PREFACE

THE Tron Kirk of Edinburgh, dedicated to Christ by the citizens of Edinburgh in 1641, and known as “Christ’s Kirk at the Tron,” has had an important history. It was one of the four early parish churches of Edinburgh, subsequent to the Scottish Reformation of 1560. It has served the City well for nearly three centuries, and has been intimately allied with it.

Situated between the Castle and Holyrood Palace, and under the shadow of the Old Scottish Parliament House, the Tron has been also associated with the National life, and those who helped to shape it. An endeavour has been here made to write its history from the City of Edinburgh Records. Being one of the old city churches of Edinburgh, much regarding it has been preserved in the Council Records, and compensates in some measure for the destruction of its own distinctive annals, which perished in the fire of 1824, and were destroyed with the old and well-known steeple.

The Tron or South-East Parish was formed in 1598, and included the greater part of the south side of old Edinburgh. Gordon of Rothiemay writes of it in 1647, and refers to its wynds and closes as “ exceeding streets elsewhere (throughout old Edinburgh) in the number of indwellers and fairness of houses.” Within it were the old patrician Blackfriars’, Niddrie’s, and St. Mary’s Wynds, as well as the Cowgate, in which “were the palaces belonging to the princes of the land, nothing there being humble or rustic, but all magnificent!” An English traveller, visiting the Tron in 1705, thus records his impression in his Diary:—“The Nobility generally resort to the Tron Church, which is the principally and the Lord High Commissioner has a Throne erected in it, in a very spatious Gallery, on his right hand sits the Lord Chancellor, and on his left the Lord Provost of Edenborough.” All these statements are fully corroborated by the seat-lists here published (pp. 148-160, 171-182), and more particularly by the special grants of pews made by the Town Council of Edinburgh to Noblemen, Senators of the College of Justice, Citizens of the Old Town, Principals and Professors of the University (see pp. 213 to 243, and pp. 301 to 319 in text). About the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, the names given reflect the rise and fall of parties in the State.

The Tron or old South-East Parish dates from the time when there were only four parishes in the burgh of Edinburgh. These parishes are still represented by the four oldest City Churches— St. Giles’ Cathedral, Trinity College, Old Greyfriars, and the Tron. The old N.-E. Parish worshipped in Trinity College Church; the old N.-W. Parish (now the High Church or St. Giles Parish) worshipped in the “East,” the “Little,” or the “New” Kirk—the Eastern Portion of St. Giles; the old S. W. Parish (represented to-day by the historical Old Greyfriars’ Church) worshipped in the Magdalene Chapel, and afterwards in the Tolbooth, then within St. Giles, at the west end of the Cathedral; and the old S. E. (or Tron Parish) in the Great Kirk of St. Giles. This position the S.-E. (or Tron Parish) occupied from 1560 to 1647, in which year the present Tron Kirk (ordered to be built by Charles 1. when he created Edinburgh a City and St. Giles a Cathedral Church) was ready for occupation by the S. E. Parish people. The Tron congregation were thus historically part of the original congregation of John Knox, and worshipped till 1647 in the part of St. Giles (the “Great Kirk”) where he preached. As it was the anglicanising tendencies of King Charles 1., under the guidance of Laud, that finally displaced them, so there were two temporary displacements (under similar ideals in 1584 and 1625) that caused them no little heart-burning, and brought about the resignation of their clergy, who witnessed against the meddling of the King in Church affairs, and for the spiritual independence of the Kirk to manage its own in a constitutional form. The S.-E. Parish thus represented the spirit of Knox and the^wws loci of his historical Kirk. My conclusions on this point are the same as those of Mr. Findlay (p. 90).

Generally speaking, the Chamberlain’s Account Books only state the sum total of the Seat Rents collected each year, but fortunately the full list of Seatholders has been preserved for 1650, the year of Dunbar, and for 1745, when Prince Charles was in Edinburgh. These are full of interest, and are printed in Chapters VI. and VII.

The Chamberlain’s Accounts from 1637 to 1647, relating to the building of the Tron Kirk, illustrate the social and work-a-day life of the period, and are printed in Chapter V.

All the structural changes in St. Giles, illustrating the Church history from the Scottish Reformation down to the end of the Restoration, are printed in Chapters II., III., and IV., and were extracted direct from the City Records for this work.

The Tron Kirk Chronicle (Chapter IX.) discloses much that is interesting in relation to the City of Edinburgh and the Church. These references are clothed in the quaint language of the period, and at a later date illustrate the transition from Old to New Edinburgh.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in the Tron from 1830 to 1840—the period of the “Ten Years’ Conflict.” But for the general complaints of the Kirk-Session (pp. 286-287) and their special complaint (pp. 288-291), the Secession of 1843 would, in all probability, have taken place from the Tron across the North Bridge, instead of from St. Andrew’s Church. This is considered in Chapter XII.

The reminiscences by the Very Rev. Dr. James MacGregor of his ministry in the Tron will be read with much interest, and I am specially indebted to him for so kindly contributing this chapter (pp. 349-359).

I desire to express my most hearty thanks to the Town Clerk and City Chamberlain of Edinburgh for so kindly granting access to the City Records and Accounts; to Mr. Jarvis, assistant to the Town Clerk, for his service and care in extracting the references to the Tron; to the obliging librarians and assistants in the Signet, Advocates’, and Public Libraries in Edinburgh, for so readily placing at my disposal books and contemporaneous newspapers; to Dr. Maitland Thomson, of the Register House, Edinburgh, for occasional assistance; to the Very Rev. Dr. Cameron Lees, St. Giles’ Cathedral, and Messrs. W. & R. Chambers for their kind permission to reproduce the plate of the Riot in St. Giles; to my father-in-law, Sir James Marwick, LL.D., for his valuable Burgh Records; to Mr. Leckie and his colleagues in the British Linen Bank, for so kindly giving me access to the Communion Plate in their custody; to Mr. Arthur Thomas, S.S.C., Session Clerk, for giving me access to documents; to Mr. Williamson, a Tron Elder, for giving the use of a valuable print, which Mrs. Butler has copied for this work; to Alexander Greig, Esq., another Tron Elder, for frequent consultation and information; and to Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier for their constant help and painstaking care in the production of this work, as well as to others acknowledged in the text (pp. 150, 325, 341).

D. BUTLER.
54 Blacket Place, Edinburgh, 13th August 1906.

The Tron Kirk of Edinburgh
Or, Christ's Kirk at the Tron, A History by the Rev. D. Butler, M.A., Minister of the Tron Parish, Edinburgh (pdf)