DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6912#0097
ROSLYN CHAPEL.
63
The chapel was not completed during the life of the founder, who died in 1479;
but his successors made some additions to the building, and to the establishment.
The sacristy, vestry, or subterraneous oratory, east of the chapel, was founded by
his lady, " Dame Elizabeth Douglass." Some additions to the original endowment
were made in 1522, by William St. Clair, of Roslyn. The establishment here was
intended to be a college for a provost, six prebendaries, and two singing boys : and
the collegiate chapel was certainly designed to be much larger than it appears at
present.
DESCRIPTION OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHAPEL, WITH REFERENCE
TO THE ACCOMPANYING PLATES.
(*,* Plate of pinnacles engraved xiv to be corrected to Plate xi.)
Plate I. Ground Plan.—This print shews the extent and arrangement of the
present chapel, and sub-chapel; with the number and relative situation of the
columns, doors, lower tier of windows, buttresses, groining of the ailes, and extent
of the eastern wall of the transept. The interior and exterior measurements are
engraved on the plate ; also a scale, whereby the extent of any smaller parts may
be ascertained. Plate II. Ground plan of columns, wall, &c. at the east end, to a
larger scale than the preceding : denning the mullions and mouldings of the windows,
Shone every pillar, foliage bound,a
And glimmered all the dead men's mail,b
Blazed battlement, and pinnet high,
Blazed eveiy rose-carved buttress fair—
So still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high St. Clair."
"This superstition," observes Mr. Scott, in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto vi. "is probably of Norwegian
derivation, and may have been imported by the Earls of Orkney into their Lothian domains. The tomb fires of
the North are mentioned in most of the Sagas."
» As only one of the columns is thus enwreathed, the poet has suffered his Pegasus to curvet rather too much.
b "Ten barons of Roslin were buried in a vault beneath the chapel pavement, and it was customary to encaae
the corpse iu a suite of armour, and thus lay it on the floor without a coffin. According to Slezer, the bodies
have been found entire at the end of eighty years; but this is a very doubtful story. Other eminent persons were
also buried in the same vault."—Chalmers's " Caledonia," V. ii, 765.
63
The chapel was not completed during the life of the founder, who died in 1479;
but his successors made some additions to the building, and to the establishment.
The sacristy, vestry, or subterraneous oratory, east of the chapel, was founded by
his lady, " Dame Elizabeth Douglass." Some additions to the original endowment
were made in 1522, by William St. Clair, of Roslyn. The establishment here was
intended to be a college for a provost, six prebendaries, and two singing boys : and
the collegiate chapel was certainly designed to be much larger than it appears at
present.
DESCRIPTION OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHAPEL, WITH REFERENCE
TO THE ACCOMPANYING PLATES.
(*,* Plate of pinnacles engraved xiv to be corrected to Plate xi.)
Plate I. Ground Plan.—This print shews the extent and arrangement of the
present chapel, and sub-chapel; with the number and relative situation of the
columns, doors, lower tier of windows, buttresses, groining of the ailes, and extent
of the eastern wall of the transept. The interior and exterior measurements are
engraved on the plate ; also a scale, whereby the extent of any smaller parts may
be ascertained. Plate II. Ground plan of columns, wall, &c. at the east end, to a
larger scale than the preceding : denning the mullions and mouldings of the windows,
Shone every pillar, foliage bound,a
And glimmered all the dead men's mail,b
Blazed battlement, and pinnet high,
Blazed eveiy rose-carved buttress fair—
So still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high St. Clair."
"This superstition," observes Mr. Scott, in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto vi. "is probably of Norwegian
derivation, and may have been imported by the Earls of Orkney into their Lothian domains. The tomb fires of
the North are mentioned in most of the Sagas."
» As only one of the columns is thus enwreathed, the poet has suffered his Pegasus to curvet rather too much.
b "Ten barons of Roslin were buried in a vault beneath the chapel pavement, and it was customary to encaae
the corpse iu a suite of armour, and thus lay it on the floor without a coffin. According to Slezer, the bodies
have been found entire at the end of eighty years; but this is a very doubtful story. Other eminent persons were
also buried in the same vault."—Chalmers's " Caledonia," V. ii, 765.