An Old Kirk Chronicle Author:Peter Hately Waddell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: volumes of these Records were burned with the schoolmaster's house last century, and the volumes which remain only begin in 1691. But the Records of Tyninghame a... more »re full of references to all that happens at Whitekirk. There are also other short historical notes, which can be gleaned from different sources, to fill up our account of it. Thus from Hill Burton's 'History' we learn that about 1355 'certain English sailors invaded the church at Whitekirk, where was a shrine of the Virgin endowed with costly gems. One man snatched a ring from the Virgin's image so rudely as to mutilate the finger it belonged to, when forthwith a crucifix fell from above and dashed his brains out. It was recorded that a ship laden with the spoil of this and other sacred places was attacked by a vehement tempest, and foundered off Tynemouth. . . It was probably on account of the particular form in which this shrine displayed its miraculous powers that the celebrated Eneas Sylvius, Pope Pius II., thought it would be a suitable recipient for his thankfulness on the occasion of safely landing in Scotland, after a stormy and perilous voyage. He made a pilgrimage accordingly, from which he frankly admits that he had anything but benefit in the flesh, whatever else he gained. In fact, the walking ten miles thither [from Dunbar] and ten miles back barefooted on the frozen ground seems to have given him a chronic rheumatism, which held by him to the end of his days, and even while he sat in St Peter's chair.' This was about 1435. Not long after, the widow of KingJames I. (on a mission to whom Eneas Sylvius had come) proposed a pilgrimage to Whitekirk, as a ruse to escape with her boy from the power of Chancellor Crichton. In Covenanting times it had many relations with the Bass prisoners; and on the hill behind th...« less