Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 4

EELSO
diadems ; and, solemnly placing the insignia of his
office on the high altar, passed into retirement. Edward
I. of England, having seized all ecclesiastical property
in Scotland, received in 1296 the submission of the
Abbot of Kelso, and gave him letters ordering full resti-
tution. In consequence of a treaty between Robert
Bruce and Edward III., Eelso Abbey shared in 1328
mutual restitutions with the English monasteries of pro-
perty which had changed owners during the inter-
national wars. In 1420 the abbot, having his right of
superiority over all other abbots of Scotland, contested
by the Abbot of St Andrews, by formal adjudication of
the King was compelled to resign it, on the ground of
the abbey of St Andrews being the first established in
the kingdom. In 1493 Abbot Robert was appointed
by parliament one of the auditors of causes and com-
plaints. On the night after the battle of Flodden
(1513) an emissary of Lord Hume expelled the abbot, and
took possession of the abbey. In 1517 and 1521 Abbot
Thomas was a plenipotentiary to the Court of England ;
and in 1526 he was commissioned to exchange with
Henryor his commissioners ratifications of thepeaceof the
previous year. On 20 June 1523 the English demolished
the vaults of the abbey and its chapel or church of St
Mary, fired all the cells and dormitories, and unroofed
every part of the edifice. Other inroads of the national
foe preventing immediate repair or restoration, the
abbej 7 , for a time, crumbled towards total decay ; and
the monks, reduced to comparative poverty, skulked
among the neighbouring villages. From 1536 till his
death in 1558, James Stuart, the natural son of James
V., nominally filled the office of abbot, and was the
last who bore the title. The abbeys of Melrose, Holy-
rood; St Andrews, and Coldingham were, at the same
date as the abbey of Kelso, bestowed on James's illegiti-
mate offspring; and, jointly w 7 ith it, they brought the
royal family an amount of revenue little inferior to that
yielded by all the possessions and resources of the Crown.
In 1542, under the Duke of Norfolk, and again in 1545,
under the Earl of Hertford, the English renewed their
spoliations on the abbey, and almost entirely destroyed
it by fire. On the latter occasion, it was resolutely de-
fended by 12 monks and 90 other Scotsmen, but, cannon
being brought up, a breach was opened, apparently in
the conventual buildings. 'The assault was given to
the Spaniards, but, when they rushed in, they found
the place cleared. The nimble garrison had run to the
strong square tower of the church, and there again they
held out. Night came before they could be dislodged
from this their last citadel, so the besiegers had "to
leave the assault till the morning, setting a good watch
all night about the house, which was not so well kept
but that a dozen of the Scots, in the darkness of the
night, escaped by ropes out at back windows and
corners, with no little danger of their lives. When
the day came, and the steeple eftsoons assaulted,
it was immediately won, and as many Scots slain as
were within"' (Hill Burton's Hist. Scotl., iii. 242, ed.
1876). In 1560 the remnant of the brotherhood was
expelled, and the abbey wrecked, by Reformers. Its
vast possessions, becoming now Crown property, were
in 1594 distributed among the favourites of James VI.,
who, by a charter of 1607, erected the abbacy into the
lordship and barony of Halidean, comprising the town
and lands of Kelso. Rudely ceiled over, with a thatched
prison above, the transept served as the parish church
from 1649 to 1771, when, part of the roof giving way
during service one Sunday, the people ran out, expecting
the fulfilment of Thomas the Rhymer's prediction that
the kirk should fall at the fullest. In 1805 the ruins
were cleared of unsightly additions ; and in 1866 they
were placed in a state of thorough repair by the late
Duke of Roxburghe.
