Rev. John Walker on Greenlaw. 113 



Of the family of John de Striveling, who hy the name of 

 " De Lambdene," possessed the barony of Lamden, I have 

 been able to ascertain very little. Signatures of members 

 of the family occur in charters of the thirteenth and four- 

 teenth centuries which would seem to prove that they con- 

 tinued to occupy their place, for several generations, in 

 opulence and honour. They seem, like the Cockburns of 

 Langton, not to have been in alliance with the Humes in 

 the defection of that family from the feudal superior and the 

 head of their house, in the fifteenth century, and to have 

 suffered heavily in the maintenance of their honour. In the 

 sixteenth century their barony appears to have been broken 

 up, and the chief portions of it were in the hands of Lord 

 Hume and members of his house. 



The troubled state of Scotland during the Commonwealth, 

 and especially in connection with the restored rule of the 

 Stuarts, during the latter half of the seventeenth century, 

 seems to have affected this district severely. Old estates, 

 some of which have now been reunited, were broken up, 

 the old proprietors disappeared, new names came and went, 

 and until the middle of the sixteenth century, changes in 

 regard to considerable portions of the property of the parish 

 appear to have been incessant. 



Ancient Remains, &c. — Very few memorials of its 

 ancient buildings remain in the parish. The Parish Church, 

 or rather a part of its present walls, is ancient. It was given 

 by the first Earl of Dunbar to the Abbey of St. Mary, of 

 Kelso, about 1140, and seems to have been repaired or 

 mostly rebuilt, previously to 1700, about 1696. About that 

 time were built the present steeple ; and westwards from 

 it another building in extent and form resembling the 

 church, and in line with it, for accommodating the business 

 of the county and the courts of law ; the apartments of 

 the steeple from the ground to its third floor, were used as 

 the county prison. 



The prison and the courts of law have been removed to 

 separate and new buildings, erected about thirty years ago, 

 and the remains of the old county buildings completely 

 cleared away. 



About fourteen years ago, when a stove by Haden was 

 placed in the church, it was jfound, on making the drain re- 

 quired for cold air, that, as it stands at present, it has three 

 floors, and that on the lowest, about three feet under the 

 present floor, there have been interments and are still 



