§64 Mr. Stuart on Kelso. 



forests for reparation,"* and we find that on such occasions 

 the monks were at times in such distress, that they had to 

 get licence to buy provisions in England, as in 1368, when 

 the abbey is described as " collapsa et quasi adnichilata."t 

 We may form some idea of the rough life to which a border 

 abbot was exposed, when we read that on the night after the 

 battle of Flodden, Andrew Ker of Fernieherst broke into the 

 Abbey of Kelso, and having turned the abbot out of doors, 

 forcibly kept possession of it.J In the final destruction of 

 the monastery, the Scottish reformers were mostly anticipated 

 by the Earl of Hertford, whose invasion of Scotland in 1544 

 was made memorable by the merciless burnings and ravages 

 which accompanied it. In 1546, we find from Lord Eure's 

 report to Henry VIII., that he took the church of Kelso 

 which had again been garrisoned, and wherein were 31 foot- 

 men. In June of the same year, when another inroad took 

 place of the garrison of Mack, it appears that the ruins were 

 again occupied, and that sixteen men were taken who " had 

 beilditt them a strength in the old walles of the steple." || 



Nevertheless it appears that some part of the church con- 

 tinued to be used as a place of worship till after the Refoim- 

 ation,§ and the conventual buildings still afforded shelter to 

 a remnant of the monks " for in one of the tumults which 

 took place in 1560, when the monks had been expelled, the 

 church drew the attention of the excited populace, who in 

 their headlong zeal, not content with having defaced the 

 images and burned the reliques upon the steps of the high 

 altar, demolished also whatever else remained of its internal 

 furniture and ornaments, and destroyed still further the al- 

 ready ruinous fabric." § We find that in 1587 all the monks 

 were dead, and after the possessions of the abbey had passed 

 through several lay hands, they were finally conferred on Sir 

 Robert Ker of Cessford, who in 1599 was created a peer by 

 the style of Lord Roxburgh, and is the ancestor of the pre- 

 sent Duke of Roxburgh.^ 



The munificence of its founder as well as of the great 

 barons of Teviotdale and the Merse, at an early period raised 

 the abbey of Kelso to be one of the most wealthy of Scottish 

 monasteries. Their lands were numerous, and we learn much 

 of their mode of managing them, from the register of their 



* Robertson's Index to the Charters, p. 63. Edin, 1798. 



t Rotuli Scotise, vol. i., p. 924. 



i Morton's Monastic Annals of Teviotdale, p. 96. 



y lb. p. 103. § lb. p. 103. IT lb. p. 105. 



J 



