I was out of the reach of mails, as well as of books; and so August had passed into September ere an answer could be penned to the above queries. “The hall,” as I wrote in reply, “was undoubtedly the great banquet-hall of the Castle, where, when the king resided there, he occupied the daïs, along with the nobles in attendance, while inferior guests and retainers sat at the table below. But such halls were available for any large assembly; and in truth Scotland had no regular Parliament House till the reign of Charles I. Old Parliaments for the most part followed the Court, and found a place for meeting as they best could--in the hall of some great abbey or royal castle; or failing either, in a church or town hall. When, for example, Philip IV. of France quarrelled with the Pope in 1302, the only place of meeting that Paris could furnish for the States General was the church of Notre Dame. When the English Court was at Westminster, the Parliament turned St. Stephen’s Chapel to like account; and the Blackfriars’ Monastery at Perth, in all probability, afforded the usual place of meeting for the Scottish Parliament, till the assassination of James I. in 1437 led to the transference of the Court to Edinburgh, with a view doubtless to safe royal residence within the Castle. Only one Parliament, the thirteenth of his reign, met at Edinburgh, in what hall is not specified. But, immediately after the death of the poet-king, the first Parliament of the new reign assembled there; and the record for once leaves no doubt. It runs thus: ‘Quo die comparentibus tribus regni statibus apud Edinburgh, omnes comites, nobiles, et barones, ac liberi-tenentes dicti regni, venientes ad Castrum de Edinburgh.’ From that memorable date may possibly have originated the tradition which survived when, in the middle of last century, Maitland described the hall as ‘a large ancient edifice, formerly the Parliament House, now converted into a barrack.’ As to the Tolbooth, the one we know of was only erected in the reign of James V., and while it was building the council met in the Holy Blood aisle of St. Giles’s Church.”