ong of Gilnockie is credited with having destroyed, during
the course of his career, no fewer than fifty-two parish churches. The
picture of the religious condition of the Borders, as reflected in the
State Papers, is well fitted to awaken painful reflections. Eure, for
example, in a letter addressed to Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1596,
says:--"Another most grievous decay is the 'want of knowledge of God,'
whereby the better sort forget oath and duty, let malefactors go without
evidence, and favour a partie belonging to them or their friends. The
churches mostly ruined to the ground, ministers and preachers 'comfortless
to come and remain where such heathenish people are,' so there are neither
teachers nor taught."[134] In a still more doleful strain the Bishop of
Durham describes the irreligious condition of the Borders. "Diverse
persons," he says, "under pretext of danger to their persons, and some
through a careless regard of their conscience toward their flocks, besides
also other out of a continual corruption of their patrons, turn residence
into absence, whereby the people are almost totally negligent and ignorant
of the truth professed by us, and so the more subject to every subtile
seducer."[135] So completely, indeed, had religious teaching fallen into
abeyance that one writer even goes the length of affirming that "many die,
and cannot say the Lord's Prayer."[136]

The Commission appointed to inquire into the state of affairs on the
Borders, after the breaking of Carlisle castle by Buccleuch, and to
discover, if possible, some remedy for the clamant evils which prevailed,
suggested in the first paragraph of their report "that ministers be
planted at every Border Church to inform the lawless people of their duty,
and watch over their manners--the principals of each parish giving their
prime surety for due reverence to the pastor in his office; the said
churches to be timely repaired."[137]

The propriety and wisdom of this deliverance will not be seriously
questioned by those who have some knowledge of the motives and principles
by which human life is moulded and governed. Religion is the bulwark of
society and the State--the necessary condition alike of their existence
and wellbeing. It was therefore clearly perceived by those responsible for
the social and moral wellbeing of this much distracted region that some
effective measures must be adopted to revive the religious life of the
people. The task was none