Bygone Church Life in Scotland Author:William Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OLife in tbe lpre'Reformation Gatbebrate. By A. H. Millar, F.S.A-ScoT. THE history of every Scottish city or burgh of importance is intimately connected wi... more »th one of two possible originals. Each burgh has taken its origin either from a feudal castle or from a cathedral or abbey. This statement may seem very sweeping in its character, but a close examination will prove that it is founded on fact. Edinburgh, for instance, grew up around the ancient Castle—Eadwin's burh—while the Cathedral of St. Giles and all the subordinate churches were adjuncts of the secular centre. The true ecclesiastical point of origin in Edinburgh was St. Margaret's Chapel, and it still stands within the Castle walls. Glasgow, on the other hand, took its origin from the Cathedral. That building formed the nucleus of the original city, and the first houses in Glasgow were the Bishop's Castle beside the Cathedral, and the dwellings and manses of the ecclesiastics in its immediate vicinity. It was as a " Bishop's burgh,"or community under ecclesiastical control, that Glasgow first had a corporate existence. The Bishop or Archbishop nominated the civic rulers, and though an attempt was made shortly after the Reformation to abrogate priestly control, and to transfer the power of the election of the Provost to the Guildry, the Protestant Archbishops strove to retain this right up till the early years of the seventeenth century. In 1639 the Town Council for the first time elected the Provost and Bailies, but even then the consent of the Duke of Lennox —who had received the secularised property of the Archbishopric—had to be obtained; and it was not until 1690 that the citizens of Glasgow obtained the right to choose municipal governors. These two forms of origin may be traced in all the important Scottish burg...« less