For such a purpose no example can suit us better as illustrating the secular and civil uses to which these structures were put than the Market Cross, or "Mercat Croce," of the northern capital. This venerable erection might indeed be truly named, borrowing an American expression, the "hub" of Scotland, round which for centuries has revolved the history, not of Edinburgh only, but of the whole kingdom. It seems not improbable that the original of this cross belonged to the class of well-crosses to be referred to hereafter, and may have been placed there by the earliest teachers of the faith in the district, an old well existing not far from the present site under the name of the cross-well. But no certain allusion to a cross standing here is found before the year 1436, when we read of the assassins of King James I. of Scotland meeting their punishment "mounted on a pillar in the Market Place in Edinburgh." Nearly three hundred years before this, however (in 1175), William the Lion ordered that "all merchandisis salbe presentit at the mercat and mercat croce of burghis," which may well be taken to imply that the first burgh in the kingdom was not at that time without its "croce." Our next reference is in a Charter of S. Giles' Church, dated 1447, in which occur the words "ex parte occidentali fori et crucis dicti burgi," and its use as a Market centre is clearly defined in a letter from James III. to his citizens, written in October 1477, in which he orders "all pietricks, pluvaris, capones, conyngs, checkins, and all other wyld foulis and tame to be usit and sald about the Market Croce and in na other place."