MEDIEVAL ECCLESIOLOGY.
The subject of Medieval Ecclesiology is much too comprehensive to be
treated with attention proportionate to its extent, and the importance
justly ascribed to it, in the compass of a single chapter. But some
notice of it is indispensable to the completeness of any systematic
treatise on Scottish antiquities; and in attempting this it becomes
once more necessary to glance at the ethnological elements on which
depend the transition from the earlier and simpler characteristics
already noticed. Whatever value be attached to the attempts advanced
in the previous chapter to give some precision to the history of
Primitive Scottish Ecclesiology, little doubt can now be entertained
that throughout the whole period of Celtic rule in Scotland and
Ireland, a peculiar character pervaded the native arts, and greatly
modified the forms of Christian architecture introduced from Italy
along with the new faith. Long, however, before Thorfinn subjected the
Celtic population of the north to the Norwegian yoke, and sanctioned
Macbeth's usurpation of the throne of the Southern Picts, the Teutonic
races from the south were securing a footing in the Lothians. From the
middle of the seventh century the limits of the kingdom of Northumbria
extended to the Forth, and though the Angles maintained their varying
northern frontier only by a constant warfare with the Picts and Scots,
yet the population must have become almost entirely Teutonic before the
recognition of Egbert of Wessex as bretwalda or chief ruler of England,
in 829. In 867, the Danes, a different branch of the Scandinavian race
from the old Scottish Northmen, conquered the kingdom of Northumbria,
and it is not till after the accession of the Saxon Athelstane, in
925, that we again find it partially and temporarily incorporated with
the southern kingdoms. With these portions of English history we have
little further to do than simply to note the evidence they furnish
of the same remarkable changes having affected the population of the
Scottish Lowlands which divided the races of the south into Weals and
Engle-kin, or Celtic and Teutonic; Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, being
comprehended from a very early period under the common name of Englen
or English. The changes which followed on the Danish conquest again
temporarily isolated Northumbria, where Harold Harefoot established a
separate kingdom; and when Macbeth secured the concurrence of Thorfinn
in his accession to Duncan's throne, he included in his dominions
a large portion of the Scottish Northumbria. To this succeeded the
accession of Malcolm Canmore, Duncan's eldest son, a prince of the old
Celtic race, but sharing also through his mother in the Anglo-Saxon
blood, educated at the Court of Edward the Confessor, and restored to
the throne of his fathers chiefly by the aid of the Northumbrian Saxons.
The establishment of Malcolm on the Scottish throne dates from the
year 1058; but four years prior to this he had succeeded, with the aid
of his uncle, Siward, Earl of Northumberland, and a Saxon army, in
driving Macbeth beyond the Forth, notwithstanding the strenuous aid of
the Northmen, with whom a large portion of the native Celtic race were
then closely allied. From this important epoch in our national history
dates the commencement of that remarkable revolution known by the
name of the "Saxon Conquest." The Norman triumph at Hastings greatly
accelerated its progress. Already the Scottish Court was the resort
of numerous Anglo-Saxon nobles and leaders, whose services had given
them claims on the Scottish Crown, and whose retainers accompanied them
to settle on their new possessions in the Scottish Lowlands. But the
Norman invasion drove many more to seek from the northern ruler the
shelter which he had found in his adversity at the English Court; nor
must we forget that his own barbarous policy helped to colonize his
southern territories. Leaguing, when it suited his purpose, against
the Norman aggressors, he wasted the country as far as Durham in 1070,
bringing back with him so many prisoners of both sexes, that an old
chronicler remarks,--"So great was the number of captives, that for
many years they were to be found not only in every Scottish village,
but in every Scottish hovel."[627] Thus by the most opposite means was
a Saxon population invested in the possession of the Lothians. Norman
adventurers followed, dissatisfied with the Conqueror's rewards, as
the Saxons of old blood were impatient of the Norman yoke. The Saxon
Edward, it will be remembered, had Norman blood in his veins, spent
his early years in Normandy, and when he at length attained to the
English Crown, surrounded himself with Norman barons and churchmen,
and bestowed on them some of the highest preferments in the kingdom.
At his Court, therefore, Malcolm could acquire no such prejudices
against the Norman as animated the expatriated followers of Harold. To
him the discontented Norman baron with his hardy men-at-arms would be
as welcome as the Saxon thane with his faithful retinue. Both found
a ready portion in the fertile Lothians, in an age when even the
multitude of children were "as arrows in the hands of a mighty man." It
was a peaceful and nearly bloodless revolution, yet by it this northern
kingdom was more completely transformed than by all the protracted
struggles of Roman, Pict, or Northman. The sceptre was still swayed by
a prince of the Celtic line; but the power was passing away for ever
from the last independent representatives of the nomade colonists of
Europe.
The victory at Hastings was far less effectual in making England
Norman than in making Scotland Saxon. In this respect the usurpation
of Macbeth, which drove Malcolm to seek refuge and to acquire his
education at the English Court, exercised a remarkable influence on
the future history of both countries, and prepared in requital, a
home for the southern Saxon, which has proved the birthland of the
most vigorous offshoot of the race. But chief among the Anglo-Saxon
fugitives is the noble princess, sister of Edgar Atheling, who brought
to the Scottish throne the civilisation as well as the hereditary
rights of the race of the Confessor. The earlier years of Malcolm's
reign appear to have exhibited all the fiercest characteristics of a
disputed succession; and it is probable that during the long years
of conflict between Northman, Celt, and Saxon, the native arts and
civilisation were greatly deteriorated. Its ecclesiastical system had
suffered no less than its civil arts. The church of St. Columba had
been spoiled of its temporal possessions, and had parted with many
of its canonical usages, including the celibacy of the clergy, that
mainspring of the medieval church, which appears to have been so
heartily favoured by the good Abbot of Iona. It is no part of the plan
of this work to embrace ecclesiastical controversies, or to attempt
to settle disputed questions relative to the precise doctrines and
practice of the ancient Culdees. So interesting an inquiry could only
be injured by a superficial notice of the modern disputes relative to
their Episcopal or Presbyterian constitution, and the ancient ones
about the tonsure and the times of observing Easter. Trivial as such
controversies may be thought by some, they appear to have involved
questions of higher moment, including that of the independence of
the Celtic Church. The neglect, if not the entire abnegation of the
celibacy of the clergy for a considerable period prior to the Saxon
Conquest, is, however, indisputable; and the orthodox grandniece of
the Confessor, in giving her hand to Malcolm Canmore, plighted troth
with the legitimate grandchild of an Abbot of Dunkeld. To assume
the primitive purity or simplicity of our early northern Church on
such grounds would be erroneous. It is sufficient for our present
purpose to know that it differed in various important respects from
the Roman Church of western Christendom. The peculiar features which
have attracted our notice in previous chapters originated chiefly from
the isolation of the Scottish Church and nation; but that isolation
was now to come to an end. The Princess Margaret became the queen of
Malcolm Canmore, and the sharer of his throne. Her gentle spirit, not
untinctured by the asceticism of the age, softened the fierce passions
of her husband, and made his wild nature bend obedient to her will. The
grandniece of the Confessor became the reformer of the Scottish Church,
and the redresser of its abuses. Provincial councils were summoned
at her command, at which Malcolm became the interpreter between the
Saxon queen and his Celtic clergy. Her great aim was to assimilate
the Scottish Church to that of England, and indeed of Rome, neither
of which it would seem to have greatly resembled. To her we chiefly
owe the eradication of the Culdees, (_Gille-de_, servant of God,) the
successors of the first recluses and monks who established religious
fraternities in Scotland, and who differed latterly from other orders
probably more in their laxity as to monastic observances than on
points of faith. Yet there were not wanting among them even then some
worthy representatives of their primitive missionary founders. The
Chartulary of St. Andrews, which furnishes some curious evidence of
their absorption, partly by conformity and partly by force, into the
new orders of canons regular, also affords some insight into these
primitive religious societies not unsuited to awaken regrets at their
arbitrary extinction. The sons of St. Margaret, Edgar, Alexander, and
David, though differing in nearly every other respect, concurred in
carrying out the reformation by which the Scottish Church was restored
to uniformity with the ecclesiastical standards of the age. Worthy
descendants of the Confessor, they not only made the Church of England
their model, but frequently selected their spiritual directors from
its clergy, preferred English priests to the bishoprics, and peopled
their abbeys with its monks. The "Saxon Conquest" was in truth even
more an ecclesiastical than a civil revolution, and the evidences of
its influence are still abundant after the lapse of upwards of seven
hundred years. In the period which intervened between the landing of
the fugitive Saxon princess at St. Margaret's Hope and the death of
her younger son David, nearly all the Scottish sees were founded or
restored, many of the principal monasteries were instituted, their
chapels and other dependencies erected, and the elder order of Culdee
fraternities and missionary bishops for the first time superseded by
a complete parochial system. It was David I. who ejected the brethren
of St. Serf established on the secluded little isle of Lochleven, and
merged both that and the Culdee house of Monymusk into the new priory
of canons regular of St. Austin established at St. Andrews. We read
with no little interest the brief inventory of the Lochleven library,
thus unscrupulously seized by the "soir sanct." Among its sixteen
volumes were the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the three books
of Solomon, a Commentary on the Song of Solomon, and another on the
book of Genesis:[628] no discreditable indication of the studies of
these recluses of Lochleven, whom some have inclined to rank among the
Protestants of their age. But old things were then passing away under
the guidance of reformers not less zealous than those of the sixteenth
century. An entire change, moreover, necessarily resulted from the
novel relations subsisting between the northern and southern kingdoms.
The seat of Scottish civilisation had hitherto been chiefly in the
north and west, while the Lothians and the southern dales had been but
a debatable land--the battle-ground oftener than the secure possession
of the Pictish or Scottish kings. On this very account great facilities
existed for its settlement by the southern fugitives, ready to hold
it of the Scottish crown by feudal military tenure, and to defend it
against the aggressions of the new power established in England. A
charter preserved in the treasury at Durham, and belonging at latest
to the very commencement of the twelfth century, furnishes interesting
illustration of the new elements of strength and progress infused into
the kingdom by the colonization of its southern districts. The charter
relates to the founding of the church of Edenham, on the north bank
of the Tweed, in the rural manse of which the poet of the Seasons
was born in the year 1700,--one also of the many results which have
flowed from that old deed of piety, executed five centuries before.
The settler is Thor the Long, probably neither of Saxon nor Norman
blood, but a descendant of one of Hardacnute's Danish followers, who
established himself on the banks of the Tweed by invitation of Edgar,
the son and successor of Malcolm. The charter thus describes at once
the royal grant and the pious gift of the new settler, and may very
happily serve to illustrate the process of Teutonic colonization of
the Scottish Lowlands: "To all the sons of holy mother Church, Thor
the Long, greeting in the Lord: Be it known that Aedgar, my Lord, King
of Scots, gave to me Aednaham, a desert; that with his help and my own
money I peopled it, and have built a church in honour of St. Cuthbert;
which church, with a ploughgate of land, I have given to God, and to
St. Cuthbert and his monks, to be possessed by them for ever."[629]
Such was in reality the process by which the "Saxon Conquest" was
accomplished. No wonder that it should be unnoticed by contemporary
chroniclers, and remain a puzzle to historians who esteem wars and
regal successions the sole indices of the past. It was wastes not men
that had to be conquered, and therefore the victory is chronicled alone
in such brief parentheses as that of the Edenham charter.
It is easy to see how complete a change must necessarily have taken
place on the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland at the period of
its receiving so great an impulse. The Christian arts, introduced to
a great extent along with the new faith from Ireland, had hitherto
been modified chiefly by local influences. The reformation effected
by Queen Margaret and her sons abruptly arrested the development of a
peculiar native style, and made the architecture of England as well
as its ecclesiastical system supply the new Scottish model. With the
elevation of the Saxon princess to the Scottish throne, we for the
first time discover a chronological coincidence in the styles of the
ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland and England. In the sixth
year of the reign of Malcolm II., the grandfather of Duncan, _i.e._,
in 1010, according to a charter of doubtful value, which has been the
subject of no little diversity of opinion,[630] he gave to God, the
blessed Mary, and all the saints, the church of Mortlach or Murthelach,
in perpetual gift, erecting it into an Episcopal see, in obedience,
as it is said, to a vow made in the immediate vicinity of the church
when battling with the Norwegian Invaders. In its present form the
charter seems to be unworthy of implicit credit, yet the circumstantial
accounts of Fordun and Boece agree with it in every essential point,
and it appears reasonable to assume that its most important features
are not without some authority and historical value. David I.
translated the see from Mortlach to Old Aberdeen in 1125, endowing it
for the first time with revenues proportionate to the dignity of the
bishopric. It appears, however, if we may so far trust the charter,
that Mortlach was the seat of a religious foundation prior to the
honours conferred on it by the victorious Malcolm, the humble church
of which was elevated, in fulfilment of the royal vow, to the rank of
a cathedral. At such a date we might expect a building corresponding
to those of which the remarkable relics remain at Abernethy and
Brechin; and even yet, though sorely defaced by modern additions, the
venerable parish church of Mortlach is believed to include portions of
the primitive cathedral. The holes are pointed out where the victor
is affirmed to have caused the heads of three of the vanquished Norse
leaders to be built into the wall as a votive offering: a singular but
sufficiently characteristic memorial of the ferocious spirit of the
age, though resting on little better authority than local tradition.
