In 1650, as troops of Oliver Cromwell approached Edinburgh, all able-bodied men of the town were ordered to assemble in the kirkyard. Cromwell took the city after the defeat of the Covenanters at Dunbar and, between 1650 and 1653, Cromwell's troops occupied the church as a cavalry barracks and caused significant damage. Cromwell himself may have preached in Greyfriars. In 1656, the church was divided by a partition wall in anticipation of the creation of two new parishes in Edinburgh; this never happened and the partition was removed in 1662.