OS1/14/35/78

Continued entries/extra info

[Page] 78

[Church of the Blessed Virgin - continued from page 79]
on the 28th. of June 1633 appointing where the tenants of church lands were to meet to pay their rents to their superiors
which the "patron and person (parson) of the Kirk of Dundee dissolved from the abbacie of Lundores" were directed
to convene their tenants for that purpose at Dundee.
At the time this venerable pile was erected the town extended no further westward than to the neighbourhood
of the top of the Seagate and hence for many ages the designation of the church was the "Kirk in the Fields"
In some dispositions of property in the Nethergate which we have seen dated so low as the beginning of the 17th
century to which the churchyard was a boundary the church was so called by that name.
The dimensions of the original edifice when entire were - length from east to west 250 feet exclusive of the tower which within
walls at the base is 24 feet square; breadth from north to south being the length of the transept or cross part of the
building 174 feet Having been built in the manner of a cathedral the church was necessarily into several
parts such as the nave the chancel north and south transepts and the tower.
The first incident of importance that befel this monument of the piety of the Earl of Huntingdon was its de-
-struction by Edward I of England already from the universal ruin that overspread the the Kingdom during the
minority of David II. who succeeded in 1329 it is evident that a long period of prosperity would be necessary
to enable the people at large to pay attention to the reedification of their religious buildings. The people
were plundered to nakedness, the public finances ruined almost beyond recovery and every class steeped in
poverty to the lips but in the year 1375 the national finances were so improved that 100,000 marks sterling
a vast sum at that time, were paid for the ransom of David II. from Captivity in England. As a con-
siderable portion of the ransom was paid by the magistrates and citizens of Dundee it is plain that
the general prosperity of the town must have greatly increased and it is therefore to this era that the
reedification of the church ought perhaps to be referred. &c, &c,
Thomson's Hist. [History] of Dundee pp. [pages] 281, 282, 283