Qualla: Greyfriars Kirk

Greyfriars Kirk: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Remi Mathis, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 23 July 1637, in the pulpit of Greyfriars Kirk, the minister James Fairlie attempted to read Charles I's new Service Book. The women in the congregation cursed him; he cursed them back. The next Sunday his colleague Andrew Ramsay refused to read the book at all and was deposed by royal authority. Eight months later, on 28 February 1638, gentry and nobility queued inside this same church to put their names to the National Covenant - the pledge that turned Scotland against its king. The Bishops' Wars followed. So did the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. So did everything else. A small kirk in Edinburgh started a revolution, and the building still stands.

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: Remi Mathis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Greyfriars Kirk: Friars Before the Kirk

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jockrutherford from Owen Sound, ON, CC BY-SA 2.0. Observantine Franciscan friars arrived in Edinburgh from the Low Countries around 1447, six of them, led by a man named Cornelius of Zierikzee. They settled at the corner of the Grassmarket and Candlemaker Row a few years later. They wore grey habits - hence the name Greyfriars. ...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: jockrutherford from Owen Sound, ON | CC BY-SA 2.0

Greyfriars Kirk: A Church Built on a Graveyard

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit neverbutterfly, CC BY 2.0. Mary, Queen of Scots gave the friary grounds to the town council in 1562 as a burial ground - the kirkyard of St Giles' had become impossibly overcrowded. Construction of the church itself began in 1602, paused, restarted, and finished in 1620. The first service inside its walls ...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: neverbutterfly | CC BY 2.0

Greyfriars Kirk: The Covenant and the Cavalry

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 4.0. Greyfriars' most famous moment came on 28 February 1638. Archibald Johnston of Warriston read the National Covenant from the pulpit. Then Scotland's nobility and gentry signed it - some inside the church, some out in the kirkyard, where there was more room. The Covenant rejected ...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: Sgerbic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Greyfriars Kirk: The Tower That Exploded

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1706 the town council used the west tower of Greyfriars as a gunpowder store. At about 1.45 am on Sunday 7 May 1718, it exploded. The tower came down. The west end of the church was wrecked. A contemporary record describes the blast as having rent the western gable, broken a...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: Sgerbic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Greyfriars Kirk: The Greyfriars Revolution

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W. Moir Bryce, Public domain. On 19 January 1845 a boiler flue overheated and a fire gutted Old Greyfriars and damaged New Greyfriars. Some suggested it was divine judgement on the established church for the Disruption of 1843. After reconstruction, the minister Robert Lee began what became known as the Greyf...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: W. Moir Bryce | Public domain

Greyfriars Kirk: What the Church Holds Now

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 4.0. Old and New Greyfriars united in 1929. Between 1932 and 1938 Henry F. Kerr removed the dividing wall and restored the church as one space. In 1979 the Highland, Tolbooth, St John's congregation joined, and the church kept its tradition of weekly Gaelic services - a Highland prese...

Read more: Greyfriars Kirk on Qualla

Image: Sgerbic | CC BY-SA 4.0