This abbot being a man of such high office, it is natural to look for some benefit arising to the abbey through his influence, and accordingly we find that he has left his mark on the church, his coat of arms being carved at least three times on different parts of the building. This leads to the conclusion that some portions of the structure were erected by him, and gives a clue to the date of erection of those portions.
The secularisation of the property of the abbey followed the usual course in the sixteenth century. In 1535 King James V. was invested with the administration of the revenues, and, in 1541, he conferred the abbey on his infant son—Durie, the abbot, retiring on a pension to make way for him.
During the repeated invasions of the Generals of Henry VIII., the abbeys of the south of Scotland suffered along with the churches and domestic buildings of the district. In 1544 Melrose was damaged by Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Bryan Laiton, who also defaced the tombs of the Douglases in the church—a disgrace which was avenged the following year by the defeat of the English at Ancrum Moor. The above destructive attack was followed by that of the Earl of Hertford, who demolished what of the Border abbeys had not already been destroyed.
In 1558 Cardinal Guise was Commendator of Melrose, and, in 1559, the abbey was taken possession of by the Lords of the Congregation. In 1560 it was annexed to the Crown; but an allowance was granted to eleven monks and three portioners, being apparently all who survived of the inmates of the monastery, who, in 1542, numbered one hundred monks and as many lay brethren.
Under Queen Mary the estates were granted to the Earl of Bothwell, with the title of Commendator, and, after passing through the hands of Douglas of Lochleven and Sir John Ramsay, they were ultimately acquired by the Scotts of Buccleuch.
The abbey appears never to have recovered the destruction of the sixteenth century, and gradually fell into decay. The materials of the buildings were used for the erection of other structures, and Douglas, the Commendator, built a house for himself out of the ruins.
The masonry long continued to form a quarry for the supply of the locality, being used, amongst other purposes, for the erection of the Tolbooth and for repairing the mills and sluices.
In 1618 the portion of the structure which still remained was fitted up as the parish church, and, in order to render it secure, a plain pointed barrel vault was thrown across the nave, and was supported by plain square piers built against the old piers on the north side. The original vaulting seems to have been previously demolished.
By remarkable good fortune the statues and images which filled the niches escaped destruction till 1649, when they suffered at the hands of an iconoclast, but by whose orders it is not known.
The charters of the abbey have been kept amongst the archives of the Earl of Morton, and form “the finest collection of ancient writs preserved in Scotland.”[133]