"At whatever time," says the Old Statist, writing about 1795, "three
skulls may have first been put there, there they surely were; and not
longer than about thirty years ago was the last of them picked out and
tossed about by the school-boys."[631] The former proportions of the
church were ninety feet long, including a chancel of twenty-seven feet,
while its greatest breadth was only twenty-eight feet. Within the last
twelve years great alterations and additions have been made, with the
usual inattention to the ancient features of the venerable edifice.
The original walls are very massive. The windows, where unaltered, are
extremely narrow and deeply splayed internally, the work probably of
the new era which we have now to consider, though it is not impossible
that some portions of the original church of Mortlach may still
remain.[632]
It was about the year 1070--the precise date is uncertain--that Malcolm
Canmore wedded the gentle and pious Saxon princess, whose amiable
disposition insensibly softened the rugged nature of her husband,
and swayed him by the influence of a most sincere affection, till he
became the docile minister of her will. We possess a narrative of the
private life of Malcolm and his Queen, on the authority of Turgot the
confessor of the latter, who had frequent opportunities of intimate
intercourse with both. Amid the austerities and superstitions which
belonged less to the individuals than the age, it is impossible not
to admire the rare picture of domestic charity and kindly affections
which it discloses. It was at Dunfermline, according to Turgot, that
the auspicious marriage of Malcolm and Margaret took place; and one
of the first works of the queen was to found a church in the place
where her nuptials had been celebrated, which she dedicated to the
Holy Trinity, and enriched with many costly gifts. Such was the origin
of the Benedictine Abbey of Dunfermline, though it can scarcely admit
of doubt that some church or chapel existed at this chosen place of
royal residence prior to the foundation of St. Margaret. The editor
of the "Registrum de Dunfermelyn" remarks, "The original church of
Canmore, perhaps hot of stone, must have been replaced by a new edifice
when it was dedicated in the reign of David I. If any part of that
structure remain, it must be little more than the foundations. Age, or
the accidents of a rough time, or the increasing consequence of the
house, gave rise to an enlarged and more magnificent structure about
the middle of the thirteenth century."[633] It cannot be difficult,
I think, to shew that such conclusions are erroneous, and at least
totally inadmissible in reference to the sombre and impressive nave of
Dunfermline, the oldest and perhaps most interesting specimen of the
Romanesque style now remaining in Scotland. But the whole reasoning
proceeds on the imperfect views hitherto entertained of the state of
civilisation and the progress of the arts in Scotland previous to the
commencement of its medieval era, dating from the reign of Malcolm,
when for the first time both its civil and ecclesiastical institutions
were assimilated to the rest of Europe.
So far from Malcolm Canmore's church being probably of wood, there are
some of the most substantial early Romanesque structures in England
which there is good reason for ascribing to the same builders who
erected the Church of the Holy Trinity at Dunfermline, in the lifetime
of its pious foundress. Malcolm was present at the laying of the
foundation stone of Durham Cathedral by the confessor and biographer
of his own pious queen, on the 11th of August 1093, shortly before his
last fatal rupture with England; and his son Alexander witnessed the
deposition of the relics of St. Cuthbert in the same sacred edifice in
1104. No one who has had the opportunity of examining both Durham and
Dunfermline, can have failed to observe the remarkable correspondence
of their character and details. The same massive and dissimilar
piers: the same chevron, spiral, and billet mouldings distinguishing
the compartments of the nave: the same chamfered cushion capitals
to the heavy cylindrical shafts: as well as a marked conformity in
many minor details, all point to a common origin for Durham Cathedral
and Dunfermline Abbey. St. Finnan, a monk of Iona, is said to have
built the first church of Lindisfarne, a timber erection, and the
original seat of the see of Durham, in the seventh century. Scottish
missionaries twice introduced the faith into Northumberland; Iona
and Melrose supplied successive heads to the southern house; and
even after the Conqueror compelled the chapter to receive a bishop
of his appointment of Norman blood, the intimate relations between
the see and the northern abbeys appear to have been very temporarily
interrupted. In so far as greater plainness and massive simplicity
afford any ground for assigning priority of date, the argument is in
favour of the greater antiquity of Dunfermline Abbey, which must have
been far advanced, if not indeed finished, according to the original
design, before the foundation of the Cathedral at Durham was laid in
1093, as the death of both of the royal founders took place before the
close of the year; and they were buried there before the rood altar.
Perhaps the fact of their interment there, and not in the choir,--to
which the bodies of both were translated with solemn ceremonial and,
according to the old chroniclers, with miraculous attestations of
their enduring affection,[634] four years after the canonization of
St. Margaret in 1246,--may be thought to afford presumptive evidence
that the abbey choir was then incomplete. This, however, is by no
means probable, as the choir was always the part of the church first
built. But it was no doubt with a view to receive into a structure
worthy of so sacred a depository the relics of the sainted queen that
the choir was remodelled according to the prevailing First-pointed
style of the thirteenth century. We possess a curious proof that even
the reconstruction of the choir was effected, not by demolishing and
rebuilding the whole, but merely by remodelling the original masonry
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,--a process of common occurrence
with nearly all the large cathedral and abbey churches; for by a bull
of Pope Innocent IV., dated September 15, in the seventh year of his
pontificate,[635] (1250,) he dispenses with the reconsecration of the
abbey, because the walls of the former church for the most part still
remained.[636] No doubt the nave also underwent some modifications,
of which it now bears evidence, but all its essential features can be
assigned to no other period than that of the original foundation.
To the same early period must be assigned the erection of the
interesting little chapel of St. Margaret in the Castle of Edinburgh,
which it was my good fortune to rediscover a few years since, when
converted to the vile use of a powder magazine, after its very
existence had been lost sight of for upwards of a century.[637] Some of
its characteristic details have been thought rather to belong to the
later period of the Romanesque style; but a careful examination of the
simple capitals of the jam-shafts, and the low relief of the mouldings
on the chancel arch, has satisfied me that there is no evidence in its
structure inconsistent with the idea of its being the oratory of Queen
Margaret, which, according to Barbour, she caused to be decorated with
a painting of prophetic import, still remaining in his day,[638] (obiit
1396.) The plain coved vault of the apse, and the small roundheaded
and entirely unornamented windows, so different from the later work of
Dalmeny or Leuchars, confirm this opinion. By a charter bearing date
14th February 1390, King Robert II. endowed the altar of the chapel of
St. Margaret the Queen, in Edinburgh Castle, with a yearly rental of
eight pounds, but which was subsequently transferred to the chapel of
St. Mary the Virgin, in the same fortress, probably erected at that
period, and only demolished towards the close of the last century.[639]
The great improbability of the oratory of Queen Margaret having been
demolished, and so small and plain a chapel built in her honour either
in the reign of Alexander or David, seems to render the conclusion
unavoidable, that the interesting little chapel of St. Margaret is
directly associated with the pious queen, to whom there can be little
doubt Shakespear alludes in Macbeth, though he makes Macduff speak of
her not as the wife but the mother of Malcolm:--
"The queen, that bore thee,
Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
Died every day she lived."[640]
The portions which remain of the original Romanesque structure of
Alexander I.'s foundation on Inchcolm, erected about 1123, are
characterized by the same unornate simplicity; nor is it till the
reign of David I. that we have any certain examples of the highly
decorated late Romanesque work. Even in the Abbey of Jedburgh much of
the original work is heavy and plain, compared with the singularly
rich details which lighten the solid masses of Kelso Abbey. Of
Holyrood Abbey, founded by David I. in the same year with that of
Kelso, comparatively little use can be made in fixing the chronology
of Scottish medieval architecture. From its vicinity to the capital,
and its long occupation by the Court, every invading army spoiled or
burnt it, and almost every abbot made some new additions or repairs,
till it has become a complete ecclesiological enigma. In the cloister
doorway, on the south side of the nave, it presents undoubted remains
of the original foundation of David I. The west tower, the arcades in
the aisles, and various other portions, indicate that the main walls
of the building belong to the transition-period, prior to the complete
development of the First-pointed style; most probably in the minority
of Alexander III. The great west doorway and the centre aisle are in
the very best style of late First-pointed; while the external north
wall and its richly decorated buttresses, as well as various additions
on the south side, are reconstructions of Abbot Crawfurd, who succeeded
to the abbacy in 1457, as appears from his arms still visible on
various parts of the new work. The unique windows of the west front,
with segmental arches and nondescript tracery, though bearing some
resemblance to portions of the palace in Stirling Castle, ascribed to
the reign of James IV., will, we suspect, be more correctly assigned
to the era of his unfortunate descendant, Charles I., whose cipher is
carved on the beam of the great doorway below. The beautiful arcade of
early but unusually rich First-pointed work, and with sculptured heads
in the spandrils, which adorns the west front of the tower, is in some
respects unique, and is certainly unsurpassed in the richness of its
details by any contemporary work.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Section of Arch Mouldings.]
[Illustration: Section of Pier.]
The cathedral of St. Magnus at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, has already
been referred to as an exceedingly interesting specimen of late
Romanesque work, commenced about the year 1136; so that from the banks
of the Tweed to these remote northern isles we find the Romanesque
style universally adopted in the first years of the twelfth century.
One curious and unique example of this period, however, must not be
overlooked. The remarkable little church and tower of St. Rule, at St.
Andrews, have excited scarcely less interest than the round towers of
Brechin and Abernethy, and have been the subjects of equally vague
speculations. The slender tower, measuring upwards of an hundred feet
in height, by twenty feet eight inches in breadth at base, while the
choir is only thirty-one and a half feet long,[641] is well calculated
to arrest the attention, though the edifice is, as a whole, more
remarkable for its singular and perfectly unique features than for
the grace or consistency of its proportions. The remarkable excess in
height over all the other measurements of the tower prevails, though
to a less extent, in the entire design. The accumulated soil covers
the bases of the columns of the chancel arch, and thus detracts from
this peculiar characteristic of the primitive metropolitan cathedral;
but even now, while the interior of the choir measures only nineteen
feet ten inches in breadth, the present height of the chancel arch
is twenty-one and a half feet, and that of the arch in the tower,
formerly connecting the nave and choir, is twenty-four feet two inches;
from the floor to the top of the side walls is twenty-nine feet seven
inches, and to the apex of the original high-pointed roof, as shewn
on the tower wall, is fifty-five feet five inches.[642] Assuming the
existence of three steps at the chancel arch, we shall not probably err
in adding to all the latter measurements at the least from four to five
feet, thereby presenting a remarkably striking contrast to the very
narrow proportions of the choir. The details are extremely simple. The
sections of the piers and arch mouldings of the chancel figured here
will suffice to shew that they partake somewhat of the meagreness of
the larger features, while they are entirely devoid of the massiveness
so peculiarly characteristic of the older Romanesque. Nevertheless,
in this, as in other details of the building, the architect has shewn
much ingenuity in economizing the limited means and materials at his
command: the tenuity and apparent meagreness of design of the chancel
arch, as seen in section, producing in reality an effect of greater
breadth and solidity than a number of less distinct and boldly relieved
features could have effected. The columns are finished by simple
double-cushioned capitals, surmounted by a plain chamfered abacus,
from which springs the arch, one of the most singular features of this
curious building. Its details are shewn in the section, but the arch
considerably exceeds a semicircle; and mounted on its lofty piers,
with the tall, narrow tower beyond, presents a remarkable but by no
means unpleasing effect. From the excessive height which prevails
throughout all the most prominent features of the church of St. Rule,
it possesses, as a whole, little in common with such sombre and massive
structures as Kirkwall or Dunfermline, or with the more ornate little
Romanesque churches of Leuchars or Dalmeny. Its walls, indeed, which
have so well withstood the tooth of time, are only two feet seven
inches thick. A careful examination of its details, however, leaves
no room to doubt that it belongs to the twelfth century, when the
older Romanesque was being modified by many novel additions prior to
its abandonment for the First-pointed style; and there can be little
risk of error in recognising in the church of St. Rule the basilica
of Bishop Robert, the founder of the Priory of Canons Regular of St.
