25 is the Town Wall. _w_ indicates the University, including Hamilton House
_y_ indicates a rectangular ruin, Darnley’s house (?)]
All these facts prove that the old wall which enclosed Kirk o’ Field and the Black Friars on the south had fallen into disrepair, and that new walls had for some time before the murder been in course of building. Now, in the map of 1647, we find a very neat and regular wall, to the south of the site that had been occupied by Kirk o’ Field. Whereas, in Darnley’s time, there had been a gate called Kirk o’ Field Port to the left, or west, of the Kirk o’ Field, by 1647 there was no such name, but, instead, Potter Row Port, to the left, or west, of the University buildings; by 1647 these included Hamilton House, and the ground covered by Kirk o’ Field. This wall, extant in 1647, I take to be ‘the new wall,’ passing lineally ‘to the wall of the church yard’ of Kirk o’ Field. It supplied the place of the wall which, in the chart of 1567 (p. 130), ran south and north past the gable of Kirk o’ Field.
Thus Kirk o’ Field, in February, 1567, had, to the south of it, an old decayed town wall, much fallen down, and was thus _within_ that town wall. But ‘it is traditionally said,’ writes the editor of Keith, Mr. Parker Lawson, in 1845, ‘that the house of the Provost of Kirk o’ Field’ (in which house, or the one next to it, Darnley was blown up) ‘stood as near as possible _without_ the then city walls.’[125] Scott follows this opinion in ‘The Abbot.’ Yet certainly Kirk o’ Field was not without, but within, the ruinous town wall mentioned in the Burgh Records of May 7, 1567. How are we to understand this discrepancy?
The accompanying chart, drawn from a coloured design sent to the English Government in February, 1567, ought to be _reversed_, as in a mirror. So regarded, we are facing Kirk o’ Field, and are looking from south to north. At our left hand, or westward, is the gate or port in the town wall, called ‘the Kirk o’ Field Port.’ If we pass through it, if the chart be right we are in Potter Row. Just from the Port of Kirk o’ Field, the town wall runs due north, for a few yards: then runs due east, enclosing the church yard of Kirk o’ Field, on the north, and the church itself, shown in ruins, the church, as usual, running from east to west. After running west to east for some fifty yards, the town wall, battlemented and loopholed, turns at a right angle, and runs due south to north, being thus continued till it reaches the northern limit of the plan. Now this wall, here running due south to north, is not the ‘wall of the town decayed and fallen down on the south side of the Provost of Kirk o’ Field’s lodgings,’ as described in the Burgh Records of May 7, 1567. This wall, on the other hand, leaves the collegiate quadrangle of Kirk o’ Field inside it, on the _east_, and the ruined gable of Darnley’s house, a gable running from east to west, abuts on this wall, having a door through the wall into the Thieves’ Row. It is true that one of Darnley’s servants, Nelson, who escaped from the explosion, declared that the gallery of Darnley’s house, and the gable which had a window ‘through the town wall,’ ran _south_.