524 MEMOIlt OF GEORGE WILSON. 



instructions of Henry vin., who took this way of forcing an 

 alliance between the infant Queen Mary and his son Edward. 

 But a more definite account, pertaining to a later year of the same 

 unfortunate Scottish Queen, points out the locality of the modern 

 cemetery as the site of batteries erected by the Eegent Lennox in 

 1572, when the castle and city were held by the brave Sir 

 William Kirkaldy of Grange on behalf of the Queen. The 

 Regent's party were bent on holding a Parliament within the 

 city ; and the ' Queen's men,' to prevent this, took possession 

 of St. Giles's Church, and manned the steeple, which completely 

 commanded the Parliament House. Thereupon the Estates (i.e., 

 the Scottish Parliament) assembled in the Canongate, without 

 the walls, but within the liberties of the city, which extended to 

 St. John's Cross ; and a battery was erected for their protection 

 as the gossiping old Diarist chronicles in the 'Diurnal of 

 Occurrents,' upon ' the Dow Craig abone the Trinity College 

 beside Edinburgh, to ding and siege the north-east quarter of 

 the burgh.' This Dow (Gaelic, Du or black) Craig is undoubt- 

 edly the spot. The Calton Hill, with the adjacent suburban 

 district of Calton, belonged to the barony of the Lords Bairn er-- 

 inoch, and in the earlier part of the 1 8th century the last Lord 

 Balmerinoch, who perished on the block in 1746 for his fidelity 

 to the Stuarts, presented the Dow Craig and adjacent ground to 

 his Calton vassals as a public cemetery. Since then the rugged 

 scene of foreign violence and rude civil strife has been dedicated 

 to the sacred rites, where all that is mortal of many a loved one 

 has been laid to rest, earth to earth ; and the hallowed spot is 

 consecrated by many a humble memorial of affection, clustering 

 around the mausoleum of the great philosopher and sceptic, 

 David Hume, to which has since been added by pious hands the 

 sculptured emblem of the Christian's hopes, looking like an 

 afterthought, appended by later hands, to some old pagan Roman's 

 sepulchre." 



