the feudal aristocracy altogether selfish in its views, supported the patriot leaders Wallace and Bruce in their desperate struggle, and sent down that tide of native feeling which animated Burns and Scott, and which is not yet dead, however much it may be endangered by the childish follies of its quixotic champions. Whatever of thought, of enterprise, of public feeling, appears in our poor history, took rise in our burghs, and among our burgess class." 1

1 Innes, Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland, Pref., xlix.

267

CHAPTER XI.

THE BORDER ABBEYS AND CASTLES DAVID I.

It was, further, in the time of David, as Earl and King, that Scotland first became formally incorporated with the great ecclesiastical system of Europe. The great religious houses, the abbeys and monasteries in the lower reaches of the Tweed-Kelso, Jedburgh, and Melrose―arose for the first time, or they were reconstituted with a munificence and splendour unknown before. Dryburgh was founded a little later, in 1150, by Hugh de Moreville, Lord of Lauderdale, and High Constable of Scotland, who succeeded his father in 1159, and died in 1162.1

The very ruins of these houses now strike us with wonder, admiration, and awe. We can trace how they grew from the conception of the early Norman and Saxon arched structure, the type of simplicity, mass, and strength, until, with this as a basis, they effloresced at a later period in the ornate yet chastened Gothic. As we dote over the picturesque beauty of the broken details which are left to us, and try to conjure up the great

1 "Anno 1162, obiit Hugo de Moreville, fundator ecclesiæ de Drieburg."-Chronica de Mailros. But see below, 279.

unity which in each case they constituted, we cannot but feel that in those otherwise dim and barbarous early centuries, there was a sense of vastness and of regal magnificence in art which has not since then flourished as a genuine growth in our land, and that the power of imagination which could so embody itself was inspired by a deep and faithful state of the human soul, interpenetrated by the emotions of awe and grandeur, and purified by reverence and the sense of an encompassing invisible reality.

The Abbey, which was to become known as that of Kelso, and over which, shortly after its foundation, a spiritual peer presided as mitred abbot, was first set down by Earl David (1118-1124) near his castle in the forest of Selkirk my waste" of Selkirk-the name he applied to the now sweet pastoral valleys of the Ettrick and the Yarrow. He filled it with Tironensian monks. The monks did not like the situation, or policy suggested the transference of their seat to the lower and richer part of the valley, near the ancient and royal Castle of Roxburgh, and where the Teviot, now amid a scene of soft woodland beauty, mixes its waters with the Tweed. The town, now known as Kelso, then bore the name of Calchou; it had been known as Calchvynyd in the Cymric times, and had long been an attractive place of residence. There, somewhere between 1147 and 1152, David, as king, fixed finally the seat of the Tironensian monks; and the community grew to be one of the largest and richest in the kingdom. They held and cultivated numerous lands. They had under them, as was usual, various classes of rentallers-cottars (cottarii), small cultivators, and hus

In

bandmen (husbandi), who occupied a husband land, or somewhat larger acreage than the cottar. The origin of the word cottar, cote or mud dwelling, shows the humbleness of the position, at least at first. The husband land seems to have comprised two oxgangs, and each oxgang about thirteen acres. The carucate or ploughgate, so often spoken of, extended to twelve oxgangs. The Scotch plough of the day required twelve oxen.1 The abbey had also its granges or farm-houses, where a lay brother lived, and to which were attached nativi, serfs, or churlsin a word, slaves. Early in the thirteenth century, Earl Waldev of Dunbar gives over "Halden and his brother William and all their children and all their descendants" to Kelso.2 Entries of this sort are but too common. the reign of Alexander II. (1214-1249), we find that one Turkil Hog, his sons and daughters, were sold for three marks of silver by Bertram of Lesser Riston to the Prior and Convent of Coldingham. And there are other sales of the same nature by the lords of Prendergest to Coldingham. About 1280, Bernardus Fraser, along with a carucate of land in West Gordon, gave to the abbey Adam, the son of Henry del Hoga, another unfortunate Hog" nativo meo cum tota sequela sua." This may be fairly translated-"my serf, along with his whole bag and baggage," which, doubtless, grouped together worldly effects and children, even remoter descendants, and showed a very summary way of disposing of Adam, a serf, yet a man. Poor Adam, who may be credited with a human soul, may have had some stirrings in his heart

1 Innes, Liber de Calchou, Int., 37. 3 National MSS., lviii. lix.

2 Ibid., Carta 128.

+ Liber de Calchou, Carta 124.

of revolt and repulsion, which were quite too deep for the appreciation of even Bernard Fraser, his lord and master. Slavery and servitude to the abbeys were gradually extinguished, chiefly through commutation in money, and perhaps the growth of a sense of the absolute worth of manhood and the sacredness of human personality.

The Abbey of Jedburgh, at first probably a Priory, which is of the same date with that of Kelso, about 1147, was also founded or reconstructed by David I. It occupied a perilous position on the extremity of the Border-line. Its strong and massive tower, still nearly entire, though marked by blackening fire, shows that the white-stoled Premonstratentian monks there were men of arms as well as of letters; and, doubtless, they found the former most effective when the ruddy glare from "high Dunyon" told them of the Southron foe on the ridge of the Carter Fell. Jedburgh Abbey shows two magnificent Norman doorways-one on the west, the other on the south side of the nave. That on the west, the principal entrance to the building, has a depth of arch of 7 feet 6 inches, and the mouldings that rise from the capitals of the shafts are marked by rare strength and grace. The union of power and restraint is the lesson taught us by that old workmanship.

The monastery of Melrose, as we now find it, was of later date than Kelso, as its more ornate architecture might lead us to expect. David had been king for twelve years ere, in 1136, he founded the second Melrose. This was exactly five hundred years after the foundation of the first monastery at Old Melrose, by Oswald, King