Mr. Stuart on Kelso. 265 



charters, as in the thirteenth century many of them were 

 held in demaine. On their land they raised oats barley and 

 wheat. About the year 1300 their property in Redden, one 

 of their granges, was as follows : — The grange which they 

 tilled with five ploughs, and where they had pasture for four- 

 teen score of ewes besides oxen ; half a plough-gate, which 

 was let to Richard of the Holm ; eight husband-lands and 

 one ox-gang, for each of which certain bond services were 

 performed by the tenant at stated times, namely, every week 

 in summer a journey to Berwick with one horse, which was 

 to carry three bolls of corn, and return either with two bolls 

 of salt, or one boll and a ferloch of coals, and on the next day 

 after every such journey, one day's work of whatever kind 

 might be wanted. When not required to go to Berwick, they 

 wrought two days in summer and three in autumn. To stock 

 his little farm each husbandman received two oxen and a 

 horse, three chalders of oats, six bolls of barley, and three of 

 wheat. The abbot Richard afterwards commuted these 

 services for money, when they gave back their stock and each 

 paid eighteen shillings per annum for his land. Nineteen 

 cottages, eighteen of which were let for twelvepence a year, 

 and six days' work in autumn, during which they were found 

 in food, which they were also when they assisted in washing 

 and shearing the sheep ; the nineteenth cottage paid eight- 

 eenpence a year and nine days' work. They had also two 

 brew-houses, which paid two marks a year, and a miln which 

 paid nine merks."* 



Another great source of the monastic revenues, arose from 

 the parishes granted to them by their various owners. These 

 parishes instead of enjoying the advantages of a resident 

 clergy, spending on the spot the revenues of the church, were 

 served by ill-paid vicars and chaplains of the monastery, so 

 that the working of the parochial system was thus frustrated 

 at an early period of its development. 



Among the arts practised in the monastery was that of 

 caligraphy, which was so often applied in religious houses to 

 service-books, to chronicles, charters, and the registers of 

 them, 'and we find that some of the most elegant of the 

 charters of David I. and his grandsons issued from the scrip- 

 torium of Kelso. The most remarkable of these, and as a 

 writing the most remarkable of Scotch charters, is the great 

 charter of Malcolm IV., granted to the abbey in 1159, which 



* Morton p. 114. 



