, or till 
 a late period were, occupied by a shepherd and his family; and there was something to be respected 
 in the nerves of those who could live in these deep dusky vaults, with the torrents roaring in the 
 rocks beneath, and the broken, shattered, and occasionally falling masses of masonry swaying in 
 the winds above. 
 
 It does not appear to be distinctly known at what time this mountain territory, so far separated 
 from the others in the far west, came into the hands of the Argyle family. It was of old called 
 
 Castle Campbell, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 CASTLE CAMPBELL. 
 
 the Gloume or Gloom ; and there has been much jocularity about the Castle of Gloom, in the 
 parish of Dollar, or Dolour, and beside the stream of Griff, or Grief. Colin, first Earl of Argyle, 
 did not like the name, and procured an Act of Parliament in 1489 to change it to Castle Campbell. 
 It may be given as a specimen of a species of document which at that period pretty frequently 
 occurs in the statute-book. 
 
 " Oure sourane Lorde of his Riale autorite at the desire and supplicacioun of his cousing and 
 traist consalor Coline Erie of Ergile Lord Campbele and Lerne his Chancellare has chengeit 
 the name of the Castell and place quhilk was callit the Gloume pertenyng to his said cousing, and 
 in this his present Parliament makes mutacioun and changeing of the said name, and ordaynes the 
 samen Castell to be callit in tyme to come Campbele." 
 
 It is not likely that the great Macallum Mhor resided so often in a place where his power was 
 bounded by an ordinary estate, as in bis island fortalice at Loch Awe, or at Inverary, where he 
 was monarch of the surrounding territory. There are traces, however, of the occasional residence 
 of the family here. The author of the statistical account of the parish mentions, among the 
 seignorial obligations of the feudatories of the domain, that " in some of the charters the vassals are 
 taken bound to cary the wine used in the Castle from the port of Aloa, and in others to furnish 
 horses to bring their superior and his family from Stirling." He mentions, apparently from 
 acquaintance with the tenures themselves, that some buildings in the neighbouring village of Dollai 
 are held by owners who, if they had to fulfil the original obligations in their titles, would have to 
 be the hei'editary bakers and butchers of the owners of the Castle, and supply coal for its fires, beer 
 for its table, and oats for the horses of the men-at-arms.* 
 
 There is one curious piece of historical evidence of the occupation of the Castle. In 1556 
 John Knox had lifted his ecclesiastical banner against the Queen Regent and the Pope, had 
 gathered round him a body of followers, and held, though not yet without considerable danger, open 
 disputations. It was then that he was desired to minister to the English Church at Geneva ; and 
 having sent his female relations on before him, he determined to leave his friends in Scotland, and 
 accomplish the perilous journey. In the mean time, in the words of the history generally attri- 
 buted to his own pen, he " passed to the old Erie of Argyle who then was in the Castle of Campbell 
 where he taught certain dayis. The laird of Glenurquhare being one of his auditouris, witted the 
 said Earle of Argyle to retaine him still ; but he, purposed upon his journey, wold not att that 
 tyme stay for no requeast, adding ' That if God so blessed thei small beginnings that they 
 continued in godlyness, whensoever they pleased to command him they should find him obedient;' 
 but said ' That ones he must neadis visit that ly till flock which the wickedness of men had 
 compelled him to leave j* 1 and so in the month of July he left this realm and passed to France, 
 and so to Geneva." f 
 
 We pass over to another historical epoch, nearly a century later. Cromwell had swept the 
 King's army before him at Naseby, and the Royalist cause was doomed in England. Montrose, 
 who proposed to bring his Highland army to England, was still beyond the Grampians, and he had 
 to pass the well-organised forces of Baillie. In his way along the side of the Ochils to the memo- 
 rable field of Kilsyth, he passed the gate of one of the stateliest of the fortresses of his hated 
 adversary Argyll. The opportunity was too tempting to be overcome ; and, indeed, he only 
 pursued the system of warfare adopted by both sides, when he sacked and burned Castle Campbell. 
 
 * New Stat. Account, Clackmannan, 108. 
 
 t The Works of John Knox, i. 254. 
 
J 
 
Drawn, iy RMfiilUrys. £rwnwea\ by J.Sod/ra/. 
 
 (CASTJL3S (GAMF1B5K3L3L . 
 
I 
 
4 
 
CAWDOR CASTLE. 
 
 It is a matter curious, aud not in itself unpleasing, that the principal places noted in the great 
 tragedy of Macbeth should still present two remarkable baronial edifices — the huge tall isolated 
 pile of Glammis, and the grim keep of Cawdor, surrounded by its rambling, irregular, half-fortified 
 outworks. Their true association, however, is more with the days of Shakspeare than those of 
 Macbeth. Perhaps some part of the great tower of Glammis may be as old as the thirteenth 
 century, but no portion of Cawdor is older than the fifteenth ; and though its threatening draw- 
 bridge, its vaults, and its dark corridors, may aptly associate themselves with the " I have done 
 the deed; — didst thou not hear a noise?" yet the time when they were built was more distant 
 from the days of Macbeth on one side, than from those of Queen Victoria on the other. Indeed, 
 had we an actual building of Macbeth's day in Scotland, it would not be invested with so much 
 tragic gloom, nor could it so appropriately associate itself with deeds of horror ; for it would 
 probably be made of wicker ware or slight timber, and be in all respects unfit to represent the 
 proper stage properties of a tyrant's stronghold, and the scene of a royal murder. Yet not many 
 years ago scepticism was put to utter shame at Cawdor, by being shown the identical four-posted 
 bed in which the murder was committed, of a fashion so old that no respectable upholsterer of the 
 nineteenth century, even in Inverness or Forres, would have tamely submitted to the scandal of 
 having constructed it. The room, and the bed within it, were both burned by an accidental fire 
 in the year 1815 ; but it is somewhat contrary to the usual course of such traditional identifications, 
 that a mere accident should deprive the visitor, especially the native of London, of so very inte- 
 resting an exhibition ; and it may be hoped that the noble owner of the castle may yet restore the 
 room where Duncan was murdered, and fit it up appropriately with a few tattered tartans, and a 
 broadsword or two, from the decayed accoutrements of a Highland regiment. 
 
 Cawdor has, however, apart from its purely nominal association with Macbeth, some little 
 mysteries of its own. In one of the dungeons stands a hawthorn tree, stretching from the floor to 
 the roof, — an instance of the durability of that stubborn shrub, since the castle must have been built 
 over it. So eccentric a circumstance of course elicited a tradition to account for it, which may be 
 best described in the words of Mr Carruthers of Inverness : — 
 
 " The Thane who founded the castle is said to have consulted a seer as to the site of his intended 
 building. The wise man counselled him to load an ass with the iron chest full of the gold he had 
 amassed to erect his castle with, and to build it wherever the ass should first halt. The ass stopped 
 at the third hawthorn tree. The advice was followed ; the castle was built round the tree, enclosing 
 the precious stem ; and here it still remains, many a generation having pledged to the toast of 
 ' Freshness to the Hawthorn tree of Cawdor Castle.' The donjon is about ten feet in height, and 
 the tree reaches to the top. There is no doubt that the walls must have been built around it. An 
 old iron chest lies beside the tree, which is said to have borne the precious burden of gold. Two 
 other ancient hawthorn trees grew within a few score yards, in a line with the castle — one in the 
 garden, which fell about forty years since, and the other at the entrance to the castle, which was 
 blown down after a gradual decay, in 1836. Some suckers are now springing from the venerable 
 root, and are carefully enclosed by a wooden fence." 
 
 From the same picturesque pen, we quote the following description of part of the interior of the 
 castle, supposed to have been built soon after the commencement of the sixteenth century, ventur- 
 ing on no antiquarian commentary of our own : 
 Cawdor Castle, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 CAWDOR CASTLE. 
 
 " In one of the apartments of this new erection is a carved stone chimney-piece, containing the 
 family arms, and several grotesque figures, — among which are a cat playing the fiddle, a monkey 
 blowing a horn, a mermaid playing the harp, a huntsman with hounds pursuing a hare, &c. One 
 of these rude representations is that of a fox smoking a tobacco-pipe. On the stone is engraved the 
 date 1510, at which time that wing of the castle, as we have mentioned, was erected. Now it is 
 generally believed that tobacco was first introduced into this country by Sir Walter Raleigh, about 
 the year 1585 ; and it is singular to find the common short tobacco-pipe thus represented on a stone 
 bearing date 1510. There can be no mistake as to the date, or the nature of the representation. 
 The fox holds the ' fragrant tube' in his mouth, exactly as it is held by its human admirers ; and 
 the instrument is such as may be seen every day with those who patronise the ' cutty pipe.'"* 
 
 The possession of some of the lands forming the lordship of Cawdor has been traced so far back 
 as the year 1236, when a charter exists by which Alexander II. confirms a destination of the lands 
 of Both and Banchory. The deed was attested by Walter Fitzallan, the Justiciar of Scotland, 
 Walter Cumyn, whose family name was afterwards to be so tragically connected with Scottish 
 history, Walter Byset, who was the old Norman possessor of the territories which subsequently 
 belonged to the Lovat family, Henry Beliol, and Allan Durward, The charter is in favour of 
 Gilbert Durward or Doreward, whose Latinised name Hostiarius, through a series of mistakes, makes 
 him figure in Shaw's History of Moray as a knight bearing the name of " Horsetrot." Calder was 
 one of those ancient thaneships, the peculiar character of which has been so puzzling to anti- 
 quaries, and the baron is spoken of as the Thane in documents of a comparatively late period. In 
 1450 or 1454, a royal license was granted to the Thane to build a tower of fence ; and this is pro- 
 bably the date of the oldest part of the castle. The domain came into the possession of a branch 
 of the powerful family of Campbell by the marriage, in 1510, of Sir John Campbell, third son of 
 the Earl of Argyle, to Muiriel or Marion, the heiress of Cawdor.f The family was ennobled in 
 1796 by a British barony. Among the later traditions of Cawdor Castle, a low chamber under 
 the roof is shown, where the notorious Lovat is said to have found a retreat after the battle of 
 Culloden. But this is not likely to be true, for Lovat was found concealed far westward, and to 
 reach Cawdor he would have had to leave his own fortresses in the wilds of Inverness behind him, 
 and pass through a country occupied by the royal troops. 
 
 * Carruthers' Highland Note-Book, p. 154. r Shaw's History of Moray, p. 153. 
 
/ 
 
lEMTIEiLMtJJE T® CO AW 
 
 CJASTCILiIEi 
 
(OA I ! IP Li IE , NAIfH 
 
CLACKMANNAN TOWER. 
 
 The valley of the Devon contains a distinct neuk of Scottish scenery, separated by the range of 
 the Ochil Hills from the great straths of the Earn and Tay, and by the Firth of Forth from the 
 other tourist districts. The waters of the Devon and its confluents, struggling through the barrier 
 of the Ochil range, have created many pieces of mountain and rock scenery, which would not be 
 contemptible in the wilds of the Grampians. The Calder Linn, with its horrible circular black 
 cauldrons, in which the water whirls round for ever, and its sheer descent, in two leaps, from the 
 brow of the mountain range into the placid valley, is scarcely surpassed by Foyers, in those 
 two sentiments imparted by a fine cataract — a feeling of power, and a mysterious sense of 
 danger. The Devil's Mill — a parcel of small cataracts, pattering away and amusing themselves in 
 a deep horrible gulf of dark waters — and the Rumbling Bridge, complete a kindred sequence of 
 scenery, well worthy of a detour, which will also embrace the magnificent ruins of Castle Camp- 
 bell, engraved in this collection. 
 
