St. Giles?s Church. was a place frequently assigned in bills for the payment of money. The transept, called at times the Assembly aisle, was the scene of Jenny Geddes? famous onslaught with her faZdstuZe, on the reader of the liturgy in 1637. The erection of Edinburgh into an episcopal see in 1633, under Bishop William Forbes Gwho died the same year), and the appointment of In 1596 St. Giles?s was the scene of a tumultuous dispute between James VI. and the leaders of the Church party. The king was sitting in that part of it which the Reformers named the Tolbooth Kirk, together with the Octavians, as they were styled, a body of eight statesmen into whose hands he had committed all his financial affairs and patronage. The disturbance from which the king felt THE LANTERN AND TOWER OF ST. GILES?S CHURCH. St. Giles to be the cathedral of the diocese, led-in its temporary restoration internally-to something like what it had been of old; but ere the orders of Charles I. for the demolition of its hideous galleries and subdivisions could be carried out, all Scotland was in arms, and the entire system of Church polity for which thesechanges were designed, had come to a violent and a terrible end. This transept was peculiarly rich in lettered gravestones, all of which were swept away by the ruthless improvers of 1829, and some of those were used as pavement round the Fountain Well. himself to be in peril, arose from an address by Balcanqual, a popular preacher, who called on the Protestant barons and his other chance auditors to meet the ministers in ?? the little kirk,? where they, amidst great uproar, came to a resolution to urge upon James the necessity for changing his policy and dismissing his present councillors. The progress of the deputation towards the place where the king was to be found brought with it the noisy mob who had created the tumult, and when the bold expressions of the deputation were seconded by the rush of a rude crowd-armed, of course
PLAN OF ST. GILE'S CHURCH, PRIOR TO THE ALTERATIONS IN 1829.