Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/65

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Organ Builders.
53

thority, which he could not have done otherwise consistently with the actions and religious establishment of his native country. This was ill endured by the common people of Edinburgh, who considered it as staining and polluting the house of religion by the dregs of popery. The more prudent, indeed, judged it but reasonable that the King should enjoy his own form of worship in his own chapel; but then followed a rumour, that the religious vestments and altars were to be forcibly introduced into all the churches, and the purity of religion, so long established in Scotland, for ever defiled. And it required the utmost efforts of the magistrates to restrain the inflamed passions of the common people."[1]

The organ introduced into the Chapel Royal of Edinburgh by James VI must have been a magnificent instrument. I have fortunately met with a very curious notice of it. John Chamberlain, writing

  1. Johnston's "Historium Rernm Britannicorum, ad annum 1617."