It would have gone ill with this “solid, weel-jointed mason-wark” when the leaven of the Reformation was working, had not the Glaswegians, prouder of the building than of the religion for which it stood, presented a bold front against the fury of the surrounding townships and their own suburbs, eager to destroy it altogether. Again, in the words of Andrew Fairservice, “It wasna for love o’ paperie—na, na! nane could ever say that o’ the trades o’ Glasgow. Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a’ the idolatrous statues o’ sants (sorrow be on them) out o’ their neuks. And sae the bits o’ stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar Burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the fleas are kaimed off her, and a’body was alike pleased.”
CROMWELL
The Cathedral was then made to fulfil the needs of no fewer than three congregations: one meeting in the choir, another in the nave, and a third in the Laigh Kirk, or Low Church (i.e. the crypt). The ancient pile has not been without its dramatic moments, as when, in October 1650, Cromwell himself sat here, unmoved, with Mr. Secretary Thurlow, while a furious preacher, Dr. Zachary Boyd, emulating a like exploit of John Knox before Queen Mary, many years before, for two hours preached at him, as “Sectary and Blasphemer.”
“Shall I have him out by the ears and pistol him?” whispered Thurlow, his anger gaining the better of his lawyer instincts.
“No,” replied the man of force and arms, unwontedly, but roughly, diplomatic. “He’s a fool and you’re another: I’ll pay him out in his own coin.”
He invited Boyd to dinner, and after the meal offered up an exhausting prayer of three hours’ length. After this “like cures like” homœopathic treatment, Dr. Boyd crept home, dazed, to bed and nightmare: but it would surely have been more prettily exasperating had Cromwell prayed his three hours before dinner.
The Cathedral Square abuts upon one of the most squalid neighbourhoods in Glasgow, but it is here that the oldest domestic building in the city stands. The stranger’s attention is first attracted to it by the legend, “Provand’s Lordship,” painted across the weathered stone frontage over the hairdresser’s shop that occupies part of the ground floor. Then, glancing at the high-pitched roof and the corbie-stepped gables, characteristic of old Scottish architecture, he will perceive that he is indeed contemplating a very reverend building. It was, in fact, originally erected during the episcopacy of Bishop Muirhead, 1455-73, as a manse for certain of the clergy of the Cathedral, and this portion of the building still exhibits a shield of the Bishop’s arms: three acorns, on a bend. In 1570, shortly after the Reformation had dispossessed the clergy of their properties, William Baillie, who had been granted the Provand’s Lordship lands and houses by Queen Mary in 1565, added the wing that now fronts upon the street. Here, in 1565, before that addition was made, the Queen stayed on her visit to Glasgow. The visitor, exploring the ancient and interesting, but miserably uncomfortable, rooms, will, more than ever, suspect that the goodness of the “good old days” is a myth.
PROVAND’S LORDSHIP
But why “Provand’s Lordship”? You might stand all day in the crowded Cathedral Square, and canvass all who passed; and yet no one would be able to tell you, unless indeed you happened upon one of the leading spirits of the “Provand’s Lordship Literary Club,” Dr. Robert B. Lothian, Messrs. R. H. Arnott, Thos. Lugton, and Jas. Murphy, who have just purchased the property.