In the 12th century Kelso was known as C'alkou or
Calchou, a name which Chalmers identified with Chalk-
heugh ('chalk height'), a precipitous bank with strata
of gypsum cropping to the surface ; but, according to
Professor Veitch, its name was Calchvynyd in the old
Cymric times. Of events not noticed under our history
346
KELSO
of the abbey and of Roxburgh, the earliest on record
occurred in 1209, when, a Papal interdict being im-
posed upon England, the Bishop of Rochester left his
see, and took refuge in Kelso. Ten years later William
de Valoines, Lord Chamberlain of Scotland, diea in the
town. In 1255 Henry III. of England and his queen,
during a visit to their son-in-law and daughter, Alex-
ander III. and his royal consort, at Roxburgh Castle,
were introduced with great pomp to Kelso and its abbey,
and entertained, with the chief nobility of both king-
doms, at a sumptuous banquet. In 1297 Edward I., at
the head of his vast army of invasion, having entered
Scotland and relieved the siege of Roxburgh, passed the
Tweed at Kelso on his way to seize Berwick. Truces,
in the years 1380 and 1391, were made at Kelso between
the Scottish and the English kings. On the death of
James II. by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Rox-
burgh Castle (1460), his infant son, James III. , being then
with his mother in the camp, was carried by the nobles,
in presence of the assembled army, to the abbey, and
there crowned and treated with royal honours. In 1487
commissioners met at Kelso to prolong a truce for the
conservation of peace along the unsettled Border terri-
tory, and to concoct measures pre lim inary to a treaty of
marriage between the eldest son of James III. and the
eldest daughter of Edward IV. The disastrous results
of the battle of Flodden, in 1513, seem — in consequence
of James IV. 's death, and of the loss of the protection
which his authority and presence had given — to have,
in some way, temporarily enthralled the town to Lord
Hume, and occasioned, as we have already seen, the
expulsion of the abbot from his monastery — the first
of a series of events which terminated in the ruin of the
pile. In 1515 the Duke of Albany, acting as regent,
visited Kelso in the course of a progress of civil pacifi-
cation, and received grave depositions respecting the
oppressive conduct of Lord Hume, the Earl of Angus,
and other barons. In 1520 Sir James Hamilton, march-
ing with 400 men from the Merse to the assistance of
Andrew Kerr, Baron of Fernieherst, in a dispute with
the Earl of Angus, was overtaken at Kelso by the Baron
of Cessford, then Warden of the Marches, and defeated
in a brief battle.
In 1522 Kelso, and the country between it and the
German Ocean, received the first lashings of the scourge
of war in the angry invasion of Scotland by the army of
Henry VIII. One portion of the Eiiglish forces having
marched into the interior from their fleet in the Forth,
and having formed a junction with another portion
which hung on the Border under Lord Dacre, the
united forces, among other devastations, destroyed one-
half of Kelso by fire, plundered the other half, and in-
flicted merciless havoc upon not a few parts of the abbey.
So irritating were their deeds, that the men of Merse
and Teviotdale came headlong on them in a mass, and
showed such inclination, accompanied with not a little
power, to make reprisals, that the devastators prudently
retreated within their own frontier. After the rupture
between James V. and Henry VIII., the Earl of Huntly,
who had been appointed guardian of the Marches, gar-
risoned Kelso and Jedburgh, and in August 1542 set out
from these towns in search of an invading force of 3000
men under Sir Robert Bowes, fell in with them at
Hadden Rig, and, after a hard contest, broke down
their power and captured their chief officers. A more
numerous army being sent northward by Henry, under
the Duke of Norfolk, and James stationing himself
with a main army of defence on Fala Moor, the Earl of
Huntly received detachments which augmented his force
to 10,000 men, and so checked the invaders along the
Marches as to preserve the open country from devasta-
tion. In spite of his strenuous efforts, Kelso and some
villages in its vicinity were entered, plundered, and
given up to the flames ; and they were eventually de-
livered from ruinous spoliation only by the foe being
forced by want of provisions and the inclemency of the
season to retreat into their own territory. When
Henry VIII. 's fury against Scotland was kindled anew
about the proposed marriage of the infant Queen Mary