The choir contains a double piscina, near the east end, in a good first pointed style.
Under the triangular windows in the south wall of the nave are a piscina and ambry. These mark the position of an altar, which may have been erected at the rood screen, which probably separated the nave from the choir at this point, thus dividing the portion of the church open to the parishioners from that reserved for the clerics. Opposite this piscina there is a door (now built up) in the north wall, and near it, on the outside, there is another piscina. This may possibly mark the position of another chapel, which may have been that of the Holy Cross above, said to have been erected by Hugh Fraser in the fifteenth century.
NEWBATTLE OR NEWBOTLE ABBEY,[90] Mid-Lothian.
Newbotle Abbey or, as it is now called (without the name having any special meaning), Newbattle Abbey is situated on the river Esk, about two miles south from Dalkeith. It was founded by David I. in the year 1140, for monks of the Cistercian order, who were brought to Newbotle (or new residence) from Melrose. The “leader of the colony” appears to have been Ralph, the first abbot, who obtained numerous gifts and privileges for the convent, and consecrated a “cemetery within the precinct of the monastery.” The second abbot, Alfred, who died in 1179, was also a great benefactor to the abbey. He brought to it many relics, which he enclosed in a silver chest. “He adorned the chapter house with handsome seats, and also erected proper stalls, with convenient desks or menologies of wood, in the cloisters on the side where the ‘collation’ or reading of the lives of the saints was held, for the use of the brethren during the reading of collation before compline at the washing of feet at Maunday.”[91]
During the time of the tenth abbot, Constantine, the church was dedicated by Andrew de Moravia, Bishop of Moray, in March 1233.
In the year 1241, Mary de Couci, queen of Alexander II., “looking to her time of peril, and impressed with the frail tenure of life, bequeathed her body to be buried in the church of Newbotle.”[92] This would seem to indicate that the fabric of the church, if not finished by this time, was far advanced. Mary de Couci survived for about thirty years, when her desire to be buried here was carried out; and Father Hay describes her tomb, apparently from the record of an eye-witness. “In the midst of the church was seen the tomb of the queen of King Alexander, of marble, supported on six lions of marble. A human figure was placed reclining on the tomb, surrounded with an iron grating.”[93]
In 1275 Waldeve, the seventeenth abbot, “going the way of all flesh, with blessed end, departed to the Lord, leaving his house in full peace and excellent condition.”
Gervase, the nineteenth abbot, who demitted office in 1323, settled for ever on the infirmary of the abbey an annual rent of three merks, “to be expended for the uses of the sick and the recreation of the feeble.”[94] These few notices seem to show that about the middle of the fourteenth century the abbey was in a fairly complete state. It possessed great estates in the counties of the Lothians, Lanark, Peebles, and Stirling. Father Hay writes that, about this time, he “finds, from the books of receipts and expenses, the annual income of the monastery could maintain eighty monks and seventy lay brethren, with the corresponding establishment.”[95]
But evil days were at hand. In 1385, during the expedition of Richard II., “the English,” writes Father Hay, “burnt the monastery of Newbotle; and, at the same time, several of the granges and farms of the monastery were destroyed, and the others were deserted, while the lands were left untilled. The towers or peles, built by the monastery for protection against English marauders, fared in the same way. Some of the monks were carried away prisoners; others fled to other monasteries. The few who remained in the abbey, having scarce sufficient food, were compelled, by great distress, to sell twenty-nine excellent chalices, nine crosses of exquisite workmanship, and other sacred ornaments, with their silver household plate. At that time the greater part of the abbey tower was ruined by the falling of the cross.” These events happened during the time of Hugh, the twenty-third abbot.
The work of restoration was, doubtless, gone on with as soon as convenient; and, in 1390, Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith, by his will, gave his body to be buried in the monastery of St. Mary of Newbotle. “At the same time he bequeathed to the abbey a ‘nowche,’ or jewel of St. John, worth 40 merks, or its value, and, in addition, £23, 6s. 8d. for the building of the church and wages of the masons employed upon it. For the service of the monks’ refectory he gave twelve silver dishes, weighing eighteen pounds, six shillings sterling, enjoining his heirs to see that they should not be abstracted from the use of the refectory or sold.”[96] Two years later Sir James, in another will, bequeaths similar sums to the abbey, without appropriating a part to the building or to the payment of workmen, which seems to show, as Mr. Innes remarks, that the rebuilding of the abbey church had been completed in the meantime.