266 Mr. Stuart on Kelso. 



is still preserved at Floors. It is carefully and even hand- 

 somely vrritten ; but its chief interest is derived from an 

 illuminated initial M, which gives us a favourable idea of the 

 art of miniature painting practised in the monastery, and 

 perpetuates a pair of the earliest Scotch portraits that have 

 come down to us. There is no reason to doubt that the two 

 personages represented with the insignia of royalty in this 

 remarkable illumination are King David I., the founder and 

 great benefactor of the abbey, who had died full of years and 

 of honour six years before, and his grandson Malcolm IV. the 

 reigning sovereign, the granter of the charter, whose youth- 

 ful and beardless face contrasts with the venerable counte- 

 nance of his grandfather, and accounts for his soubriquet 

 of " the maiden," better than the refuted tradition of his 

 vow of chastity.* 



At the Reformation of religion in Scotland, when the 

 monasteries were dissolved, the revenues of Kelso, according 

 to an account taken by the government, were as follows — 



£3716 Is. 2d., Scots money. 



9 chalders of wheat. 

 106 chald. 12 bolls of bear. 



4 chald. 11 bolls of oats. 

 112 chald. 12 bolls, 3 firlots of meal. 



The abbot was mitred, his lands were erected into a regal- 

 ity, and he was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction ; a Bull 

 of Pope Lucius III. declared, that if any archbishop, bishop, 

 or other prelate should presume to promulgate sentences of 

 excommunication, suspension, or interdict at anytime against 

 any of the men of the abbey, such sentences should be of no 

 effect.t 



After having examined the ruined walls of the abbey, a 

 shoit walk up the Tweed leads to a ridge in the angle formed 

 by the junction of the Teviot with the silver waters of her 

 more important sister. On this ridge stand the fragments of 

 the great castle of Roxburgh, within whose walls many 

 events of great and national importance have been at various 

 times transacted. The remains of its shattered towers yet 

 attest its great strength, and in ancient times the town of 

 Roxburgh arose around its sheltering walls and became itself 

 a place of mercantile and political importance. At the castle 

 of Roxburgh, David I. and his successors frequently kept 



* Registrum Cartarum de Kelso. Pref. p. xlv. Edin. 1846. 

 t lb. p. 369. 



