Dryburgh Abbey drawn by Robert William Billings (1814-1874). Source: Edinburgh (1852). [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Commentary by the Artist
THE visitant of Abbotsford and Melrose now seldom fails to make the short and pleasant addition to his journey which brings him to the simple tomb-stone of the feudal poet, under the pointed Gothic arches of his ancestral burial aisle. Не will then see much that is worthy of notice, independently both of historical and poetical association. The scene is one of the finest in Scotland for water, hill, and forest bank. The Tweed winds gracefully — the banks have enough of culture to make them green and cheerful, without too forcibly reminding one of stock and the rotation of crops; and the grey ruins rise from a screen of wood sufficient to show their picturesqueness without altogether exposing their ragged desolation. The effect of the whole scene teaches that monastic ruins are seen to most advantage among cheerful sloping woodlands — they remove in a great measure the feeling of desolation, which roofless broken stonework has a tendency to create, substituting natural beauty for the artificial symmetry which has yielded to the ravages of time and violence. The stranger has been accustomed to notice, in that interesting spot, some other objects which have surprised but seldom gratified him. Gateways, and other outer edifices of the furniture Gothic of Horace VValpole’s time — an eccentric collection of statuary, some of it in actual plaster, placed in the most incongruous and unsuitable places; and, to crown all these freaks of an eccentric antiquarian nobleman, who dedicated the spot to his peculiarities, a huge mass of stone, called a statue of Sir William Wallace, overlooks the whole scene from the ridge of the hill.
The architectural character of the fragments speaks at once to the period of the foundation of the institution in the times of the Norman architecture, and its resuscitation, after partial destruction, during the immediately following period. It is unnecessary to inquire whether the author of the article in Grose’s Antiquities has proved that there must have been a Druidical establishment here, “because the Celtic or Gaelic etymology of the name Darachbruach, or Daraghbrugh or Dryburgh, can be no otherwise interpreted than the bank of the sacred grove of oaks, or the settlement of the Druids.” It is sufficient to know, that the monastery of Dryburgh was founded in the year 1150. David the First is generally believed to have been the founder, from his alluding to the Church of the brotherhood dedicated to St Mary as founded by himself, in a charter making large grants to the brothers there officiating. On the other hand, the Chronicle of Melrose states distinctly that Hugh de Merville was the founder; and the statement has been sanctioned by antiquarian critics (Halles’ Annals, i. 97; Chalmers’s Cal., i. 503). There is no doubt that both were benefactors; and between the church itself and the religious order who were to serve in it there was room for a double foundation. Merville was one of those princely Normans who, before the War of Independence, crowded into Scotland, and lorded it over the richest parts of the country. He was a great favourite of the king, and obtained from him the otiice of Constable of Scotland, borrowed from the Norman practice at the court of England. Не died in 1162. The monastery was founded for brethren of the Premonstratensian order who came from Alnwick, and their superior held the rank of Abbot. Of the successive abbots, the first of whom was named Robert, an account may be found, so far as anything is known of their personal history, in the preface of the Chartulary of the abbey, known as Liber Sanctae Mariae de Dryburgh, printed for the Bannatyne Club, and in Morton's Monastic Annals of Teviotdale.
In the year 1322, the fraternity, then richly endowed among the surrounding lands, and lodged in а magnificent edifice, received an unpleasant visit from the retreating army of Edward II. It is said that the fugitives expected food, and were irritated by the attenuated condition to which the miseries of hostile invasion had reduced the monastic larder, with everything else that had been rich and prosperous in the land. Tradition says that the brethren vented their jeers on the retreating troops. However it may have been, the ruffian soldiery set tire to the edifice, and burned it to the ground. Munificent contributions were made to the restoration of the buildings by Robert I., and the small extent of masonry left after the contlagration is clearly indicated by the predominance of an architecture subsequent to the event.
