The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Such was the change effected on Scottish art by the remarkable historical events which gave the throne of England to the Norman invader, and established the descendants of the Saxon Alfred on that of Scotland. For nearly a century the ecclesiastical architecture of England and Scotland is one in style, coincident in date, and uniform in the character of details. This unwonted uniformity, however, is clearly traceable to causes the full effect of which was ere long modified by other influences. Soon after the introduction of the First-pointed or Early English style a marked difference is discoverable, and thenceforth the dates and peculiar characteristics of the ecclesiastical architecture of the two countries disagree in many essential points. Notwithstanding the adoption of the somewhat exclusive term Early English for the First-pointed style, it appears to have reached its limits at fully as early a period in Scotland as in England. The choir of Glasgow Cathedral, built by Bishop Jocelin, between 1188 and 1197, though not to be compared with the Cathedral of Salisbury in loftiness of proportions, or grandeur of effect as a whole, is certainly further advanced in the rich and finished character of its beautiful capitals and other varied details, though the English cathedral was not begun till A.D. 1220, or thirty-two years later than that of St. Kentigern. The crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, which formed the first work of Bishop Jocelin, is not surpassed by any structure of its class, and hardly indeed equalled by any other crypt in the kingdom. As a specimen of pure First-pointed work it is deserving of the most careful study; and the recent judicious restorations effected under the direction of the late Mr. William Nixon, have rendered it an object which the student of medieval architecture may visit with unqualified admiration and delight. So little has hitherto been done in the way of investigating the history or peculiar character of Scottish Ecclesiology, that very few examples have yet been assigned to their true date. It has been customary to ascribe the founding of the cathedral church of St. Andrews, for example, to Bishop Arnold, A.D. 1159-1163, and loosely to assume from this that a considerable portion of it was of that early date. But the mention by Wyntoun of his interment in the "auld kyrk,"[643] i.e., the church of St. Rule, must be accepted as some indication that the new cathedral had made no great progress at his death. The beautiful fragment of its choir which still remains may with little hesitation be ascribed to the later episcopate of Bishop William, A.D. 1202-1233; during whose occupation of the see we have evidence of considerable building being in progress. Specimens of pure First-pointed work are by no means rare in Scotland, ranging from the stately cathedral of St. Mungo, or the ruined abbey of Dryburgh, to the chancel of the lovely little church of St. Blane in the Isle of Bute. But with the exception of the magnificent fragments of the abbey of Aberbrothoc which still remain to us, no more characteristic specimen of the peculiar style which arose in Scotland in the reign of William the Lion can be referred to, than the three eastern bays added to the old Romanesque cathedral of St. Magnus, in the remote Orkneys. The details are indeed for the most part First-pointed, and the piers beautifully moulded and clustered shafts, but the arches that rise from them are of the same form as those of 1136, though also richly moulded in conformity with the style which superseded the Romanesque in the latter part of the twelfth century. Such work can neither be consistently classed with the true First-pointed, of which Glasgow Cathedral is a type, nor with the later Scottish Decorated. Down to the close of Malcolm IV.'s reign the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland and England may be held to coincide alike in style and date: the Scottish First-pointed being upon the whole both earlier and more fully developed than the corresponding English style, according to the chronology assigned by Mr. Rickman. But with the first symptoms of transition the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland begins to assume its peculiar characteristic features, marked by a return to the use of the semicircular arch, and a preference of circular to angular details, employed not indiscriminately or at random, but on a fixed principle, along with the consistent use of the pointed arch, and of details peculiar to the later styles. The fact of such peculiarities is more easily demonstrated than its cause. The intimacy and interchange of races with England under Malcolm Canmore, and the complete assimilation of the Church of Scotland to that of England, abundantly account for the uniformity of the English and Scottish Romanesque Period. Perhaps we shall not overrate the effect of the profuse zeal and liberality of David I., and the fruits of his example, in assuming that the very numerous specimens of beautiful late Romanesque work, on every scale, from cathedrals and abbeys, to simple little village churches, built almost entirely in his reign, may not have been without their influence in stamping some of its most marked types with an enduring authority on the national mind—in all periods of its history characterized by a certain tenacity of adherence to a favourite idea. Be this, however, as it may, the retention of the use of the semicircular arch, and of forms of the same type, after their abandonment in the ecclesiastical architecture of England, becomes the source of a style peculiar to Scotland, and which it has been too much the custom hitherto to regard as a mere provincialism little worthy of note. The worst fruit of this has been, that our ancient Scottish edifices have been remodelled in accordance with rules derived entirely from contemporary English models; and our architects have employed themselves for nearly half a century in deliberately obliterating the most characteristic features of native art.

