The precincts of St Giles’s being now secularised, the church itself
was, in 1628, degraded by numerous wooden booths being stuck up around
it. Yet, to show that some reverence was still paid to the sanctity
of the place, the Town-council decreed that no tradesmen should be
admitted to these shops except bookbinders, mortmakers (watchmakers),
jewellers, and goldsmiths. _Bookbinders_ must here be meant to signify
booksellers, the latter term not being then known in Scotland. Of
mortmakers there could not be many, for watches were imported from
Germany till about the conclusion of the seventeenth century. The
goldsmiths were a much more numerous tribe than either of their
companions; for at that time there prevailed in Scotland, amongst the
aristocracy, a sort of rude magnificence and taste for show extremely
favourable to these tradesmen.
[Illustration: Old St Giles’s.]
In 1632, the present great hall of the Parliament House was founded
upon the site of the houses formerly occupied by the ministers of St
Giles’s. It was finished in 1639, at an expense of £11,630 sterling,
and devoted to the use of parliament.
It does not appear to have been till after the Restoration that the
Parliament Close was formed, by the erection of a line of private
buildings, forming a square with the church. These houses, standing
on a declivity, were higher on one side than the other; one is said
to have been fifteen stories altogether in height. All, however,
were burned down in a great fire which happened in 1700, after which
buildings of twelve stories in height were substituted.[80]
Among the noble inhabitants of the Parliament Close at an early period,
the noble family of Wemyss were not the least considerable. At the time
of Porteous’s affair, when Francis, the fifth earl, was a boy, his
sisters persuaded him to act the part of Captain Porteous in a sort of
drama which they got up in imitation of that strange scene. The foolish
romps actually went the length of tucking up their brother, the heir of
the family, by the neck, over a door; and their sports had well-nigh
ended in a real tragedy, for the helpless representative of Porteous
was black in the face before they saw the necessity of cutting him
down.[81]
The small booths around St Giles’s continued, till 1817, to deform the
outward appearance of the church. Long before their destruction, the
booksellers at least had found the space of six or seven feet too small
for the accommodation of their fast-increasing wares, and removed to
larger shops in the elegant tenements of the square. One of the largest
of the booths, adjacent to the south side of the New or High Church,
and having a second story, was occupied, during a great part of the
last century, by Messrs Kerr and Dempster, goldsmiths. The first of
these gentlemen had been member of parliament for the city, and was the
last citizen who ever held that office [in the Scottish parliament].
Such was the humility of people’s wishes in those days respecting their
houses, that this respectable person actually lived, and had a great
number of children, in the small space of the flat over the shop and
the cellar under it, which was lighted by a grating in the pavement of
the square. The subterraneous part of his house was chiefly devoted
to the purposes of a nursery, and proved so insalubrious that all his
children died successively at a particular age, with the exception of
his son Robert, who, being born much more weakly than the rest, had the
good luck to be sent to the country to be nursed, and afterwards grew
up to be the author of a work entitled _The Life of Robert Bruce_, and
the editor of a large collection of voyages and travels.