Notices of Chatton, by Messrs. Procter and Hardy. 65 



hornets with most vindictive stings. The latest inroad of 

 the Scots was in 1349, but there had been stealing incur- 

 sions, during an interval of truce, in previous years. In 

 1352, out of twenty-seven bondagia at Chatton, eleven lay 

 waste and uncultivated ; and out of thirteen cottages, eight 

 were tenantless. The record accounts for this, and the 

 complaint is re-echoed from nearly all the other villages, 

 from the want of tenants, of the destitution of the country. 

 In 1349, a great plague, from which no quarter of the known 

 world was exempt, cutting off, it is said, one third of the 

 human race, had reached the Borders, and at length forced 

 the Scots, who had mocked at it as " the vile death of the 

 Englishmen," to suspend their animosity and succumb to the 

 general calamity. According to Fordun, it was chiefly the 

 middle and lower classes who became its victims*. War 

 could not so utterly have swept off the inhabitants, without 

 leaving heirs ; so that these were probably plague-stricken 

 tenements which were thus depopulated. Even in 1368, 

 several still lay unoccupied, as if a curse rested on them. 

 " Solebant jacere vasta," says the record. War and the 

 plague combined had been followed by a dearth. Reckon- 

 ing fifty holdings, bond and free, and there must have been 

 more, with four individuals in each household, there were 

 at least two hundred inhabitants in the township ; of whom 

 nineteen families, or seventy-six persons, had either perished 

 or been scattered abroad. Each bondagium in 1352 com- 

 prised a dwelling house and appurtenances, with twenty- 

 four acres in land and meadow, rented at 13s. 4d. per annum, 

 and each cottage paid 2s. The wild animals in the park 

 were either so diminished or destroyed that its herbage was 

 let at 50s. As already hinted, the " renowned chapel " of 

 Chatton is a misnomer, Mr. Tate having misread the 

 passage, which is " cuid' capell' celebrant' apud Chatton,'" 

 i.e., to a chaplain ministering at Chatton ; there being no 

 allusion to the chapel itself. 



Chatton Feast is held on the first Sunday in September ; 

 the Monday following being devoted to games. From 

 changes in the calendar it has probably been diverted from 

 the 14th September, or Holyrood-day, which would be the 

 feast of the dedication of the Church. — J. H.] 



* Forduni " Scotichronicon " lib. xiv., c. 7. Stowe's " Annales,'* by 

 Howes, pp. 245, 246. Ridpatb's " Border History," p. 340. 



