Maxwell Official Guide to Holyroodhouse - The Grian Press

38
PALACE AND ABBEY CHURCH
Visitors are admitted to the Chapel Royal from the
north-east angle of the Palace quadrangle. On the left
of this entry and within the church are two carved slabs,
one bearing the arms of the Duke of Hamilton, Hereditary
Keeper of the Palace, and therefore not earlier than 1646 ;
the other a far older and more interesting piece of sculpture,
being one of the stone panels removed from the exterior
of James V.'s tower by order of the Parliamentary Com-
missioners in 1650. It bears the royal arms of Scotland,
supported by a unicorn, which also carries the banner of
St Andrew. The ground of the panel is decorated with
thistles, finely designed, with the initials I. R. in base.
Above these stones a massive piece of oak carving, no
doubt originally painted and gilt,
is fixed to the wall,
much defaced. Formerly it was placed on the exterior
over the west doorway, and bore the arms of Charles I.
surrounded by the Garter.
In this south-west angle of the church may be seen a
fragment of the vanished tower, with a doorway. Passing
in front of the west doorway, and looking east, the visitor
sees before him the nave of the Abbey Church as far as
the crossing, the walls having been diminished in height
by the fall of the roof and destruction of the clerestory
in 1768. Of the crossing itself, only the two western
piers remain, the arch between them being filled with a
large window, and the place below the window built up
with the materials of the choir and transepts when these
were pulled down after 1569. If, as is probable, there
was a tower or spire over the crossing, it had been removed
before the sketch made in 1543 (fig. 12, p. no).
It may have been taken down in the course of Abbot
Crawfurd's reconstruction c. 1460. This window was
blown in by a gale in 1795 and not repaired till 1816,