Andrews, about A.D. 1144. The bishop had much to reform at St. Andrews
ere either his new foundation or his Episcopal see were placed on the
creditable footing in which he left them to his successor; and we may,
with little hesitation, ascribe the singular proportions of the church
of St. Rule to the desire of giving with his first slender means the
utmost dignity that they admitted of to the metropolitan church. The
early chapter seals of St. Andrews afford some of the few undoubted
examples of a designed and tolerably accurate portraiture of an ancient
church. The oldest of these, a seal attached to a charter A.D. 1160,
but itself no doubt of a somewhat earlier date, shews the miniature
cathedral as it probably originally appeared, with central and west
towers, choir, and nave, but altogether of much smaller dimensions than
the greater number of parish churches. The windows of two lights in
the top of the tower may be compared to the plainer example, divided
by a cylindrical shaft, with cushioned capital, and moulded base, in
the lower part of the tower of Dunblane Cathedral, a fragment of the
first cathedral of St. Blane, possibly of the time of Canmore, and
certainly not later than the reign of Alexander I. But the lighter and
more ornate style of those of St. Rule fully accord with the later date
assigned to it here.
[Illustration: Chancel Arch, St. Rule's.]
Specimens of Romanesque parish churches are by no means rare in
Scotland. Besides those of Leuchars and Dalmeny may be named
Duddingston, Ratho, and Borthwick, Mid-Lothian; Gulane, East-Lothian;
Uphall, Abercorn, and Kirkliston, West-Lothian; St. Helen's,
Cockburnspath, Berwickshire; Mortlach and Monymusk, Aberdeenshire; St.
Columba's Southend, Kilchouslan, Campbeltown, and the beautiful little
ruined church of St. Blane, on the island of Bute, with its Romanesque
chancel arch and graceful First-pointed chancel; besides various others
more or less perfect still remaining in Argyleshire--all presenting
interesting features illustrative of the development of the Romanesque
style in Scotland, and furnishing evidence of the great impetus given
to church building at the period.
Such was the change effected on Scottish art by the remarkable
historical events which gave the throne of England to the Norman
invader, and established the descendants of the Saxon Alfred on that
of Scotland. For nearly a century the ecclesiastical architecture
of England and Scotland is one in style, coincident in date, and
uniform in the character of details. This unwonted uniformity,
however, is clearly traceable to causes the full effect of which was
ere long modified by other influences. Soon after the introduction
of the First-pointed or Early English style a marked difference is
discoverable, and thenceforth the dates and peculiar characteristics
of the ecclesiastical architecture of the two countries disagree in
many essential points. Notwithstanding the adoption of the somewhat
exclusive term _Early English_ for the First-pointed style, it appears
to have reached its limits at fully as early a period in Scotland as
in England. The choir of Glasgow Cathedral, built by Bishop Jocelin,
between 1188 and 1197, though not to be compared with the Cathedral
of Salisbury in loftiness of proportions, or grandeur of effect as a
whole, is certainly further advanced in the rich and finished character
of its beautiful capitals and other varied details, though the English
cathedral was not begun till A.D. 1220, or thirty-two years later than
that of St. Kentigern. The crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, which formed
the first work of Bishop Jocelin, is not surpassed by any structure
of its class, and hardly indeed equalled by any other crypt in the
kingdom. As a specimen of pure First-pointed work it is deserving of
the most careful study; and the recent judicious restorations effected
under the direction of the late Mr. William Nixon, have rendered it
an object which the student of medieval architecture may visit with
unqualified admiration and delight. So little has hitherto been done
in the way of investigating the history or peculiar character of
Scottish Ecclesiology, that very few examples have yet been assigned
to their true date. It has been customary to ascribe the founding of
the cathedral church of St. Andrews, for example, to Bishop Arnold,
A.D. 1159-1163, and loosely to assume from this that a considerable
portion of it was of that early date. But the mention by Wyntoun of
his interment in the "auld kyrk,"[643] _i.e._, the church of St.
Rule, must be accepted as some indication that the new cathedral had
made no great progress at his death. The beautiful fragment of its
choir which still remains may with little hesitation be ascribed to
the later episcopate of Bishop William, A.D. 1202-1233; during whose
occupation of the see we have evidence of considerable building being
in progress. Specimens of pure First-pointed work are by no means
rare in Scotland, ranging from the stately cathedral of St. Mungo,
or the ruined abbey of Dryburgh, to the chancel of the lovely little
church of St. Blane in the Isle of Bute. But with the exception of the
magnificent fragments of the abbey of Aberbrothoc which still remain
to us, no more characteristic specimen of the peculiar style which
arose in Scotland in the reign of William the Lion can be referred
to, than the three eastern bays added to the old Romanesque cathedral
of St. Magnus, in the remote Orkneys. The details are indeed for
the most part First-pointed, and the piers beautifully moulded and
clustered shafts, but the arches that rise from them are of the same
form as those of 1136, though also richly moulded in conformity with
the style which superseded the Romanesque in the latter part of the
twelfth century. Such work can neither be consistently classed with
the true First-pointed, of which Glasgow Cathedral is a type, nor
with the later Scottish Decorated. Down to the close of Malcolm IV.'s
reign the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland and England may be
held to coincide alike in style and date: the Scottish First-pointed
being upon the whole both earlier and more fully developed than the
corresponding English style, according to the chronology assigned
by Mr. Rickman. But with the first symptoms of transition the
ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland begins to assume its peculiar
characteristic features, marked by a return to the use of the
semicircular arch, and a preference of circular to angular details,
employed not indiscriminately or at random, but on a fixed principle,
along with the consistent use of the pointed arch, and of details
peculiar to the later styles. The fact of such peculiarities is more
easily demonstrated than its cause. The intimacy and interchange of
races with England under Malcolm Canmore, and the complete assimilation
of the Church of Scotland to that of England, abundantly account for
the uniformity of the English and Scottish Romanesque Period. Perhaps
we shall not overrate the effect of the profuse zeal and liberality
of David I., and the fruits of his example, in assuming that the very
numerous specimens of beautiful late Romanesque work, on every scale,
from cathedrals and abbeys, to simple little village churches, built
almost entirely in his reign, may not have been without their influence
in stamping some of its most marked types with an enduring authority
on the national mind--in all periods of its history characterized by a
certain tenacity of adherence to a favourite idea. Be this, however,
as it may, the retention of the use of the semicircular arch, and of
forms of the same type, after their abandonment in the ecclesiastical
architecture of England, becomes the source of a style peculiar to
Scotland, and which it has been too much the custom hitherto to regard
as a mere provincialism little worthy of note. The worst fruit of this
has been, that our ancient Scottish edifices have been remodelled
in accordance with rules derived entirely from contemporary English
models; and our architects have employed themselves for nearly half a
century in deliberately obliterating the most characteristic features
of native art.
The influence which stamped its character on the age of David I.
was more ecclesiastical than civil. The intercourse with England,
though not uninterrupted, continued during his reign and that of his
imbecile successor sufficiently close and frequent to account for
much similarity in the arts and manners of the two kingdoms; nor was
it till the quarrel of William the Lion with Henry II., in 1172, his
subsequent imprisonment, and the disputed claims of independence both
of the Church and Crown, that the effectual alienation took place from
which we may trace in part the divergence of Scottish from English
models. The claim of the dependence of the Scottish Church on the
English archbishops was probably more effectual than any civil change
in severing the two Churches, with all that pertained to them. But
before this lasting disruption took place, the First-pointed style had
been fully developed, and was already expanding into the rudiments of
the next transition. There were indeed constructed, to some extent
contemporaneously, works in what may be correctly enough styled the
Early English, or pure First-pointed style, of which Glasgow choir
is an example, and others like the abbey of Aberbrothoc, essentially
peculiar in many respects. To the latter I would propose to apply the
term, _Scottish Geometric_, reserving for the more elaborate style,
ultimately developed after the War of Independence, the name of
_Scottish Decorated_.[644] The choir of Glasgow Cathedral exhibits a
series of extremely interesting examples of the pierced interspaces
of the First-pointed window, in which the tracery of the Decorated
Period originated; while the nave of the same beautiful edifice, the
work of Bishop William de Bondington, 1233-1258, is no less valuable as
an example of the succeeding stage, where the grouped lancet windows
have given place to a pointed arch divided by plain mullions and
intersecting tracery into several lights, which again have in some
cases been filled in with geometric figures, still very partially
blended into a homogeneous or consistent whole. The circular arch,
however, was never totally abandoned. In the chapter-house of the abbey
of Inchcolm, for example, a beautiful little octagonal structure of
two floors, the doorway is a semicircular arch, though with mouldings
entirely of the later style; the chapter-house is lighted with small
lancet windows, while the chamber above has corresponding apertures
with semicircular heads. This preference of the semicircular arch,
especially for doorways, was never afterwards laid aside. The great
west entrance of the magnificent abbey of Aberbrothoc, founded by
William the Lion in 1178, is an exceedingly rich and beautiful
Scottish doorway of the period, presenting in its details the blending
of forms derived both from the Romanesque and First-pointed styles.
The entire building furnishes a most interesting example of the
peculiarities of early Scottish Gothic, marking, as I conceive, the
historic epoch in which the native styles had their rise. In the
south transept, for example, this is exhibited with great freedom
and variety of character. Three tiers of arcades decorate the wall:
the lowest consists of a series of equilateral pointed arches, each
filled with a cusped trefoil head, and ranging with and repeating the
same mouldings is a small but finely proportioned semicircular headed
doorway. The arrangement is exceedingly happy, admitting of the greater
breadth of doorway without breaking the line formed by the top of the
arcade, or disturbing the uniformity of its series of engaged shafts.
So far from seeming to be incongruous, it has a most harmonious effect
to the eye. Above this is a second arcade, composed entirely of the
lancet arch; while the third, or highest tier, consists of a series of
semicircular arches, forming the continuation of the triforium, so that
the arrangement of the orders seems deliberately reversed. The pleasing
effect of the whole can only be judged of when seen _in situ_.
Meanwhile the arts continued to progress, advancing towards more
complete development of the medieval architecture, then common in all
its most essential features to nearly the whole of Europe. The Canons
of the General Council of the Scottish Church, in 1242, preserve to us
a remarkable ordinance for an annual national collection throughout
the kingdom in aid of the building of Glasgow Cathedral, the present
nave of which was then in progress. The translation of the relics
of St. Margaret to the choir of Dunfermline Abbey, in 1250, marks
the completion of that interesting contemporary work,--now unhappily
replaced by a pseudo-choir in the style of the year 1820. Works
manifestly of the same period, and more markedly Scottish, are still
common in many districts: as in parts of Dunblane Cathedral, of Paisley
Abbey, Brechin Cathedral, the east end, and other portions of the
Cathedral of the Orkneys, &c. But a great revolution was at hand,
which abruptly severed the already loosening cords that for a time had
brought the ancient kingdoms and the Churches of Scotland and England
into unwonted unity of purpose and feeling. In 1285 died the wise and
good king, Alexander III., leaving his kingdom to all the miseries
of a divided regency and a disputed succession. Margaret of Norway,
granddaughter of Alexander, an infant, at a foreign court, had been
acknowledged the heir to the crown of Scotland very shortly before
the sudden death of the king. Eric, king of Norway, alarmed at the
dissensions among the Scottish regents, appealed to Edward of England
to interpose, and thus commenced the series of memorable events in our
national history, ending in the war of independence, which placed the
Bruce upon the throne, and finally shut out England from all influence
on Scottish policy or art. Thenceforth to have "an English heart" was
the Scottish name for treason; and the term deliberately applied even
in the Acts of the Scottish Parliament to their southern neighbours is
"our auld enemies of England."