It appears that, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the brethren, waxing rich and luxurious, allowed and perpetrated many abuses; had vehement disputes with each other, leading to personal conflicts, unseemly in men under religious vows; and entered into simonaical transactions, the mercenary interests arising from which appear to have been the real source of the disorders. Excommunicated persons had audaciously braved the power of the Church by performing spiritual functions, and had incurred consequences only to be averted by personal appearance at Rome, and submission to the discipline of the Pontitf. But this was dispensed with, and the power of exercising discipline committed to the Abbot, for the curious but sound reason that, in their journey to Rome, persons of the character and habits of these licentious churchinen would only find too many temptations to go astray, and might be plunged into still greater excesses (Morton's Monastic Annals, 297).
Few of the brethren of the Abbey appear to have arrived at very great distinction. Dempster, in that wonderful fictitious biographical dictionary, which he was pleased to name Historia Ecclestistica Gentils Scotorum, gives us an account of a certain Radulphus Strodus, flourishing about the year 1370, who had distinguished himself at Oxford, and was an alumnus of Dryburgh, where he afterwards lived and died. Dempster says that in the library of the brotherhood were many of his works unknown to the English. He had travelled in the Holy Land, and from personal observation produced Itinerarum Теrrae Sanctae. In a catalogue of his other works, occurs one that, if it ever existed, would perhaps be curious, Phantasma Radulphi; but most of these catalogues of the labours of Scottish writers, as given by Dempster, are fictitious or greatly exaggerated; and he sometimes, in the marauding spirit of his age, drove a distinguished writer, with all his herd of works, across the Border-nay, sometimes from the interior of Germany or Italy-into his own beloved country, believing that he had done a patriotic duty. He was a vehement controversialist on the side of the old religion; and thus one of the merits of Radulphus is, that he Wrote Positiones et xviii. Argumenta contra Wicleffum Hœreticum. Dempster says that the Dryburgh monk stood high in the estimation of Chaucer, who counted him “inter prœcipuos sui seculi poetas.” And we have something like a confirmation of this at the conclusion of Troilus and Cresside —
О moral Gower, this book I direct
To thee and to the philosophicall Strode;
To vouchsafe, there need is, to correct
Of your benignities and zeales good,” dsc.
A Radolphus Strodes is commemorated as an author by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca, probably on the authority of Dempster, and in Jöcher’s Lexicon he is mentioned as a monk of “Tedburg,” and ein guter Poet. Finally, it should be mentioned that Gesner, writing before Dempster, mentions a Strodus who, among other works, had written against Wicliffe, but he calls him Anglus.
The celebrated Andrew Forman appears, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, to have held this abbey in commendam, among his multitudinous ecclesiastical benetiees. He was Bishop of Moray and Archbishop of Bourges; and after having been gorged with offices by the Pope, he was successful in a conflict against the Papal influence for the archbishopric of St Andrews, vindicating the principle that it should not be held by an Italian. It is of this great pluralist that Pitscottie tells an absurd anecdote. In the course of his diplomatic career, according to the honest chronicler, it lay with him to entertain the whole vatican, Pope and Cardinals, to dinner. He required to say grace, because “the use and custom was, that, at the beginning of meat, he that ought the house, and made the banquet, should say the grace and bless the meat.” The bishop, “who was not ane guid scholler, nor had not guid Latine,” was perplexed and put out by the responses of the Italians, and, losing presence of mind and patience, “he wist not weill how to proceed fordward, bot happened, in guid Scottis, in this manner, sayand quhilk they understuid not, ‘The divill I give yow, all false cardinallis to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’ ‘Amen,’ quoth they. Then the bishop and his men leugh, and all the cardinallis themselffis” (Pitscottie’s Chronicle). If there be no further truth in the anecdote, it at least shows the opinion entertained by the reforming party of the learning of the bloated pluralists, who brought so much scandal on the latter days of the Catholic supremacy in Scotland.
The rich abbey of Dryhurgh was too near the Border to escape the marauding expeditions of the English. Besides its destruction by Edward II., already mentioned, and attacks from time to time by the Border freebooters — which were generally limited to the fat cattle and sheep intended for the monastic larder — it suffered in that inroad of Richard II., which forms a title to one of Wyntoun’s chapters— “Quhen Rycharde, Kyng of Ingland, gert bryne abbayis in Scotland."
