Spottiswoode Society > History of the affairs of the Church and State of Scotland from the beginning of the reformation to the year 1568 > Volume 1

RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP KEITH. IxV
acquainted. This seems to be proved by three schedules
entered in Mr Agarde's Index in the Chapter House at
Westminster. It is certain that King Edward I., from the
year 129G till his latest breath, regarded Scotland as part of
his dominions. It cannot, therefore, be supposed that so
politic a Prince would intentionally destroy Records essen-
tially necessary to the government and to the general inte-
rests of the country, as well as to the private interests of
many of the greatest landholders who supported his preten-
sions to the last. Indeed, if the Records themselves had
been destroyed, those Catalogues of them must have shared
the same fate. Nor can the disappearing of these Records
surprize us, when we consider the slovenly and careless man-
ner in which the Records of England itself were kept ; and
if many of the most important Records of that country have
been lost, we cannot wonder that the Records which may
have been carried into England attracted still less attention
and care. - "
This view of the subject is corroborated by the authority
of John Riddell, Esq. Advocate, who, in noticing the " lament-
able destruction of muniments and writings,"" says — " This
has been chiefly owing, I humbly conceive, to the ruthless
and precipitate nature of our Reformation, and the sad
havoc it occasioned to writs and documents in general, espe-
cially by the destruction of religious houses — their chief custo-
diars, intestine tumults and feuds, no doubt, partly contri-
buting, with occasional incendiary inroads of the English; but
not so much directly to Edward I. as imagined, who was more
bent, with curious antiquarian zeal, on recovering and secur-
ing those instruments and authorities that concerned the
important subject that engrossed him — the feudal superiority
of England over Scotland. — It was owing to their [the Re-
formers] exhortations to an infuriated rabble to destroy the
nests' — cathedrals andabbeys — of the Papal Hierarchy, that,
not to mention various important chronicles and other writ-
ings, the Ecclesiastical Registers and Archives, including the
Consistorial — have nearly all irretrievably perished, and been
withheld from us. Edward I., whose name has been used