The year 1306, in which Robert Bruce ascended the throne of his
ancestors, almost exactly corresponds with the date (1307) assigned by
Rickman for the close of the First-pointed or Early English style. But
meanwhile a period of division, anarchy, and bloody war, had lasted
in Scotland for upwards of seventy years, during which the only arts
that found encouragement were those of the armourer and the military
architect; nor was this state of things brought to a close twelve
years after the coronation of the Bruce, when, in the year 1318,
the Pope, John XXII., the obsequious tool of England, renewed the
excommunication of Clement V. against the king and all his adherents.
The very registers and chartularies are ominously silent; though here
and there we find evidence that the old spirit of pious largess to
the Church was only temporarily overborne by the stern necessities
of the time. Bishops and abbots meanwhile fought alongside of their
fellow-countrymen in the foremost of the fight, or, like the good Abbot
of Inchaffray, animated them to strike for liberty and independence.
The results of all this are abundantly apparent in the earliest
succeeding examples of ecclesiastical architecture. They partake of the
mingled features of the First and Middle-pointed styles, and are in
many cases characterized by a degree of plainness and meagre simplicity
which renders the application of the term _Decorated_ occasionally
very inappropriate to what contain, nevertheless, the rudiments of the
style. What marks them still more with a novel character are features
such as the unusually small side doorways, the small windows, the
single aisle, and, above all, the plain vault, whether pointed or
round, all of which appear to be traceable to the almost exclusive
devotion to military architecture by the builders of that age. The
Church was then _militant_ in a peculiar sense, and found it difficult
to reassume the fitter and more becoming garb of peace.
The plainest, as well as the most ornate Scottish ecclesiastical
structures subsequent to this date, almost invariably exhibit some
interesting evidence of the adherence to the use of the semicircular
arch, and its cognate forms, not only in doors, windows, and arcades,
but in the tracery of pointed windows, which at length resulted in the
peculiar style of Scottish Decorated Gothic. The Scots, in truth, did
of necessity, and undesignedly, what the modern artists, especially
of Germany, have affirmed in their practice to be indispensable to
the revival of art. They returned nearly to the rudiments of pointed
architecture, and wrought out a system for themselves. From this date
the rules of English ecclesiology can only mislead the student of
Scottish ecclesiastical architecture.
The choir of the singular church of the monastery of Carmelites or
Whitefriars, at South Queensferry, founded by Dundas of Dundas in
1330, is an exceedingly interesting specimen of the simple style of
the period. The windows, which are few and small, divided by plain
mullions, with no other tracery than their bending into lancet and
interspaces in the head; the roof a plain vault without groining,
and with a singularly sombre look from its entire elevation above
all the windows except at the east end, there being no aisles, and
consequently no clere-story; the piscina, on the south side, a recessed
pointed arch, neatly moulded, but without cusping or other ornament;
the sedilia alongside of it, a flat-arched recess, rounded off at the
angles by a segmental curve, and divided into three spaces only by
pendant mouldings or cusps, too imperfect now to shew exactly what they
may have been: all these are characteristic chiefly of the extreme
simplicity of the details. But here also the semicircular arch occurs.
The credence in the east wall, on the north side of the altar, is
recessed with mouldings nearly similar to the piscina, and like it with
all the mouldings sunk within the recess, but with a rounded instead
of a pointed arch. The priest's door, on the south side of the choir,
is of the same form externally, though square-headed within; and a
plain ambry occupies the north wall, directly opposite to the piscina.
The eastern gable of the church is decorated externally in a novel
manner with a niche and various heraldic devices, probably of later
date, and coeval with the nave and south transept, which are curious
specimens of the Perpendicular style.[645] This extremely interesting
example of an important period of Scottish Ecclesiology is generally
overlooked, though it lies within a mile of Dalmeny, the favourite
example of the parochial church architecture of the twelfth century.
Its very existence is probably unknown to thousands who annually pass
the neighbouring ferry, as it lies beyond the route of travellers going
to the north.
The little ruined church of the village of Temple, East-Lothian,
is another simple but pleasing specimen of the transition from the
First-pointed to the Scottish Decorated style. Two long, narrow lancet
windows, now blocked up, probably indicate the original character of
the whole structure. The large east window is divided into three lights
by mullions and intersecting tracery in the head, into the two largest
openings of which plain circles are inserted. Still simpler is the
arrangement in the smaller windows on the south side. They are divided
into three lights, the mullions forming pointed heads at the two side
lights; but instead of being continued so as to form intersecting
tracery in the central space, a large circle is inserted between the
pointed heads of the side lights, the lower segment of which finishes
the head of the central light by its inverted curve. In this extremely
simple combination may be traced the rudiments of the beautiful and
richly decorated window in the south transept of Melrose Abbey. The
same mode of filling up the head of the window with circles inserted
in the intersecting tracery, may be seen on a large scale in the two
great windows of the west front of Paisley Abbey, founded by Walter,
the second of the family, Steward of Scotland, about 1163,[646] for
monks of the Cluniac order of reformed Benedictines. It likewise
occurs in some of the original windows of Glasgow Cathedral; while the
partial development of the same simple combinations, into intricate
and beautiful forms is most happily illustrated in the tracery of the
south side of the nave, evidently an insertion of later date than the
building, the north windows of which remain unaltered.
[Illustration]
A decorated window in the west gable of Paisley Abbey, belonging to
a period fully a century later than the lower portion of the same
front, exhibits the preference for the circular instead of the ogee
arch, which would have been combined with the other features of
its tracery in any English example of the style. The round-headed
light is found to prevail alike in the plainest and the most ornate
tracery, from the abandonment of the First-pointed style about the
middle of the thirteenth century, till the final close of Scottish
medieval ecclesiology in the troubled reign of James V. The curious
but remarkably simple window figured here is one of the original ones
in the nave of the beautiful little collegiate church of Corstorphine,
near Edinburgh, founded by Sir John Forrester in 1429. But it is not
in such minor features as tracery heads only that the rounded arch is
employed. Throughout the whole period from the introduction of the
Scottish geometric Gothic, in the reign of William the Lion, till the
abandonment of medieval art, it continued to be used interchangeably
with the pointed arch wherever convenience or taste suggested its
adoption. In the triforium of Paisley Abbey one of the most remarkable
examples occurs of its use in common with the later form of arch in the
main features of the architectural design. Corresponding in breadth to
each bay of the nave is a large semicircular arch spring from short
clustered columns, with moulded capitals, nearly resembling those of
the plainer First-pointed pillars of the nave. The rich mouldings of
the triforium arch are recessed to the same depth as the pointed arches
below, and are again subdivided by a slender clustered column into two
pointed and cusped cinquefoil arches, with a quaterfoil in the space
between. A similar arrangement, though executed in a less ornate style,
occurs in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, the work of Bishop Robert de
Cardeny, 1406,[647] while the practical end in view may be observed
in the nave of Holyrood Abbey, where a constructive semicircular arch
is thrown from pillar to pillar at the same elevation, though there
concealed by the triforium screen. The object in both cases obviously
was to throw the principal weight upon the supporting columns of the
centre aisle. These examples serve to shew the interchangeable use of
the round and pointed arch by the Scottish architect as it best suited
his purpose, or harmonized with the general arrangements of his design.
So also in the doorways, the clere-story windows, and the tracery,
the rounded arch is systematically used in the Scottish Decorated
period interchangeably with the later pointed forms. But the taste
for rounded forms also manifests itself in other ways: in circular
turret stair-cases, as at Linlithgow, and formerly in that attached to
the beautiful south porch of St. Giles's, Edinburgh; and again in the
vaulted roofs of belfry towers, where the converging ribs meet in a
large open moulded circle, as at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, St. Michael's,
Linlithgow, the collegiate churches of Seton and Torphichen, and till
recently in the rich groining, springing from large half figures of
angels bearing shields and scrolls, of the plain west tower of Glasgow
Cathedral,--most injudiciously removed to restore the west front to
a uniformity which but poorly repays the idea of size and elevation
formerly conveyed by the contrast between the central and west towers.
Examples of the semicircular-headed doorway are of constant occurrence
throughout the whole Scottish Decorated period, accompanied with the
utmost variety and extent of decoration. The west door of the Abbey
Church, Haddington, is a very pleasing example of two orders repeating
the favourite roll-and-fillet moulding, with a deep hollow between
filled with floriated decoration. It is divided into two doorways by
a central shaft, and both it and the jam-shafts have richly floriated
capitals and moulded bases. The triple, round-headed windows of the
tower, and indeed the whole style of its decoration, are no less
markedly characteristic of the peculiarities of the Scottish Decorated
period. A still more beautiful doorway, of similar construction,
formed, till the year 1829, the entrance to a chapel added to the south
aisle of the collegiate church of St. Giles at Edinburgh in 1387. It is
now rebuilt between two of the pillars of the central tower, but shorn
of many of its finest adjuncts. Similar illustrations might be greatly
multiplied, as in the vestry door of the cathedral at Iona, filled
in with a trefoil arch; in the beautiful cloister doorway of Melrose
Abbey; in the gracefully proportioned priests' door of the collegiate
church of Seton, on the south side of the choir, adorned with the arms
of Sir William Seton on a shield couche, about the year 1400, but more
probably the work of his son; who was buried there in 1441; and in the
richly decorated south doorway of Holyrood Abbey, with ogee canopy,
and flanking buttresses, the work of Abbot Crawfurd about 1458. The
same form of doorway was to be seen, accompanied with several varieties
of detail, in the collegiate church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh,
founded by Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II., in 1462, and
recklessly demolished in the progress of the North British Railway
operations in 1848. In some respects this was the finest example of
late decorated work in Scotland. The entrance from the north transept
to the chantry chapel, latterly used as the vestry, was by a neat
round-headed doorway, with a simple roll-and-triple-fillet moulding,
with a broad hollow externally running continuously round the arch, and
with a hood-mould enriched with flowers in the hollow, springing from
moulded corbels.
[Illustration]
Another small round-headed doorway, with a similarly decorated hood
moulding, but with engaged jam-shafts with moulded capitals and bases,
latterly blocked up, had formed the entrance to the north transept; and
a large one, of like construction, but with the rich mouldings in the
jams carried round the head of the arch, without capitals, was placed
within a groined porch formed in the angle of the south transept, and
formed the principal entrance to the church. The decorations of this
fine doorway consisted entirely of a series of filleted quarter-roll
mouldings, continued round the recess of the doorway without any
break. The most beautiful portion of the whole building was the richly
decorated groined roof of the choir and apse, with its vaulting shafts
springing from corbels sculptured into all manner of grotesque forms
of imps, grinning masks, and caricatures of monks and friars, such as
the one here figured, which projected nearly over the site of the old
high altar, as if in purposed mockery of the rites on which it seemed
to look down. Yet above these unseemly drolls rose the ribbed groins
of the beautiful roof, in its eastern portion especially, hardly to
be surpassed in chaste design or elaborately varied details. In this
point, however, it more nearly approximated to the usual arrangement
of English roofs, being enriched with clustering ribs and bosses,
and divided by transverse pointed arches into vaulted bays. The most
striking peculiarity in the Scottish stone roof-work is the use of
the single vault instead of the transverse groined vaulting, deemed
essential elsewhere to ecclesiastical roofing. In its earliest and
simplest forms, as in the choir at South Queensferry, it differs
in no way from the contemporary baronial halls, as at Borthwick or
Crichton, from which it appears to have been directly derived. It is
probable, however, that pictorial decoration was employed to relieve
its otherwise bald surface, as was certainly the case in the baronial
halls, traces of which still remain both at Borthwick and Craigmillar.
It continued in use to the last in this very simple form, where little
decoration was required, as in the muniment room of the church of
the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, while the choir of the same building
presented one of the chastest and richest specimens of a groined vault
in Scotland.
The single vaulted church roof, so like that of the baronial hall, may
be very fitly traced to the almost exclusive occupation of Scottish
builders, for nearly a century previous to its introduction in military
architecture. But while retaining its form they speedily learned to
restore it to harmony with the decorated work below. The chapel of St.
