St. Giles?s Church.
was a place frequently assigned in bills for the
payment of money.
The transept, called at times the Assembly aisle,
was the scene of Jenny Geddes? famous onslaught
with her faZdstuZe, on the reader of the liturgy in
1637. The erection of Edinburgh into an episcopal
see in 1633, under Bishop William Forbes
Gwho died the same year), and the appointment of
In 1596 St. Giles?s was the scene of a tumultuous
dispute between James VI. and the leaders of the
Church party. The king was sitting in that part
of it which the Reformers named the Tolbooth
Kirk, together with the Octavians, as they were
styled, a body of eight statesmen into whose hands
he had committed all his financial affairs and patronage.
The disturbance from which the king felt
THE LANTERN AND TOWER OF ST. GILES?S CHURCH.
St. Giles to be the cathedral of the diocese, led-in
its temporary restoration internally-to something
like what it had been of old; but ere the orders of
Charles I. for the demolition of its hideous galleries
and subdivisions could be carried out, all
Scotland was in arms, and the entire system of
Church polity for which thesechanges were designed,
had come to a violent and a terrible end. This
transept was peculiarly rich in lettered gravestones,
all of which were swept away by the ruthless improvers
of 1829, and some of those were used as
pavement round the Fountain Well.
himself to be in peril, arose from an address by Balcanqual,
a popular preacher, who called on the
Protestant barons and his other chance auditors to
meet the ministers in ?? the little kirk,? where they,
amidst great uproar, came to a resolution to urge
upon James the necessity for changing his policy and
dismissing his present councillors. The progress
of the deputation towards the place where the
king was to be found brought with it the noisy
mob who had created the tumult, and when the
bold expressions of the deputation were seconded
by the rush of a rude crowd-armed, of course
