St Andrews

“ In St Andrews the reformer was sure to be free from personal danger, and on the whole to have the sympathy of the citizens; though it was not to be supposed that—in the city and university where the late Archbishop Hamilton had been long supreme, and had recently been claiming to exercise the authority of Chancellor of the University, and new founder of St Mary's College, [226] and where he had left behind several relations and dependents more compliant with the new order of things than himself—there were not to be found in this crisis several in [Pg 189] fluential His preaching in St Andrews. ”

“ To Bute, with his almost passionate veneration for the ancient university, which for centuries had been the chief home of religion and learning in Scotland, it was intolerable to think of St. Andrews being deposed from its pride of place and sinking into a decaying village, a mere resort of sea-bathers and golfers. ”

“ Nearer the eye, showing half against the slope of the coast, and half against the water, rose St. Andrews on its cliff, the fine dark tower of the college church poised over the little city, the jagged ruins of the castle marking the outline, the cathedral rising majestically in naked pathos; and old St. Rule, homely and weather-beaten, oldest venerable pilgrim of all, standing strong and steady, at watch upon the younger centuries.”
From the flattest part of Fife, let us turn to its inland Highland side. ”

“ Andrews in the following year, and embraced the Reformation principles, of which he became a champion on the Continent, in England, and finally and especially in Scotland. He joined the reforming party in St. Andrews in 1547, and was, much against his will, elected their minister. The next year he was made prisoner, sent to France, and condemned to the galleys, where he remained for nearly two years. For the next five years he was in England, chiefly at Newcastle and Berwick, where he was zealously engaged in propagating and defending the reformed doctrines. ”

“ But whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a college alienated, and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.
St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or sympathy. Events long past are barely known ”

“ In the same year King David granted a charter to the prior and canons of St. Andrews, in which he provided that they shall receive the Keledei of Kilrimont into the canonry, with all their possessions and revenues, if they were willing to become canons-regular; but, if they refused, those who are now alive are to retain the property during their lives, and, after their death, as many canons-regular are to be instituted in the church of St. Andrews as there are now Keledei, and all their possessions are to be appropriated to the use of the canons. ”

“ Just guess my surprise and astonishment when I found they were Scottish views—one of Edinburgh, one of Crail Church, and three of St Andrews, including the old College and Chapel, the Castle, and St Leonards College, with date 1676. Here was another most curious thing I determined to ask about before I left. However, I touched nothing in the room, as I had promised my host, and besides—you will laugh—I had no wish to be stricken with the “Brown Witch’s” promised curse of blindness and ultimate death to any intruder who touched her things. ”

“ They generally came to St Andrews for the winter, partly to get away from the cold of their northern home, and partly because they thought the history and atmosphere of St Andrews lent itself to an all-pervading presence of ghosts, spooks, and spirits. I had only been to two such shows before—one at Helensburgh and one at Cambridge—and was, and still am, very doubtful of the genuineness of spiritualism. On the day appointed I went to the M'Whiskers' house in South Street, and was shown in by a Highlander in the M'Whisker tartan. ”

“ Nothing more happened to me for several days, till one morning I awoke about two o’clock to find a youngish-looking monk seated in an armchair. ‘Fear not,’ he said, ‘Sister Elfreda, I left this earth many years ago. In life my name was Walter Desmond, but when I became a monk at St Anthony I was known as Brother Stanilaus. As a rule I am invisible, but can assume my bodily shape if necessary. In life I was at St Andrews, Durham, and Cambridge.’ ‘When in Cambridge,’ I asked, ‘did you know the writer of St Andrews ghost stories?’ ‘No, I only knew him by sight. ”

“ This can hardly be termed a St Andrews ghost story, but it is so remarkably strange and weird that I have been specially requested to add it to the series, and there is an allusion to St Andrews in it after all.
Several years ago we had in the Golf Club at Cambridge a Russian Prince who took up golf, and the questions of spirits, bogies, witches, banshees, death warnings, and the like, equally strongly. He was a firm disbeliever in all of them, and belonged to a Phantasmalogical Research Society to inquire into and expose all such things. ”

“ Andrews, was born there about 1730. After studying at St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, he was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel; but having failed to obtain a presentation to one of the churches in St. Andrews, he was shortly afterwards appointed professor of logic in St. Salvator's College, of which he was promoted to be principal in 1777. ”

“ She was madly in love with Castelar, the French minstrel, and after he was beheaded at St Andrews she became a nun, and it is said died of grief in her nunnery.’
“That is all, old boy,” he said, “and it is late. I think it seems right; that girl I and my sister saw must have been the spirit of Marie ⸺; and perhaps it was she who was the occupant of that haunted tower—who knows? but I shall never, never see such a divinely beautiful face on this earth again.” ”

“ Of all the tales I heard, the one that pleased and fascinated me most was the legend of the monk that looks over St Regulus's Tower on moonlight nights. I went thither every night, and constantly fancied I saw a figure peering over the edge, but was not certain. Then I got hold of a very old man, who related to me the old legend. It seems that years ago there was a good Prior of St Andrews named Robert de Montrose. He ruled well, gently, and wisely, but among the monks there was one who was always in hot water, and whom Prior Robert had often to haul over the coals. ”

“ Andrews, apprehended that blessed martyr of Christ Jesus, Walter Myln; a man of decrepit age, whom most cruelly and most unjustly he put to death by fire in St. Andrews, the twenty-eighth day of April, the year of God 1558. This did highly offend the hearts of all godly, and immediately after his death a new fervency arose amongst the whole people; yea, even in the town of St. Andrews, the people began plainly to damn such unjust cruelty. ”