Mirinus, more frequently termed the sounding aisle, attached to the
south side of Paisley Abbey, furnishes a remarkably beautiful specimen
of a ribbed roof of this simple form, treated with great variety, and
an ingenious adaptation to the variations in the walls from which it
springs, which shews how entirely the architect was familiar with
this style of vaulting, so little known elsewhere. The choir of the
collegiate church of Bothwell, founded by the grim Earl of Douglas in
1398, is another very fine example, in which the richness of details
abundantly proves that economy had no influence in the choice of this
favourite form of ceiling. Another magnificent specimen of the richest
style of Scottish decorated Gothic is Lincluden Abbey, the work of the
same grim Earl; but its graceful vaulting-shafts no longer sustain
the branching ribs of stone. The choir at Seton is a plainer and less
complete example. Only the eastern portion, including the apse, is
decorated with moulded ribs, which spring from sculptured corbels, and
meet in the ridge rib, where they are tied by equally fine bosses at
the intersections. George, second Lord Seton, is said by the historian
of the house of Seton to have "pendit the choir and biggit the
vestry," about the year 1493;[648] but the chronology of this work is
manifestly wrong in some places, and is altogether a very unsafe guide
for the ecclesiologist. In nearly all those examples no side aisles
exist, and they are indeed very generally confined in Scotland to the
largest collegiate and abbey churches, being introduced evidently
less for ornament than for use, where an unusual amount of space was
required. Occasionally even the semicircular arch is employed in the
roof, as in the Lady Chapel at Roslin, where the greater elevation of
the pointed arch would be objectionable from its peculiar position. The
choir of the beautiful little cross-church of St. Monance, Fifeshire,
finished apparently in 1369, furnishes an interesting example of the
transition to the transverse vaulted roof, the ridge ribs of the
cross-vaults being bent down about half-way from the centre, where they
diverge from a boss into three groin ribs, the centre one springing
nearly from the top of each window, which is as usual considerably
below the vaulted roof. The choir-roof of the collegiate church of the
Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, A.D. 1462, may be considered as marking the
period when the peculiar Scottish vaulted roof was generally abandoned,
though more than one interesting example of its use at later dates
remain to be noticed. It is retained in the older portion of the north
aisle of the choir of St. Giles's Church at Edinburgh, while the two
eastern bays, as well as the beautifully groined centre aisle, the work
of the same period as the collegiate foundation of Mary of Gueldres,
are in conformity with the newer style.
The same convenience which suggested the use of the round instead of
the more elevated pointed arch, also occasionally led to the use of
the still more depressed segmental arch, as in the chantry doorway at
Bothwell; or even to the two-centred flat arch with segmental curves,
as in the great doorway of the beautiful screen and organ-loft at
Glasgow, and in a smaller doorway, the work of Abbot Crawfurd, circa
1460, now built into the east arch of the north aisle of Holyrood
Abbey. The segmental arch is most frequently employed in monumental
recesses, as at St. Bridget's Douglas, St. Kentigern's Borthwick,
and in the choir at Seton; but other Scottish churches exhibit the
semicircular arch employed for the same purpose, as in the magnificent
tomb of Margaret, countess of Douglas, at Lincluden, and in the
recesses under the great north and south windows of the transepts at
Seton. One of the most beautiful Scottish examples of a late segmental
arched doorway, which is figured here, is that of the vestry or chantry
chapel of Bothwell Church, Lanarkshire.
[Illustration: Bothwell Chantry Door.]
[Illustration: Dunkeld Cathedral.]
[Illustration: St. Michael's, Linlithgow.]
The window tracery of the same period, and accompanying the other
features of the Scottish Decorated style already described, partakes
of the like character and forms. The pointed window-head is subdivided
by round-headed lights, and these again are filled in with foliated
details, the result of which is exceedingly pleasing in the best
examples, from the striking contrasts produced by the combination
of pointed and circular forms, as well as from the flowing tracery
frequently resulting from the union of the two, and producing the
pear-shaped light which predominates in Scottish Decorated tracery.
This latter source of expression has led some writers to describe
Scottish tracery as exhibiting an approximation to the French
flamboyant style. Nothing, however, can be more unwarranted. The ogee
form is almost never designedly adopted, and even seems to be often
purposely avoided, as in the Paisley window already cited, and in many
similar examples. The window figured below, from the south aisle of
the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, is a very characteristic example of the
mode of introducing the circular and semicircular forms, to modify the
ogee tracery lines which so greatly predominate in the true French
flamboyant. The multiplication of descriptions of minute details of
tracery could, however, very partially serve to convey any distinct
idea of the peculiar characteristics of Scottish window tracery.
The woodcut of one of the windows on the south side of the nave of
St. Michael's Church, Linlithgow, may suffice as a characteristic
illustration of the most familiar combinations of the style. Another
though greatly inferior example of the same class of Scottish Decorated
tracery from Melrose, is engraved in the Glossary of Architecture.
(_Plate_ CCXLVIII., vol. iii.) One remarkable Scottish specimen of
ecclesiastical architecture must not be omitted to be noticed, as a
singular instance of the local peculiarities developed by the building
materials of particular districts. The west front of the cathedral of
St. Machar at Old Aberdeen, is chiefly curious as shewing the form
which the style assumed when produced with the intractable granite
of the country. Its erection dates about 1380-1400;[649] but instead
of one large west window, divided by light monials and tracery into
numerous lights, the breadth of front is filled in with a series of
tall, narrow, lancet-like, but round-headed windows, with no other
ornament than a cusped trefoil in the head. The towers on either side
are equally simple and unornate, and are chiefly interesting as genuine
specimens of granite Gothic, of which the modern town exhibits some
more ornate, but greatly less satisfactory examples.
Another peculiar use of the semicircular arch is in clere-story
windows, as in the choir of the remarkable little cathedral of Iona,
built by Abbot Finlay, in the reign of Robert the Bruce, _i.e._, prior
to 1329;[650] in the nave of Sweetheart Abbey, erected, according to
Fordun, in 1275; and in the large collegiate church of St. Michael
at Linlithgow, perhaps added after the conflagration of the church
mentioned by Fordun as occurring in 1424. The latter windows are
divided by a neat mullion into two lights, with trifoliated pointed
heads. In this church may be also noted the occurrence of corby-stepped
gables, a favourite feature of Scottish domestic architecture,
occasionally transferred to ecclesiastical edifices. Interesting
examples of the tall, narrow, round-headed window, occur in the private
chapel of the neighbouring palace. Among the decorations of Linlithgow
Church should also be noted the shields attached to the columns, and
wrought into the bosses of the roof. These are of frequent occurrence
in Scottish churches. They abound in the beautiful ruin of Lincluden
Abbey; and are also employed in a peculiar manner as decorations of the
capitals of pillars, where they have frequently an exceedingly bold
effect, as in the eastmost pillars of St. Giles's choir at Edinburgh,
and also in the Rothesay chapel, in the nave, where large shields,
blazoned with royal and noble arms, project from the cardinal faces of
the abaci, and overhang the lower mouldings of the capital.
[Illustration: Bishop Kennedy's Arms, St. Giles's.]
No mention has yet been made of the celebrated collegiate church of
Roslin, founded by William St. Clair, Earl of Caithness, in 1466,
because it has hitherto been usual to regard it as an altogether unique
architectural monstrosity. It will be seen, however, from the preceding
sketch of the most characteristic peculiarities of the Scottish
Decorated style, that many of the most remarkable features of Roslin
Chapel are derived from the prevailing models of the period, though
carried to an exuberant excess. The circular doorway and segmental
porch, the dark vaulted roof, and much of the window tracery, are all
common to the style. Even the singular arrangement of its retro-choir,
with a clustered pillar terminating the vista of the centre aisle, is
nearly a repetition of that of the cathedral of St. Mungo at Glasgow.
Various portions of other edifices will also be found to furnish
examples of arrangement and details corresponding with those of
Roslin, as in the doorway of the south porch and other features of St.
Michael's, Linlithgow, and also in some parts of the beautiful ruined
church of St. Bridget, Douglas. It is altogether a mistake to regard
the singularly interesting church at Roslin, which even the critic
enjoys while he condemns, as an exotic produced by foreign skill. Its
counterparts will be more easily found in Scotland than in any other
part of Europe. It is a curious fact, worthy of note in passing, that
only twenty-two varieties of mason's marks occur throughout the whole
building, indicating perhaps the number of skilled workmen to whose
elaborate art we owe its intricate and endless variety of sculptured
details. Among these, notwithstanding the many descriptions and
drawings which have been made of the chapel, it is little known that
there exist the remarkable series of medieval religious allegories--the
seven acts of mercy, the seven deadly sins, and the dance of death:
the latter including at least twenty different groups and scenes--as
strange a story as was ever told in stone.
From some of the few dates which have been given it will be perceived
that the close of the Scottish Decorated period is as totally
disconnected with that of England as is the development of its peculiar
and most characteristic features. The large collegiate church of
St. Giles at Edinburgh, the cathedral of the bishopric during the
brief period of the existence of the see, exhibited, till its recent
remodelling, a most interesting progressive series of examples of this
style, from its simplest to its latest pure state. The destruction
of so much of this by the misdirected zeal of modern beautifiers
is a source of just regret to the Scottish ecclesiologist, as the
dates of many of the additions were ascertainable, and afforded a
safe guide in tracing out the gradual development of the style. But
enough still remains in the interior to be well worthy of study. The
oldest portion is the north aisle of the choir, with its longitudinal
vault, shewing what was the style of the centre aisle of the nave
previous to 1829, and also of the choir prior to the erection of the
present beautiful clere-story about 1466. The date of the north aisle
may not improbably be yet ascertained precisely; meanwhile, in the
absence of such evidence, its mouldings and other details appear to
justify the assignment of its erection immediately after the burning
of the church and town by Edward III. in 1355. A charter of David II.,
dated A.D. 1359, confirms under the great seal the endowment of the
altar of St. Catherine there with the upper lands of Merchiston. Like
the neighbouring abbey, however, it was repeatedly spoiled, burned,
repaired, and rebuilt. In the archives of the burgh a contract is
still preserved made in the year 1380 between the Provost and certain
masons to vault over a part of the church,--probably the simple but
fine ribbed vault of the nave demolished in 1829. A small aisle of
two bays, built between the north transept and a fine late Romanesque
porch,--only defaced in the latter end of the last century, and finally
demolished in our own day,--appeared from its style to be of nearly
the same date. The woodcut shews the singular sculptures on one of the
bosses in the eastern bay, which appeared from the original painted
glass formerly in its window to have been the chapel of St. Eloi, the
patron saint of the ancient corporation of Hammermen.
[Illustration]
In 1385 the church was again burned by the army of Richard II.;[651]
and in 1387, as appears by the agreement with "Johne Johne of Stone
and Johne Skayer, masounys," still preserved among the city archives,
the five chapels were added on the south side of the nave. One of
these included the beautiful porch and doorway already described,
which is required by the contract to be "in als gude maner als the
durre standand in the west gavyl of ye foresaid kyrk."[652] From
this, therefore, we may presume that the great west door--demolished
as appears from the burgh records, along with the whole west wall in
1561--was also in the favourite Scottish form of the rounded arch.
Various entries in the accounts of the Great Chamberlain of Scotland,
rendered at the Exchequer between the years 1390 and 1413, shew that
the cost of the restoration of the main building had been borne by
Government, while the city was engaged in extending it by the addition
of a second aisle on the south side of the nave; and to this period
there can be no hesitation in assigning the present south aisle of
the nave,--closely corresponding in style to the five chapels built
in fulfilment of the contract of 1387. The next addition was a second
aisle added to the north side of the nave, forming two bays to the west
of the ancient Romanesque porch defaced in 1760. This beautiful little
fragment still remains, with its light and elegant clustered pillar
adorned with large blazoned shields on a rich foliated capital, from
which spring the ribs of its groined roof and the arches which connect
it with the adjoining aisle. The heraldic devices on the shields
supply a clue to the date as well as to the singularly interesting
associations connected with this portion of the church, from which I
have given it the name of the Rothesay Chapel. They consist of the arms
of Robert Duke of Albany, second son of Robert II., and of Archibald
fourth Earl of Douglas, two Scottish nobles found acting in concert
only on one other occasion, when David Duke of Rothesay was starved to
death in the dungeon of Falkland Palace, A.D. 1401. It seems only a
legitimate inference to assume that this chapel may have been founded
by them as an expiatory offering for that dark deed, and a chaplain
appointed to say masses at its altar for their own and their victim's
souls. A Parliament holden at Holyrood, 16th May 1402, enacted the
solemn farce of examining them as to the causes of the prince's death,
and a public remission was drawn up under the King's seal, declaring
their innocence in terms which leave no doubt of their guilt.[653] It
amply accords with the spirit of the age to find the two perpetrators
of this ruthless murder, after having satisfied the formalities of an
earthly tribunal, proceeding to purchase peace with heaven.