 On his way to these probably more attractive scenes, let not the tourist pass unnoticed 
 the lofty gloomy square tower which, on the top of an eminence, reached through the ricketty 
 old town of Clackmannan, is a conspicuous enough object through all the level carse and 
 si rounding mountain ranges. Both from its architecture and its traditionary history, it will 
 repxy a visit. It might be difficult to say how old it is, and whether the lower portion 
 of the tower may be, as tradition assei'ts, coeval with the great King Robert the Bruce — the 
 doorway is undoubtedly of a much later period. But, as a whole, the main portion of the 
 building is an excellent specimen of the square tower of the fifteenth century, with its simple 
 strength and solidity. The traditions of Scotland love to bring everything into association with 
 Wallace and Bruce ; and since Clackmannan Tower was actually the domain of a near relative of 
 the liberator monarch, it is very natural that it should have been with more than the usual 
 appearance of probability connected with his heroic career. Indeed, a two-handed sword and a 
 helmet, said to have been a portion of his identical armour, were of old to be seen in Clackmanan, 
 and many a pilgrimage was made to the old tower to handle them. When the line of Bruce of 
 Clackmanan failed, the sword and helmet, substantial realities in themselves, whoever they may 
 have belonged to, were removed to Broomhall, as the seat of the nearest representative of the 
 family, the Earl of Elgin. A speculator on the nature of popular traditions might find some curious 
 matter in those connected with the Bruce. For instance, in the village there is a large stone, which, 
 having been broken, is girded with iron, and preserved with devout reverence as the lares of the 
 village. On this stone, says the tradition, the king, when residing in Clackmannan Tower, acciden- 
 tally left his glove ; and sending his squire to fetch it, he used the two words, clach, a stone ; and 
 mannan, a glove ; from which the tower, village, and county derive their name. The words are 
 in Gaelic, a language of which probably the Norman knight was utterly ignorant ; but his Squire 
 seems to have spoken honest broad Scotch, since a neighbouring farm, called " Look about ye," 
 is said to have been derived from his familiar recommendation to the king so to occupy himself in 
 his absence. 
 
 These local traditions, of which a fuller account may be found in Mr Chambers's Picture of 
 Scotland, are here introduced, because, notwithstanding the illustrious name with which it is con- 
 
 Clackmannan Tower, 1—2. 
 
CLACKMANNAN TOWER. 
 
 nected, the history of the castle is really uneventful. The first recorded event connected with I, 
 is a charter, dated 9th December 1359, of the castle and manor of Clackmannan. It is granted 
 by the great King Robert to his namesake and consanguineus, who seems to have been descended 
 of a younger son of the Lord of Annandale.* There is nothing in the genealogy of the family, 
 which may be found at length in Douglas, but the usual series of charters and domestic events. 
 In the old Statistical Account of Scotland there is a copy of a genealogy of the Bruces, which 
 had belonged to the last representative of ^he Clackmannan family. Its earlier and apocryphal 
 part is a little curious. Thus, " Since we are to speak of the genealogy of that heroick prince, King 
 Robert Bruce, take notice, in the first place, that this sirname (whether corruptly pronounced for Le 
 Preux, the Valiant, as in the old records it is sometimes written Le Breuse, or a tropicall [topical ?] 
 sirname De Bruis, from a town and castle of that name in the Grisons country) hath originally 
 from France, where, about thi year 1145, lived Peter Brucie, famous for writing against the Romish 
 errors of transubstantiation, whose followers, by the Popish writers, are styled Petro Brusiarie." 
 
 Henry Bruce, the last laird or baron of Clackmannan, died in 1772. His widow, Catherine, 
 who was of the same race, being a daughter of Bruce of Newton, survived to the year 1791. 
 The venerable Lady Clackmannan was one of those women — not unfrequently met with among 
 the Scottish gentry — who seem to live into a new generation, to teach it a suitable respect for the 
 physical and mental vigour of that which has departed. Though she lived to the age of ninety- 
 five, the universal tyrant rather surprised than subdued her, for her death was owing to an acci- 
 dent. She kept a hospitable board in the old tower, had troops of friends, and was ever ready, in 
 good-natured pride, to show the trophies of her house — the helmet and sword — to the patriotic 
 pilgrim of whatever degree. On the guest of gentle blood she would sometimes confer the honour 
 of knighthood with the two-handed sword ; nor did she consider the ceremony as entirely jocular, 
 or barren of distinction, though conscious that it went for nothing in the Heralds 1 College. 
 
 * Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, p. 238. 
 
COLDINGHAM PRIORY. 
 
 The ancient nunnery of St Ebba, founded during the Church's early conflicts with Northern 
 paganism, stood on the sea-beaten rock, named after its foundress, where the storm and gloom of 
 precipice and ocean were in conformity with the stern purpose, the danger, and the self-morti- 
 fying humility of the devotees. When the ecclesiastics grew rich and powerful under the patron- 
 age of the munificent Normans, they descended from the wild rock into the fertile sheltered vale. 
 Thus, a few miles inland from the scanty remains of ancient St Abb's, and of other relics of religious 
 houses built along the rocky coast of Berwickshire, are the ruins of the church of Coldingham 
 Priory. They are but a few magnificent remnants, owing their preservation through the last 
 century and a half to a sort of friendly amalgamation with the somewhat uncongenial structure of 
 a modern Scottish parish church. Ecclesiologists have heartily abused this structure for the 
 "sordid motives" which suggested it; but it has served its part better than more ambitious 
 restorations, for it has afforded its vulgar protection to the venerable remains of its august senior, 
 without offending the observer by holding out a particle of pretension to occupy any artistic rank. 
 If restorations are not very perfect, it is perhaps as well that they should not come within the 
 category of architecture at all. 
 
 The fragments of this building will be seen, from the accompanying engravings, to be of an 
 extremely interesting character. Along with some other Scottish edifices within the bounds of 
 the ecclesiastical influence of Lindisfarne, they show a peculiarly graceful mixture of the later and 
 less stern features of the Norman, with the earlier indications of the pointed style. This is not like 
 the instances where an architect of the earlier style has been succeeded by one of the later, who 
 thinks it necessary to make his work as unlike as it can be to that of his predecessor, in order that 
 its superiority may be seen ; but it is as if one mind, acquainted with both types, or at all events 
 artists working in harmony, and desirous of producing a symmetrical general effect, had drawn 
 on the resources of both styles. The work is that of no copyist — it indicates a fertile mind, con- 
 scious of its own resources, and not condescending even to be uniform with itself, since the decora- 
 tions are characterised by eccentric variations, especially in that department where an inventive 
 mind finds its chief temptation to luxuriate — the foliage. There is of course none of the full 
 richness of foliage to be found in the later pointed architecture — the reason, probably, why the 
 author of " Descriptive Notices of some of the Ancient Parochial and Collegiate Churches of Scot- 
 land " says, " The foliage, although better developed and more varied in design than is usually 
 to be met with among early semi-Norman structures, is yet awanting in the prominence, and that 
 peculiar freedom and sweetness of turn, so conspicuous in the herbaceous forms of the matured 
 first pointed period." 
 
 This religious house having been a cell of Durham, its history is to be found in the monastic 
 annals of the north of England. Dugdale and others, founding on a semi-legendary statement of 
 Bede, carry the foundation of the institution as far back as the middle of the seventh century, 
 when Eibba, the aunt of Egfrid, King of Northumberland, chose for its site the rock called St 
 Abb's Head.* An Ebba appears to have been the head of the religious house two centuries later, 
 of whom one of the ordinary legends, peculiar to the time, is preserved. It imports that she and 
 her nuns, to defeat the dishonourable intentions of a host of Danish pirates, cut off their lips and 
 
 * See Caley and Ellis's edition of the Monasticon, vi. 1149. 
 
 Coldingham Prior?. 1 —2. 
 
2 
 
 OOLDINHHAM PRIORY. 
 
 noses to make themselves objects of horror. The plan would no doubt be very effective If it was 
 adopted, and the legend proceeds to say that the infuriated Danes burnt down the nunnery. 
 
 It is stated in Dugdale, that " from this time till 1098 Coldingham lay deserted, when Edgar, 
 King of Scotland, founded upon its site a Priory of Benedictines, which he bestowed upon the 
 monks of Durham, with all lands, waters, wrecks," &c. But it is natural to suppose, notwith- 
 standing the legends which represent the earlier house to have been inhabited both by monks and 
 nuns, that the Priory of Coldingham was a totally distinct foundation from the small nunnery of 
 St Abb's a few miles distant. The building was burnt by King John in 1216, and it is to a date 
 shortly subsequent to this disaster, when it appears to have been rebuilt, that the present remains 
 are to be attributed. When the ecclesiastical separation of Scotland from England was completed, 
 this house came under the diocesan authority of the Bishop of St Andrews, and the superiority of 
 the Abbey of Dunfermline. It is only once, however, casually mentioned in reference to the year 
 1512, as a dependancy of that house in its chartulary. Edward III. was a patron and benefactor 
 of Coldingham. It was afterwards gifted by the Kings of Scotland, from time to time, with great 
 revenues from ecclesiastical sources; and the many churches the temporalities of which it obtained, 
 scattered about in the fruitful holms of Berwick — such as Ayton, Old Cambus, Swinton, Lamberton, 
 Mordington, and many others which it would be tedious to commemorate — attest its power and 
 riches. Vestiges of many of these subsidiary edifices remain, and a pilgrimage among them 
 might repay the labours of the antiquary. In one of them, Lamberton, took place that marriage 
 of James IV. with the daughter of Henry VII., which led to the union of the crowns. 
 
 The history of Coldingham Priory has itself been somewhat eventful and turbulent. It is of 
 frequent mention in Border and even national history, but only a general allusion to the events 
 connected with it can here be afforded. Its riches were the cause of that civil war which cost 
 J ames III. his life. The three great southern families, the Douglases, Homes, and Hepburns, had 
 established themselves in a sort of joint possession of the priorship and other lucrative offices of 
 the house, while James proposed to annex the revenues to his new royal chapel of Stirling, where 
 he desired to keep up a choir of vocal and instrumental musicians. The civil conflict thus 
 commenced, and its disastrous consequences in the defeat and murder of the King, are well known. 
 
 In 1554, the English invaders under Hertford occupied the abbey as a fortification, from which 
 all the efforts of the Regent's army could not dislodge them. It was left in so dilapidated a state 
 that the English were supposed to have set it on fire when they abandoned it. When appropriated 
 at the Reformation, it had the fortune to fall by marriage and descent to that Earl of Bothwell who 
 kept James VI. in ceaseless personal terror, and excited so many ludicrous turmoils. When 
 Oliver Cromwell's army invaded Scotland, some of the Cavaliers fortified the tower of Coldingham, 
 and so enraged him with a pertinacious defence, that, after he had driven them out by a lengthened 
 cannonading, he blew up a large part of the building. 
 
