e King of Scots
had to encounter not only his own native hierarchy, but the victorious
Church of England, just elated by its triumph over Henry. The Chapter
of St. Andrews had elected a person to be their bishop, not acceptable
to William, who desired to give the chair to his own chaplain. The
King seized the temporalities, and prevailed on the other bishops to
countenance his favorite. The bishop-elect appealed to Rome. Pope
Alexander III issued legatine powers over Scotland to the Archbishop
of York, who, along with the Bishop of Durham, after an ineffectual
war of minor threats and inflictions, excommunicated the King, and
laid the kingdom under interdict. At this point Alexander III died,
and the new pope thought it wise to make concessions to an
uncompromising adversary in a rude and distant land, who had shown
himself possessed of an extent of temporal power sufficient to
counteract the power of Rome, even among the ecclesiastics themselves.

It was before this great feud commenced that the Abbey was founded;
but during its continuance the institution received, from whatever
motives, many tokens of royal favor, as well as precious gifts from
the great barons. Among the list of benefactors we find many of those
old Norman names, which cease to be associated with Scottish history
after the War of Independence. It is a still more striking instance of
the community of interest between the two kingdoms anterior to this
war, that while we find a Scottish king devoting a great monastic
establishment to the memory of an English prelate, we should find an
English king conferring special privileges and immunities within his
realm on the Scottish brotherhood....

The Abbey was founded for Tyronesian monks, and the parent stock
whence it received its first inmates was the old Abbey of Kelso. In
the year of the foundation, Reginald, elected "Abbot of the Church of
St. Thomas," was, with his convent, released of all subjection and
obedience to the abbot and convent of Kelso. The church was completed
and consecrated under the abbacy of Ralph de Lamley, in 1233.
Aberbrothwick was one of those ecclesiastical institutions immediately
connected with the spread of the Roman hierarchy, which gradually
sucked up the curious pristine establishment of the Culdees; and the
muniments of the Abbey thus afford some traces of the character and
history of this religious body, at least towards the period of their
extinction. Thus, while the C