The influence which stamped its character on the age of David I. was more ecclesiastical than civil. The intercourse with England, though not uninterrupted, continued during his reign and that of his imbecile successor sufficiently close and frequent to account for much similarity in the arts and manners of the two kingdoms; nor was it till the quarrel of William the Lion with Henry II., in 1172, his subsequent imprisonment, and the disputed claims of independence both of the Church and Crown, that the effectual alienation took place from which we may trace in part the divergence of Scottish from English models. The claim of the dependence of the Scottish Church on the English archbishops was probably more effectual than any civil change in severing the two Churches, with all that pertained to them. But before this lasting disruption took place, the First-pointed style had been fully developed, and was already expanding into the rudiments of the next transition. There were indeed constructed, to some extent contemporaneously, works in what may be correctly enough styled the Early English, or pure First-pointed style, of which Glasgow choir is an example, and others like the abbey of Aberbrothoc, essentially peculiar in many respects. To the latter I would propose to apply the term, Scottish Geometric, reserving for the more elaborate style, ultimately developed after the War of Independence, the name of Scottish Decorated.[644] The choir of Glasgow Cathedral exhibits a series of extremely interesting examples of the pierced interspaces of the First-pointed window, in which the tracery of the Decorated Period originated; while the nave of the same beautiful edifice, the work of Bishop William de Bondington, 1233-1258, is no less valuable as an example of the succeeding stage, where the grouped lancet windows have given place to a pointed arch divided by plain mullions and intersecting tracery into several lights, which again have in some cases been filled in with geometric figures, still very partially blended into a homogeneous or consistent whole. The circular arch, however, was never totally abandoned. In the chapter-house of the abbey of Inchcolm, for example, a beautiful little octagonal structure of two floors, the doorway is a semicircular arch, though with mouldings entirely of the later style; the chapter-house is lighted with small lancet windows, while the chamber above has corresponding apertures with semicircular heads. This preference of the semicircular arch, especially for doorways, was never afterwards laid aside. The great west entrance of the magnificent abbey of Aberbrothoc, founded by William the Lion in 1178, is an exceedingly rich and beautiful Scottish doorway of the period, presenting in its details the blending of forms derived both from the Romanesque and First-pointed styles. The entire building furnishes a most interesting example of the peculiarities of early Scottish Gothic, marking, as I conceive, the historic epoch in which the native styles had their rise. In the south transept, for example, this is exhibited with great freedom and variety of character. Three tiers of arcades decorate the wall: the lowest consists of a series of equilateral pointed arches, each filled with a cusped trefoil head, and ranging with and repeating the same mouldings is a small but finely proportioned semicircular headed doorway. The arrangement is exceedingly happy, admitting of the greater breadth of doorway without breaking the line formed by the top of the arcade, or disturbing the uniformity of its series of engaged shafts. So far from seeming to be incongruous, it has a most harmonious effect to the eye. Above this is a second arcade, composed entirely of the lancet arch; while the third, or highest tier, consists of a series of semicircular arches, forming the continuation of the triforium, so that the arrangement of the orders seems deliberately reversed. The pleasing effect of the whole can only be judged of when seen in situ.

