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In 1323 Robert I made a 13-year pact of truce with Edward II. As reward for this good behaviour, in 1324 Bruce was again made communicant and recognised as King Robert I of Scotland by the Pope. It was during this truce that the rebuilding of Melrose abbey became a concern of the king's. The episode at Rievaulx may have brought home to the Bruce just how heavy was the price that had been paid by the abbeys, particularly those of the Cistercian order, for Bruce's ambitions and actions.
The King was dying, it was said of the dreaded disease of leprosy, endemic in medieval Europe. Bruce had built himself a modest hall opposite Dumbarton Castle, ancient Al Cluith, where the River Leven runs into the River Clyde. Dumbarton and Berwick were the only two Royal Castles retained by Bruce. All the others had been slighted on their recapture from the English. From this haven he issued his final instructions regarding Melrose, a Letter Patent of protection and a Letter to his son and heirs urging payments to the abbey with the reminder that his heart was to be buried there (RRS Nos 379, 380). Both documents are dated 11th May 1329. The king died on June 7th 1329, less than a month later. On his death-bed Bruce charged that his heart be taken to the Holy Sepulchre by a knight on crusade. Sir James Douglas took up the charge, and our story comes full circle.
Melrose Abbey suffered greatly from hostile incursions of more than one English monarch; the soldiers of Edward II desecrated, pillaged, and burned the church; Richard II in 1385 laid waste the surrounding country and set fire to the abbey after it was made a grant in 1389, as some compensation for the injuries it had sustained in the retreat of his army. Mainly through the generosity of Robert the Bruce, a more stately church was begun in 1326, and scarcely completed by the sixteenth century. Abbot Waltheof (1148), stepson of David I, and honoured as a saint; Abbot Joscelin, afterwards Bishop of Glasgow (1175), took a prominent part in the erection of the fine cathedral of that city, as a shrine for the body of St. Mungo; Abbot Robert (1268) had been formerly Chancellor of Scotland; Abbot Andrew (1449) became Lord High Treasurer; many others were raised to the episcopate.
Later in the 14th century, an attempt by Scotland to assist France, led to Richard II invading Scotland and Melrose abbey was one of the many places burnt to the ground. It is the abbey which was built over the next 100 years which we see mainly today. The ornamentation was rich, the craftsmanship superb, the sandstone quarried from the local Eildon Hills. Surprisingly, it was Richard II and English masons who started the work (Richard thought the Borders had become part of England).
In 1526, on the 25th July, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch attempted to rescue the young King James V (1513 - 1542) from the clutches of the over-powerful Douglas, Earl of Angus while on a journey from Jedburgh to Edinburgh. Battle was joined at Skirmis Hill, the site of the present Waverley Castle Hotel, Melrose. Buccleuch was defeated, losing some 80 of his 600 spear men. The Douglas lost some 100 men killed including the Laird of Cessford. This death triggered a murderous feud between the Kers of Cessford and the Scotts of Buccleuch.
The greatest damage however was done by the Earl of Hertford in 1544. The English troops of Henry VIII burned Melrose in 1544. The dissolution, when carried out, produced much popular resentment, especially in Lincolnshire and the northern counties. Eventually, in the autumn of 1536, the people banded together in a very formidable insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace and some demanded that Edward VI of England (aged 10) should marry Mary Queen of Scots (aged 5). The insurgents rallied under the device of the Five Wounds, and they were only induced to disperse by the deceitful promises of Henry's representative, the Duke of Norfolk. The ruins were further devastated by a fanatical mob in 1569, when statues and carvings were ruthlessly destroyed; but more wanton still was the subsequent carting away of the sacred stones in great numbers to serve as building materials. The result is seen in the carved religious emblems still appearing upon surrounding houses.
Melrose was long famed for the manufacture of a fabric called Melrose land-linen, commissions for which were received from London and foreign countries. So early as 1668, the weavers were incorporated under a seal-of-cause from John, Earl of Haddington, the superior of the burgh; and for a considerable period preceding 1766, the quantity of linen stamped averaged annually between 33,000 and 34,000 yards, valued at upwards of £2,500. But toward the end of last century, the manufacture rapidly declined; and, long ago, it utterly and hopelessly disappeared. Cotton-weaving, subordinately to Glasgow, was introduced as a succedaneum, and had a short period of success; but it, too, became extinct. An ancient fair held in spring, called Kier or Scarce Thursday fair, was long a famous carnival season, but afterwards became an occasion of business, and then dwindled to extinction.
"The original name of the parish was Fordel; and this, in 1136, was substituted by Melrose, the name of the site of the Culdee establishment, arrogated and assumed in that yeare by the new-fledged Cistertian abbey. Three chapels anciently stood in the district north of the Tweed. One was situated at the village of Gattonside, was regularly built of freestone, and seems to have been appurtenant to some manor. Another, dedicated to Saint Columba, the far-famed founder of the Culdee establishment of Iona, and giving to its site his abbreviated name with the adjunct signifying a field or pasture, stood at Colmslee, on Allen-water, and had anciently in its neighbourhood the dairy of the Melrose monks, and still survives in some observable vestiges. The third chapel, called Chieldhelles, and consisting of handsome stone architecture, stood in the north-east corner of the parish, on a tiny tributary of the Leader, and still gives its name to the spot which it occupied." [Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland, edited by John Marius Wilson and published in 1868. volume II, page 410:]
The last Commendator was James Douglas and after Douglas's resignation in 1608 King James VI granted the Abbey lands to John Ramsey, Viscount Haddinton. The Commedator's House is within the Abbey precinct and was built in the 15th century as the Abbot's quarters. By 1618, part of the nave had been adapted to serve as a parish church by building a rubble wall against the north arcade. After the Reformation, little respect was paid to the building and often cattle and sheep were to be found inside the building. By all accounts, the interior was gloomy, filthy and damp. This church continued in use until the 19th century when construction of the parish church began in 1808. By then, the Abbey had suffered a great deal of abuse and the Duke of Buccleuch cleared a large amount of rubbish off the site. Sir Walter Scott was so alarmed at the state of the building that he made direct appeals to the Duke to carry out repairs. Eventually, the Duke allowed Scott to direct his builder to undertake whatever work he saw as necessary to safeguard the building. During the years of the Second World War the Annay was the site of a prisoner of war camp.