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t in Flanders.[270] About 1500 several of the guilds had chapels assigned to them, and for these they contributed to the church funds. Many famous Scotsmen were buried within St. Giles, and amongst them were the Napiers of Merchiston, although it is doubtful whether Baron Napier rests there or not.[271] The Regent Murray, assassinated at Linlithgow in 1569, was buried in the south aisle; his monument was destroyed, but the brass plate, with the inscription written in his honour by George Buchanan, was rescued, and is inserted in a new monument erected in the Murray Aisle. The scattered members of the body of the great Montrose were collected and buried in the Chapman Aisle, in the south part of St. Giles, in 1661, but all trace of his remains has now been lost, and no monument until recently indicated his grave. The last day on which mass was said in St. Giles was probably the 31st of March 1560;[272] the disturbances connected with the Reformation broke out in Edinburgh at an early date, and St. Giles' Church was one of the first to suffer. All things have their end. Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men, Must have like death that we have. The images were stolen from the church; that of St. Giles was carried off by the mob, drowned in the North Loch, and then burned; his arm bone, so precious before, is supposed to have been thrown into the adjacent churchyard; the church was pillaged and the altars and images cast down; the valuables were taken by the authorities and sold, while the proceeds were spent in the repairs of the church. "Irreverence," writes Dr. Lees, "had long been common. It was not to be expected that with the change of religion would come any additional reverence for the things and places which the old religion had proclaimed sacred. We read without much surprise, therefore, of weavers being allowed to set up their looms and exercise their craft 'in ane volt prepared for them in the rufe of Sanct Gellis Kirk,' of the vestry of the church being turned into an office for the town clerk.... It is almost inconceivable that old associations should so thoroughly and quickly have died out."[273] The church suffered from the over-zeal of the early reformers and also from the effects of civil contention when Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange and Queen Mary's adherents retained possession of the castle. Kirkaldy took forcible possession
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