112 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



received Margaret of England, on his marriage in August, 1503. On the 

 invasion by the earl of Hertford, both the abbey and palace were given to the 

 flames ; and, three years later, after the battle of Pinkie, Somerset " having 

 sent commissioners for that purpose," the lead was removed, and the " two 

 bells taken down." The church had originally various altars at which service 

 was performed by different chaplains. At length, on the twenty-ninth of June, 

 1 559, both abbey and palace were demolished and plundered diu-ing one of those 

 fanatical ebuUitions which too frequently disgraced the citizens of that period. 

 On her return to Scotland in April, 1561, Queen Mary fixed her court in the 

 abbey, and five years afterwards was married to Darnley in the church — but 

 her marriage with Bothwell was celebrated in the hall — of the palace. Two years 

 after her imprisonment, it was suppressed and stript by the earl of Glencairn, 

 but afterwards repaired and fitted up as the parish church of the Canongate. 

 In 1617, James VI. gave orders that statues of the Apostles should be erected 

 in it ; but while the Enghsh artists were thus employed, the populace, mistaking 

 the motive, observed such " idols" with a sinister eye, and the king's advisers, 

 dreading its effects on a people still under the influence of strong party feeling, 

 recommended the discontinuance of the work, and the carvers and their " graven 

 images" were accordingly withdrawn. " Strange," said the king, chagrined 

 at the measure recommended — " strange indeed, that prejudice cannot discri- 

 minate between ornament and image — between the incitement to devotion and 

 the adoration of an idol !" In the reign of Charles II., the chmxh was 

 finally withdrawn from parochial use, and splendidly fitted up, with an organ 

 and other decorations, as a chapel for the sovereign and knights of the 

 Thistle, to whom, on the twelfth of July, 1687, the key was ordered to be 

 given up. But aU this renovated splendour was crushed at the revolution by 

 the 'zeal of insurgency. — A last attempt was made to restore the desecrated 

 fabric by covering it with a ponderous stone roof; but the unskilfulness of the 

 architect and the state of the walls, already shaken by the storms of six 

 centuries and often " tried in the fire," rendered such a project madness in 

 the attempt and ruin in the end. Shortly after its completion the massy 

 roof fell in,* and, destroying or greatly damaging all the internal decorations, 



• On this occasion, what had escaped the mob at the Revolution now became their property. The 

 rhurch was ransacked, and every thing carried off which could be converted into money. Of the bones of 

 the illustrious dead, some were removed, and others left exposed — a sad and mortifying spectacle. The 

 head of Queen Margaret, which was entire, and even beautiful, and the skull of Darnley, were purloined — 

 Darnley, the haughty, the imperious, but fascinating lover of the unfortunate Mary. The thigh bones of 

 this ambitious noble, on inspection, fully corroborated the testimony of authors as to his heroic — or rather 

 gigantic, stature of seven feet. — Bord. Ant. JIol. Abb. 



