Moray House & St John's Cross: A Balcony of Plots
Why is it significant?
Stop under the stone balcony jutting out over the Canongate from Moray House, with its tall gateway topped by stone pyramids. Nearby, close to the corner of St John Street, is the site of the old St John's Cross. Two very different royal moments happened within a few steps of where you are standing.
Key Facts
| Place | Moray House & St John's Cross: A Balcony of Plots |
|---|---|
| Address | Canongate & St John Street, Edinburgh EH8, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95060, -3.18080 |
| Part of Walk | Crowns, Kirks and Sanctuary: Edinburgh's Canongate and the Palace of Holyroodhouse |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop under the stone balcony jutting out over the Canongate from Moray House, with its tall gateway topped by stone pyramids. Nearby, close to the corner of St John Street, is the site of the old St John's Cross. Two very different royal moments happened within a few steps of where you are standing.
The first is a happy one. In 1633 Charles I, arriving for his Scottish coronation, was greeted here by the magistrates, and tradition says that at the cross he knighted the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Alexander Clerk. Bells, banners, speeches, a king in his finery, and not the slightest hint of what was coming for him.
The second moment is darker. Moray House was built around 1625 for the Dowager Countess of Home and later passed to the Earls of Moray. In May 1650 the Marquis of Montrose, the king's most brilliant general, was carried up the Canongate on a cart to be hanged. On this balcony stood a wedding party celebrating the marriage of the Earl of Moray's daughter to the son of Montrose's great enemy, the Marquis of Argyll. The story goes that they jeered as he passed, and someone spat.
Two years earlier, in 1648, Oliver Cromwell had lodged in this very house, and it is said he discussed the fate of Charles I here with Argyll. Then in 1707, according to a persistent legend, commissioners of the Treaty of Union met in a summerhouse in the garden behind to sign their papers away from the angry crowds, and fled to a cellar when they were discovered.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century the house has trained teachers, and it now belongs to the University of Edinburgh. Generations of Scottish schoolteachers learned their craft in a house of balconies and plots. Keep climbing the Canongate to the crossroads at the top, where the World's End pub stands on the corner, and look down at the road.