The chapel was built between 1541 and 1544 using money bequeathed by Michael MacQueen or MakQuhen (died 1537), supplemented by his widow, Jonet Rynd or Rhynd.

[3] It was designed to accommodate a chaplain and act as an almshouse for seven poor men who were to pray for the soul of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The chaplain, who remained a Roman Catholic, was replaced by a Protestant minister, but successfully sued to continue to receive his salary until his death in 1567.

The Dominican friar turned Reformer John Craig preached in the Chapel, speaking in Latin because he had been out of Scotland for so many years.

The heads and hands of martyred Covenanters were displayed in various locations in Edinburgh in 1689, and were collected at the chapel prior to burial in Greyfriars Kirk.

This Baptist church originated in 1765 when Robert Carmichael, a minister from an Old Scots Independent congregation in Candlemakers’ Hall, became convinced that baptism should be for believers only and by immersion.

In the early nineteenth century it was used as a place of worship by the Bereans, a Protestant sect following former Scottish Presbyterian minister John Barclay (1734-1798) who held to a modified form of Calvinism.

[6] Following a fund-raising campaign supported by Alex Neish, Architects Simpson and Brown undertook a major restoration programme in 1992/93.

[3] The original ceiling, no longer extant, was painted in 1725 by Alexander Boswall in 'skye colour with clouds and a sin (sic: sun) gilded in the centre'. '