MELROSE, a village in the parish of Melrose in Roxburghshire, on the south side of the river Tweed, near the northern base of the Eildon hills, and thirty-five miles from Edinburgh. It is pleasantly situated in a picturesque and fertile country, the scene of many a border legend; the streets form a kind of triangle, in the centre of which stands the cross, a structure supposed to be coeval with the abbey itself. The cross is supported by the endowment of a small portion of land, called the Corse-rig, which the proprietor holds upon the sole condition of “keeping up the cross.” Melrose Abbey must have first occasioned the rise of the [7:14:543]village, and continues to be its chief support to the present day; it was founded by King David I. in 1136, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary; and it was furnished with monks of the Cistercian order from Rivale Abbey in Yorkshire. The nave which lies due east and west is in length 258 feet, and in breadth 79 feet; at the distance of fifty feet from the eastern extremity it is intersected at right angles by the transept which is 130 feet in length, and44 in breadth. The pious founder, whom James VI. calls a “sair sainct for the croune,” conferred extensive lands and valuable privileges on the abbot and monks of this abbey, which was one of the most magnificent institutions of the kind in Scotland. They held by charter the lands of Melrose, Eldun, and Dernervie, the lands and wood of Gattonside, with the fishings of the Tweed along the whole extent of those lands, the right of pasturage and pannage in the king’s forests of Selkirk, Traquair, and in the forest lying between the Gala and the Leader, and also the privilege of taking wood for building and burning, from the same forests. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the piety of princes and nobles continued adding to the privileges and wealth of the monks of Melrose, who accumulated vast possessions in Ayr, Dumfries, Selkirk, Berwick, and other places. Monastic institutions were generally considered as sacred by contending paι ’ ties, and thus the protection afforded by the abbey of Melrose must have been exceedingly serviceable in a district peculiarly exposed to the marauding incursions of barbarous freebooters, and which was the field of frequent sanguinary conflicts, infuriated by national antipathies and personal wrongs. Being situated, however, close by the hostile borders, it could hardly be expected that it should always escape. In 1322 the abbey was burned by Edward II., and several of the monks, with William de Peebles, the abbot, were slain. It was repaired and endowed with most munificent grants by Robert Bruce, whose heart was buried here, after the unsuccessful attempt tô have it deposited in the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem.

During the reformation in England under Henry VIII., the dilapidation of the monasteries in the south of Scotland commenced. In 1545 a great part of the ^.bbey of Melrose was destroyed by Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Bryan Layton. In the same year, Melrose, with its monastery, was again wasted by the English army under the Earl of Hertford, and in a few years afterwards it became the prey of the Scotish reformers. The act of annexation first placed the lands and revenues of this wealthy establishment in the hands of Queen Mary; they then passed to various favourites of royalty, until at length the abbey and a great part of its domains were acquired by the family of Buceleuch. The ruins of the monastery afford the finest specimens of Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture of which this country can boast; and it is singularly fortunate that this is not only one of the most exquisitely beautiful, but one of the most entire of the ecclesiastical ruins in Scotland. Till within these few years the abbey was used as the parish church; there is now, however, a church built at some distance from it, and the abbey has been disincumbered of the clumsy and discordant galleries or lofts erected for the accommodation of the congregation. The rents of this abbey at the reformation were, in money, £1758 Scots; in wheat, 19 chalders, 9 bolls; in bear, 77 chalders, 3 bolls; in oats, 47 chalders, 1 boll, 2 firlots; meal, 14 chalders, with 8 chalders of salt, 105 stones of butter, 10 dozen of capons, 26 dozen of poultry, 376 muirfowl, and 360 loads of peats. Alexander II. was buried beneath the great altar, and the remains of many of the illustrious line of Douglas rest within the abbey, which was also the place of interment of other powerful families. The population of the village of Melrose, in 1835 amounted to 689∙