[Illustration: Rothesay Chapel, St. Giles.]
The next addition to the Collegiate Church was the Preston aisle,
added to the south side of the choir by William Prestoune of Gortoune
in 1454, agreeably to a charter setting forth the great labour and
charges of his father, "for the gettyn of the arme bane of Saint
Gele--the quhilk bane he freely left to our moyr Kirk of Saint Gele
of Edinburgh." The curious charter has been repeatedly printed.[654]
The chaste and highly decorated groining of this portion of the church
shews the progress of the style, which is still farther illustrated
by the beautiful clere-story and east bays of the choir, added about
the year 1462,[655] at which time the burgh records furnish evidence
of considerable work being in progress. The latest addition to the
metropolitan church, with the exception of the rebuilding of the
beautiful crown tower in 1648, was the addition of a third aisle of
two bays, in 1513, between the south transept and the porch erected on
the south side of the nave in 1387. This formed a chapel dedicated to
the Virgin Mary and Gabriel the Archangel. It was an example of great
value to the Scottish ecclesiologist, as shewing the adherence to the
Decorated style, and its increasingly elaborate yet chaste adornment
with richly sculptured groining, at that late period, one hundred and
thirty-six years after the date assigned by Rickman for its abandonment
in England. Unhappily only a mutilated fragment of this most
interesting addition to the building survived the operations of 1829.
The favourite and beautiful Scottish crown towers must also be noted,
still preserved in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, King's College, Aberdeen,
and the Tolbooth of Glasgow, but once also surmounting the towers of
St. Michael's, Linlithgow, the Abbey Church of Haddington--styled from
its beauty the Lamp of the Lothians--and also, as seems probable
from its appearance, the lofty tower at Dundee. Nothing could more
effectually demonstrate the total freedom of our native architects
from all English influence than this remarkable disagreement in the
chronology of the styles practised in the two kingdoms; nor must it
be forgot that the passion of the previous sovereign, James III., was
for architecture, and that his favourite councillor and companion was
his architect, Cochrane, who fell a victim to the jealousy of the rude
Scottish barons, excited by the marks of royal favour he received. In
no country of Europe was architecture more zealously encouraged than
in Scotland during his reign. Our Scottish poet Drummond somewhat
quaintly sums up his character in terms more censorious than might
have been expected from his own dalliance with the muses: "He was much
given to buildings and trimming up of chapels, halls, and gardens, as
usually are the lovers of idleness; and the rarest frames of churches
and palaces in Scotland were mostly raised about his time: an humour,
which though it be allowable in men which have not much to do, yet
it is harmful in princes."[656] There was still less need to go to
foreign sources for instruction or for artistic models during the
prosperous reign of James IV., the favourer of learning and the arts;
the patron of our greatest national poets, Dunbar, Kennedy, Gawn
Douglas, and others of the Scottish Makars; of Chepman the introducer
of the Scottish printing-press; and indeed the encourager of all the
most liberal pursuits of a chivalrous age. Under his more popular rule,
architecture was encouraged no less royally than in that of his father,
and excited the Scottish nobles to emulation instead of jealousy.
Dunbar's noble poem of the THRISSILL AND THE ROIS commemorates the
reunion of Scotland and England in the affiancing of James IV. to
the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England in 1501;
and it is curious to note how completely coincident with this is the
manifestation of the influence of English models on the contemporary
architecture of Scotland. The Perpendicular or Third-pointed English
style appears in Scotland as a mere exotic, too temporarily tried to be
properly regarded as a national style, and when used at all, employed
contemporaneously with the pure native Decorated work. The earliest,
and if I mistake not the only entire example of a Third-pointed
building in Scotland is the parish church of Ladykirk, on the banks
of the Tweed, built by James IV. in the year 1500. It is a somewhat
stiff and formal structure externally, betraying the introduction of
an unfamiliar style. In the interior, however, the features of the
older native models predominate, and the plain single vaulted arch
is especially remarkable in connexion with other details of a style
which was wont in the hands of the southern architect to expend its
utmost exuberance in pendants, bosses, and fan-tracery on the groined
roof. The magnificent perpendicular work of the eastern portions of
Melrose Abbey, however, exhibit no such formality or plainness, though
probably a nearly contemporary structure. The arms of Andrew Hunter,
abbot of Melrose, prior to 1453, are cut on one of the buttresses of
the Decorated nave. John Fraser, a later abbot, promoted from Melrose
to the see of Ross in 1485, completed the cathedral at Fortrose; the
pure and elaborate Decorated work of which admits of no unfavourable
comparison with Melrose nave, and shews that we must look to a later
date, and most probably to the following century, for the introduction
of perpendicular details in the completion of its choir. In the
valuable little fragment of the roof of the latter, fortunately still
standing, where all else is gone, we once more see the influence of
Scottish taste modifying the characteristics of the new style. Here
too, instead of the fan-tracery and pendants of contemporary English
roofs, is the Scottish single vault, enriched only with additional ribs
and bosses, but preserving the favourite feature of carrying the roof
completely above the side lights, and making it depend for illumination
upon the great east window. The few other examples of Scottish
perpendicular work which exist are scarcely sufficient to admit of any
general deductions. The semi-hexagonal apse, both at Linlithgow and
Stirling, shew it modified at a later date by native peculiarities,
derived from the favourite Decorated style, and in the latter--ascribed
to Cardinal Beaton--also exhibiting a singular introduction of the
round-headed lights of the earlier period, into the tracery of large
perpendicular windows, as well as a peculiar adaptation of the Scottish
vaulted roof. Both, however, must be regarded as late and somewhat
debased examples. Along with these may also be noted the occasional use
of the square-headed window, as in the chantry chapel of the church of
the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, and in the clere-story of St. Mary's at
Leith, both destroyed within the last few years. The singular church
at South Queensferry furnishes a very curious example of some of the
features of perpendicular Gothic applied in a novel fashion to an
ecclesiastical edifice. The north wall appears to have been almost
entirely occupied by the buildings of the monastery, so that it is
destitute of ornament, and only pierced with one small pointed window
of one light at the east end of the choir, near to which a round-headed
door--now blocked up--has communicated with the attached buildings.
There is no indication of a north transept having ever existed. Both
the nave and south transept are entirely lighted with square-headed
windows. That of the transept is divided into three lights, neatly
cusped in the head. The west end of the nave is furnished with a window
in the same style, while the door, which is small and plain, is at the
west end of the south side; two other square-headed windows of two
lights fill up this side of the nave, and a large and heavy rectangular
tower, measuring in greatest breadth, from north to south, across
the length of the church, occupies the intersection of the transept
with the nave and choir. Altogether the church is more curious than
admirable as a late specimen of Scottish medieval art.
While this transient attempt at the naturalization of the English
Tudor style of architecture in Scottish art has thus left some few
enduring traces, it is worthy of note that its most characteristic
feature, the four-centred arch, is nearly, if not quite unknown in
Scotland, otherwise than as a modern exotic which figures in the
favourite perpendicular rifacciamentos of ecclesiastical facades,
wedded too often to the bald church or meeting-house with about as much
congruity as the ill-assorted pair that figure in Hogarth's well-known
wedding scene. Whatever might have resulted under more favourable
circumstances, the new style was destined to no full development in
Scotland. By a charter dated 1st August 1513, Walter Chepman, burgess
of Edinburgh, memorable as the introducer of the printing-press to
Scotland, founded and endowed an altar in the south transept, or "Holy
Blood Aisle" of St. Giles's Church, "in honour of God, the Virgin Mary,
St. John the Evangelist, and all saints." It was a period of national
happiness and prosperity, in which learning and the arts met with the
most ample encouragement. Only one brief month thereafter all this
was at an end. James and the chief of his nobles lay dead on Flodden
Field; Scotland was at the mercy of Henry VIII.; the Crown devolved
to an infant; and faction, ignorance, and bigotry replaced all the
advantages of the wise and beneficent rule of James IV. It is not by
slow degrees, but abruptly, like the unfinished page of a mutilated
chronicle, that the history of Scottish medieval art comes to an end.
Yet the favourite forms and mouldings of the Decorated Period lingered
long after in the domestic architecture of the country. The ornamental
ambries found in the castellated mansions, and even in the wealthier
burghal dwellings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, partake
so much of the character of earlier ecclesiastical features, that they
are frequently described as fonts, stoups, or piscinæ; and even when
standing, as is their usual wont, by the side of the huge old fashioned
fire-place, they have been assumed to afford evidence that the domestic
halls and kitchens of our ancestors were their chapels or baptistries.
Some few of these relics of obsolete tastes and manners still linger
about the old closes of Edinburgh, though now rapidly disappearing
before the ruthless strides of modern innovation. The vignette shews
the form of one of these ornamental ambries from a singular antique
mansion in the Old Town of Edinburgh, which bore the date 1557, and was
believed to have been occupied for a time as the residence of the Queen
Regent, Mary of Guise. Another large chamber in the same building bore
evidence of having been at one time used as a private oratory, and in
it was a curious and still more highly decorated niche, which, however,
exhibited somewhat of the debased excesses pertaining to that closing
period in which the pure Gothic passed into the picturesque but lawless
style of the Elizabethan age. Nevertheless its pierced stone-work
served to illustrate the lingering adherence to the earlier national
style of window-tracery far down into the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: Ambry, Kennedy's Close.]
[Illustration: Ambry, Guise Palace.]
Into the characteristics of the later baronial and domestic
architecture of Scotland it is impossible to enter here, though some of
their peculiarities well merit the increased degree of attention they
are now receiving. The picturesqueness of the turret stairs, with their
lintels decorated with monograms and armorial bearings, and inscribed
with quaint legends and pious mottos; the crow-stepped gables, finials,
and dormer windows, and the singular overhanging carved "timber lands"
of the old streets and closes of Edinburgh, are familiar to all. Some
of their features might still be borrowed with advantage to our modern
street architecture; but for the most part they are only valuable as
the memorials of a period and state of society which has for ever
passed away.
[Illustration: Monogram, Blyth's Close.]
Before quitting the interesting subject of medieval architecture as
developed in Scotland, some notice of the ancient and mysterious
fraternity of Free Masons seems necessary in order to embrace one
important source of that singular progressive unity of purpose
traceable throughout the various stages of medieval ecclesiology.
While Free Masonry was denounced in many countries of Europe, and was
placed for a time under the ban of the law by Henry VI. of England, its
chief protector, it appears to have met with no check or restraint in
Scotland; and having been made the subject of special royal favour by
James I., it has ever since continued to be cherished here with greater
zeal than in almost any other country of Christendom. With its modern
existence, however, apart from the practice of the art, we have here
as little to do as with its extravagant claims to an antiquity nearly
coeval with the art of building. We can trace the association of masons
into guilds or corporations in some parts of Europe at the very dawn of
medieval art. In Lombardy such a free guild of masons was established
in the tenth century; and the craft is believed to have first obtained
footing in England under the Saxon king, Athelstane, about the
same period.[657] In Normandy we only discover the rise of such an
association in the middle of the twelfth century; but the practice of
secret combination obviously emanated from an ecclesiastical source.
The whole system of guilds originated, in part at least, in the
necessity of preserving and extending such speculative and practical
knowledge as may now be safely committed to the press. Such a security
for the safe keeping of traditional knowledge was specially required
in regard to architecture, which depends so entirely on combined
operations, and needs the assistance of the chief branches of science
which were carried to any perfection during that period. The whole
decorative arts of the medieval era were subordinate to architecture,
and it was essentially the handmaid of the Church. Ecclesiastics were
at once its patrons and the chief practisers of its highest branches,
so that the establishment of an order which embraced within its
fellowship all the practical artificers as naturally sprung from the
requirements of the Church as its various monastic fraternities. Hence,
wherever any great ecclesiastical work was to be carried on, a guild
of masons was organized, which no doubt soon embraced practitioners of
every requisite branch of art. Accordingly we still find in Scotland
that the oldest masonic lodges are at Dunfermline, Elgin, Melrose,
Kilwinning, Arbroath, Glasgow, and other sites of remarkable early
ecclesiastical edifices, while generally some parish churches or other
minor ecclesiastical edifices still exist within the surrounding
district, betraying traces of the same workmanship as the parent
edifice. To the oneness of belief by which medieval Christendom was
held together under its common head, and to the practical unity of the
ecclesiastical corporation which constituted the Church, apart from the
laity, may be traced the rise and gradual development of the successive
styles of Gothic architecture. But to the operations of the masonic
lodges within their several districts must be ascribed the local
peculiarities and provincialisms which may be detected grouping around
almost every great abbey or other remarkable ecclesiastical structure.
