On the whole, the Reformation in Dundee was peacefully carried out, but in 1645, during the Civil War, the city was sacked and most of its houses went down in war fires. In 1651, General Monk, sent by Cromwell, captured Dundee, and probably one sixth of the garrison were put to the sword. Sixty vessels were loaded with plunder to be sent away, but “the sailors being apparently as drunk as the soldiery” the vessels were lost within sight of the city. “Ill got, soon lost,” said Monk’s chaplain. Governor Lumsden, in heroic defence, made his last stand in the old tower, which still remains scarred and pitted with bullet marks.
Dundee rose to wealth during our Civil War, when jute took the place of cotton. Being a place of commerce rather than of art, literature, or romance, and touching the national history only at long intervals, few tourists see or stay long in “Jute-opolis.” Nevertheless, from many visits and long dwelling in the city and suburbs, Dundee is a place dearly loved by us three; for here, in health and in sickness, in the homes of the hospitable people and as leader of the worship of thousands, in the great Ward Chapel, where he often faced over a thousand interested hearers, the writer learned to know the mind of the Scottish people more intimately than in any other city. Nor could he, in any other better way, know the heart of Scotland, except possibly in some of those exalted moments, when surveying unique scenery, it seemed as if he were in the very penetralia of the land’s beauty; or, when delving in books, he saw unroll clearly the long panorama of her inspiring history.
Among the treasures, visible in the muniment room of the Town House, are original despatches from Edward I and Edward II; the original charter, dated 1327, and given the city by Robert the Bruce; a Papal order from Leo X, and a letter from Mary Queen of Scots, concerning extramural burials. Then the “yardis, glk sumtyme was occupyit by ye Gray Cordelier Freres” (Franciscan Friars, who wore the gray habit and girdle of St. Francis of Assisi) as an orchard, were granted to the town as a burying-place by Queen Mary in 1564. The Nine Crafts having wisely decided not to meet in taverns and alehouses, made this former place of fruit their meeting-place; hence the name “Howff,” or haunt. My rhyming friend Lee, in his verses on the “Waukrife Wyverns” (wakeful griffins), has written the feelings and experiences of his American friend, who often wandered and mused among the graven stones, as well as his own:—
“’T was Sabbath nicht, the clinkum-bell
Tauld o’ harangues on heaven and hell—
I read a sermon to mysel’
Frae off the stones.
* * * * *
Vast meeting-place whaur all are mute,
For dust hath ended the dispute;