Jedburgh, Monastery of
JEDBURGH, MONASTERY OF
Abbey of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, Roxburghshire, Diocese of Saint Andrews, Scotland. Founded c. 1138 by david i of Scotland with the help of Bp. John of Glasgow, the priory of St. Mary was built high on the banks of the Jed. It appears to have been raised to the status of an abbey before 1152. Its large and architecturally imaginative church was completed before 1250, but being near the English frontier it suffered heavily in the Anglo-Scottish wars (1297–1300) and again in the 15th and 16th centuries, being almost destroyed by the English in 1545. Finally suppressed in 1559, it was erected into a temporal lordship for Alexander Home in 1606. Partially used as a reformed church until the 19th century, the abbey is now an imposing ruin.
Bibliography: c. innes, ed., Origines parochiales Scotiae, 2v. (Bannatyne Club; Edinburgh 1850–55) v. 1. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions of Scotland, An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Roxburghshire, 2 v. (Edinburgh 1956) v. 1. d. e. easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland (London 1957) 77.
[l. macfarlane]