“ Boyd at St. Andrews was probably better known beyond Scotland than any other presbyterian divine of his day. He had numerous friends among the leaders of the English clergy and eminent men of letters, and, popular as his writings were at home, they were even more widely read in America. Soon after settling in St. Andrews he began to urge the question of an improved ritual in the services of the national church, and in 18G6, on the initiative of his presbytery, a committee was appointed by the general assembly to prepare a collection of hymns. ”

“ He loved Lausdree, and during sleep he came and paid us that visit. Queer, isn’t it? Ten days after, he died. He wanted to see the old castle before he died, and his force of will power brought his [51] double self, or astral body, to visit us. It is not so uncommon as people think.
“Numbers of people are seen in two places at once far apart. Look at Archbishop Sharpe of St Andrews. He was in Edinburgh, at Holyrood I think, and sent his servant over post haste to St Andrews to bring back some papers he had forgotten there. ”

“ That great pontiff, who never forgot that the head of the Church was a temporal prince, Leo X., had just ascended the throne, and found that it would be convenient to have this archbishopric of Bourges for his nephew, Cardinal Abo. By good luck the see of St Andrews, the primacy of Scotland, was then vacant, and was given as an equivalent for the French dignity. Such a promotion was a symbolically appropriate reward for the services of Forman; his predecessor fell at Flodden, and thus, in his services to the King of France, he had made a vacancy for himself. ”

“ 'As all who come into the country must obey the King, so all who come into an university must be of the Church.'
And here I must do Dr Johnson the justice to contradict a very absurd and ill-natured story, as to what passed at St Andrews. ”

“ And so, in the parish kirk of St. Andrews, upon the day appointed, appeared the said Friar, and had amongst his auditors Master John Major, Master George Lockhart, the Abbot of Cambuskenneth, and Master Patrick Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews, with all the Doctors and Masters of the Universities. The theme of his sermon was, "Truth is the strongest of all things." ”

“ The first university in Scotland was that of St Andrews, founded in 1411 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of that see, and St Andrews. modelled chiefly on the constitution of the university of Paris. It acquired all its three colleges—St Salvator's, St Leonard's and St Mary's—before the Reformation—the first having been founded in 1456 by Bishop James Kennedy; the second in 1512 by the youthful Archbishop Alexander Stuart (natural son of James IV.) , and John Hepburn, the prior of the monastery of St Andrews ”

“ It seemed all his life—he was 62—he had been gasping like a fish on a river's bank to get into a really well-haunted house, but had utterly failed till he took the post of head butler at Lausdree Castle, which he informed me was but a short distance from St Andrews. He gave me a most tremendous description of the old castle, and from his account it seemed to be the asylum and gathering place of all the bogies in Britain and elsewhere. ”

“ This was shouted out to me very loudly by a cheery golfing “Johnny,” as I entered the merry smoking-room of the old ’Varsity Golf Club at Coldham Common, Cambridge, some years ago. “Draw in your armchair, light a cigar or a pipe, and tell us all [many celebrated actors were present] some of those wonderful bogie stories about dear St Andrews. It is the bogie time of the year, and you must remember I played the ‘Bogie Man’ for you in one of your big burlesques at St Andrews and Cupar some years ago, so fire away with the bogies, please, and be quick.” ”

“ Andrews, born 5 Aug. 1635, was eldest son of James Martine (1615–1684) , minister successively of Cults (1639) , Auchtermuchty (1641) , and Ballingry (1669) , all in Fifeshire. His mother—his father's first wife—was Janet Robinson, who died 13 Sept. 1644 (Hew Scott, Fasti, pt. iv. 52) . His grandfather was Dr. George Martine, principal of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews. George became commissary clerk of St. Andrews in August 1666, and held that office till August 1690, when he was deprived ‘for not taking the assurance to King William and Queen Mary’ (Macfarlane) . ”

“ There were other Wisharts in Scotland. Yea, as Dr Laing has shown, another George Wishart in Dundee, who was a zealous friend of the English alliance—not only after the conspirators got possession of St Andrews castle, but from the earlier date when the monasteries in Dundee were destroyed and sacked. [71] There was probably another about St Andrews who, while the martyr was yet a boy, was called in to attest a charter by the notorious friar Campbell in 1526. ”

“ Andrews, but for its Town Council and its School Board, is a quiet place; and the University, except during the progress of a Rectorial Election, is peaceable and well-conducted. I hope these verses may so far reflect St. Andrews life as to be found pleasant, if not over exciting. ”

“ There is no trace of such partial independence as was experienced at St Andrews itself, possibly because the bishop’s grant was backed up by a royal charter. In the same fashion the Culdees of Monymusk, originally perhaps a colony from St Andrews, became Canons Regular of the Augustinian order early in the 13th century, and those of Abernethy in 1273. At Brechin, famous like Abernethy for its round tower, the Culdee prior and his monks helped to form the chapter of the diocese founded by David I. in 1145, though the name persisted for a generation or two. ”

“ She told me a long tale of the Rainham Ghost in Norfolk, known as “The Brown Lady of Rainham,” whom her father and Captain Marryat both saw, and so on.
At last we got near the subject I wished information on.
“In my young days,” she said, “St Andrews was quite a wee bit place with grass-grown streets, red-tiled houses, outside stairs, queer narrow wynds, not over clean, only a few lights at night—here and there, an old bowet or oil lamp hanging at street corners. Every one believed in Sharpe’s Phantom [63] Coach in those good old days.” ”

“ The time came, towards the end of his Arts curriculum at St Andrews, when "the young man's fancy lightly turned to thoughts of love." If he had been privileged to mix in cultured family life, his fancy might have settled on a suitable object. But in St Andrews, where the distinctions of caste are strongly defined, the students are unfortunately placed. They are regarded as being beneath the upper or professional class; and they consider themselves as above the under or trading class. ”