The geographical and political isolation of Scotland, which gave to
its Church a degree of independence unknown to most other countries
of Papal Christendom, as well as its very partial share in the great
movements of medieval Europe, including the crusades, all tended to
give additional importance to those local influences which in other
countries were more subordinated by external sources of change. To this
source, therefore, we can hardly err in referring much of the peculiar
character ascribable to Scottish Ecclesiology, which it is attempted
here to reduce to some system.
[Illustration]
The revived interest in the study of medieval architecture, added
to the happy substitution of investigation for the older and more
convenient practice of theorizing, have led to considerable attention
being directed to the singular marks or symbols, apparently the
works of the original builders, which are observable on all ancient
churches. That masons' marks are old as the building of the Pyramids
is undoubted. They were discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse on forcing
his way into the chambers of construction of the great pyramid, where
there cannot be a doubt no human being had been before since the
completion of its vast masonry. Similar marks have also been observed
on Roman altars and on structures of an equally early era. The most,
however, that can now be inferred from such is the invariable practice
of each workman marking the stone he had cut, which remains in use
in our own day to distinguish the work of different individuals. But
much more than this appears to be deducible from the medieval masons'
marks. "The fact that in these buildings it is only a certain number
of the stones which bear symbols; that the marks found in different
countries (although the variety is great) are in many cases identical,
and in all have a singular accordance in character, seems to shew that
the men who employed them did so by system, and that the system, if
not the same in England, Germany, and France, was closely analogous
in one country to that of the others."[658] The observation and
collation of these marks have accordingly become objects of interest,
as calculated to aid in the elucidation of the history of the medieval
masonic guilds. It is not, however, sufficient merely to detect the
occasional identity of single mason-marks on different and widely
distant buildings. The following, for example, includes, I believe,
the entire set of mason-marks to be found on Roslin Chapel. Of these
the first, Δ, is only to be found on the altars and piscinæ, and the
two adjoining ones around the doors. A comparison of these with the
mason-marks of Gloucester Cathedral, Malmsbury Abbey Church, Furness
Abbey, &c.,[659] will shew that several of the symbols are common to
all these; but this can lead to no conclusion. Many of the subordinate
lines added to regular figures are still recognised among the craft as
additions given to distinguish the symbols of two masons when the mark
of a member admitted from another lodge was the same as that already
borne by one of their own number. If, however, the entire series, or
the greater number of the marks on one building could be detected on
another apparently of the same age, it would be such a coincidence as
could hardly be ascribed to any other cause than that both were the
work of the same masonic lodge. I should anticipate, for example, that
such would be found to be the case, to some considerable extent, on
the oldest portions of Dunfermline and Lindisfarne Abbeys, and Durham
Cathedral. The united cooperation of a very few zealous labourers may
soon bring such a question to the test, if sufficient care is taken to
discriminate between the original work and the additions or alterations
of subsequent builders. Meanwhile, when so much zeal is displayed in
the collection of Roman potters' stamps, medieval pilgrims' signs,
tradesmen's and tavern tokens of the seventeenth century, and even the
more recent provincial copper coinage, it may suffice to suggest that
the collection of complete sets of mason-marks from ecclesiastical
edifices,--discriminating those belonging to portions of different
dates,--may furnish a clue to the influence of masonic guilds on the
development of successive styles, or the prevalence of remarkable
provincial peculiarities.
We obtain from Father Hay's "Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of
Rosslyn," a curious account of the assembling of the needful band of
artificers for the building of the collegiate church founded by William
Saint Clair, Earl of Caithness:--
"His adge creeping on him," says the genealogist, "to the
end he might not seem altogither unthankfull to God for the
benefices he receaved from him, it came in his minde to build a
house for God's service, of most curious worke, the which that
it might be done with greater glory and splendor, he caused
artificers to be brought from other regions and forraigne
kingdomes, and caused dayly to be abundance of all kinde of
workemen present: as masons, carpenters, smiths, barrowmen, and
quarriers, with others; for it is remembered that for the space
of thirty-four years before, he never wanted great numbers of
such workmen. The foundation of this rare worke he caused to
be laid in the year of our Lord 1446; and to the end the worke
might be the more rare: first he caused the draughts to be
drawn upon Eastland boords, and made the carpenters to carve
them according to the draughts thereon, and then gave them
for patterns to the massons, that they might thereby cut the
like in stone.... He rewarded the massones according to their
degree."--Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslyn, p. 26.
From this curious notice it would seem that the Earl was himself the
chief designer and architect to whose ingenuity and inventive skill
we owe the remarkable and unique example of masonic art which still
remains at Roslin. Nor is this at all improbable. He was devoted to
building, in an age in which it became one of the most favourite
pastimes, and indeed engrossing pursuits of the Scottish kings. The
Saint Clairs continued, according to some authorities, from this early
date to be recognised as the chiefs of the whole body of Scottish Free
Masons, till in 1736 William St. Clair, Esq. of Rosslyn, resigned into
the hands of the Scottish lodges the hereditary office of Grand Master,
which, however, he continued to hold till his death. The evidence
of the creation of this office in the person of the founder of the
collegiate church of Roslin is defective, and the entire narrative
of Father Hay must be received with caution, though professedly
derived from original manuscripts. Of the existence, however, of the
hereditary office of Grand Master in the younger branch of the St.
Clairs, which terminated on the death of William St. Clair of Rosslyn
in 1778, there can be no question; and of the early connexion of the
St. Clairs with the masonic fraternity, there seems equally little
reason to doubt. On this account, therefore, the set of mason-marks
given above from the remarkable memorial of their masonic skill which
still exists at Roslin, possesses peculiar interest. While, however,
we find in Father Hay's curious notice that artificers were brought
from foreign kingdoms, that is not to be misunderstood as indicating
that either the design or entire execution of this remarkable edifice
is to be ascribed to a foreign guild. The same was done by Wykeham, in
order to secure the perfect execution of his own magnificent designs,
and in one or two of the mason-marks the additions may be traced
which probably indicate the admission of a stranger using, _with a
difference_, the symbol already belonging to some brother of the local
guild. The very small number of varieties, however, is remarkable,
though it of course only embraces one class of the numerous artificers
employed. The conclusions indicated by the traditions of the craft,
and the direct evidence which their works supply, seem equally opposed
to the ideas too hastily adopted by some enthusiastic elucidators of
medieval free masonry, that travelling lodges continued to perambulate
Europe, devoting their artistic skill to supply the wants of the
universal church, so that we might look for precisely the same details
being repeated in contemporary works of the Norman architects of
Sicily and of the Orkney Islands, or of Drontheim. We do indeed find
in the eighth century the Pictish king sending for builders to rear
a fitting edifice at Abernethy after the Roman manner, and, to the
last, skilled artificers were doubtless sought far and near--with the
ready facilities for foreign correspondence which the Church then
exclusively possessed--whenever any work of unusual importance was to
be executed; but long before the sons of St. Margaret had commenced
their magnificent foundations, the corresponding demands for the aid
of the free mason in every country of Christendom had removed all
necessity for the maintenance of peripatetic missionary guilds. The
order, however, flourished under this abundant patronage; nor did the
localization of its guilds interrupt that mutual recognition of members
of the privileged fraternity by means of which Gothic architecture
continued for upwards of four hundred years to be a living art,
expanding and developing itself under ever varying but progressive
forms of fitness and beauty.
We have witnessed in our own day an attempt to resuscitate medieval
architecture by a retrogression altogether opposed to the spirit of the
old builders, in whose hands it grew like a thing of life that returns
not upon the work of earlier years. Its results have been of value in
securing the restoration of many crumbling memorials of the past; and
in Scotland our best architects have yet much to learn in the same
reverent spirit, ere we can hope to see our national historic monuments
of medieval art preserved, instead of being defaced and obliterated
by the superinduction of spurious French or Anglo-Gothic details--a
restoration that "means the most total destruction which a building
can suffer; a destruction accompanied with false description of the
thing destroyed."[660] But a national style of architecture was never
reproduced by such means. It must grow up like the oak, unforced and in
its native soil; and, when thus originating, its living forms become
the embodiment of the polity, social history, and religious faith
of the nation. Yet architecture is on this very account essentially
a practical art, and even in the most gorgeous medieval cathedral
a sense of fitness, and ideas of direct utility, may be traced as
controlling powers influencing the whole design. From this overruling
utilitarian spirit sprang the element of picturesqueness, which we
look for in vain in modern Gothic. The old cathedral or abbey has
here a chapter-house, there a transept or cloister, a chantry chapel,
vestry, or porch, introduced simply because it was required, though
harmonized with all the skill of a perfect artist into an integral
part of the architectural design. In the modern Gothic everything is
balanced, proportioned, and reduced to strict rule and formality, but
it is lifeless as the men of the old centuries to which it properly
belongs. As to modern Protestant cathedrals, with "long-drawn aisles,"
constructed for no possible end connected with the worship for which
they profess to be designed, they are manifest absurdities, which
proclaim the lifelessness of the art in which they have originated.
The national peculiarities traceable in medieval architecture are
among the most remarkable evidences that it was a living art. Like
a transplanted flower, it was modified everywhere by the soil and
climate: the classic elements which are seen pervading that of Italy;
the substantial yet ornate but impure grandeur of that of Spain; the
compact, consistent, harmonious completeness of that of Germany; the
rich but lawless exuberance of the French Flamboyant; the stately
progression of the beautiful English Decorated into the profusely
overlaid, yet still strictly defined Perpendicular; and the massive but
comparatively plain and unchanging Scottish Decorated--all manifest
peculiarities which pertain to the several nations with which they
originated. "The essential modifications of architecture in each age
and country must depend in part on the natural materials, localities,
and in part on the artificial forms, social, civil, and religious, on
the acquired habits and manners of the peculiar nation for which it
labours, and the changes in these must produce corresponding variations
in architecture."[661] The revivalist who seeks to reproduce the
creations of the past in defiance of these manifest laws by which
they existed in harmony and just adaptation to their geographical or
social adjuncts, will find his self-imposed task not much less hopeless
than to reanimate the fossil Mastodon or Dinotherium. But meanwhile
the geologist, without seeking to reanimate these extinct vertebrata,
learns much regarding the past from the investigation of their colossal
remains, and so too may the archæologist see into the living spirit of
the medieval era by the earnest study of its creations, though he hopes
better things of his own age than that it should expect perfection in
those immature centuries, or seek for life in the beautiful sepulchres
wherein they lie entombed.
The consecutive view given above of the progressive development of the
various styles of ecclesiastical architecture, accompanied as it is
with some few elements for the construction of a chronological series
of examples, is sufficient, at least, to bear out the views advanced in
reference to the independent character and individuality of Scottish
Ecclesiology. It would be easy to multiply references to examples of
the various peculiar features referred to, but what is far more wanted
is the ascertainment of a larger number of well authenticated dates
of existing work. Even of the cathedrals and great abbeys scarcely
anything is known, though now that so many of the Scottish chartularies
are published, and as a valuable adjunct to them, their seals are being
systematically described, we may hope to discover, by a comparison with
the armorial sculpture of our ecclesiastical structures, a sufficient
number of dated examples by which to test the whole. Meanwhile, the
following table is offered with great diffidence, and merely as some
probable approximation to the true chronological arrangement of the
Scottish styles, placing alongside of it the English classification of
Rickman, as adopted with some later modifications, in the Fifth Edition
of the Glossary of Architecture, to shew the extent of coincidence
or disagreement. I shall be glad to find it speedily superseded by a
system much more complete; but anything which supplies the elements of
a recognised nomenclature and orderly classification will be of some
use as a help towards cooperation among Scottish ecclesiologists. The
styles distinguished here as _First-pointed_ and _Geometric_ are to
some extent synchronous, depending perhaps on the native or foreign
education of the ecclesiastics by whom the works were prosecuted;--a
remarkable circumstance, and probably without a parallel in the
history of medieval art. We find William de Bondington of Glasgow, for
example, in the last year of his episcopate, adopting the ritual and
customs of Sarum as the constitution of his cathedral.[662] It need not
therefore excite our surprise to find the portion of the nave executed
under his superintendence bearing an equally close affinity to the
Sarum model, then in progress. Scottish First-pointed differs very
little from the Early English, whereas the Scottish Geometric has no
parallel elsewhere, and in Scotland entirely superseded the other at
a very early date. It is, therefore, manifestly indispensable to the
prosecution of Scottish Ecclesiology, that what is peculiar to it shall
receive a nomenclature of its own. It can only lead to uncertainty and
confusion to continue to apply the term First-pointed[663] to such
work as the east end of St. Magnus's Cathedral, where not only the pier
and triforium arches are semicircular, but even the arch of the great
east window is filled in with a rose of twelve leaves, and being left
unpierced above, it is practically a round-headed light. A much more
elaborate treatment of the subject would be necessary than is possible
within the limits of a single chapter, in order to shew the peculiar
mouldings and other characteristic details. In the Scottish Decorated,
for example, cylindrical and octagonal piers are by no means uncommon;
both pier arches and windows are very frequently composed simply of
two or three plain chamfer orders. Square-edged hood-mouldings and
string-courses are also common; and in the more ornamental piers the
double-roll, and the roll and fillet mouldings almost invariably
predominate. In the windows also--among the most expressive features
of every style of Gothic architecture--one harmonious feeling is
observable throughout the endless varieties of tracery, giving to
them a national aspect not less marked than the physiognomy of their
builders. The most prevailing characteristics are well represented in
the example figured above, from one of the beautiful series of St.