 The tower, ninety feet high, though in a tottering condition and quite unfit for further warlike 
 uses, stood for upwards of a century afterwards. The author of the Statistical Account, 
 writing in 1834, says, " It continued in a very precarious state, till it fell about sixty years ago, 
 and not a stone of it now remains." Grose, writing in 1789, and referring apparently to the same 
 tower, says, " Some years ago, in taking down a tower at the south-west corner of the building, a 
 skeleton of a woman was found, who, from several circumstances, appeared to have been immured. 
 She had her shoes on, which were long preserved in the custody of the minister." 
 
CORSTORPHINE CHURCH. 
 
 It has been generally supposed that Scotland, while possessed of several magnificent and 
 extensive remains of gothic architecture, is deficient in the small antique rural churches which 
 so beautifully harmonize with the landscape scenery of England ; and that their place is too often 
 occupied by some bare, unadorned edifice, conveying no outward sign of the pious purposes to 
 which it is applied. Perhaps the result of our labours may be, to shew that Scotland is not so 
 deficient in the minor retiring beauties of gothic architecture as it is generally supposed to be ; and 
 that there are many specimens deserving a much fuller notice from the ecclesiastical and archi- 
 tectural antiquary than they have hitherto obtained. Among these is the unobtrusive little 
 Church of Corstorphine, situated about three miles west of Edinburgh, in the lowest level of the 
 valley lying between the Pentland and the Corstorphine Hills. It is a plain edifice, of mixed 
 date, 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 as if they were irregularly clustered together without design. A 
 portion of the roof is still covered with old grey flagstone. A small belfry tower at the west 
 end is surmounted by a short octagonal spire. 
 
 The interior is kept in decent order as the parish Church. It is conspicuous as containing the 
 monuments of the Forresters of Corstorphine, whose connection with the endowment of this 
 Church, will have to be noticed farther on. One of these monuments and apparently the most 
 ancient, is in a niche under the window of the southern transept, and is a recumbent armed male 
 figure, with a dog at his feet. On the north side of the chancel there are two other niches. The 
 author of the Statistical Account, says " The figures in the recess nearest to the body of the 
 Church, represent Sir John Forrester, the founder of the collegiate Church, and one of his ladies. 
 Fronting this arch are five shields armorial, viz., 1st, Forrester, three hunting horns, stringed; 
 2nd, Forrester impaling St. Clair of Orkney — quarterly, first and fourth a ship, second and third 
 a cross; 3rd, Forrester; 4th, Forrester impaling a fesse cheque Stewart ; 5th, Forrester."* The 
 niche is plain and flat, but the figures are boldly cut, and in good condition. The lady, whose 
 costume is so minutely sculptured as to admit of being compared with the fashions of the present 
 day, has a book clasped in her hands. The other niche in the chancel is represented in the 
 accompanying engraving. The recumbent figures are supposed to represent Sir John Forrester, 
 the son of the founder, and his wife. The cutting of the figures is sharp, and the drapery is in 
 many parts well preserved and curious. The male figure has been decapitated ; the female, whose 
 hands are crossed over her breast, is in more perfect condition. Opposite to these monuments 
 are the remains of a piscina, and of a niche, canopied, and divided into three departments. 
 
 This edifice was not the original parish Church of Corstorphine, but a separate establishment, 
 founded and highly endowed by the enthusiasm of the affluent family whose monuments it 
 contains. Notices have been found of the existence of a Chapel attached to the manor of Cor- 
 storphine, and subordinate to the Church of St. Cuthbert, now in the new town of Edinburgh, 
 so early as the year 1128. This Chapel was subsequently converted into a parish Church. In its 
 
 Corstorphine Church, 1 — 2. 
 
 * New Statistical Account, Edinburgh, 223. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 CORSTORPHINE CHURCH. 
 
 vicinity another Chapel was founded, towards the end of the fourteenth century, by Sir Adam 
 Forrester, the edifice of which is supposed to form part of the present Church, because after this 
 latter was begun to be built, no mention has been found of the second Chapel, as a separate 
 edifice. The building at present under our notice, formerly a separate collegiate Church, was 
 founded, as an inscription on the wall of the chancel and other authorities testify, in 1429, by Sir 
 John Forrester. The author of the Statistical Account of Corstorphine, who has investigated the 
 ecclesiastical history of his parish with great zeal and success, says : 
 
 " The original foundation of the collegiate Church was for five prebendaries, of whom one was to be called the Provost, and 
 two boys ; and for their maintenance, Sir John consigned the annual rents of 120 ducats of gold, on condition that he and his 
 successors should have the patronage of these 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 that 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 Holyrood- 
 house, as 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 all its rights, emoluments, and pertinents 
 to the College for ever."* 
 
 In 1475, Hugh Bar, a burgess of Edinburgh, founded an additional chaplainry in this favoured 
 Church. " This chaplain, in addition to the performances of daily masses for the souls of the 
 King and Queen, 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 Virgin Mary, for the souls 
 of the same persons."f The provostry of Corstorphine was a lucrative office, held by many 
 important personages. In the beginning of the sixteenth century it was held by Robert Cairn- 
 cross, who holds an unenviable reputation in Buchanan's history, by the manner in which he 
 obtained the preferment of the abbacy of Holyrood, without subjecting himself to the law against 
 simony. Having, it is said, ascertained that the Abbot was on the point of death, he laid a 
 considerable wager with the King, that he would not be offered the first vacant benefice, and lost 
 his bet by being appointed the next Abbot.J The temporalities of the Church were dispersed 
 at the Reformation, a portion falling into the hands of lay improprietors, and other parts being 
 transferred to educational, and to other ecclesiastical institutions. The old parish church was 
 demolished in 1644, and the collegiate establishment, in which the minister had for some time 
 previously been accustomed to officiate, became the regular parish Church. 
 
 * New Statistical Account, Edinburgh, 224. f lb. 226. J Buchanani Hist. chap, xvi § 35. 
 
 - 
 
COXTON. 
 
 Not one fragment of history has heen preserved relating to the small but picturesque tower 
 delineated in the two accompanying illustrations; and so little attention does it seem to have 
 excited, that it is not even mentioned in any of the numerous descriptions of Scotland, although it 
 stands out a conspicuous object in the landscape near the great north road from Aberdeen to Inver- 
 ness, and is little more than two miles distant from the town of Elgin. There is, however, little 
 reason to be surprised in tins instance ; for the rugged buildings of the north of Britain, instead 
 of having been watched over or preserved, were, until recently, too frequently only so many stone 
 quarries and stores of ready prepared timber to their proprietors, and even to strangers. But 
 notwithstanding the neglect of history, and tbe want of the " long pedigree," we do not fear 
 any lack of interest for our few remarks on Coxton. 
 
 For our own part we are not sorry that this building has hitherto escaped notice ; had it been 
 otherwise, we might not, perhaps, have been the first to draw attention to the existence of one 
 entire baronial remain in Scotland, or enjoyed the pleasure of delineating one building of a most 
 interesting class, which the hand of man has not robbed of anything belonging to the original design. 
 The ancient fortified house we are considering wants, certainly, the walled courtyard which 
 formerly enclosed the two of its sides upon which small and heavily-barred windows appear ; but 
 it is otherwise perfect, and possesses peculiarities entirely its own. 
 
 In general effect, Coxton resembles many Border towers, having the lower room or vault for 
 sheltering, or rather securing, the owner's cattle against marauders, and above this the dwelling- 
 house of the laird, comprising the scanty accommodation of three rooms and several small closets, 
 the latter being within the substance of the walls. 
 
 To the lower dwelling-room there was* no access from without, save by means of a ladder; and 
 what is still more singular, there is no appearance on the exterior of any means of access to the 
 upper rooms, although there is a circular newelled stair within the substance of the wall, in the 
 angle between the covered turrets shown in the accompanying wood-engraving. The sides 
 represented in our larger plate, which were formerly protected by the walled court, have rather a 
 cheerful expression ; and the pretty hollow corbelled and cabled open turret, from whence a parley 
 might be held, has a character perfectly unique. But the opposite angles (shown on the following 
 page) are sufficiently dismal, and were rather to be avoided by the stranger in former times, 
 for not a window or opening appears in the walls, excepting so many port-holes for arrows or 
 musketry. 
 
 In many of the old Border towers and larger castles we have vaulted rooms ; and indeed, in 
 general, all the apartments on the ground-floors of this class of buildings are vaulted. Sometimes 
 the upper room is also arched, and there is one instance (at Burgie f) where the two upper stories 
 are by this means protected from combustion. But Coxton is entirely fire-proof ; and excepting 
 its two external doors, wdiich are backed by massive gates of cross-barred iron, no wood whatever 
 is used in the whole building. Neither is there a slate, for the whole roof is stone, forming on 
 the exterior a sloping line, and internally a high-pitched pointed arch. The same fire-proof 
 construction is applied even to the covered turrets at the angles. 
 
 * An external stone stair Las recently been erected. + A view of this tower has already appeared in this Woik 
 
 Coxton, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 COXTON. 
 
 When we consider that every floor is a heavy semicircular stone vault, the absence of external 
 buttresses naturally forces itself upon our observation. No defect, however, has resulted from this, 
 for by an admirable contrivance they are rendered unnecessary — the floors are vaulted at 
 opposite angles. Thus, if the sides of the lower-room arch stand east and west, those of the arch 
 immediately above are north and south, and so they keep alternating. By this simple arrange- 
 ment, the weight of one floor or vault acts as a counterpoise to the arch beneath ; and the efficiency 
 of this construction is evinced by the state of the building. Not a crack is visible ; and we predict 
 that, until the stone disintegrates, the Castle will stand. 
 
 Within the rooms is a singular provision for communication, perfectly independent of the stah> 
 case. In the centre of each floor is a square stone, fitted into a groove. These stones, when lifted 
 up, show an opening from the summit to the base of the tower, and by the aid of a rope and pulley 
 the requirements of its inmates might be attended to, and all the inconveniences of carriage up 
 the narrow staircase avoided. 
 
 Our notice of Coxton commenced by stating that it has no historical record. There is, however, 
 over its principal doorway, a large carved stone containing some time-worn initials and armorial 
 bearings, and the date 1644. This has been inserted in the building at a period considerably later 
 than that of its construction ; and, judging from parallel examples of style, we should be inclined 
 to fix the foundation of the tower fully a century earlier than this date. R. w. B. 
 
CRAIGIEVAR CASTLE. 
 
