St. Michael's consists of a choir, including two aisles and a three-sided apse at the east end; a nave, including two aisles; two chapels inserted, north and south, in the place usually occupied by the transept; a square tower at the west end, and a south porch giving access to the nave. The nave is the oldest part of the building, and appears to have been erected before the middle of the fifteenth century. The choir is of somewhat later date.[285] A broad stone bench or seat is carried round the nave, and the bases of the triple wall shafts of the vaulting rest upon it. Those of the choir, different in design, rest on the floor. In the nave there are triforium openings in each bay, and clerestory windows above them. The windows throughout the church are of large size, and filled with varied geometric tracery. The windows of the apse are large, and the tracery of two of the windows is perpendicular in character. The transepts (or north and south chapels) and the south porch have crow-stepped gables both on their outer walls and also over the inner or aisle wall which separates them from the church. Each of these contains an apartment over the vault, that over the south porch being probably a place for preserving documents. The buttresses of the nave have a simpler character than those of the apse and north transept. The canopies of the niches are ornamented somewhat similarly to those of Rosslyn. The buttress of the south-west angle of the nave, crowned with the sculptured figure of St. Michael, is a striking feature on approaching the church. The western tower was originally terminated with a crown of open stone-work, similar to that of St. Giles, Edinburgh. About 1821 it was found to be in a dangerous condition, and had to be taken down. The tower is of late design and contains a doorway, continental in style, which may possibly be the work of Thomas French, the King's master-mason, and above which there is a large perpendicular window. The upper part of the tower would contrast well with the crown on the top. The tower opens into the nave with a wide and lofty arch, carried up to the clerestory level, and the groined vault with large window below produces a good effect. In each side wall of the tower is a richly canopied recess, intended for monuments or sculpture. A portion of what seems to have been a carved altar-piece is preserved in the church and represents scenes in our Lord's Passion.[286] The steeple contains three bells with inscriptions.
The south transept contained an altar dedicated to St. Katherine, and was the place where James IV. is reported to have seen the apparition that warned him against the fatal expedition to England—an incident chronicled by Pitscottie, and forming the basis of Sir David Lyndsay's tale in Marmion. The church contained twenty-four altarages, which were removed in 1559 by the Lords of the Congregation in their march from Perth to Edinburgh; and probably still further damage was done by Cromwell's dragoons, who used it as a stable. The church belonged to St. Andrew's priory, and was long served by perpetual vicars. It has been recently restored, and made worthy of its great past.
The west doorway is pronounced to be a pleasing specimen of the half continental manner in which that feature was usually treated in Scotland.[287]
Haddington Parish Church (East Lothian) is one of the ecclesiastical structures belonging to the ancient royal burgh of Haddington. Besides it there were the monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Cistercian nunnery, and the chapels of St. Martin, St. Ann, St. Katherine, St. John, and St. Ninian. Of these establishments the only two that now survive are St. Martin's (a very ancient chapel) and the parish church, which deserves the name now applied to it (although originally it seems to have been given to the vanished church of the Franciscan monastery) on account both of its beauty and the distance at which its lights were visible—Lucerna Laudoniæ, or Lamp of Lothian. The ancient church of Haddington was founded by David I., dedicated to the Virgin, and by him granted in 1134 to the priory of St. Andrew. The present structure is of later date, and from the style of the architecture, was probably rebuilt in the first half of the fifteenth century.[288] The church is cruciform, having choir and nave, both with side aisles, and north and south transepts without aisles. Over the crossing is the central tower. The choir and transepts are ruinous, and the restored nave is used as the parish church. The tower was originally crowned with a canopy or spire of open work similar to that of St. Giles, Edinburgh, and King's College, Aberdeen; and large picturesque gargoyles still break the line of the cornice on the top. Although the edifice has been so sadly damaged, it does not appear to have suffered at the Reformation. The town was under siege in 1548, when it was held by the English after the battle of Pinkie, and was attacked and taken by the Scots and their French allies. It is not unlikely that the church suffered at that time.