Michael's, Linlithgow. Similar windows, though varying in detail, occur
at St. Monance, Fife, St. Mary's, Leith, at Mid-Calder and Duddingston,
in the Abbey Church, Haddington, in the collegiate churches of Seton,
Crichton, and Roslin, in Melrose Abbey, and the ancient church tower
of Dundee. They also existed in both the collegiate churches of St.
Giles and the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh; and are even found amid the
traces of declining art in the beautiful chapels of King's College,
Aberdeen, and Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh--the latter of which has
been assigned, without a shadow of evidence, as the work of Inigo
Jones, the architect having in reality been William Wallace, styled in
the treasurer's accounts and other authentic documents relating to its
erection, by the old name of Master Mason. Such are some of the genuine
characteristics of our native styles; but at Dunfermline, Dunblane,
Corstorphine, or wherever the hand of the modern restorer has been, we
find them displaced by perpendicular tracery, English mouldings and
details, and the like evidences of irreverent ignorance.
MEDIEVAL ECCLESIOLOGY
|-------------------+---------+--------------+-----------------------|
| SCOTTISH ECCLESIOLOGY. |
|-------------------+---------+--------------+-----------------------|
|REIGN. | A.D. | STYLE. |EXAMPLES. |
|-------------------+---------+--------------+-----------------------|
|Kings of the | | | |
|Northern and | 400-843 |Scoto-Italian.|St. Magnus, Egilshay. |
|Southern Picts, | | | |
| | | | |
|Kenneth MacAlpin |843-1057 | Scottic. |Round Tower, |
|to Malcolm Canmore,| | |Abernethy. Round |
| | | |Tower, Brechin. |
| | | | |
|Donald Bane, | 1093 | Romanesque, |Dunfermline |
| | | 1070-1170, |Abbey--Nave. |
|Edgar, | 1097 | prevailed |Inchcolm Abbey--part |
| | | about |of the Dormitories |
|Alexander I. | 1106 | 100 years. |St. Rule's Church. |
|David I. | 1124 | |Jedburgh Abbey. |
|Malcolm IV. | 1153 | |Kelso Abbey. |
|William the Lion, |1165-1170| |Dalmeny Church. |
| | | |Leuchars Church. |
| | | | |
|William, |1170-1214|First-pointed,|Glasgow |
| | | 1170-1242, |Cathedral--Crypt and |
| | | prevailed |Choir. |
|Alexander II. | 1214 | about 70 |Dunblane |
| | | years. |Cathedral--Nave. |
|Alexander III. | 1249 | |Kilwinning Abbey. St. |
| | | |Blane's, Bute--the |
| | | |Chancel. |
| | | | |
|Margaret, Maid of | 1285 | Scottish |Aberbrothoc Abbey. |
| Norway, | | Geometric, | |
|John Baliol, |1292-1296| 1178-1285, |Paisley Abbey--Nave. |
|Interregnum, |1296-1306| prevailed |Kirkwall |
| | | about 100 |Cathedral--east end of |
| | | years. |Choir. |
| | | |Sweetheart Abbey, |
| | | |Kirkcudbright. |
| | | | |
|Robert I. | 1306 | Scottish |Dunkeld |
| | | Decorated, |Cathedral--Nave Aisles.|
|David II. | 1329 | 1300-1500, |Melrose Abbey--Nave. |
|Robert II. | 1370 | prevailed |Fortrose Cathedral. |
|Robert III. | 1390 | about |St. Monance Church, |
| | | 200 years. |Fife. |
|Regency of Albany, | 1407 | |Bothwell Church. |
|James I. | 1424 | |Lincluden College. |
|James II. | 1436 | |St. Michael's, |
| | | |Linlithgow. |
|James III. | 1460 | |Trinity College, |
| | | |Edinburgh. |
|James IV. |1488-1500| | |
| | | | |
|James IV. |1500-1513|Perpendicular,|Melrose Abbey--Chancel.|
|James V. | 1513 | 1500-1513. |Ladykirk. |
|-------------------+---------+--------------+-----------------------|
|------------+---------+---------------|
| ENGLISH. |
|------------+---------+---------------|
|REIGN. | A.D. | STYLE. |
| | | |
|Heptarchy. | 457-800 | |
| | | |
|Egbert to |800-1066 | Saxon. |
|Harold II. | | |
| | | |
|William I. | 1066 | Norman, |
|William II. | 1087 | or English |
|Henry I. | 1100 | Romanesque, |
|Stephen. | 1135 |prevailed about|
|Henry II. |1154-1189| 124 years. |
| | | |
|Richard I. | 1189 |Early English, |
|John. | 1199 |prevailed about|
|Henry III. |1216-1272| 100 years. |
| | | |
|Edward I. | 1272 | Decorated |
|Edward II. | 1307 | English, |
|Edward III. |1327-1377|prevailed about|
| | | 100 years. |
| | | |
|Richard II. | 1377 | Perpendicular |
|Henry IV. | 1399 | English, |
|Henry V. | 1413 |prevailed about|
|Henry VI. | 1422 | 169 years. |
|Edward IV. | 1461 | |
|Edward V. | 1483 | |
|Richard III.| 1483 | |
|Henry VII. | 1485 | |
|Henry VIII. |1509-1546| |
|------------+---------+---------------|
FOOTNOTES:
[627] Sim. Dunelm. p. 201. Hailes' Annals.
[628] Liber Cart. Sanct. Andree, p. 43.
[629] Raine's North Durham, App. p. 38.
[630] Registrum Episcopatis Aberdonensis, Pref. xii.-xvi. Keith's
Bishops, Append.
[631] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. xvii. p. 443.
[632] Not having had an opportunity of personally inspecting this
interesting but little heeded Scottish relic, I have had to depend
on the kindness of a local correspondent for the description of its
present state. It appears to be early and exceedingly plain Romanesque
work, with some later and many modern additions. Both in style and
singularity of proportions it bears very considerable resemblance to
the simple little Romanesque chapel of Kilcolmkill, in the parish of
Southend, Argyleshire.
[633] Regist. de Dunferm. Pref. xxv.
[634] Wyntownis Cronykil, b. vii. chap. x.
[635] Regist. de Dunferm., p. 184.
[636] The reference is no doubt also to so large a portion of the
original structure having been left entire, including the present
nave: "Licet ecclesia vera post consecracionem ipsius per nobilioris
structuræ fabricam fuit augmentata quia tamen proponitis quod antiqui
parietes ejus pro majori parte in pristino statu perdurent. Vobis
auctoritate præsentium indulgemus ut eisdem parietibus in pristino
statu perdurantibus nonnullis vos compellere valeat ad eandem Ecclesiam
propter hoc denuo consecrandam," &c.
[637] Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, vol. i. p. 128.
[638] Barbour's Bruce, book vii. l. 1037; Dr. Jamieson's Edition, vol.
i. p. 211.
[639] Memorials of Edinburgh, vol. i. p. 127. Notices of both chapels
repeatedly occur in the Chamberlain's Rolls; but with an obvious
confusion of the two--explicable perhaps on the supposition that the
chaplain was bound to serve both altars. A curious notice of a meeting
held in the chapel of the Castle of Edinburgh in 1447 occurs in the
_Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis_, vol. i. p. 367, No. 351.
[640] Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.
[641] The dimensions of the choir of St. Rule's Church, as it now
stands with the chancel demolished, are, extreme length externally
thirty-one feet eight inches, breadth twenty-five feet, breadth of
chancel arch within the inner pillars nine feet, present height of the
chancel arch, the base of the pillars being covered, twenty-one feet
four and three-quarter inches, present height of external wall thirty
feet. The windows are small, round-headed, and quite plain, with a deep
internal splay, and an external one of little more than one-fourth of
the whole thickness of the wall. They measure in the daylight, or place
for inserting the glass frame, six feet five inches high, and one foot
eight inches broad.
[642] The marks of three successive roofs are traceable on the east
wall of the tower.
[643] Wyntownis Cronykil, book vii. chap. 7.
[644] It might perhaps better coincide with the newer English
nomenclature to characterize the Romanesque as _First-round_, the
succeeding style as First-pointed; and then the Scottish style
resulting from the two, as _Second-round_; and the peculiarly national
style into which it was finally developed as _Second-pointed_. The
great objection is the necessity of speaking in either case of
_Round-pointed_, or of _Pointed-round_ arches.
[645] However the proposed nomenclature of English ecclesiologists may
answer their native style, it is impossible to adapt it to Scotland.
First-pointed is undoubtedly preferable to Early English, when we
can shew still earlier Scottish. Middle-pointed, however, is a most
inconvenient and unsuitable term to our Scottish Decorated, where
many of its most characteristic forms are circular; and Third-pointed
becomes a misnomer, where, as in the nave and transept of South
Queensferry the only pointed arch is a small plain benatura on the east
side of the door, which is placed on the south side of the nave. The
windows are square-headed, and the door round-headed. The roof has been
open timber work.
[646] Regist. Monast. de Passelet. Preface.
[647] Vitæ Episcoporum Dunkel., p. 16.
[648] Historie of the House of Seytoun.
[649] The choir of the cathedral, now utterly demolished, appears to
have been the work of Bishop Alexander de Kyninmund, 1356-1380. An
interesting indenture relating to its progress is printed in _Regist.
Episcop. Aberdon_. A.D. 1366, vol. ii. p. 59. The same collection
contains two Papal bulls, granting indulgences to contributors towards
the building of the nave, A.D. 1379, 1380. The succeeding bishop Henry
de Lichtoun completed the nave, and built the west towers.
[650] Vitæ Episcoporum Dunkel. p. 13.
[651] Wyntown, b. ix. c. vii.
[652] Maitland's Hist. of Edin. p. 270.
[653] Tytler, vol. ii. p. 427. Hume of Godscroft's House of Douglas, p.
118.
[654] Archæol. Scot. vol. i. p. 375.
[655] The armorial shields on the pillars include the Royal arms, those
of France, of the Queen Dowager Mary of Gueldres, who died in 1462,
of the celebrated Bishop Kennedy, of Alexander Napier of Merchiston,
comptroller of the household, and vice-admiral of Scotland,--Temp.
James I. and II., (erroneously ascribed by me in the Memorials of
Edinburgh, vol. ii. p. 162, to the Countess of Lennox,) of Thomas de
Cranston, _Scutifer Regis_ to James II., &c.
[656] Drummond of Hawthornden's History of the Jameses, p. 61.
[657] Antiq. of Free Masonry in England. J. O. Halliwell,
Esq.--Archæol. vol. xxviii. p. 444.
[658] "On certain marks discoverable on the stones of various buildings
erected in the Middle Ages." By G. Godwin, Esq.--Archæol. vol. xxx. p.
117, accompanied with plates of masons' marks.
[659] Archæol. vol. xxx. Plates VI. VII. IX. X.
[660] Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 179.
[661] Hope's Historical Essay on Architecture, p. 458.
[662] Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, vol. i. p. 166.
[663] It is so described in the "Ecclesiological Notes on the Isle of
Man," &c., an interesting and intelligent note-book, (p. 96); but no
reader would ever guess from the description, that excepting in some
of the minor details, it bears no resemblance to any known specimen of
English First-pointed work.