Or the meritorious specimens of Gothic architecture in Scotland, few have perhaps received so little attention as the Church of Haddington, now half an hour's journey from Edinburgh, and in the centre of a populous and wealthy district. The popular literature of the country has never immortalised it—it does not come within any tourist's series of picturesque objects—there is no fine scenery in its neighbourhood, which is a district purely agricultural; hence it has remained in comparative obscurity; but few lovers of Gothic architecture who happen to be so near its vicinity as the Scottish metropolis, would fail to visit it, if aware of its merits.

Haddington is a clean, flourishing-looking country town, with wide airy streets, and some modern buildings not without pretension. But presiding over all as the object most worthy of notice and respect, the distant traveller perceives the broken square tower of the old church, of a deep red brown, a colour which characterises the neighbouring sandstone. It stands among a few picturesque trees on a flat meadow bordering on the Tyne, which, no longer the puny rivulet it appears at Crichton near its source, is a broad, but not a deep or rapid stream. The aspect of the whole scene-the quiet winding river—a handsome bridge across it—the cheerful village and the trees round the venerable parish Church,—is peculiarly English, with one exception, the state of ruin in which the greater part of the fabric has reached our time. But it appears that rivers rising like the Scottish streams, among morasses and hills, are peculiarly ill adapted to a temporary sojourn in flat meadow scenery, for peaceful and shallow as is the stream at this place, it has swollen into several memorable inundations, and the church standing in its quiet meadow, has repeatedly been surrounded by a furious flood. Few of the Scottish chroniclers omit to mention the flood of September 1358, when houses, villages, and bridges were swept away, and trees torn up by the roots. This flood became associated with a miracle of a very peculiar character. As the waters approached the priory of Nuns, founded by the pious Ada of Northumberland, a nun snatched up the image of the Virgin, and threatened to throw it into the water, unless the saint protected the priory: it is a disputed point whether faith or insanity prompted the act, but it was instantly efficacious and the waters subsided. The occurrence appropriately took place on the vigilia nativitatis beatæ virginis.*

Another renowned flood occurred in 1421, when the Church could only be approached by boats, and the ornaments in the sacristy were injured. In 1775, the river rose seventeen feet above its level, and a tablet marks the height the waters attained in the centre of the town.† Such is the occasionally turbulent character of the peaceful spot on which the old church stands. The architecture is marked by the features of the transition from the early to the later period of the decorated style. The western doorway, and the triple arches of the tower window, though exhibiting the semicircular form peculiar to Norman architecture, belong to a much later period, the former exhibiting a great variety of decoration. Above this door is a large pointed window in a style considerably decorated, which, from some flowered capitals very low down in * See Fordun, and Extracta ex variis cronicis Scotia, the compiler of which calls it, "tanta inundatio, quæ a fluvio Noya talis non est audita." † See New Stat. Acc. Haddington, 3.

the jambs, has an appearance as if the pointed arch had been a comparatively late alteration of a piece of architecture more in harmony with the doorway. The aisle walls of the nave are surmounted by embrasures, which have a somewhat modern appearance; although the mouldings, which are in high relief, have a decidedly ancient aspect. The aisle and clere story windows are in a style considerably decorated, and the buttresses, in harmony with the same character of architecture, are surmounted by pinnacles. The pillars in the interior of the nave are clustered, but not very deeply moulded. The capitals are slightly flowered, each pillar having a different pattern from all the others in the same line, but corresponding with that immediately opposite. This part of the building has been lately repaired and comfortably fitted up for a parish church, in the usual manner, with galleries and pews. The transepts and the chancel are in a state of ruin, but it does not appear that it would be difficult to restore the latter, which is a fine specimen chiefly of the later decorated style, the pillars clustered and flowered, and the windows with low sprung pointed arches.

HISTORICAL SKETCH.

LITTLE is known of the origin and history of the Church of Haddington. A zealous and able antiquary sought to connect it with a remarkable tragedy, which having taken place close to the spot, may not be inappropriately mentioned on this occasion. About the year 1242, a tournament took place on the border, in which the chief of the family of Bysset had been unhorsed by a descendant of the house of Atholl. Not long afterwards, while Lord Atholl was residing in Haddington, he was murdered, and the house in which he lived was burned to conceal the deed;— such at least is the version of the facts which the chroniclers have preserved. Both these families were the holders of possessions in the highlands, where the Celtic inhabitants thought it their duty to avenge any insult offered to their leader, and to brave all danger, hardship and guilt to accomplish their vengeance. The Byssets in vain pleaded that they were at the time in the distant town of Forfar; the conclusive fact of some of their people being found on the spot could not be answered. The King probably knew that the Byssets were not personally guilty of the crime, for they were allowed to retire unmolested to Ireland, suffering, however, the forfeiture of their estates. The late General Hutton, in his inquiries on ecclesiastical antiquities, thought it likely that he would be able to trace the origin of the Church of Haddington to this occurrence. "If Bysset," he says, writing to one of his correspondents, "was really innocent of the murder, the person by whom it was actually perpetrated would feel the keenest remorse, from the ruin in which he had involved that family, added to the enormity of the crime he had committed; and he may have had recourse to that mode of quieting his conscience, sometimes practised in those superstitious times, by founding the Church and Monastery in question. The time of the murder seems to correspond with the period when the Church seems probably to have been erected."* But notwithstanding inquiries in various directions, going to the extent of tracing the history of the Byssets in Ireland, the zealous antiquary could find nothing to confirm his theory, while, at the same time, the scanty information he received could scarcely be said to convey a contradiction of it. The Rev. Dr. Barclay supplied the Antiquaries' Society with an account of the Parish of Haddington, in which he found himself unable to throw light on the origin of the Church; and General Hutton's 'numerous correspondents are nearly unanimous in directing him to Dr. Barclay's paper as the only quarter in which he will find any information on the subject. Ada, the pious Countess of Northumberland, about the year 1178, founded here a Priory of Nuns, or, in the words of Wyntoun the chronicler, (b. iv. ch. vi.)

"At Hadyntown scho gert be made,
And founde a great Nounery.
Thare Ladyis is to lyve relygyowsly.

Grose says of Haddington Church, "This Church, now parochial, is commonly but erroneously supposed to have belonged to the Nunnery founded by Ada, Countess of Northumberland, but was in reality the Church of the Franciscans," who had a Monastery at Haddington. This view is in some measure confirmed by a note preserved by General Hutton of "a charter of confirmation of a mortification made by Walter Bertram, Provost of Edinburgh, to a Chaplain at St. Clement's Altar in the Brother Minor's Kirk at Haddington;" and Dr. Barclay, expressing his views in a letter to General Hutton more fully than in his Article in the Antiquarian