[72] We learn from Crawford’s History of the University (MS. Adv. Lib.) that the service was read that day in the Old Kirk on account of the more dignified place of worship towards the east being then under the process of alteration for the erection of the altar, ‘and other pendicles of that idolatrous worship.’
[73] Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral Letter, by S. Johnson, 1694.
[74] Wodrow, in his Diary, makes a statement apparently at issue with that in the text, both in respect of locality and person:
‘It is the constantly believed tradition that it was Mrs Mean, wife to John Mean, merchant in Edinburgh, who threw the first stool when the service-book was read in the New Kirk, Edinburgh, 1637, and that many of the lasses that carried on the fray were preachers in disguise, for they threw stools to a great length.’
[75] A newspaper commenced after the Restoration, and continued through eleven numbers.
[76] Small stools.
[77] See St Giles’, Edinburgh: Church, College, and Cathedral, by the Rev. Sir J. Cameron Lees, D.D.; also Historical Sketch of St Giles’ Cathedral, by William Chambers, by whom the cathedral was restored in 1872-83. Regarding the reinterment of Montrose, there is a narrative, with some fresh light on the subject, in the paper, ‘The Embalming of Montrose,’ in the first volume of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. The monuments to Knox, the Earl of Murray, and the Marquises of Argyll and Montrose are quite modern.
[78] St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832 when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’ Library.
[79] Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.
[80] Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.