Meanwhile the Douglases, for long the most powerful House in Scotland, the rivals of the Crown, were crushed by James II, and of the Douglases, Sir George, of Springwood Park, is descended from the House of Cavers, (on Teviot, below Hawick), scions sprung from Archibald, natural son of the Earl of Douglas who fell at Otterburne (1388) and is immortal in the ballad. The whole land is full of scenes made famous by the adventures of these ancient clans; they may be tracked by blood from Hermitage Castle to the dowie dens of Yarrow and the Peel Tower on the Douglas burn.
Sir Herbert Maxwell, in "The Story of the Tweed" (p. 139) not unnaturally laments the "sadly suburban" name of Springwood Park, standing where it ought not, in place of the ancient name of Maxwell, originally "Maccus whele," "the pool of Maccus," on Tweed.
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Maccus was a descendant of the primeval Maccus, who, before the Norman Conquest, signed himself, or was described, as Maccus Archipirata, "the leading pirate." To a later Maccus David I gave the salmon fishing at Kelso; the pool, called "Maccus whele" became Maxwell, and the lairds "de Maxwell." The Maxwells moved to the western Border to Caerlaverock and into Galloway; and of all this history only the name, "Max wheel," of a salmon cast below the pretty bridge of Kelso, is left.
The name Kelso is of Cymric origin: calch myadd. "Chalk hill." To be sure, as the man said of the derivation of jour from dies, the name is diablement change en route. The ruins of Kelso Abbey are the chief local remains of the Ages of faith. When David I, not yet king, brought French Bénédictines to Scotland, he settled them in Ettrick Forest. Here they raised the schele chirche—the Monastery, on a steep hill above Ettrick (now Selkirk), and here they "felt the breeze down Ettrick break" with its chill showers, and wept as they remembered pleasant Picardy; the climate of Selkirk being peculiarly bitter. David, when king, moved his Benedictines to the far more comfortable region of Kelso, or "Calkow," where they began to build in 1128. The style of their church is late Norman, and the tower was used in war as a keep in the fierce wars of Henry VIII. The place was gutted and the town burned by Dacre, in 1523; and suffered again from Norfolk, in 1542, and Hertford in 1545. Henry VIII chivalrously destroyed this part of the border from the cottage to the castles of the Kers and the pleasant holy places of the Church, during the childhood of his kinswoman, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. His aim was always to annex Scotland; and, of course, to introduce the Gospel. In 1545, after overcoming the garrison of the church tower, Hertford's men wrecked the whole place, leaving little more than we see to day; though that little is much compared with what the Reformers have left of St. Andrews and Lindores.
Kelso saw more than enough of very ugly fighting in those days; not even her monks stood aloof when blows fell fast and their cloisters were threatened. In 1545, twelve monks and ninety laymen gallantly held the Abbey against the English, and when at length Hertford's guns created a practicable breach, they retreated to the church tower. Hill Burton says, in his History of Scotland, that then "the assault was given to the Spaniards, but, when they rushed in, they found the place Kelso Abbey. cleared.