 This fine specimen of the Franco-Scottish fortified mansion hides itself in the unheard-of parish 
 of Leochel, one of the most remote and pristine districts of the north. It is sometimes inhahited, 
 and is in good preservation. Its uses, as a fortress against the Highland reiver rather than as a 
 mere dwelling-house, are recalled by all its attributes of sullen strength, and not less startlingly by 
 the admonition round the shield, by which the adventurous intruder is warned against the temerity 
 of awakening sleeping dogs. All its details have been so fully developed in the accompanying 
 plates, that a description of them is unnecessary. Not many years ago, the general effect of the 
 edifice was destroyed by the presence of two towers, which have fortunately been removed. They 
 were built by an architect who would not condescend to study the style of building peculiar to the 
 north, and, being called on to make additions to a castle, could do so no otherwise than in the Eng- 
 lish baronial style. All that is now to be regretted is, that, to make room for what he probably 
 considered decided improvements, he had altered some part of the original structure. The land- 
 scape around would be as unsuitable for the spreading pomp of an English hall, as it is in accord- 
 ance with the tall narrow clustered tower. It is a succession of bare round hills, brown with 
 heather, save where the white masses of granite crop outward, like the bones of the earth project- 
 ing through its skin. Throughout these lonely hills and glens the remains of ancient warfare are 
 thickly scattered. Weapons, generally made of stone, are frequently dug up ; the outlines of the 
 hills are in some places altered by ancient embankments and intrenchments ; a cairn marks the spot 
 where Macbeth is said to have fallen ; and near it are the ditches and embankments of a fortifica- 
 tion, which even the sceptical Lord Hailes believed to be as old as the days of the renowned 
 usurper. These matters, however, carry us into a far earlier period of history than any with which 
 Craigievar Castle can be associated. The domain belonged of old to the family of Mortimer, who 
 are said to have commenced the building of the castle, but lacked funds for its completion.* It was 
 purchased in 1611 by William Forbes of Menie, a cadet of the worshipful family of Forbes of 
 Corse, who had a history, then rare among the Scottish country gentlemen, as we are told that he, 
 " by his diligent merchandising in Denmark and other parts, became extraordinary rich." " He 
 completed this castle," says the same writer, " and plaistered it very curiously."! His son and 
 successor, William, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia in 1630. Sir William Forbes was one 
 of the few Aberdeenshire lairds who, in the troubles of the seventeenth century, adopted the cause 
 of the Covenant. He was one of the Commissioners at the Treaty of Ripon, and a man of note, 
 both in the field and in the cabinet, during those wild times. He frequently appears in the pic- 
 turesque pages of Spalding, and his domain was subjected to such inroads as the following: — " lie 
 [John Dugar, a Highland freebooter,] did great skaith to the name of Forbes — such as the Lairds 
 of Corse, Leslie, Craigievar, and some others ; abused their bounds, and plundered their horse, 
 nolt, sheep, goods, and geir, because they were the instruments of Gilleroy's death ; and the 
 Forbescs concluded to watch his comeing and gocing, and to get him if they might." J 
 
 It is a remarkable circumstance, however, that many of these remote northern fortresses are 
 
 * New Statistical Account — Aberdeen, p. 110!>. 
 t View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, (Spalding Club,) p. 599. % Hist, of the Troubles, L 85. 
 
 Cuauievar Castle, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 CRAIG IEVAR CASTLE. 
 
 more eminently connected with the literature than with the warlike history of the country. A few 
 miles on the one side of Craigievar stands Crathes, the ancestral abode of Bishop Burnett and his 
 eminent kinsman ; while on the other side Craigston recalls the name of the fantastic scholar, Sir 
 Thomas Urquhart. Craigievar is in a similar manner connected with literature, chiefly ecclesiasti- 
 cal. The elder brother of the merchant who founded the family was Patrick Forbes, Bishop of 
 Aberdeen, a man eminent for the unambitious sincerity with which he discharged the duties of his 
 office, and held honours which were rather thrust on him than desired. Like Robert Leighton, he 
 had the rare fortune, while filling a prelate's chair, to make himself acceptable, by his moderation, 
 his Christian virtues, and his learning, to the enemies of Episcopacy. He was the author of some 
 works known to the curious in ecclesiastical literature, and was the object of many able posthumous 
 eulogies, published in a collected form as " Funeral sermons, orations, epitaphs, and other pieces, 
 on the death of the Right Reverend Patrick Forbes," reprinted for the Spottiswood Club. The 
 simple people of the district had their own way of commemorating his theological triumphs. In 
 connexion with the ruins of his Castle at Corse, it is said, " tradition bears, and the common people 
 still believe, that the Devil visited the Bishop in this Castle ; that they differed ; and that the 
 Devil, on his departure, carried away with him the broad side of the Castle, on the stone stairs 
 whereof they still pretend to point out his footsteps.' 1 * His son, John Forbes, was the leader of 
 that band of Aberdeen Doctors who carried on a tough controversial war with the Covenanters, on 
 whose side his cousin was doing battle with the sword. His theological works, published at 
 Amsterdam in 1703, in two volumes folio, are well known, even beyond the circle of theological 
 students. 
 
 * Old Stat. Account, vi. 220 
 
TJRAIKGHIIEVAK CASTILE M.JE . 
 
MSID) KO(Q)M W. (CRADGniEBVAIRi.' CASTLE o 
 
CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE. 
 
 Nearly every stranger visiting Edinburgh, as well as every inhabitant of the town, must have 
 seen this old fortified mansion, if not on a near approach and inspection, at least in observing 
 how its brown ruins dignify the summit of a long slope of wooded eminence rising out of the 
 great valley between Arthur Seat and the Pentland Hills. It may be a disputed matter whether 
 a castellated edifice is seen to greatest advantage starting straight from the edge of a precipice, or 
 forming in itself the only abrupt elevation, and crowning, like Craigmillar, a gentle but dignified 
 ascent. There can be little doubt that if in the former instance the united effect of edifice and 
 rock appears more grand, — viewing the building alone, the latter is more calculated to raise its 
 dignity, since the elevation is not in itself an object calculated to excite awe, save in as far as it 
 ministers to the majesty of the edifice which it lifts above the plain. The hill on which this castle 
 stands is profusely planted with young wood, but in the immediate vicinity of the ruin, the " old 
 ancestral trees," that have surrounded it for centuries, alone remain. There is, perhaps, no other 
 instance in Scotland of a family mansion so systematically built on the principles of fortification 
 in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the centre stands the donjon or square keep of the 
 earlier age of baronial architecture. Instead of a varied cluster of buildings being from time to 
 time erected under its shadow, it has been surrounded by a regular external wall, enclosing a 
 square area of considerable extent. The wall is high and strong, with round towers at the 
 corners, intended, like bastions in modern fortification, for the protection of the intervening 
 curtains. Such is the general plan of the edifice as it may be seen at a distance. On a close 
 examination no portion of the ruin bears the air of very remote antiquity, but the whole has the 
 appearance of being raised in that age of strife and blood, when the Scottish barons had felt the 
 influence of improved commerce and agriculture in increasing their wealth, but had not lost the 
 smallest fragment of their ancient pride and ferocity. The square tower is so far preserved that 
 one can mount on the top, whence may be seen a large portion of the most richly cultivated and 
 not the least picturesque district of Scotland. The hall in some respects resembles that of 
 Borthwick ; but as Sir Walter Scott has justly remarked, it is inferior in dignity. In several 
 portions of the vaulting there may be traced tne remains of old paintings, chiefly of an heraldic 
 character, a feature which it enjoys in common with Borthwick. On the lower part of the side 
 there are some paintings much more distinct, which are evidently, however, modern attempts. 
 Within the keep, a room of peculiarly small dimensions is shewn as Queen Mary's apartment, 
 and whoever enters it is tempted to make the remark that the tall Darnley could certainly have 
 enjoyed little of her society in such a bower. It is a circumstance not easily explained, that in 
 the castles which have been frequented by that princess, the very smallest room is usually pointed 
 out as that which was appropriated to her. In another room, still kept in a habitable state, are 
 shewn some pieces of armour, stated to have belonged to Darnley and other historical characters, 
 an assurance which the visitor may believe or not as he thinks fit. There are several gloomy 
 
 Craigmillar Castle, 1 — 4. 
 
2 
 
 CRAIGMXLLAR A.STLF. 
 
 dungeons, in one of which there is a partial opening in the ground. Here it is said that a 
 skeleton was taken out — a species of reminiscence which few old castles are, or ought to be, 
 without. In the neighbourhood of the dungeons a stone lintel deeply worn by the rubbing of 
 some piece of metal, such as one may frequently observe at the side of some cottage door, is to be 
 shewn ; and the guide, if he knows his trade, will say it has been worn by the sharpening of 
 the headsman's axe — an awful instance of the wholesale slaughter of feudal times — for which the 
 doubting visitor is apt to substitute a theory of the cook sharpening his carving-knife. The 
 number of stairs ascended and descended — the several battlements — the long passages — the 
 multitude of rooms of various character and dimensions — impress the visitor with an idea of the 
 great size of the original edifice. Besides the keep and the older towers, there is within the walls 
 a structure of comparatively modern appearance, and probably built towards the conclusion of the 
 seventeenth century. There are also the dilapidated remains of a chapel, which a small niche 
 and some other fragments shew to have been once decorated with Gothic work. There is very 
 little ornament of any description attached to the edifice of the castle itself. " On the boundary 
 wall," says Sir Walter Scott, " may be seen the arms of Cockburn of Ormiston, Congalton of 
 Congalton, Moubray of Barnbougle, and Otterburn of Redford, allies of the Prestons of 
 Craigmillar. In one corner of the court, over a portal arch, are the arms of the family, three 
 unicorns head-couped, with a cheese press, and barrel or tun— a wretched rebus to express their 
 name of Preston."* This sculptured fragment (which bears the date 1510 above the shield) is 
 represented in the foreground of our internal view of the Keep Tower. 
 
 * Prose Work?, v'i. 36o. 
 
CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE. 
 
 3 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The name of a " Henry de Craigmillar" appears as a benefactor of the Church in the year 
 1212. The nearer we come to the time of the War of Independence in Scotland, the more generally 
 do we find the lands of the south in the possession of those Norman families which disappeared 
 during the later periods of Scottish history, and gave place to names of Scoto-Saxon origin. Thus 
 in 1374, the lands of Craigmillar passed from the hands of John de Capella, into those of Sir Simon 
 Preston.* The head of this family is frequently mentioned as Provost of Edinburgh, and on 
 22nd January, 1565, Sir Simon Preston was appointed Lord Justice General, an office which he 
 seems only to have held for a brief period.f 
 
 In 1479, Craigmillar became connected with a mysterious state tragedy. The Duke of 
 Albany was charged with conspiring against the life of his brother, James III. but made his 
 escape. The younger brother, John Earl of Mar, lay under the same charge,' and was 
 imprisoned in the fortress of Craigmillar. James III. as it is well known, did not shew the 
 qualities which were considered the characteristics of a true king in that age. He was partial 
 to music, architecture and study. " He was ane man that loved solitariness, and desired never 
 to hear of warre."J His brother Mar, on the other hand, " was ane fair lustie man, of ane 
 great and well-proportioned stature, weill faced, and comlie in all his behaviouris, who knew 
 nothing but nobilitie. He used meikle hunting and hawking, with other gentlemanie exercise, 
 and delighted also in entertaining of great and stout horse and mares, that their ofspring myght 
 flourish, so that he might be served thairwith in tyme of warres."§ It is a debated matter 
 whether his brothers were really guilty of conspiracy against the king's life, or some wily 
 courtiers excited in the timid solitary's mind a suspicion that the hardy youth, popular, manly, 
 handsome, and partial to the national sports, aimed at possessing the crown, which the people 
 considered him better fitted to wear than its legitimate owner. Whether he was guilty or not, 
 Mar never left his captivity alive. The chroniclers say that, having been allowed to choose 
 his own death, he preferred that of Petronius and Seneca, and had his veins opened in a bath. 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, however, says, the unfortunate prince was seized by fever and 
 delirium in Craigmillar, and that he was thence removed to the Canongate to be placed under 
 the king's physician, in whose hands he died, either from too profuse phlebotomy, or his having, 
 in a fit of delirium, torn off the bandages. || 
 
 Craigmillar was one of the fortresses which suffered in Hertford's invasion of Scotland. A 
 contemporary chronicler says the English army " past to Craigmillar, quhilk was haistilie given 
 to thame, promesand to keip the samyne without skaith : quhilk promes thai break, and brunt 
 and destroyit the said hous."^f The outer wall bears the date of 1427, but it is probable that 
 the greater part of the inner edifice may have been built since these ravages of the English. 
 