Meanwhile the arts continued to progress, advancing towards more complete development of the medieval architecture, then common in all its most essential features to nearly the whole of Europe. The Canons of the General Council of the Scottish Church, in 1242, preserve to us a remarkable ordinance for an annual national collection throughout the kingdom in aid of the building of Glasgow Cathedral, the present nave of which was then in progress. The translation of the relics of St. Margaret to the choir of Dunfermline Abbey, in 1250, marks the completion of that interesting contemporary work,—now unhappily replaced by a pseudo-choir in the style of the year 1820. Works manifestly of the same period, and more markedly Scottish, are still common in many districts: as in parts of Dunblane Cathedral, of Paisley Abbey, Brechin Cathedral, the east end, and other portions of the Cathedral of the Orkneys, &c. But a great revolution was at hand, which abruptly severed the already loosening cords that for a time had brought the ancient kingdoms and the Churches of Scotland and England into unwonted unity of purpose and feeling. In 1285 died the wise and good king, Alexander III., leaving his kingdom to all the miseries of a divided regency and a disputed succession. Margaret of Norway, granddaughter of Alexander, an infant, at a foreign court, had been acknowledged the heir to the crown of Scotland very shortly before the sudden death of the king. Eric, king of Norway, alarmed at the dissensions among the Scottish regents, appealed to Edward of England to interpose, and thus commenced the series of memorable events in our national history, ending in the war of independence, which placed the Bruce upon the throne, and finally shut out England from all influence on Scottish policy or art. Thenceforth to have "an English heart" was the Scottish name for treason; and the term deliberately applied even in the Acts of the Scottish Parliament to their southern neighbours is "our auld enemies of England."

The year 1306, in which Robert Bruce ascended the throne of his ancestors, almost exactly corresponds with the date (1307) assigned by Rickman for the close of the First-pointed or Early English style. But meanwhile a period of division, anarchy, and bloody war, had lasted in Scotland for upwards of seventy years, during which the only arts that found encouragement were those of the armourer and the military architect; nor was this state of things brought to a close twelve years after the coronation of the Bruce, when, in the year 1318, the Pope, John XXII., the obsequious tool of England, renewed the excommunication of Clement V. against the king and all his adherents. The very registers and chartularies are ominously silent; though here and there we find evidence that the old spirit of pious largess to the Church was only temporarily overborne by the stern necessities of the time. Bishops and abbots meanwhile fought alongside of their fellow-countrymen in the foremost of the fight, or, like the good Abbot of Inchaffray, animated them to strike for liberty and independence. The results of all this are abundantly apparent in the earliest succeeding examples of ecclesiastical architecture. They partake of the mingled features of the First and Middle-pointed styles, and are in many cases characterized by a degree of plainness and meagre simplicity which renders the application of the term Decorated occasionally very inappropriate to what contain, nevertheless, the rudiments of the style. What marks them still more with a novel character are features such as the unusually small side doorways, the small windows, the single aisle, and, above all, the plain vault, whether pointed or round, all of which appear to be traceable to the almost exclusive devotion to military architecture by the builders of that age. The Church was then militant in a peculiar sense, and found it difficult to reassume the fitter and more becoming garb of peace.

The plainest, as well as the most ornate Scottish ecclesiastical structures subsequent to this date, almost invariably exhibit some interesting evidence of the adherence to the use of the semicircular arch, and its cognate forms, not only in doors, windows, and arcades, but in the tracery of pointed windows, which at length resulted in the peculiar style of Scottish Decorated Gothic. The Scots, in truth, did of necessity, and undesignedly, what the modern artists, especially of Germany, have affirmed in their practice to be indispensable to the revival of art. They returned nearly to the rudiments of pointed architecture, and wrought out a system for themselves. From this date the rules of English ecclesiology can only mislead the student of Scottish ecclesiastical architecture.

The choir of the singular church of the monastery of Carmelites or Whitefriars, at South Queensferry, founded by Dundas of Dundas in 1330, is an exceedingly interesting specimen of the simple style of the period. The windows, which are few and small, divided by plain mullions, with no other tracery than their bending into lancet and interspaces in the head; the roof a plain vault without groining, and with a singularly sombre look from its entire elevation above all the windows except at the east end, there being no aisles, and consequently no clere-story; the piscina, on the south side, a recessed pointed arch, neatly moulded, but without cusping or other ornament; the sedilia alongside of it, a flat-arched recess, rounded off at the angles by a segmental curve, and divided into three spaces only by pendant mouldings or cusps, too imperfect now to shew exactly what they may have been: all these are characteristic chiefly of the extreme simplicity of the details. But here also the semicircular arch occurs. The credence in the east wall, on the north side of the altar, is recessed with mouldings nearly similar to the piscina, and like it with all the mouldings sunk within the recess, but with a rounded instead of a pointed arch. The priest's door, on the south side of the choir, is of the same form externally, though square-headed within; and a plain ambry occupies the north wall, directly opposite to the piscina. The eastern gable of the church is decorated externally in a novel manner with a niche and various heraldic devices, probably of later date, and coeval with the nave and south transept, which are curious specimens of the Perpendicular style.[645] This extremely interesting example of an important period of Scottish Ecclesiology is generally overlooked, though it lies within a mile of Dalmeny, the favourite example of the parochial church architecture of the twelfth century. Its very existence is probably unknown to thousands who annually pass the neighbouring ferry, as it lies beyond the route of travellers going to the north.

