Lesmahagow

It seems to be a hasty conclusion of Chalmers ("Caledonia"), that the Prior of Lesmahagow had a right to a seat in the Scottish Parliament.  There are but two instances on record in which the Prior sat; the first of these was in the Parliament held at Briggeham, in March 1289, when the Pope granted a dispensation for the marriage of the son of Edward of England with Queen Margaret.  In this instance several priors seem to have taken part in the proceedings whose names are never again met with in parliamentary rolls.   In the second instance, viz, in 1471 there is every reason to believe the the Prior of Lesmahagow sat as representative of the Monastery of Kelso, as the office of Abbot was vacant from 1466 until 1473, when Abbot Robert was installed.   There was the same laxness in making up the rolls of this as of the other Parliament, the Dean of Brechin and others being allowed to take part in the proceedings who could not claim a seat.  I t is matter of histoy that in these early times it was often difficult to get a sufficient number of members assembled for legislative purposes, as the burden of parliamentary duties was felt to surmount the honour, and parties frequently rendered themselves odious by imposing taxes, however necessary.

Morton, in his well known work, "Monastic Annals of Teviotdale", states that Thomas de Durram, an Englishman, who is believed to have owed his preferment to the military successes of his countrymen under Edward I. when that monarch overran Scotland in 1296, bore the name and office of Abbot of Kelso and Prior of Lesmahagow, by usurpation, before 1315.  He is accused of having wastefully spent or embezzled the property of both establsihments during his rule, which is understood to have terminated with the victory of  Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314.  In 1315, these alienations were found by Robert, Bishop of Glasgow, to be null and void, the said English Prior being an usurper and dilapidator of the revenues of the Abbey of Kelso.  (Lib. de Cal., 154, 188.)

John, Bishop of Glasgow, by request of Robert I., and with consent of his chapter, conveyed to the Abbey of Kelso, the church and teinds of Eglismalescok, or Carluke, the management of which was assigned to Lesmahagow by that monastery.  The Bishop, in the preamble to the deed, assigns as his reason for so doing, that good works are commendable, and that Kelso, which always showed hospitality to all comers, had been impoverished by hostile incursions and long-continued war between Scotland and England.  (Ibid., 366,477.)  In the Rental of Kelso, circa 1567, the kirk an dteinds of Carlouk, "set for sillar," is stated at £66 : 13 : 4.  (Ibid., 493.)

Robert the Bruce, in 1316, granted in favour of the monks of Lesmachut serving the Lord, ten merks sterling for supplying eight candles of a pound of wax each, for a light at the tomb of St. Machutus on Sundays and festivals, as was the custom in cathedral an dcollegiate churches, to be paid at two terms in the year, viz, five merks at the feast of Pentecost, and other five at the feast of St. Martin in winter, without dispute or difficulty to them or their attorney, out of the revenues of the mills of Mauldisley, in Carluke, free of all exactions, in free, pure, and perpetual alms.   (Ibid., 169, 204; 365, 476.)  As the second of these charters is to the same effect with the first, although differing in some details, it has been generally believed that the intention of the King was to grant twenty merks annually to the monks, which idea is supported by the grant of Robert III. of twenty merks to them annually from the mills of Carluke.  ("Robertson' Index," 145, 22.)  The deeds of Robert the Bruce, however, will bear the interpretation that the second grant may have been in confirmation of the first, or to supply some defect.  The tomb of Machutus here alluded to was probably an altar one.  It has been already stated that the Saint was buried in France, but these charters show that Lesmahagow was believed to possess at least a portion of his reliques.

From David II.,  wo reigned from 1330 to 1332, the monks of Lesmahagow obtained a charter confirming their liberties and privileges.   From the same king they obtained a charter freeing them from all imposts.   Trusting no doubt to the various royal charters granted to the Priory of Lesmahagow, many monks from Kelso found it a safe retreat during the hostilities between Scotland and England.  It was not however always a sanctury from savage intrusion.   During the fierce waar waged by Edward III., for the restoration of the race of Baliol to the Scottish throne, John of Eltham, Earl fo Cornwall, and brother to the English monarch, having led a body of English troops through Clydesdale by the western marshes towards Perth, in the year 1335, lodged at Lesmahagow; and in the quaint language of Wyntown,

"Into Lesmahagow cowth ly,

That nicht he burnt up that Abbey."

That many person who had taken refuge in the church perished in the flames, receives some countenance from the fact that when the foundations for the present church were dug in 1803, on the site of the old one, the number of skeletons found was so numeroous that the pile of bones, when ready for interment, waas compared, for size and height, to a peat stack.

Fordun and Wyntown relate the Eltham joined his brother subsequently at Perth, when the King was so highly incensed on learning what he had done, that he "there with a knife reft his brother of life," and

"There was the vengeance tane perfay,

Of the burning of that Abbey."

Chalmers ("Caledonia"), with critical acumen, remarks that John Eltham died at Perth on the 5th of October 1336, while his brother Edward returned to England the end of September fo the same year; so that if he died of a wound from his brother's hamd he must have survived for sometime after it was inflicted.   (Vide also Foed., iv. 709-715.)  There is strong probability for supposing that the true cause of the burning of the Abbey, and which seems to have escaped the observation of Chalmers, was jealousy on the part of the English invader at the adherence of the brethren of Lesmahagow to the cause of the Bruce family.  Robert the Bruce would not have granted funds to light up the tomb of Saint Machutus had the monks been his political opponents, and the confirmation of that grant fifty years subsequent to the conflagration, by Robert III., shows that they continued steady in their support.  David Scott, in his "History of Scotland" (p. 202), mentions that John of Eltham burnt several churches, amongst others Saint Bride ro Bridget's church, with a great many people at their devotions, and then recounts the story of his royal brother being so wroth that the stabbed him.  If Scott has not fallen into the mistake fo substitiuting St. Bride for Lesmahagow, it is probable that it was the chapel of St. Bride of Kyp which was one of the churches burnt, rather than St Bride of Douglas.

The arrangement by which the chaplain of "St. Bridge" of Kyp was paid by Lesmahagow out of the lands of Little or Lesser Kyp has already been mentioned.  Of St. Bridge, St. Bridget, or St. Bride, little is known except what may provoke a smile, viz., that she adopted the plan of holding up her petticoat to dry in the rays of a sunbeam !

From the Register of Glasgow (283, 311) we learn that in 1359, William, Prior of Lesmahagow, was witness to a gift of the altar of the Holy Cross in the church of Cadzow, and from the Register of Paisley (33, 37) it appears that in 1367 a commission was granted by the Abbots fo Dunfermline and Newbattle, as conservators and judges of the Diocese of St. Andrews, acting under a Papal Bull, to the Abbot of Kilwinning, and to "that revered man, Lord William, Prior of Lesmahago" empowering them to settle a dispute between the Abbey of Paisley and Sir William More of Abircorne.