 The most interesting associations connected with old buildings in the south of Scotland almost 
 invariably attach themselves to the history of Queen Mary. How Craigmillar had become a 
 
 * Grose, i. 50. t Pitcairn's Crim. Tr. i. 477. t l'itscottie, 177. § lb. 178. 
 
 || Dmmmond's Hist, of the Jameses, p. 48. See Tytler's Hist. iv. 2G0. Pinkerton, i. 294, 503. 
 % Diurnal of Occurrent.s p. 32. 
 
4 
 
 CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE. 
 
 royal residence does not distinctly appear. James V. frequently lived there, and Mary seems 
 to have made it her chief country retreat. Some months after the murder of Rizzio, and when 
 the keen-eyed statesmen of the day were watching the estrangement of Mary and Darnley with 
 anxious interest, we find Le Croc the French Ambassador thus writing to the Archbishop of 
 Glasgow (2nd December, 1566), "The Queen is for the present at Craigmillar, about a league 
 distant from this city. She is in the hands of the physicians, and I do assure you is not at all 
 well, and do believe the principal part of her disease to consist in a deep grief and sorrow. Nor 
 does it seem possible to make her forget the same. Still she repeats these words, / could wish to 
 be dead. You know very well that the injury she has received is exceeding great, and her 
 Majesty will never forget it. * * * To speak my mind freely to you, but I beg you not to 
 disclose what I say in any place that may turn to my prejudice, I do not expect upon several 
 accounts any good understanding between them, unless God effectually put to his hand."* 
 
 Some secondary accidents only seem to have prevented this fortress from being stained with 
 the blood of Darnley. It appears that when he returned from Glasgow in the beginning of 1567, 
 the first design, instead of lodging him in the Kirk of Field, was to convey him to Craigmillar, 
 where it was supposed that his recovery from disease might be aided by the sanatory appliance 
 of the bath — an ominous proposal to a prince who might remember what tradition stated to have 
 happened ninety years earlier within the same walls. After this arrangement had been suggested 
 to him by the Queen, who, whether herself guilty or not, was undoubtedly then the instrument of 
 planning his last journey, we are told that, " when Mary left him, Darnley called Crawfurd to 
 him, and informing him fully of all that had passed at the interview, bade him communicate it 
 to his father, the Earl of Lennox He then asked him what he thought of the Queen's taking 
 him to Craigmillar? 'She treats your Majesty,' says Crawfurd, ' too like a prisoner — why 
 should you not be taken to one of your own houses in Edinburgh ?' ' It struck me much the 
 same way,' answered Darnley, c and I have fears enough ; but may God judge between us : 1 
 have her promise only to trust to ; but I have put myself in her hands, and I will go with her 
 though she should murder me.' "t 
 
 At some period of the seventeenth century Craigmillar passed into the possession of the family 
 of Gilmour, in which it still remains. The most remarkable member of this family was Sir John 
 Gilmour, Lord President of the Court of Session, the son of a writer to the signet. He was an 
 advocate during the period of the Protectorate, and owing his fortunes apparently more to ability 
 than professional or historical learning, he elicited from his fellow-lawyer, Sir George Mackenzie, 
 the antithetical compliment of being f< sine rhetorica, eloquens — sine literis doctus." At the 
 Restoration he was appointed President of the Court of Session, and he died in 1671, leaving 
 behind him a collection of Reports still well known in connection with his name. 
 
 Keith's Hist. xcvi. Spottiswoode Edition. 
 
 + Tytler's History, vii. 78-9. 
 
4 
 
i 
 
 I 
 
isTKuioti or riJi: kkkp towkm. 
 
CRAIGSTON CASTLE. 
 
 This broad square mass of building has some features in common with Fyvie, from which it is 
 but a few miles distant. The high deep arch joining the two towers, or wings, is one of these 
 points of resemblance ; but, in the general outline, Craigston wants the multitudinously spiral sum- 
 mit which gives so light and rich a character to its neighbour, and is conspicuous for a massive 
 plainness of outline, which appears to have been a prevailing aim with the architect, as he had laid 
 in the corbels of square turrets at the corners, but appears to have changed his mind, abstaining 
 from conferring on the building the light aerial effect of these terminations. Though thus severe 
 in its outline, however, the edifice is not unadorned. Over the top of the arch, and from the one 
 tower to the other, stretches a border of grotesque statuary. " The inside of the castle is remark- 
 able for a spacious hall, now converted into a handsome drawing-room, containing numerous speci- 
 mens of curiously carved oak paneling, of the same age as the building, and the remains of its 
 original decoration. These present the effigies of a very miscellaneous assemblage of heroes, kings, 
 cardinal virtues, and evangelists. Among others, one room contains the sovereigns of the Stuart 
 family down to James VI. ; and another, the carved likeness of Prince Henry, the heir to the 
 crown when the castle was erected ; also of his brother Prince Charles, both being represented as 
 
 children Among the pictures in the castle are three by Jamieson ; of these, one is a 
 
 portrait of General David Leslie; another, that of William Forbes, Bishop of Edinburgh; and the 
 third, that of Sir Alexander Fraser of Philorth. There are also portraits of the last four members 
 of the family of Stuart, namely, James, Prince of Wales, and his princess Clementina Sobieski, 
 with their sons, the Prince Charles Edward, and Henry, Cardinal of York ; these, with full-length 
 pictures of the last Earl Marischal, and of Captain John Urquhart of Cromarty and Craigston, are 
 originals, and painted about the year 1735, by Francesco Trevisani, an eminent portrait-painter 
 of Kome."* 
 
 The domain of Craigston appears to have belonged of old to the family of Craig, from which 
 Sir Thomas Craig, the celebrated feudal lawyer, was descended.! Of the building of the castle 
 there is a very distinct account cut in a stone in front, in the following terms : " This vark fovndit 
 y e fourtene of March ane thousand sex bounder four zeiris, and ended y e 8 of Decemb r 1607." 
 Before this event, the estate appears to have passed from the family of Craig to a cadet of that 
 of Urquhart of Cromarty. It appears to have been erected by the same John Urquhart, to whom 
 Arthur Johnstone dedicated the following epitaph : — 
 
 " Occidit Urchardus, quo nemo bcatior, am 
 
 Jam fatur, et famulas quas sibi fecit, opum. 
 Posteritas, cui liquit agros ct pnedia, disce 
 
 Illius exemplo vivere, disce men.' '$ 
 
 The proprietor of Craigston, at the time when the castle was built, is frequently mentioned 
 in local history as " The Tutor of Cromarty." So complete a supremacy attached to the 
 
 * Hay's Castellated Architecture of Aberdeenshire, 100, 102. 
 + Tytler's Life of Craig, p. 2. Collections on the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, p. 481 
 % Delitia: Poet. Scot. i. 618. 
 
 Ckaioston Castle, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 CRAIGSTON CASTLE. 
 
 head, genealogically speaking, of a family at that period, that the most honourable title by 
 which an uncle belonging to a junior branch could be named, was by his office of tutor to the young 
 heir, incident to his relationship. The individual to whom the Laird of Craigston thus acted as 
 tutor, was no ordinary man — Sir Thomas Urquhart, the author of several strange works with long 
 Greek names, the translator of Rabelais, and the narrator, if not the inventor, of the wonderful 
 incidents which form the biography of the Admirable Crichton. 
 
 The connexion of its inmates with this erratic genius is perhaps the most remarkable circum- 
 stance that has to be recorded about this unobtrusive mansion. If we may believe his own state- 
 ment, his early progress did credit to his uncle's guardianship ; for, when describing his companions 
 as absorbed in the field-sports of the age, he says : — " I was employed in a diversion of another 
 nature, such as optical secrets, mysteries of natural philosophic, reasons for the variety of colours, 
 the finding out of the longitude, the squaring of a circle, and wayes to accomplish all trigonometrical 
 operations by sines without tangents, with the same compendiousness of computation ; which, in 
 the estimation of learned men, would be accounted worth six hundred thousand partridges, and as 
 many moorfouls."* 
 
 The work by which Sir Thomas Urquhart is best known to the world is his Jewel, in which he 
 arranges the chronology of the history of the world, by " deducing the true pedigree and literal 
 descent of the most ancient and honourable name of the Urquharts in the house of Cromarty, since 
 the creation of the world until the present year of God 1652." It has often been supposed that, 
 being written by the translator of Rabelais, the Jewel is a satire on the flagrant genealogies of the 
 seventeenth century ; but there is far better reason for believing that it has been dictated by inordinate 
 and almost insane self-conceit. The first thirty-one names in the genealogy are founded on that scrip- 
 tural pedigree, the greater part of which contains the common ancestors of all the world ; and it is 
 in the year 1810 of the world's age, and 2139 before the Christian era, that the house of Urquhart 
 branches forth in the person of " Escrinon," married to " Narfesia." " He was sovereign prince 
 of Achaia. For his fortune in the wars, and affability in conversation, his subjects and familiars 
 surnamed him i^x^ro;-\ — that is to say, fortunate and well beloved. After which his posterity ever 
 since hath acknowledged him the father of all that carry the name of Urquhart. He had for his 
 arms, three banners, three ships, and three ladies in a field or, with a picture of a young lady above 
 the waste, holding in her right hand a brandished sword, and a branch of myrtle in the left, for 
 crest ; and, for supporters, two Javanites, after the soldier habit of Achaia, &c. Upon his wife 
 Narfesia, who was sovereign of the Amazons, he begot Cratynter."^ 
 
 Such, if we credit the head of the house, was the origin of the family, a descendant of which still 
 inhabits this mansion. 
 
 * Introduction to Works, p. 7. t So printed in the collected edition. J Works, 156. 
 
% 
 
CRATHES CASTLE. 
 
