e Scottish throne, introduced a colony of thirteen
Reformed Benedictine monks from the newly founded abbey of Tiron in
Picardy, and planted it near his forest castle of Selkirk. He endowed it
with large possessions in Scotland, and a valuable territory in his
southern earldom of Huntingdon, but the French monks were dissatisfied
with their position on the banks of the Ettrick, and on David's
accession to the throne of his brother he removed them from Selkirk--"a
place unsuitable for an abbey"--and established the monastery "at the
Church of the Blessed Virgin on the bank of the Tweed, beside Roxburgh,
in the place called Calkow."[411] The abbey was dedicated to the Virgin
and St. John the Baptist. Its first abbot was Ralph, one of the French
monks, and the Scotch chronicles state that he succeeded St. Bernard,
the reformer of the order, in his abbacy at Tiron, on his death in 1116,
but Dr. Cosmo Innes thinks this can scarcely be reconciled with the
succession of abbots as given by the French writers.[412] The monastery
soon became the richest and most powerful in Scotland, and in 1165 the
Pope granted permission to the abbot to wear the mitre, and the abbot
claimed precedence of all the superiors of monasteries in Scotland. In
1420 this precedence was decided by James I. in favour of the prior of
St. Andrews.[413] Many of the abbots were distinguished men, who were
employed in the affairs of the kingdom, and several were promoted to
bishoprics.[414] Foremost in rank and power, the monks of Kelso also
vindicated their place by the practice of the monastic virtues, and a
copy of Wyntoun's _Chronicle_ is supposed to have been written at
Kelso.[415] They seem to have recalled the saying, claustrum sine
literatura vivi hominis est sepultura ("the cloister without literature
is the grave of a living man"), and Dr. Cosmo Innes remarks

"That the arts were cultivated within the Abbey walls we may
conclude without much extrinsic evidence. The beautiful and somewhat
singular architecture of the ruined church itself still gives proof
of taste and skill and some science in the builders, at a period
which the confidence of modern times has proclaimed dark and
degraded; and if we could call up to the fancy the magnificent Abbey
and its interior decorations, to correspond with what remains of
that ruined pile, we should find works of art that might well
exercise the talents of high masters. The erect