Parish Churches of Third or Late Pointed Period
Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, Perth.—The ancient city of Perth possessed many endowed religious establishments, but the only one that survives is the church of St. John the Baptist, from which the city derived its title of "St. John's Town." This church, divided by walls so as to form three separate places of worship, is still the parish church of the town. The first church of Perth was probably connected with the neighbouring Pictish monastery at Abernethy, and was erected by the monks there during the Celtic period. The register of Dunfermline contains the earliest historical mention of the church under the years 1124-1127, when it was granted by David I., with its property and tithes, to that abbey. The church was consecrated by David de Bernham, Bishop of St. Andrews, in 1242, and it is stated that the heart of Alexander III. was buried in the church of St. John.[289] The abbots of Dunfermline allowed the building to become ruinous, and tried to place upon the citizens of Perth the burden of upholding the fabric. The interest of the citizens seems to have been diverted from the church, and directed, probably at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to the building of the Dominican monastery, and about the middle of the century to the erection of the Carmelite or Whitefriars' monastery. It is probable that in connection with repairs necessary for the church, King Robert the Bruce in 1328 granted that stones might be taken from quarries belonging to the Abbey of Scone, "for the edification of the Church of Perth." Of the twelfth century church of St. John nothing now remains to indicate its architecture, although it may have been both magnificent and extensive. After the death of Robert the Bruce in 1329 the restoration begun by him probably ceased, and during the unrest of the fourteenth century the church probably suffered further damage. In 1335 King Edward III. was in Perth, and slew his brother, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, before the high altar of the Church of St. John for his excesses and ravages in the western districts of Scotland. In 1393-1394, after a parliament at Scone, Walter Trail, Bishop of St. Andrews, conducted divine service in St. John's Church. From 1401 till 1553-1556 there is a continuous record of the foundation of altars in the church, and of endowment of already existing ones. The chapel in which St. James' altar was situated stood on the south side of the church, and the foundation charter of the altar of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1448 by Sir John de Bute, states that the altar was situated "in the new choir of the Parish Church." The church consists of a choir and nave, with north and south aisles, and north and south transepts without aisles. The nave and choir are of almost equal length; there was a chapel on the west side of the north transept that no longer exists, but the wide arch of the opening into it is partly visible in the transept. It was two storeys in height.
It is pronounced[290] as evident from the style of the architecture that the choir and crossing beneath the central tower belong to the period about 1448. The transepts may be later, and both are of the same period. The two eastern bays of the main arcade of the choir are more elaborately moulded than the others, and round the eastmost pillar on the south side there is cut an inscription containing the names of John Fullar and his wife.[291] It has been remarked that the tithes and fees received by the magistrates probably did not suffice for the work laid on them by the monks of Dunfermline, and that John Fullar and his wife volunteered to pay for a part, certainly for the pillar on which their names are inscribed. In the second bay of the choir from the east on the north side there is a round arched doorway, now built up, and it led to the sacristy, afterwards used as a session-house; it was taken down about 1800, and the meetings were held in a building on the south side of the nave near the west end, which has also been removed. The present north and south doorways in the choir are modern, although the south one is in the position of the old doorway. The choir has no triforium, but good plain masonry instead, undivided by wall shafts; the clerestory windows are small and round arched, are divided into two lights by a central mullion, and have plain tracery in the arch-head. The nave is divided, like the choir, into five bays, and has no triforium nor clerestory; there is a deep blank wall above the arcade arches. "This wall is of rough masonry compared to that in the choir, and the whole of this part of the church is of a much coarser and ruder description, betokening a later age. The capitals of the piers are of the very rudest kind, and are a perfect contrast to the delicate work of the choir. In the meagre description of St. John's to be found in the books on Perth, this rudeness is pointed to as a sign of great antiquity, but the reverse is unquestionably the case. This nave is undoubtedly 'the New Kirk of Perth' referred to in the Chronicle, in which 'ane Synodall assemblie' was held in April 1606."[292] Early in the nineteenth century it was contemplated to raise the nave wall and erect a clerestory; two of the windows adjoining the tower on the north side were actually built, and still remain with massive buttresses, surmounted by high finials; the work was never finished, and could not be carried farther west, as there is no proper support for such a massive building. Tradition says that at one time the church extended farther west, and it seems not improbable that a western tower in the centre of the front may have been contemplated, and even begun. "This tower, like those at Stirling, Linlithgow, and Dundee, may have been intended to open towards the church with a wide arch, of which the jambs still remain; but this idea having been abandoned, and any part of the tower which then had been built having been taken down, the present makeshift gable was put up instead to fill up the gap, which, in these circumstances, would be left for the supposed opening into the church."[293] On the north side of the nave there is a large porch called Halkerston's Tower. It was a two-storied building, the upper storey being of great height and vaulted as well as the lower one. The erection of the west end of the church is referable to about 1489,[294] when payments were made "to the kirk werk of Pertht." The central tower was erected after the adjoining part of the nave, and has one window in each face. The parapet and corbelling were renewed about forty years ago.[295] The exterior of the church has been altered at various times, and an open parapet carried along the top of the choir wall over the clerestory windows as well as along the aisle walls and up the sloping gables of the east end. Dormer windows to light the galleries break in on this aisle-wall parapet, as well as on the roof of the nave.
It was in the Church of St. John, Perth, that John Knox denounced the Mass in 1559, and the multitude afterwards demolished the ornaments, images, and altarpieces as well as the monasteries and religious houses in Perth—an example quickly followed by others throughout the country. In Scott's novel, The Fair Maid of Perth, the church is the scene of the trial by bier-right to discover the slayer of Proudfute.
The East Church (or choir) has been recently restored, and many look forward to the day when, the present partition walls being removed, St. John's Church will once more reveal the full splendour of its striking and grand interior. Perth awaits a generous restorer, and St. John's affords a grand opportunity for patriotism and beneficence.