 The valley of the Dee forms the natural channel of communication between the central high- 
 lands and the broad district of fruitful lowlands stretching north-eastward from the Mearns to the 
 easternmost point of Aberdeenshire, there jutting far into the German Ocean. The inhabitants of 
 the two districts thus joined by a common highway were as unlike each other in language, manners, 
 and character, as the French and the Germans, or the Arabs and the Caffirs. Their intercourse 
 of old was therefore, in general, rather hostile than amicable, and it was not until the great battle 
 of Harlaw, fought in the plains of Aberdeenshire in 1411, that the Celtic race had abandoned the 
 hope of erecting for themselves a kingdom as truly independent of the king and parliament of the 
 eastern plains, as they again were independent of the king at Westminster. The long valley 
 through which tlowed the river, rising among a people so hostile to those among whose fields it 
 joined the ocean, was naturallv a scene of endless contest, where each chief or proprietor had his 
 jealously-guarded stronghold. Those in the upper district of the valley — Findlay Mohr's charter- 
 chest, perched on a rock with a higher ledge hanging over and protecting it behind, and the 
 neighbouring keep of Farquharson of Inverey, celebrated in song for the slaughter of the Baron 
 of Braclay — would be the strongholds of rievers, who ate the beef and mutton which their neigh- 
 bours fed. Drum, Crathes, and the other more baronial mansions which rise above the luxui'ious 
 plantations of the lower valley, were on the other hand fortified to inspire terror in evil-doers, and 
 protect the owner's property. 
 
 Deeply retired in luxurious woods, the glimpse of this mansion, obtained from the highway, 
 excited only without gratifying curiosity, until a late thinning of the timber developed more fully 
 its crowded mass of picturesque architectural peculiarities. Though consisting of the elements 
 common to most of the northern mansions — a multitude of conical turrets, high crow-stepped gables, 
 and angular dormer windows — there is something quite peculiar in the arrangement of these 
 details. They are not cast free to show their separate outlines on the sky, but are, as it were, 
 crowded and pressed together, as if the free air offered the architect insufficient room for a full 
 development of his resources. The turrets run into kindred forms in the towers and gables, and 
 are depressed below the higher levels of the edifice. The outline is thus lumpish, but the general 
 effect of the middle grouping is one of extreme richness and picturesqueness. 
 
 The appearance of this building at once proclaims it to be the gradual accumulation of additions 
 made at various times to the original old square tower with rounded edges, of which a fine 
 unaltered specimen exists in the neighbouring castle of Drum. A writer in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century says, " The house of Crathes is well built, well planted with natural and artificial 
 wood ; the gardens produce delicate fruit ; the soil is warm ; the victual [meaning the grain] sub- 
 stantious and weighty." * This castle has been for several centuries the seat of the family of 
 Burnet of Leys. Unlike the usual memorials of violence and crime, which are expected to connect 
 themselves with an old Scottish feudal fortalice, the history of this family, so far at least as it has 
 become generally known to the world, is associated with the memory of many men of great learning 
 
 * Forbes of Foveran's Description of Aberdeenshire, printed by the Spalding Club, p. 38. 
 Crathes Castle, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 CRATHES CASTLE. 
 
 and worth, who have bequeathed valuable intellectual gifts to mankind. One of the most cele- 
 brated English prelates, Bishop Gilbert Burnet, was a grandson of Alexander Burnet of Leys, 
 whose fourth son, the father of the bishop, was a judge of the Court of Session.* On a man who 
 fills so large a space in history and literature, who has achieved so much fame and undergone so 
 many attacks, it may be curious to hear the opinion formed by a country neighbour, evidently 
 before the bishop's great work, the History of his own Times, had appeared. " Dr Gilbert Burnet, 
 Bishop of Salisbury, a most elegant and powerful preacher ; very frank and very plain in manners; 
 uncurious of politeness, save in the pulpit, harangues of parliament, and in the style of his writings, 
 which are not a few, and like to live as long as the reformed religion lives in Britain — that is, to 
 doomsday. After all these just grounds of praise, and that his contempt of riches is now evident, 
 having had fair opportunities to amass vast wealth to himself and children, (but he made a more 
 disinterested use of those occasions, the patrimonies of his sons and daughters being very moderate ; 
 his bounties to others whilst he lived, and when he died, being ample,) yet so freekish are too many 
 men that nothing of him but some less popular opinions and his plain and undissembled fashions 
 hath raised against him a numerous train of maligners." f. The bishop was not the only eminent 
 man of letters belonging to this family, — his brother, Sir Thomas Burnet, physician to the king, was 
 the author of several medical works written in Latin, the scientific language of his age. Three 
 grandsons of the first baronet achieved celebrity. Two of them, Duncan and Thomas, were eminent 
 physicians in England. The third, Gilbert, was Professor of Philosophy at Basle and Montauban, 
 and left behind him some philosophical works. J The author of the account of Bishop Burnet, cited 
 above, endeavours to show, but without success, that Thomas Burnet, master of the Charterhouse, 
 and author of The Theory of the Earth, belonged to this family ; but there is little doubt that it 
 could count kin with the eccentric and profound James Burnet of Monboddo, the author of The 
 Origin and Progress of Language. 
 
 * Brunton and Hate's H'Rtorv of the College of Justice. 373. 
 f- Vcrbes, oiy, 40. J Mida/etOA s learued men and enters of Aberdeen. 
 
(CIRATHE5S CASTILIE . 
 
Drawn, by R WBilim^s 
 
I 
 
 CRICHTON CASTLE. 
 
 The Parish of Crichton, in Midlothian, is full of small hills and corresponding valleys, the 
 sides of which are abrupt and steep, like the declivities of mountain ranges. The whole surface 
 of the soil, indeed, has more the aspect of a pastoral mountain district in miniature, than the com- 
 mon effect of mere undulating ground, where the slopes are usually gentle, and sometimes barely 
 perceptible. Through one of these valleys run the infant waters of the Scottish Tyne, which 
 here a small sluggish rivulet, is enlarged to a considerable stream ere it falls into the sea, near 
 Dunbar. On the top of a bold, projecting, grassy mound, at the base of which the stream makes 
 a quick turn, the ruins of Crichton Castle rise abrupt from the edge of the steep ascent. Sir 
 Walter Scott's well known description is probably calculated to give an exaggerated idea of the 
 stream and the general character of the scenery. 
 
 That Castle rises on the steep, 
 
 Of the green vale of Tyne ; 
 And far beneath, where slow they creep, 
 From pool to eddy dark and deep, 
 Where alders moist and willows weep, 
 
 You hear her streams repine. 
 
 But when Scott first became acquainted with the scenery, it was dignified by a clothing of 
 alder forest, the partial removal of which he regrets in his Border Antiquities.*" No remains of 
 the forest are now to be seen, save such few scattered patches of natural coppice as are almost 
 invariably to be found in the clefts of the hills in all parts of Scotland. The scenery around is 
 of a far more pastoral than sylvan character, and it conveys all the impressions of silence and 
 solitude, which treeless grassy hills, seldom touched by the plough, and distant from public roads 
 and populous places, generally produce. The Castle mound, seldom trodden, is remarkable 
 for the depth and rankness of its natural grass. The author of the Statistical Account, says, 
 " In the little glen which the Castle of Crichton overhangs, great numbers of glow-worms are 
 to be met with in summer ; and if the admirer of these beautiful creatures would visit this 
 spot in the twilight of the evenings, in the months of July and August, he would find himself 
 amply rewarded in the brilliant display of shining lamps, which the little illuminati of the glen 
 are ever and anon beaming out around him."t 
 
 Crichton may be reached either by striking off to the west from the Lauder road near Path- 
 head, or by striking eastward from the road to Galashiels, and passing Borthwick Castle. On a 
 near approach the mass of ruins is seen to belong to different ages of architecture. The original 
 nucleus about which the later edifices have clustered, is a rude unadorned square tower, of the 
 earlier form of baronial architecture in Scotland, if that can well be called baronial which was 
 often the fortalice of the leader of a troop of marauders, where he defied the law, and the wrath of 
 his enemies, after a successful foray. Crichton belonged to that part of the wild border-land 
 which was nearest to Edinburgh, and consequently most likely to be amenable to the laws. 
 While it was thus rendered a somewhat precarious post, it had its own peculiar advantages. 
 Its situation was by nature wild and inaccessible, and at the same time not far from the great 
 
 * Prose Works, vii. 157. 
 Crichton Castle and Church, 1 — 4. 
 
 f New Statistical Account, Edinburghshire, p. 57. 
 IS 
 
2 
 
 CRICHTON CASTLE. 
 
 thoroughfares running north and south, where the lord of the fortalice might pounce on his 
 enemies or those whom he had his own particular reasons for intercepting. 
 
 Many of these border leaders pursued their wild life from generation to generation, and kept 
 up the same old square tower over their heads, never adding to their buildings or acquiring 
 the position of lords of the soil in the more civilized acceptation of the term. These, when the 
 laws gained strength, were gradually cleared away, and they left their old peel-houses still in 
 their massive strength, defying the storm and surviving the decaying influence of time; but 
 accompanied by no memorial of those who had built or possessed them. In other cases the 
 family of the border freebooter became gradually enlarged into a great baronial house, and as 
 they gathered lands and honours and became conspicuous in the state, the old peel-house 
 was superseded by a more magnificent mansion, or its rude strength being still a temptation 
 to preserve it, more stately and ornamental structures, indicative of the growing wealth of the 
 family, and the progress of the architectural art, rose around it: such is the history which the ruins 
 of Crichton now tell. Towards the west they present bare massive walls with narrow loopholes; 
 on the other side, variety, lightness and richness of moulding and device. But it is within the 
 quadrangular court that the architectural beauties are most conspicuous. Entering by the eastern 
 door, a large mass of ruins, half filling the quadrangle and nearly blocking up the entrance, have 
 to be scrambled over, and then one sees the two contrasted sides of the court as repre- 
 sented in the accompanying plate ; the corner of the old square tower on the left front, and 
 on the right the Venetian-looking open arcade, surmounted by a mural incrustation of diamond 
 facets and by moulded windows. In the other plate a more full front view is given of this arcade 
 and its superincumbent wall ; and it will be observed with what skill the architect has produced 
 a rich and highly decorated effect from the judicious adaptation and repetition of an ornament 
 in itself simple and meagre. In the interior of this side of the quadrangle, the mouldings of the 
 windows, and the soffits of the staircases and small chambers are adorned with flower and cordage 
 work, pannellings and other ornaments, in almost capricious variety. 
 
 Some specimens of the edge mouldings and of the pannelling in the soffits may be observed in 
 the glimpses of the interior afforded through the upper windows in the plate. The description 
 which Sir Walter Scott has given, in his Marmion, of this part of the ruin, is probably unequalled 
 by the easy grace with which the poetry flows on, while each item of the architectural charac- 
 teristics is noticed with the precision of a "specification." 
 
 Nor wholly yet hath time defaced 
 
 Thy lordly gallery fair : 
 Nor yet the stony cord unbraced 
 Whose twisted knots with roses laced 
 
 Adorn thy ruined stair. 
 Still rises unimpair'd below 
 The court-yard's graceful portico ; 
 Above its cornice row on row 
 Of fair hewn facets richly show 
 
 Their pointed diamond form, 
 Though there but houseless cattle go 
 
 To shield them from the storm. 
 
