d it for the abbey which she and her
royal husband, Malcolm III., founded at Dunfermline in honour of the Holy
Trinity: and this cross seems to have engaged her last thoughts for her
confessor relates that, when dying, she caused it to be brought to her, and
that she embraced, and gazed steadfastly upon it, until her soul passed
from time to eternity. Upon her death (16th Nov., 1093), the Black Rood was
deposited upon the altar of Dunfermline Abbey, where St. Margaret was
interred.

The next mention of it that I have been enabled to make note of, occurs in
1292, in the Catalogue of Scottish Muniments which were received within the
Castle of Edinburgh, in the presence of the Abbots of Dunfermline and Holy
Rood, and the Commissioners of Edward I., on the 23rd August in that year,
and were conveyed to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Under the head

"Omnia ista inventa fuerunt in quadam cista in Dormitorio S. Crucis, et
ibidem reposita praedictos Abbates et altos, sub ecrum sigillis."

we find

"Unum scrinium argenteum deauratum, in quo reponitur crux quo vocatur
_la blake rode_."--Robertson's _Index_, Introd. xiii.

It does not appear that any such fatality was ascribed to this relique as
that which the Scots attributed to the possession of the famous stone on
which their kings were crowned, or it might be conjectured that when Edward
I. brought "the fatal seat" from Scone to Westminster, he brought the Black
Rood of Scotland too. That amiable and pleasing historian, Miss Strickland,
has stated that the English viewed the possession of this relique by the
Scottish kings with jealousy; that it was seized upon by Edward I., but
restored on the treaty of peace in 1327. This statement is erroneous; the
rood having been mistaken for the stone, which, by the way, as your readers
know, was never restored.

We next find it in the possession of King David Bruce, who lost this
treasured relique, with his own liberty, at the battle of Durham (18th
Oct., 1346), and from that time the monks of Durham became its possessors.
In the _Description of the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customs of the
Abbey Church of Durham_, as they existed at the dissolution, which was
written in 1593, and was published by Davies in 1672, and subsequently by
the Surtees Society, we find it described as

"A most faire roode or picture of our Saviour, in silver, called the
Black Roode of Scotland, brought out of Holy Rood House, by King David