REPORT OF THE MEETINGS FOR 1899 55 



And mix sobriety with wine, 

 And honest mirth with thoaojhts divine. 

 Small thought was his, in after time, 

 E'er to be hitched into a rhyme. 

 The simple sire could only boast 

 That he was loyal to his cost ; 

 The banish'd race of kings revered. 

 And lost his land — but kept his beard." 



Marmion, Introduction to Canto vi. 



The members then visited the old churchyard now almost 

 hidden by a cluster of spreading yews. It lies close to the 

 mansion house, and is the only remain of the village of 

 Makerstoun, to which a statistical return of 1649 (published 

 in our Transactions of 1895, p. 350) refers, saying that 

 "the kirk stands in the midst of the town, which is the 

 greatest part of the parish." In the records of the Pres- 

 bytery of Kelso there is, under the date 5th August 1668, 

 a notice of the visitation of the parish, when the minister 

 complains that "the kirk and queir [nave and chancel] are 

 ruinous, neither watertight without, nor planted with seats 

 commodiously within." There is also a list of the heritors 

 at that date. They are Henry McDougall of Makerstoun ; 

 William McDougall, portioner thereof ; Arthur Holywill of 

 Atrick Medows ; Thomas McDougall of Stodrig; and William 

 Glaidstaines of Abbothill. Another notice, of 3rd August 

 1720, may be assumed to refer to the same building, for 

 however roughly the Pre-Reformation Churches were then 

 treated, the time for pulling them down, and replacing them 

 by the rectangular shelters of which we are now slowly 

 getting rid, had not yet come. A claim had been made 

 for seats by two heritors, Thomas Macdougall of Stodrig and 

 Walter Pearson of Charterhouse. " The Presbytery found 

 by conversing with the heritors that there was no entry to 

 the isle [probably the chancel] but by the church door, 

 that the isle was not separated from the church by any rail 

 or seat in the mouth of the isle till about five years ago, 

 and that Stodrig, as he said for his own convenience, made 

 a door in the gavel of the isle, and built a seat in the arch 

 of the isle. Stodrig protested that the isle was not to be 

 measured since it was no part of the church, but his own 