CRICHTON CASTLE. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The history of this edifice cannot be more closely approximated than from its architecture, 
 which carries the old part of the building to the fourteenth, and the more modern part to the 
 fifteenth or sixteenth century. The history of its owners was of a sufficiently marked and pro- 
 minent character in the Scottish Annals. Sir William Crichton, who had risen to considerable 
 favour in the reign of James I., was made, on his death, Lord Chancellor and guardian of his 
 infant son. In 1545, he was raised to the peerage. An infant or imbecile monarch, was at that 
 period endowed with something like the virtues of a talisman, by bringing power and patronage 
 to the statesman who was strong enough to keep him in possession ; and Crichton shut up the 
 young king in the castle of Edinburgh, as his own peculiar property for the time being. The 
 royal infant's mother, the Queen Dowager, according to the chroniclers of the time, managed to 
 remove him, like a piece of smuggled goods, in a packet of linen, and conveying him to Stirling, 
 put him into the hands of the Chancellor's rival and enemy, Livingstone. 
 
 The Dowager however, changing her views, gave the Chancellor an opportunity of resuming 
 possession. The intriguers of the day concentrating themselves against the power of the 
 Douglasses, the young Chief of that name was treacherously murdered in Edinburgh, and there 
 is too much reason to believe that Crichton was the soul of the conspiracy ; and that the first 
 step towards it was, the entertainment of young Douglas with apparent hospitality in Crichton 
 Castle. In the subsequent political revolutions, which will be found described at length in 
 Ty tier's history, and the other annals of the period, Crichton was deprived of his office, and charged 
 with high treason. He held out Edinburgh Castle, his own Castle of Crichton, and various other 
 strongholds, against the Government, or more properly speaking, against the prevailing party. 
 In 1445, Crichton Castle was stormed by John Forrester of Corstorphine, on whose possessions 
 Crichton immediately took ample vengeance. It has been stated, that Forrester ordered the 
 Castle to be demolished ;* but it seems improbable that with so powerful and prompt an enemy 
 close upon him, he could have carried the destruction farther than a dismantling. The square 
 keep tower, which has the appearance of being older than the fifteenth century — though it is 
 possible that it may not be so — could not have been rased without much time and toil, in an age 
 when artillery practice was so imperfect. The more ornamental part of the Castle is evidently 
 of a date subsequent to this event. 
 
 The grandson and successor of this Lord, was involved in the conspiracy of the Duke of 
 Albany against James III. in 1483. An act of forfeiture was passed on him in Parliament, and 
 among the other offences charged against him was, the holding out of his Castle of Crichton 
 against the Royal forces. f Many men of apparent influence and power are mentioned as having 
 been his followers, and some of them bear his own name. Deprived of his princely territories, 
 he remained for some time abroad ; he afterwards returned, and must have been to a certain 
 txtent restored to favour, as he was married to the Princess Margaret, sister of James III. In 
 connection with this union, the chronicles of the age record some dark scandals, the real history 
 of which cannot be easily discovered. Meanwhile, a favourite of James, Sir John Ramsay, who 
 ia the renowned slaughter of the King's chosen companions and counsellors at the bridge of 
 
 * Scotr's Prose Works, vii. L64. t Act* of the Scottish Parliament, II. 154. 
 
4 
 
 CR1CHT0N CASTLE. 
 
 Lauder, in 1481, had been spared on account of his youth, received a grant of the forfeited estates 
 of Crichton. He did not long retain them ; on the death of his patron James III., they were 
 again forfeited on account of their Lord's share in the politics of that reign, and were given to 
 Patrick Hepburn, afterwards Earl of Bothwell, whose gift was confirmed in Parliament on 16th 
 October, 1488.* James Earl of Bothwell, whose name is so notorious in the history of Queen 
 Mary's reign, was the great-grandson of this lord. He frequently resided at Crichton, but his 
 other and stronger fortresses, Hermitage and Dunbar, are more frequently mentioned in connec- 
 tion with his historical career. The next owner of Crichton was a man as turbulent, if not as 
 treacherous, as the worst of his remarkable line of predecessors — Francis Stuart, Earl of 
 Bothwell, renowned for his conspiracies and outrages against King James. From the time of 
 his Lord's forfeiture in 1594, little historical interest attaches to Crichton Castle. Sir Walter 
 Scott took so much interest in the ruins made celebrated by his pen, that he followed them 
 through their subsequent ownership, and the result of his inquiries will be found in the Border 
 Antiquities. The estate is now the property of William B. Callender, Esq. 
 
 CRICHTON CHURCH. 
 
 The character of this edifice, which appears never to have been completed, is fully conveyed in 
 the accompanying plate. It is situated near the stream at a short distance eastward of the castle, 
 and it is worthy of remark, that, notwithstanding its contiguity, a chapel of rude architecture, 
 which from the smallness of its windows must have been very imperfectly lighted, stands within 
 a few paces westward of that fortalice. The church " was founded in 1449 for a provost, nine 
 prebendaries, and two singing-boys, out of the rents of Crichton and Locherwart ;"f and the 
 establishment must have thus owed its foundation to the wealth of Chancellor Crichton, at the 
 time when he had reached the height of his prosperity. On the 15th of January, 1525, we find 
 that Robert Bishop of Moray gave a superintendence over certain bursaries at Paris, founded by 
 one of his predecessors, to George Lockhart, Provost of Crichton, who appears to have been then 
 residing in Paris. X 
 
 * Acts of the Scottish Parliament, II. 206, 
 f New Stat. Account, Edinburgh, p. GO. t General Hutton's MS. 
 
/hum 'li h ft.ll IMIm.i* 
 
 TSngraNti by J uodnev 
 
 BAST SIUI'. OK THE COURT YARD 
 
CROSRAGUEL ABBEY. 
 
 This half-baronial half-ecclesiastical ruin, in which the rough square tower, such as those from 
 which the mosstroopers issued to their forays, frowns over the beautiful remains of some rich and 
 airy specimens of the middle period of Gothic work, is distant about two miles from the old village 
 of Maybole in Ayrshire. It was a dependancy of the great Abbey of Paisley, itself an offshoot 
 from the princely establishment of Clunay in France. It was founded by Duncan, the first Earl of 
 Carrick, who died about the year 1240,* and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Its founder endowed it with the patronage of the church of St Oswald, and other means of 
 revenue. In old writs it occurs under the various names of Crosregal, Crosragwell, Crosragmol, 
 and Crosragmer. A curious discussion appears to have early arisen between this establishment 
 and the parent institution. By a bull of Pope Clement, certain commissioners are appointed, 
 consisting of the Bishop of Dunblane, the Abbot of Dryburgh, and Roger de Derby, precentor of 
 the church of Aberdeen, to settle the dispute. The bull sets forth the foundation by the Earl of 
 Carrick, and seems to indicate that the abbots of Paisley considered the endowments to be destined 
 entirely for their own benefit, and for the establishment of an oratory or dependent cell ; while it 
 was asserted, on the other hand, that the founder intended the abbey to erect and maintain a 
 separate fraternity at Crosraguel. The Bishop of Glasgow had decided that there should be an 
 independent abbot and fraternity, subject only to the right of annual visitation on the part of the 
 Abbot of Paisley. He appointed that all the lands held by the Abbey of Paisley in Carrick should 
 be vested in the new fraternity, on which he imposed a sort of feu-duty of ten merks sterling money. 
 
 This right of visitation seems to have been confirmed to at least as great an extent as it was 
 sanctioned by the bishop. A curious notarial document of the year 1370, shows that John, Abbot 
 of Paisley, having, in the course of his visitations, found many delicts and defects in the adminis- 
 tration of the Abbey of Crosraguel, cited the abbot and all the monks, whether living within the 
 walls or elsewhere, to appear before him on a certain day. The instrument is particular in stating 
 that the citation had attached to it two oblong seals of white wax, the one being impressed with the 
 figure of an abbot officiating at the altar, with the legend " Sigillum abbatis monastarii de Pas- 
 selet," while the other represented a virgin and child, with the legend " Sigillum abbatis monasterii 
 de Crosragmol." It is then stated that the abbot appeared on the day for which he was cited, 
 attended by his monks, and then, without being urged by any force, fraud, or circumvention, so far 
 as it appeared to the notary, but of his own free will, he resigned his power and authority as abbot 
 into the hands of the Abbot of Paisley. He gave as his reason for doing so, that, in consequence 
 of his age and great bodily infirmity, he was unable to attend to either the temporal or the spiritual 
 interests of the establishment ; and thus, while he allowed its property to be dilapidated, he could 
 not save his flock from becoming a prey to the wolf. He is then released of his office and of its 
 duties, and the brethren are required to fix a day for the election of a pastor to attend to their 
 spiritual intercsts.f It does not appear by this instrument that they were to elect an abbot, and 
 the circumstances seem to relate to a bold effort again made to subject Crosraguel to an entire 
 dependence on Paisley. 
 
 The descendants of the Earl of Carrick increased the wealth of the establishment, and the great 
 King Robert the Bruce was one of its special benefactors. In the year 1404, King Robert the 
 Third conferred on the abbey a right of regality over its several lands, which gave the fraternity 
 a criminal jurisdiction over their vassals, including the four pleas of the crown. Some notice of 
 the nature of these rights of regality, as they were extended to ecclesiastical bodies, will be found 
 in the Account of the Abbey of Dunfermline. No celebrated names appear ecclesiastically con- 
 
 * Chalmcr'B Caledonia, iii. 485 ; Registrum de Pasilct, 422. t Registrum, p. 42.*) ct acq. 
 
 Chosraouel Abbey, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 CROSRAGUEL ABBEY. 
 
 nected with this institution until it waned before the rising influence of the Reformed church. The 
 last abbot was the celebrated Quintin Kennedy. On his death in 1564, George Buchanan 
 obtained a pension of £500 a-year out of the abbey revenues, a circumstance from which he was 
 christened " Pensioner of Crosraguell." He appears to have found great difficulty in making the 
 grant effective against the Earl of Cassilis.* The criminal and genealogical records of the period 
 devolve a horrible instance of rapacious cruelty perpetrated by an Earl of Cassilis, who was popularly 
 called the King of Carrick, on Allan Stewart, commendator of Crosraguel, in 1570. He was 
 determined to compel the commendator to execute in his favour certain deeds over the property of 
 the abbey. Having kidnapped him, unable to succeed by imprisonment, he one day discussed the 
 matter with the commendator in a room where a large fire was seen blazing, for the purpose of 
 preparing a feast of roast meat, as the earl facetiously called the execution of his threat. The poor 
 commendator, seeing at once the horrors awaiting him, prayed hard for release, but his persecutor 
 was merciless ; and being, as the annalist describes it, skinned, by the removal of his clothes, and 
 well basted with grease, he was set before the fire. Before he yielded he was so severely 
 scorched — or, as the annalist terms it, roasted — that his hand scarcely had muscular power 
 enough to sign the documents. And thus the earl obtained, in the indignant words of the 
 describer of the scene, " a five yeare tack and a 19 year tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands 
 of Croceragual, with all the clauses necessary for the earle to hunte him to hell ! for gif adulterie, 
 sacriledge, oppressione, barbarous crueltie, and thift heaped upon thift, deserve hell, the great King of 
 Carrick can no more escape hell for ever, nor the imprudent abbot escaped the fyre for a seasonne."t 
 
 * Pitcaim's Historical Account of the Family of Kennedy, p. 93. 
 
 t Ibid, p, 94, 
 
4 
 
m 
 
ENTRANCE OAtCTAY, FROM THE CHAPTER HOUSE 
 
DAIRSIE CHURCH. 
 
