Into the characteristics of the later baronial and domestic architecture of Scotland it is impossible to enter here, though some of their peculiarities well merit the increased degree of attention they are now receiving. The picturesqueness of the turret stairs, with their lintels decorated with monograms and armorial bearings, and inscribed with quaint legends and pious mottos; the crow-stepped gables, finials, and dormer windows, and the singular overhanging carved "timber lands" of the old streets and closes of Edinburgh, are familiar to all. Some of their features might still be borrowed with advantage to our modern street architecture; but for the most part they are only valuable as the memorials of a period and state of society which has for ever passed away.
Monogram, Blyth's Close.
Before quitting the interesting subject of medieval architecture as developed in Scotland, some notice of the ancient and mysterious fraternity of Free Masons seems necessary in order to embrace one important source of that singular progressive unity of purpose traceable throughout the various stages of medieval ecclesiology. While Free Masonry was denounced in many countries of Europe, and was placed for a time under the ban of the law by Henry VI. of England, its chief protector, it appears to have met with no check or restraint in Scotland; and having been made the subject of special royal favour by James I., it has ever since continued to be cherished here with greater zeal than in almost any other country of Christendom. With its modern existence, however, apart from the practice of the art, we have here as little to do as with its extravagant claims to an antiquity nearly coeval with the art of building. We can trace the association of masons into guilds or corporations in some parts of Europe at the very dawn of medieval art. In Lombardy such a free guild of masons was established in the tenth century; and the craft is believed to have first obtained footing in England under the Saxon king, Athelstane, about the same period.[657] In Normandy we only discover the rise of such an association in the middle of the twelfth century; but the practice of secret combination obviously emanated from an ecclesiastical source. The whole system of guilds originated, in part at least, in the necessity of preserving and extending such speculative and practical knowledge as may now be safely committed to the press. Such a security for the safe keeping of traditional knowledge was specially required in regard to architecture, which depends so entirely on combined operations, and needs the assistance of the chief branches of science which were carried to any perfection during that period. The whole decorative arts of the medieval era were subordinate to architecture, and it was essentially the handmaid of the Church. Ecclesiastics were at once its patrons and the chief practisers of its highest branches, so that the establishment of an order which embraced within its fellowship all the practical artificers as naturally sprung from the requirements of the Church as its various monastic fraternities. Hence, wherever any great ecclesiastical work was to be carried on, a guild of masons was organized, which no doubt soon embraced practitioners of every requisite branch of art. Accordingly we still find in Scotland that the oldest masonic lodges are at Dunfermline, Elgin, Melrose, Kilwinning, Arbroath, Glasgow, and other sites of remarkable early ecclesiastical edifices, while generally some parish churches or other minor ecclesiastical edifices still exist within the surrounding district, betraying traces of the same workmanship as the parent edifice. To the oneness of belief by which medieval Christendom was held together under its common head, and to the practical unity of the ecclesiastical corporation which constituted the Church, apart from the laity, may be traced the rise and gradual development of the successive styles of Gothic architecture. But to the operations of the masonic lodges within their several districts must be ascribed the local peculiarities and provincialisms which may be detected grouping around almost every great abbey or other remarkable ecclesiastical structure. The geographical and political isolation of Scotland, which gave to its Church a degree of independence unknown to most other countries of Papal Christendom, as well as its very partial share in the great movements of medieval Europe, including the crusades, all tended to give additional importance to those local influences which in other countries were more subordinated by external sources of change. To this source, therefore, we can hardly err in referring much of the peculiar character ascribable to Scottish Ecclesiology, which it is attempted here to reduce to some system.
The revived interest in the study of medieval architecture, added to the happy substitution of investigation for the older and more convenient practice of theorizing, have led to considerable attention being directed to the singular marks or symbols, apparently the works of the original builders, which are observable on all ancient churches. That masons' marks are old as the building of the Pyramids is undoubted. They were discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse on forcing his way into the chambers of construction of the great pyramid, where there cannot be a doubt no human being had been before since the completion of its vast masonry. Similar marks have also been observed on Roman altars and on structures of an equally early era. The most, however, that can now be inferred from such is the invariable practice of each workman marking the stone he had cut, which remains in use in our own day to distinguish the work of different individuals. But much more than this appears to be deducible from the medieval masons' marks. "The fact that in these buildings it is only a certain number of the stones which bear symbols; that the marks found in different countries (although the variety is great) are in many cases identical, and in all have a singular accordance in character, seems to shew that the men who employed them did so by system, and that the system, if not the same in England, Germany, and France, was closely analogous in one country to that of the others."[658] The observation and collation of these marks have accordingly become objects of interest, as calculated to aid in the elucidation of the history of the medieval masonic guilds. It is not, however, sufficient merely to detect the occasional identity of single mason-marks on different and widely distant buildings. The following, for example, includes, I believe, the entire set of mason-marks to be found on Roslin Chapel. Of these the first, Δ, is only to be found on the altars and piscinæ, and the two adjoining ones around the doors. A comparison of these with the mason-marks of Gloucester Cathedral, Malmsbury Abbey Church, Furness Abbey, &c.,[659] will shew that several of the symbols are common to all these; but this can lead to no conclusion. Many of the subordinate lines added to regular figures are still recognised among the craft as additions given to distinguish the symbols of two masons when the mark of a member admitted from another lodge was the same as that already borne by one of their own number. If, however, the entire series, or the greater number of the marks on one building could be detected on another apparently of the same age, it would be such a coincidence as could hardly be ascribed to any other cause than that both were the work of the same masonic lodge. I should anticipate, for example, that such would be found to be the case, to some considerable extent, on the oldest portions of Dunfermline and Lindisfarne Abbeys, and Durham Cathedral. The united cooperation of a very few zealous labourers may soon bring such a question to the test, if sufficient care is taken to discriminate between the original work and the additions or alterations of subsequent builders. Meanwhile, when so much zeal is displayed in the collection of Roman potters' stamps, medieval pilgrims' signs, tradesmen's and tavern tokens of the seventeenth century, and even the more recent provincial copper coinage, it may suffice to suggest that the collection of complete sets of mason-marks from ecclesiastical edifices,—discriminating those belonging to portions of different dates,—may furnish a clue to the influence of masonic guilds on the development of successive styles, or the prevalence of remarkable provincial peculiarities.
We obtain from Father Hay's "Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslyn," a curious account of the assembling of the needful band of artificers for the building of the collegiate church founded by William Saint Clair, Earl of Caithness:—
"His adge creeping on him," says the genealogist, "to the end he might not seem altogither unthankfull to God for the benefices he receaved from him, it came in his minde to build a house for God's service, of most curious worke, the which that it might be done with greater glory and splendor, he caused artificers to be brought from other regions and forraigne kingdomes, and caused dayly to be abundance of all kinde of workemen present: as masons, carpenters, smiths, barrowmen, and quarriers, with others; for it is remembered that for the space of thirty-four years before, he never wanted great numbers of such workmen. The foundation of this rare worke he caused to be laid in the year of our Lord 1446; and to the end the worke might be the more rare: first he caused the draughts to be drawn upon Eastland boords, and made the carpenters to carve them according to the draughts thereon, and then gave them for patterns to the massons, that they might thereby cut the like in stone.... He rewarded the massones according to their degree."—Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Rosslyn, p. 26.