Mercat Cross, Edinburgh

The Cross is first mentioned in a charter of 1365 which indicates that it stood on the south side of the High Street about 45 feet (14 m) from the east end of St.

[5] Five of the eight circular medallions featuring sculpted heads from the understructure of the original cross were eventually secured by Sir Walter Scott who incorporated them into the garden wall of his house at Abbotsford in the Scottish Borders.

[4] The tympanum above the wooden studded door on the east side of the Cross bears the following Latin inscription composed by William Gladstone, in incised Gothic letters:[4][7] DEO .

This ancient monument, the Cross of Edinburgh, which of old was set apart for public ceremonies, having been utterly destroyed by a misguided hand A.D. MDCCLVI, and having been avenged as well as lamented, in song alike noble and manful, by that great man Walter Scott, has now, by favour of the Magistrates of the City, been restored by William Ewart Gladstone, who claims through both his parents a purely Scottish descent.

The practice of announcing successions to the monarchy and the calling of parliamentary general elections is continued to this day by heralds of the Lord Lyon King of Arms.

Legend has it that in 1513 while the artillery was being prepared in Edinburgh before the Battle of Flodden, which resulted in a Scottish defeat, a demon called Plotcock read out the names of those who would be killed at the Mercat Cross.

According to Pitscottie, a former Provost of Edinburgh, Richard Lawson, who lived nearby, threw a coin at the Cross to appeal against this summons and survived the battle.

[11] It is also recorded that, "Upon 2d day of December, 1584, a baxter's boy [baker's apprentice] called Robert Henderson, (no doubt, by the instigation of Satan) desperately put some powder and a candle in his father's heather-stack, standing in a close opposite to the trone of Edinburgh, and burnt the same with his fathers house, which lay next adjacent, to the imminent hazard of burning the whole town: For which, being apprehended most marvellously after his escaping out of the town, he was on the next day burnt quick [alive, not strangled first] at the cross of Edinburgh, as an example".

Jean Livingstoun of Dunipace, the wife of John Kincaid, Laird of Warriston had, with the connivance of her nurse, hired Robert Weir, one of her father's servants and her reputed lover, to murder her husband, which he did by strangling him in the night.

Thanks to the intercession of her kinspeople, on 5 July 1600 Lady Warriston was granted the privilege of being beheaded by the Maiden at Girth-Cross rather than executed by one of the more usual methods for females, namely drowning or strangling before burning.

[17] Alastair MacGregor of Glen Strae, chief of the outlawed Clan Gregor was executed at the Cross along with eleven of his kinsmen in January 1604.

[21] Following occupation by the English Parliamentary Army, the proposal to incorporate Scotland into the Commonwealth was proclaimed at the Cross on 4 February 1652, followed three days later by the symbolic act of hauling down the King's Arms and ceremonially hanging them on the public gallows.

[24] Guthrie's The Causes of the Lord's Wrath and Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex, regarded by the Monarchy as dangerously seditious tracts, had been burned at the Cross by the common hangman in 1660.

[26] On 30 July 1680, David Hackston a militant Scottish Covenanter, remembered mainly for his part in the murder of Archbishop James Sharp of St. Andrews, was hanged, drawn and quartered at the Cross (although this was the standard punishment for high treason in England it was very unusual in Scotland).

[29] On 10 December 1688, a mob, having broken into the private chapel of King James VII at Holyrood Abbey and torn down the woodwork, carried it to the Cross where it was burned along with an effigy of the Pope.

[30] On 26 March 1697 Sir Godfrey McCulloch of Myreton and Cardoness was executed by beheading on the Maiden at Mercat Cross, Edinburgh for the murder of William Gordon.

[31] On 18 September 1745, the "Young Pretender" Charles Edward Stuart had his father proclaimed King James VIII of Scotland and himself Regent at the Cross.

[33] Following the Prince's defeat the following year at Culloden, the Jacobite Army colours captured in the battle were ceremoniously burned at the Cross.

Due to Scottish Gaelic national poet and Jacobite Army Captain Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's vocal attacks in verse against both Whig political ideology and the House of Hanover, copies of his 1751 collection of Gaelic poetry, the first ever secular book published in the language, were gathered up and burned at the Cross by the public hangman.

In September 2022, Dr Morrow read a proclamation stating that Charles III had become King following the death of his mother, Elizabeth II.