ANCIENT CHURCHYARD—BOOTHS ATTACHED TO THE HIGH
CHURCH—GOLDSMITHS—GEORGE HERIOT—THE DEID-CHACK.
Previous to the seventeenth century, the ground now occupied by the
Parliament House, and the buildings adjacent to the south and west,
was the churchyard of St Giles’s, from the south side of which edifice
it extended down a steep declivity to the Cowgate. This might formerly
be considered the metropolitan cemetery of Scotland; as, together with
the internal space of the church, it contained the ashes of many noble
and remarkable personages, John Knox amongst the number. After the
Reformation, when Queen Mary conferred the gardens of the Greyfriars
upon the town, the churchyard of St Giles’s ceased to be much used as
a burying-ground; and that extensive and more appropriate place of
sepulture succeeded to this in being made _the Westminster Abbey of
Scotland_.
The west side of the cemetery of St Giles’s was bounded by the house
of the provost of the church, who, in 1469, granted part of the same
to the citizens for the augmentation of the burying-ground. From the
charter accompanying the grant, it appears that the provost’s house
then also contained the public school of Edinburgh.
In the lower part of the churchyard[78] there was a small place of
worship denominated the _Chapel of Holyrood_. Walter Chapman, the first
printer in Edinburgh, in 1528 endowed an altar in this chapel with his
tenement in the Cowgate; and, by the tenor of the charter, I am enabled
to point out very nearly the residence of this interesting person, who,
besides being a printer, was a respectable merchant in Edinburgh, and,
it would appear, a very pious man. The tenement is thus described: ‘All
and haill this tenement of land, back and foir, with houses, biggings,
yards, and well[79] thereof, lying in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, on the
south side thereof, near the said chapel, betwixt the lands of James
Lamb on the east, and the lands of John Aber on the west, the arable
lands called Wairam’s Croft on the south, and the said street on the
north part.’