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Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097825
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097825
74. Franciscan Friary.
The Order of Friars Minor, the “Grey Friars”, had their church and convent on the sloping ground that occupies the angle formed by the Grassmarket and Candlemaker Row. The community came to Edinburgh in 1447, James Douglas of Cassilis taking a leading part in the arrangements for their reception (1). Permission to settle was granted to the Order by the Provost of the Church of St. Giles; he likewise allowed the Friars to make use of the neighbouring Chapel of St. John, which had belonged until 1437 to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (2). Neither drawing nor description of the structure has survived, but it was evidently a place of some pretensions as the first Warden, John Gormok, considered it altogether too sumptuous for the Order's use (3).
The Friars occupied themselves largely with medical missionary work among the sick poor; but they also distinguished themselves by the vigour of their opposition to the new doctrines. Like the Dominicans, they were attacked by the mob in 1559 and their house was eventually destroyed. For the parish church that subsequently arose on their land see [RCAHMS 1951] No. 7.
RCAHMS 1951
(1) Annales Minorum seu Trium Ordinum a Sancto Francisco Institutorum, ed. 1731, xi, p. 321, no. 89, and Reg. Mag. Sig., 1479, no. 1434. (2) Reg. Cart. St. Egid., pp. 111-2. (3) Annales Minorum, etc., loc. cit.