The bard makes as short work as the marauders seem to have made-
Dryburgh, and Newbotil, thai twa
In til thar way thai brynt ulsua.”
In a letter of the year 1523, “without a signature, but apparently by the Duke of Albany to Cardinal Accolti,” it is stated that the monks were grievously subject to the devastating inroads of the English, by whom their buildings, and the produce of their lands, were miserably wasted and destroyed. “ Wherefore the monks needed such a superior as would give his whole attention to the affairs of the said abbey, repair its buildings, and restore the worship of God therein,” and James Stewart, Canon of Glasgow, is selected as a person who would answer to these requirements (Morton's Annals, 300). The poor abbey had much need of a protector, for within a few years, in 1544, an army of marauders 700 strong, headed by Sir George Bowes and Sir Bryan Layton, and including the garrison of Berwick, “rode into Scotland, upon the water of Tweide, to a toun called Drybrough, with an abhay in the same, which was a pratty toun and well buylded; and they burnt the same toun and abhay, savyng the church, with a great substance of corne, and got very much spoylage and insight geire, and brought away an hundreth nolte, LX. naggs, a hundreth sheipe” (Quoted in Morton's Annals, 301).
The abbot of that time, however, appeared so far fit for his task that he could retaliate. In the following year he joined the Earls of Hume and Bothwell, and these allies, taking with them some French troops in the Scottish service, made a formidable raid southwards, forming altogether an army of 3000 men. They burned Horclitf, and were busy with the destruction of Thornton and Shorswood, when they were surprised and driven off with some slaughter by the garrison of Norham (Letter quoted in Morton’s Annals, 39).
By a charter of James VI., the domains of the abbey were converted into a temporal lordship in favour of the descendants of the Earl of Mar by his second wife, Lady Mary Stewart. The portion on which the ruin stands, after having been in the possession of the family of Haliburton, to be afterwards mentioned, was repurchased by the descendants of its original improprietors, and so became the property of the Earl of Buchan. The most interesting feature connected with the building at the present day is its association with the memory of Scott. In a touching passage in his diary, he describes how he deposited the remains of the thirty-years partner of his days beneath the turf on which he had so often sat with her in the sunshine, in days of happiness and prosperity. Here too his own dust was laid, inthe very centre of all the glories of his chivalrous genius, with nothing but a plain slab raised over him, as if, like the tomb of Wren, it said to the pilgrim, “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.”
It was the peculiar character of Scott’s mind to resign no claim on descent or lineage to which he had any tolerable title. Much more immediately distinguished than those ducal namesakes with whom he claimed an indistinct alliance, was his connection with a Worshipful old family, bearing the Anglo-Saxon name of Haliburton of Newmains. This family obtained the estate of Dryburgh not long after it had been made a temporal lordship. Sir Walter, not noticing, by the way, the circumstance that, in being purchased by the Earl of Buchan, it went to the descendant of a still earlier possessor, says, in his autobiography,
Robert Scott of Sandy Knowe married, in 1728, Barbara Haliburton, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of Newmains, an ancient and respectable family in Berwickshire. Among other patrimonial possessions, they enjoyed the part of Dryburgh, now the property of the Earl of Buchan, comprehending the ruins of the Abbey. My grand-uncle, Robert Haliburton, having no male heirs, this estate, as well as the representation of the family, would have devolved upon my father, and, indeed, old Newmains would have settled it upon him ; but this was prevented by the misfortunes of my grand-uncle, a weak silly man, who engaged in trade, for which he had neither stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father’s maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own glances over these pages. [Memoirs, 1. 6, 7]
R. W. B.
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Bibliography
The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland illustrated by Robert William Billings, architect, in four volumes.. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Son, 1852. Hathitrust Digital Archive version of a copy in the University of California Library. Web. 10 October 2018.
Last modified 12 October 2018