Back to Fiona's Finding Service
Back to Index
| Previous page
| Next page
THE ROYAL HUNT OF ROSLIN
King Robert the Bruce, when he was returned from Ireland, and his country free from King Edward's tyranny, began to take pleasure in pastimes, as hunting and hawking.
So upon a time he appointed a great hunting upon Pentland Hills, which was then the king’s forest, and when his nobles were all assembled, and had made two or three days' pastime, he declared to them how he had oft hunted a white faunch deer, neither ever could his hounds prevail, and desired them if they had any to try them.
They hearing the king's speech, denied that they had any could kill the deer.
Sir William Saintclair, having two red fellow hounds named Help and Hold, says, not thinking that any should charge his words, that he would wager his head that they should kill the deer before ever she came over the marche burn; but the words no sooner evanished in the air, but it was declared to the king, who taking indignation that his hounds should be speediest, would have him abide at his word, and laid against his head all Pentland Hills and Pentland Moor, with the Forest, and immediately he caused make proclamation that all should bind up their hounds, and be quiet, least they should affray the deer, except a few horsemen with ratches to search her forth.
Sir William Saintclair, greatly astonished at that, went with his hounds to the best hounding part he could find, and, according to the custom of that time, he prayed to Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, and Saint Katherine, as mediators, to save him from danger.
His prayer was no sooner ended, but the deer, by clamour of the people being raised, came off the back hills to that part where he was, who hunting his hound called Hold first, then Help, and followed speedily himself, being mounted upon a gallant steed, till he Saw the hind pass to the middle of the burn, whereat he fell on his face, beseeching Christ to have mercy on him, but the hound called Hold came to the deer, and made her stay in the burn, and then Help came and made her go to the same side where Sir William was, and there slew her.
The king seeing this, came and embraced Sir William, and gave him those lands in free forestry, which contained the Kirkton, Loganhouse, Earncraig, Whitehaugh, Easter and Wester Summerhopes, Back and For Spittles, Middlethird and Skipperfields.
After this Sir William Saintclair, in remembrance of this, in the place where he made his last devotion, built the church of St.
Katherine in the Hopes, which now remains to this day.
Know, reader, that the hill on which King Robert stayed till the deer was hunted, to this day is called the King's Hill, and the place where Sir William hunted is called the Knight's field.
It is reported that Sir William Saintclair sent a priest to the grave of that holy woman Saint Katherine, in which there is a precious oil, that issues from her bones, to bring him thereof, that he might carry it to his new-built chapel.
The priest going, and returning with the oil, he became so weary that he was forced by the way to rest him at a place a mile distant from Liberton Church, where falling asleep upon a rush bush near by, lost his oil.
The news whereof coming to Sir William Saintclair, he made workmen to dig the place where the oil was spilt, and presently up sprung a fountain, which to this day has a black oil swimming upon it.
He then bethought himself of the great robbery committed about Sainte Katherine’s in the Hopes, considering that Saint Katherine would not permit the balm of her bones to be brought to such a profane place, least they who came to worship there should, without all religious reverence, be rigorously robbed.
[From Hay's Genealogie or The History of the Saint-Clairs]
Sir William was slain by the Moors in Spain while escorting the Heart of Bruce to the Holy Land in 1330.
The effigy on his tombstone on the floor of Roslin Chapel depicts him standing upon the dead stag, in the attitude of adoration and gratitude.
The figures of his two hounds, Help and Hold, are near the top of the stone at either side of the knight's head.
Sir William erected a chapel at Pentland endowed with ground in the neighborhood; the Reformation levelled this chapel to the ground, but the churchyard is still in good repair, and there are two stones lying flat upon the ground, the crusading cross and sword on each of them, with the inscription neatly obliterated, which, in all probability, are connected with the knight and his history.
A stone of the identical pattern was lately (1848) found at Roslin, with "Sir William St.Clair" upon it, but no date or other inscription.
The knight, likewise erected upon the same estate another monastery, dedicated to St.
Katherine, the tutelary saint of the family, which was also demolished at the Reformation.
Lady St.Clair, the heiress of Orkney, built and endowed near the Meadows, at Edinburgh, on the same Pentland estate, a splendid monastery for Dominican nuns, and dedicated to St.Katherine of Sienna.
At the Reformation, too, the magistrates of Edinburgh seized upon the revenues of this convent, and the poor gentlewomen who had been educated as nuns, and spent their lives in devotion with in its sacred walls, were turned out upon the wide world; nor would the magistrates, until compelled by Queen Mary, allow the nuns a subsistence out of the funds with which Lady St.Clair had endowed the convent.
Early in the present century the chapel built upon the spot where the stag was killed was in fair preservation; but stone enclosures being in progress of erection on the farm on which it stood, the farmer, with a feeling worthy only of a Gothic age took its stones to build the dykes.
Beneath the altar the workmen came upon an urn.
The barbarians, impatient to see what it contained, broke it to shivers, and, to their joy, it was found to contain gold and silver coin, no doubt deposited by the heroic huntsman when laying the foundation of the chapel.
This quasi-sacrilegious act was followed by a visitation termed by the pious as THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN, for the labourers employed to pull down the chapel and who broke the urn, being employed a few days after in a stone quarry, a mass of earth fell upon them, killing all but one man, who was made lame for life, and wandered in poverty as a living monument of sacrilegious profanity.
[Royal Hunt of Roslin (Jackson)]
And again, by a curious coincidence, when the proprietor of the place whereon was situated the Dominincan nunnery founded by Lady St.Clair employed masons to pull down the sacred walls of that chapel, the scaffolding gave way and the tradesmen were killed.
This being viewed as a judgment of heaven for demolishing the house of God, no entreaties nor bribes have been able to prevail upon tradesmen to accomplish its entire demolition).
[Arnot's Edinburgh]
Back to Fiona's Finding Service
Back to Index
| Previous page
| Next page
e-mail to:fnsnclr@gmail.com