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Woodcut: Groined Window Head in the Hall 57. UDNY CASTLE, Aberdeen.-External View 58. WINTOUN HOUSE, Haddington.-External View

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LINCLUDEN COLLEGE.

THE peaceful spot where the gentle stream of the Cluden meets the Nith, was well adapted as a retreat for religious recluses, not of the sterner or more ascetic character. Flat spreading meadows, a few old oaks, and a sluggish stream fringed with alder, give the landscape, enriched by this small but remarkable and beautiful ruin, a tone rather English than Scottish. The character of the edifice, so far as it remains, is very peculiar. Though of small dimensions, it has, like Michael Angelo's statues, a colossal effect from the size of its details. This is conspicuous in the bold and massive corbels and capitals of the vaulting shafts from which the groined arches, now fallen, had sprung. In the plate of the interior this largeness of feature may be observed in the moulding round the priests' door-itself but a small object—and in the broken tracery of the window above it. Over the interior of the small square door by which this part of the ruin is entered, there is a moulding of oak wreath, or, perhaps, more correctly speaking, a series of crockets, so grotesquely large, as to appear as if they had been intended to be raised to a great height, so as to be diminished by distance. Heraldic forms predominate, probably owing to circumstances which the history of the institution will readily suggest. Many of the large brackets are shields, but they are massed in with the other decorations with more freedom and picturesqueness than this species of ornament is generally found to admit of.

Of the tracery of the windows, enough only remains to show how rich, beautiful, and varied it had been. The patterns, with a tendency to the French flamboyant character, are strictly geometrical, and have afforded an excellent opportunity for Mr Billings to adapt his system of geometric proportion to their restoration. The main portion of the church now existing, consists of the choir and a fragment of a transept. On the right-hand side, opposite to the tomb and door in the engraving, there are three fine sedilia partially destroyed. They consist of undepressed ribbed pointed arches, each with a canopy and crocket above, and cusps in the interior-an arrangement that unites the richness of the decorated with the dignity of the earliest pointed style. Beyond the sedilia is a beautiful piscina of the same character. The arch is within a square frame-work, along the upper margin of which there runs a tiny arcade of very beautiful structure and proportion. Opposite to these remains, is the tomb of Margaret Countess of Douglas, and daughter of King Robert III., represented in the engraving. Of the recumbent effigy which the monument had contained, there is not a vestige, and the sarcophagus is uncovered and empty. Pennant, in 1772, says—“ Her effigy in full length lay on the stone, her head resting on two cushions: but the figure is now mutilated; and her bones till lately were scattered about in a most indecent manner by some wretches who broke open the repository in search of treasure."*

The history of this establishment has been curious. According to the ordinary authorities, it was founded as a Priory of Benedictine nuns, in the reign of Malcolm IV, by Uchthred, father to Rolland, lord of Galloway, who endowed it with considerable territorial possessions in the neighbourhood. The founder, who was assassinated in 1174, is said to have been buried in the original * Tour, ii. 119.

+ Grose's Antiquities, 171. Spottiswoode's Religious Houses. Hutton's MSS. Chalmers' Caledonia, ii. 307.

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church. In 1296, Alianore, the prioress, swore fealty to Edward I. at Berwick, and was confirmed in her dignity.* This is almost the sole incident on record, during the existence of the nunnery. It appears that Archibald the Grim, Earl of Bothwell, abolished it, and devoted the building to the purposes of an ecclesiastical college. The chroniclers who mention this event, seem at a loss to account for it. The earl receives from them the character of being pious, and a great friend of the church; and while in one the "insolence" of the female devotees is mentioned as the cause of their dismissal,† Major volunteers to speculate that they must have been conspicuous for their incontinence, otherwise the good earl never would have expelled them. Hume of Godscroft, the historian of the family, speaks of his "having an eye for religion, and a special care of the pure and sincere worship of God as his only end and intention;" while in the same paragraph the worthy annalist says, "it appeareth that he did greatly increase his revenues and enlarge his dominions."‡

Archibald the Grim died in the year 1400, so that the foundation of the college would correspond pretty closely to the architectural period indicated by the present remains. The institution, consisting at first of a provost and twelve canons, was so far varied from time to time, that at the Reformation it maintained a provost, eight prebendaries, twenty-four bedemen, and a chaplain.§ The chaplainry appears to have been founded by the Countess Margaret, who made several grants to the college in 1429, confirmed by her brother, James I.|| The Douglases were lord-wardens of the Scottish marches, and in this capacity acted as a sort of monarchs, at the head of a parliament, in enacting the Border laws. It appears that these assemblages were held in Lincluden; and we find in the preamble to one of these collections of ordinances, that, on the 18th day of December 1468, Earl William Douglas assembled there," the whole lords, freeholders, and eldest borderers that best knowledge had," "and there he caused those lords and borderers bodily to be sworn, the holy gospel touched, that they, bodily and truly, after their cunning, should decrete, decern, deliver, and put in order and writing, the statutes, ordinances, and uses of March, that were ordained in Black Archibald of Douglas's days, and Archibald his son's days, in time of warfare," &c.¶

The revenues of the college were probably extensive, as the provostry was held by many eminent men. Notices of the successive provosts, collected with great industry, will be found both in Grose and Chalmers. In 1565 the college was converted into a temporal barony, and it became subsequently the property of the Nithesdale family. The person who held the provostry at this period, however, a natural son of Douglas of Drumlanrig, subsequently legitimated, continued to hold the temporalities of his benefice, and the reversion of them was granted and confirmed to his grandnephew, afterwards created Viscount Drumlanrig.**

Thus the territories of the college appear to have been possessed by a lay impropriator, subject to the condition of his paying out of the revenue an annual sum equivalent to the income of the provost. Connected with this partition of revenue a remarkable criminal trial is on record, singularly exemplifying the rude, rapacious, and unscrupulous character of those barons who divided among themselves the rich heritage of the suppressed ecclesiastical foundations.††

Chalmers, ii. 307.

+ Extracta e Chronicis, p. 207.
§ Chalmers, iii. 367.

History of the House of Douglas, 114. || Ibid. 308.

Introduction on the Ancient State of the Borders, to Nicolson and Burns' History and Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

** Chalmers, iii. 309. Act. Parl. iii. 415, 436.

++ See Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, iii. 90, 95.

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