At the Reformation, when this monastery was suppressed, it was erected into a temporal lordship, in favour of Sir Andrew Kerr of Fernihirst, under the title of lord Jedburgh, the ancestor of the present noble family of Lothian. There was also attached to this abbey, a chapel called Strasburgh, lying in a recess of the Forest, and to the east of the Jed. Jedburgh abbey appears to have been one of the finest religious houses of the Romish church in Scotland, and its remains show it to have been a large cross church, comprehending a nave with side aisles, a cross with transepts, and a choir with chapels. In the ruins are three or four styles of architecture, characteristic of the period when they were erected, and illustrative of the respective ages. It is evident from these various styles, the abbey must have been the work of different periods. One of the transepts is now fitted up as a cemetery for the family of the marquis of Lothian, the noble proprietor. This abbey never recovered from the destruction it received in 1544 A. D. from the English under Lord Hertford, and the Reformation has no hand in its ruin, though it has changed it and its great revenues into a temporal barony, and given them to a lay nobleman instead of an ecclesiastical one. This abbey was so much delapidated during the border wars, that Edward I., had at one time to send some of its canons or monks to religious houses of the same order in England to be supported. The building is partly in ruins, and part serves as a church. The workmanship is extremely fine, and many of the arches are circular and very antique. Mr. Tytler in his history of Scotland, (now in course of publication,) gives some very valuable and interesting details of the origin and progress of ecclesiastical structures, such as those we have now humbly presented to the reader in this volume, and which we here take the liberty to subjoin. "I come now to say a few words upon the third, and by far the noblest class of buildings, which were to be seen in Scotland during this remote period: the monasteries, cathedrals, and religious houses. Few who have seen them will not confess that, in the grandeur of their plan, and the extraordinary skill and genius shown in their execution, they are entitled to the highest praise; and if we read the description given in a monastic chronicle in the British Museum, of the earliest church at Glastonbury, composed of wooden beams and twisted rods, and turn from this to the Cathedral of St. Magnus in Orkney; to the noble pile at Dunfermline; to the more light and beautiful remains of Melrose Abbey; or to the still more imposing examples of ecclesiastical architecture in England; the strength of original genius in the creation of a new order of architecture, and the progress of mechanical knowledge in mastering the complicated details of its execution, are very remarkable. "There cannot be a doubt that we owe the perfection of this noble style to the monks; and although the exact era of its first appearance, either in England or in our own country, is difficult to be ascertained with precision, yet there are some valuable and interesting notices in our early bistorians, which make it probable that our first masters |