he ridge in narrow lines,
deflecting a little only on the south side, where the limits were broken
by several wealthy and well-cultivated enclosures where brotherhoods
were established--White and Black Friars, sons of Augustine and Dominic,
with their great detached houses, their gardens always an example of
husbandry, and chapels filling the air with pleasant sound of bells.
King James had himself endowed, besides many existing foundations, a
monastery for the Franciscans or Grey Friars, which has always continued
to be one of the chief ecclesiastic centres of Edinburgh. It was so fine
a building, as the story goes, that the humble-minded Minors declined at
first to take possession of it as being too magnificent for an Order
vowed to poverty; though as their superior was a monk from Cologne, sent
for by the King on account of his learning and sanctity, and accustomed
to the great convents of the Continent, such an objection is curious. On
the south side of the town, at some distance outside the walls, on the
platform afterwards occupied by the buildings of the old High School,
stood amid its blossoming gardens the Church of St. Mary in the Field,
afterwards so fatally known as the Kirk of Field, a great house so
extensive and stately that it had already served on several occasions as
a royal lodging. St. Giles's, one of the oldest foundations of all,
stood among its graves, at the foot of the Castle Hill in the centre of
the life of ancient Edinburgh, as it does still. These clusters of
sacred buildings, encircled by their orchards and gardens, made a fringe
of verdure, of charity and peace, sanctuaries for the living and
resting-places for the dead, round the strong and dark fortifications of
the little royal town, which hitherto had held for its life upon that
ridge of rock, a dangerous eminence lying full in every invader's way.

CHAPTER II

JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE

It is clear that the public opinion of Scotland, so far as there was
such a thing in existence, had no sympathy whatever with the murderers
of James. The instruments of that murder were in the first place
Highland caterans, with whom no terms were ever held and against whom
every man's hand was armed. And the leaders who had taken advantage of
these wild allies against their natural monarch and kindred were by the
very act put beyond the pale of sympathy. They were executed ferociously
and horribly, according to the custom of the time, th