 The ecclesiologist may probably be puzzled to account for the appearance of an engraving of 
 Dairsie Church in a collection of ecclesiastical antiquities ; but when he observes the curious little 
 history connected with the edifice, it is believed that he will consider it pre-eminently entitled to a 
 place among the marked historical types of ecclesiastical architecture. Solitary and remote as it is, 
 it represents a vast project — even that of covering Scotland in the seventeenth century with such 
 church edifices and services as England has retained ; and though the structural part of the project 
 went no farther than the building of the Church of Dairsie, and the doctrinal part was overwhelmed 
 in wild commotions, it is impossible to look without interest on this quiet little memorial of so 
 brilliant a failure, nestled in a clump of woodland stretching down to the gentle waters of the Eden. 
 
 The accompanying plate gives a complete idea, not only of the general effect of the edifice, but 
 of all its details, except the western doorway, which has no pretension to be Gothic, but, with its 
 thin fluted pilasters and shallow arch, is very like the entrance to the house of a moderate country 
 gentleman of the early part of the seventeenth century. It will be seen that, though the more 
 conspicuous details of the building profess to be intensely Gothic, the artist has not been accus- 
 tomed to turn his hand to that class of architecture. It was gradually and with difficulty that the 
 renovation of classical architecture could find its impersonation in the designs of those who had been 
 trained in Gothic work, though the style was then degenerating, and required a successor in some 
 new devisals, or old system revived. And so, in like manner, such isolated attempts at the restora- 
 tion of Gothic as this same parish church, show how difficult it is for the mind to divest itself of old 
 accustomed associations, and pursue a new and distinct school of structure. The bands or mould- 
 ings are, it will be seen, far more classical than Gothic, and no single feature is of a pure medieval 
 cast. The tracery part of the windows is not properly divided by raised mullions, but the lights 
 are, as it were, cut out on the flat stone, like a pattern on pasteboard. Association gives the 
 belfry an air of antiquity, from its resemblance to those attached to the older ecclesiastical buildings; 
 for, in the case even of the most ancient Scottish churches, this feature was frequently not completed 
 until the seventeenth century. On the whole, however, when seen peeping over the rich bank of 
 trees, with the ancient three-arched bridge spanning the Eden, and the ruins of the old castle of the 
 Spottiswoods farther on, Dairsie Church forms part of a sweet and interesting landscape. 
 
 As already mentioned, this church owes its existence to the great project of the seventeenth 
 century, for bringing Scotland to religious conformity with England. It was built about the year 
 1621, as a date above the door testifies, by Archbishop Spottiswood, the historian, whose main 
 object was characterised by his biographer to be " the restoring the ancient discipline, and bringing 
 that church to some degrees of uniformity with her sister Church of England ; which, had we on 
 both sides been worthy of, might have proved a wall of brass to both nations." It was in this spirit 
 that, according to the same writer, " he publicly, upon his own charges, built and adorned the 
 Church of Dairsie after the decent English form; which, if the boisterous hand of a mad Reformation 
 had not disordered, is, at this time, one of the beautifullest little pieces of church work that is left 
 to that unhappy country." * 
 
 In the year 1641, some transactions took place in the ecclesiastical courts of Fifeshire, which 
 explain the last allusion. A committee had been appointed by the Provincial Assembly of Fife to 
 search for superstitious monuments in the several presbyteries. They reported, in general, that there 
 
 * Life, prefixed to History. 
 
 T)aiesie Church, 1—2. 
 
2 
 
 DAIESIE CHURCH. 
 
 were none to be found ; " onlie Mr Patrick Scougall reported, that there were sundry crosses in 
 their Kirk of Dairsie, which by some was not thought superstitious," and therefore he pleaded that 
 a special commission should be sent thither. They assembled on 2d November, and reported that 
 they found that, at the entrance of certain desks or pews, and over the great west door, " there are 
 crosier staffes, in some part alone, and in others as aditament and cognisance of the last pretended 
 bishop's arms, not being any sign or cognisance, ordinary and common in the arms of that name or 
 family, but merely a sign of his degree hierarchical, according to the manner and form used among 
 the Roman hierarchists and others following them and therefore the minister and session are to 
 " take order with"— that is, it may be presumed, remove them. Another feature, apparently a 
 rood screen of carved wood, appears to have created more difficulty. " Further, they find supersti- 
 tious a glorious partition wall with a degree [step] ascending thereto, dividing the body of the Kirk 
 fra the quire, (as it is ordinarlie called in Papistry, and among them that follow Papists,) and be- 
 cause this particular is not specially named in the commission, and a great part of it is the building 
 and ornaments of some desks ; and above the great door of thir quire, so called, the arms of Scot- 
 land and England quartered, with divers crosses about and beside them, are set up, whereupon the 
 Kirk has not yet particularly determined ; therefore that part of superstition, or what is superstition 
 in it, the brethren convened referred, and returned back to the Provinciall next following." The 
 Assembly directed the " glorious partition wall of timber" to be shortened to the height to which 
 part of it served for the enclosure of pews. The matter of burial within the church was at the 
 same time taken up, not on sanitary grounds, but as savouring of superstition. The practice of 
 interment within churches began by the depositing of the remains of saints within the consecrated 
 walls, and a desire, first shown by monarchs and great lords, but spreading among inferior persons, 
 to be placed near the relics of these holy men. As the committee of purification declared them- 
 selves bent " upon the most calm and loving settling of all such matters, for time by-gane and in all 
 to come," they proposed to proceed to ecclesiastical extremities, only in the case of the heritors not 
 voluntarily agreeing to discontinue the condemned practice. 
 
/ 
 
 DALMENY CHURCH. 
 
 The small village of Dalmeny stands a short distance westward of the great north road from 
 Edinburgh, where it approaches Queen's Ferry. Unlike other Scottish villages which generally 
 consist of a narrow and filthy street, where the dwellings are as densely crowded together as if 
 they were in the centre of a city, the few houses of which Dalmeny consists are separated by a 
 broad green, and they have a clean, airy, healthy appearance. Abundance of woodland, scattered 
 over picturesque broken ground, is in its close vicinity, and occasional glimpses may be had of 
 the scenery of the Frith of Forth and the distant ranges of hills. In this quiet and pleasant spot, 
 stands, almost entire, one of the most truly venerable and interesting specimens of ecclesiastical 
 architecture of which Scotland can boast. Dalmeny Church is in the purest Norman style. It 
 is a simple quadrangular edifice without tower, aisles, or transepts, although an unadorned 
 projection on the north side may possibly have been added as the commencement of a transept. 
 The windows have all the small Norman arch with toothed mouldings. A horizontal moulding 
 runs along either side near the roof, which appears to have consisted of a series of entertwined 
 curves like the letter S laid longitudinally, but which seems to have been supposed by the 
 architect who has restored part of it, to be a succession of crescents lying with their concave sides 
 alternately upwards and downwards. Above this is a row of carved heads, presenting the variety 
 characteristic ot such buildings. The main entrance door is in a porch projecting to the south, 
 the archway of which is supported on two plain pillars with Norman capitals. There are over 
 this door the remains of a line, concentric with the arch of sculptured figures and animals, many 
 of which are fabulous, and have a considerable resemblance to those which appear on the ancient 
 sculptured stones scattered throughout Scotland, by which the acuteness of antiquarians has been 
 so effectually baffled. On either side of the arch are the remains of a statue, and from a curved 
 mark on the masonry, connecting the two together, it may be inferred that some moulding — 
 probably in the form of a cord — united them together. Over this doorway is an arcade of 
 interlaced Norman arches, highly ornamented. In front of the porch lies one of those old stone 
 coffins, frequently found in Scotland, of which the interior was cut out in such a shape as to fit 
 accurately to a body swathed in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, there being a circular cavity 
 for the head, a channel shallower and narrower to contain the neck, and a larger excavation for 
 the rest of the body, broadest and deepest at the place where the shoulders are to lie, and 
 becoming narrower and shallower towards the extremity corresponding with the feet. Archae- 
 ology has not yet thrown any light on the period when the narrow house first assumed this 
 substantial character ; but it is observable that stone coffins of this description are generally 
 found near the places where the most ancient existing churches stand, or where such edifices 
 have existed, but are no longer standing. 
 
 The interior of this small Church has a fine massive simple effect. The chancel is in the form 
 usually called an apse, and consists of a semicircle with the arc outwards, under a groined arch, 
 the ribs of which are deeply moulded, and ornamented with tooth work. The small chancel is, 
 according to a common arrangement, lower than the rest of the Church, and the difference in 
 height has been very skilfully adjusted in such a manner as to enhance the effect of the 
 perspective from the western end. The arching of the chancel appears to be in its original 
 
 Dalmeny Church, 1 — 2. 
 
2 
 
 DALMENY CHURCH. 
 
 condition. The two departments into which the rest of the Church is divided, appear to have 
 been in some measure restored on the pattern of the chancel. The Church has been fitted up 
 with pews and a gallery, and it is much to be regretted that portions of the shafts of the pillars, 
 and some other parts of the internal stone work, have been cut away for the purpose of 
 economising the space, and facilitating the transit through the Church. The fabric was repaired, 
 and in so far as restoration seemed necessary, put in its present position in 1816.* 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 It is very rare to find any record of the original construction of churches in Scotland so old as 
 the Norman period, and little or nothing is known of the history of Dalmeny. In the slight 
 references to it, occurring in early records it is called Dumayn, Dumanie, or Du-manan. Chal- 
 mers says, " There is a charter of Waldere, the Earl of Dunbar, from 1166 to 1182, to the monks of 
 Dunfermline, which was witnessed by Helia de Dundas and Robert Avenel the parson of Dumanie. 
 During the reign of William or Alexander II., the church of this parish was granted to the 
 monks of Jedworth : and was confirmed by the Diocesan." The Church thus appears to have 
 been a parsonage, and the tithes continued to be drawn by the monks of Jedburgh down to the 
 Reformation, the cure being served by a vicar. During the fifteenth century the tithes seem to 
 have been leased to the holders of the land, or compounded for, as in May 1471, the Lords 
 Auditors assigned a day to the Lairds of Dundas, Barnbugle and Craigie, to prove that Robert, 
 late Lord Boyd, had a sufficient lease from the Abbot of Jedworth, of the tithes of this Church.f 
 
 Several altarages appear to have been here established ; one was dedicated to St. Cuthbcrt, 
 another to St. Brigid, and a third to St. Adaman.J 
 
 • New Stat. Account, Linlithgowshire, p. 102. f Chalmers' Caledonia, II. p. 882. 
 
 X New Stat. Acco-int, Linlithgow, p. 102. 
 
to A IT* HI IE HTT GMumnm 
 
 ENTBANrE DOORWAY. 
 
J 
 
 I 
 
DUERIOB LOOKING KAST. 
 
3 
 
 s 
 
 \ «