The little ruined church of the village of Temple, East-Lothian, is another simple but pleasing specimen of the transition from the First-pointed to the Scottish Decorated style. Two long, narrow lancet windows, now blocked up, probably indicate the original character of the whole structure. The large east window is divided into three lights by mullions and intersecting tracery in the head, into the two largest openings of which plain circles are inserted. Still simpler is the arrangement in the smaller windows on the south side. They are divided into three lights, the mullions forming pointed heads at the two side lights; but instead of being continued so as to form intersecting tracery in the central space, a large circle is inserted between the pointed heads of the side lights, the lower segment of which finishes the head of the central light by its inverted curve. In this extremely simple combination may be traced the rudiments of the beautiful and richly decorated window in the south transept of Melrose Abbey. The same mode of filling up the head of the window with circles inserted in the intersecting tracery, may be seen on a large scale in the two great windows of the west front of Paisley Abbey, founded by Walter, the second of the family, Steward of Scotland, about 1163,[646] for monks of the Cluniac order of reformed Benedictines. It likewise occurs in some of the original windows of Glasgow Cathedral; while the partial development of the same simple combinations, into intricate and beautiful forms is most happily illustrated in the tracery of the south side of the nave, evidently an insertion of later date than the building, the north windows of which remain unaltered.

A decorated window in the west gable of Paisley Abbey, belonging to a period fully a century later than the lower portion of the same front, exhibits the preference for the circular instead of the ogee arch, which would have been combined with the other features of its tracery in any English example of the style. The round-headed light is found to prevail alike in the plainest and the most ornate tracery, from the abandonment of the First-pointed style about the middle of the thirteenth century, till the final close of Scottish medieval ecclesiology in the troubled reign of James V. The curious but remarkably simple window figured here is one of the original ones in the nave of the beautiful little collegiate church of Corstorphine, near Edinburgh, founded by Sir John Forrester in 1429. But it is not in such minor features as tracery heads only that the rounded arch is employed. Throughout the whole period from the introduction of the Scottish geometric Gothic, in the reign of William the Lion, till the abandonment of medieval art, it continued to be used interchangeably with the pointed arch wherever convenience or taste suggested its adoption. In the triforium of Paisley Abbey one of the most remarkable examples occurs of its use in common with the later form of arch in the main features of the architectural design. Corresponding in breadth to each bay of the nave is a large semicircular arch spring from short clustered columns, with moulded capitals, nearly resembling those of the plainer First-pointed pillars of the nave. The rich mouldings of the triforium arch are recessed to the same depth as the pointed arches below, and are again subdivided by a slender clustered column into two pointed and cusped cinquefoil arches, with a quaterfoil in the space between. A similar arrangement, though executed in a less ornate style, occurs in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, the work of Bishop Robert de Cardeny, 1406,[647] while the practical end in view may be observed in the nave of Holyrood Abbey, where a constructive semicircular arch is thrown from pillar to pillar at the same elevation, though there concealed by the triforium screen. The object in both cases obviously was to throw the principal weight upon the supporting columns of the centre aisle. These examples serve to shew the interchangeable use of the round and pointed arch by the Scottish architect as it best suited his purpose, or harmonized with the general arrangements of his design. So also in the doorways, the clere-story windows, and the tracery, the rounded arch is systematically used in the Scottish Decorated period interchangeably with the later pointed forms. But the taste for rounded forms also manifests itself in other ways: in circular turret stair-cases, as at Linlithgow, and formerly in that attached to the beautiful south porch of St. Giles's, Edinburgh; and again in the vaulted roofs of belfry towers, where the converging ribs meet in a large open moulded circle, as at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, St. Michael's, Linlithgow, the collegiate churches of Seton and Torphichen, and till recently in the rich groining, springing from large half figures of angels bearing shields and scrolls, of the plain west tower of Glasgow Cathedral,—most injudiciously removed to restore the west front to a uniformity which but poorly repays the idea of size and elevation formerly conveyed by the contrast between the central and west towers.