EDINBURGH] ST GILES 49 Parish. The South-East Quarter became, the Old Kirk Parish, and its congregation still met in the Old Kirk. For the other two Quarters separate churches were pro- vided. To the North-East Quarter was given the fine old church of the Holy Trinity, and for the South-West Quarter a new place of worship was built at the top of the Greyfriars burial-ground. In 1633, when a bishopric of Edinburgh was set up, the choir of St Giles was made to serve as its cathedral. But all that was annulled in 1637. Again in 1661 the choir was fitted up anew for cathedral functions. This lasted till 1689, when once more it was made a parish church. It had been intended to make the whole church a cathedral, but that was not carried out. In 1641 the parochial areas of Edinburgh were recast, and two new city parishes were founded. Each of these got its name from an outstanding public building in it. One was called the Tolbooth Parish, and the other the Tron Parish, from the city Tron, or Weighhouse, which stood very near the east end of St Giles, close to the Cross. From 1829 till 1833 a restoration of St Giles was carried out by the city, at a cost of nearly £21,600. Toward this Govern- ment gave a grant of £12,000. That renovation is remembered rather for what the restorers destroyed than for what they achieved. In 1870 Dr William Chambers, who had been Lord Provost of the city, began a far more real restoration. With aid from various sources, and very largely at his own expense, this was finished in 1883. But just as his great undertaking saw its end, the generous worker died. Two days after the reopening of the restored church (23rd May 1883), the funeral service of Dr Cham- bers was held in it. The renewed church can seat a congregation of 3000.] 1560 JOHN KNOX was born in or near Haddington. There are grounds for accepting Morham as his birthplace. He was the son of William Knox, a peasant cultivator of the soil. All that is known of his mother is that her name was Sinclair. It seems likely that 1513-15, and not the commonly accepted date VOL. I. 1505, was the year of his birth. He was educated at the burgh school of Haddington, and probably at the Univer- sities of Glasgow and St Andrews, in both of which another Haddingtonian, John Major, taught for a time—at the latter place for more than half a century. For twenty years of Knox's manhood there is little known of his career. He is believed to have returned to East Lothian, where he acted as a notary and as private tutor in the families of the local gentry. When he took priest's orders is unknown, but in 1540 we find him styled " Sir John Knox " (a "Pope's knight"), and in a deed of 27th March 1543 he is described in his own handwriting as "John Knox, minister of the sacred altar of the diocese of St Andrews, notary by Apostolical authority." Three years later, in 1546, he had avowed the Protestant doctrines, and was carrying a two-handed sword before George Wishart, then in peril of arrest and condemnation to the stake at the hands of Archbishop Beaton. In 1547, with two pupils, he took refuge within the Castle of St Andrews, now held by the murderers of Cardinal Beaton. And here he had his call to the ministry of the Reformed Church. The Sunday after, he preached in the parish kirk of St Andrews, denouncing the Pope, and striking straight at the root of the evils of which the papacy was the fruit. A month later the castle fell to the French, and the captured garrison were consigned to the galleys and to prisons in France. For nineteen months Knox toiled as a galley - slave, amid much suffering of body and mind. Released in Feb. 1549, he went to England, and was appointed by the Privy Council to minister to the garrison and town of Berwick-on-Tweed. In 1551 he was removed to Newcastle-on- Tyne. He acted as chaplain to Edward VI., and declined the Bishopric of Rochester as well as the vicarage of All-Hallows in London. In 1554 he was in charge of the English church at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, but went to Geneva in 1555, where he became intimate with Calvin, and ministered to the English colony who had gathered there and had been granted D