Chapter Sixteen. Continues the Record.

Pausing in my work, I rose and looked out across the sunlit sea. Then, eager to gain further knowledge, returned and continued the deciphering, as follows:

“Of the years I remained at Croylande, growing old in years, and often visiting with my friend Malcolm Maxwell the beadsman Petre of Castor, beyond the town of Peterborough, I speak not, save to say that much happened in London of the king’s marriages and or our lord-Cardynall Wolsey’s disfavour with his majesty.

“But now, reader, another thing did happen in the year 1537 that unquieted our abbot and all of us—namely, that the king intended to suppress and seize our abbey, as his majesty had seized the houses of Romburgh, Fyneshed, Walsinghame, and Bury St. Edmonds. Whereupon our abbot, John Welles, a holy and well-beloved man, wrote unto Thomas Cromwell, chief secretary to the king’s highness, this letter:

”‘With due reverence I command me unto your honourable lordship, humbly asserteing the same that I send your lordship by this bearer part of our fen fish, right meekly beseeching your lordship favourably to accept the same fish, and to be good and favourable, lord, unto me and my poor house, in such cause as I hereafter shall have cause to serve unto your good lordship, and I with my bretheren shall daily pray to our Lord God for the long continuance of your lordship in health.—At Croylande the xxv. day of March, by your daily orator, John, abbot there.’

“But it pleased not the King’s Secretary that our splendid abbey should be spared, and the gift of our fish was unavailing. The king’s highness recognised not the good and true service done to his grace, and gave not his favour unto us. Because of its isolation our abbey became a place of refuge in those black days of the king’s wrath against us. Through those years I had lived a quiet life in the cloister, mostly employed in prayer and meditation, for of a vertie I was penitent, and prayed for the repose of the soul of my Lady Lucrezia. Alas, the secular spirit prevailed in our land, and we received worde at the first daybreak in December 1538 that the commissioners, William Parre, Robert Southwell, and Thomas Myldemay, who had seized the monastery of St. Androse in Northampton for the king’s use, intended to seize likewise our house and lands. Therefore did our good abbot John take me aside with Malcolm Maxwell and held counsel with us how best to conceal owr altar plate and jewels, of the which we held a goodly quantitie. Secretly, knowing how safe a place was the fish ponde, wherein I had already hidden the Borgia treasure, I suggested it, and that night, leaving sufficient silver to satisfy his majesty’s commissioners, the three of us took the great silver altar and a goodlie number of the Abbey treasures, and, placing the latter in three chests bound with iron, sank them deep in the mud in the centre of the pond. Only Maxwell and myself were privy to the secret that we had taken from the abbey treasury the things that follow.”

In Old English the list read:

“i. greate altar of sylver, mayde by the Abbat Richard in 1281.
i. great chalyce of golde gyven by Thomas de Bernack in the yeere 1356.
iiij. large chalyces of sylver.
iiiij. patens.
i. alms bason.
viij. cuppes of sylver.
iii. cuppes of golde.
ii. golde candelsticks.
iiij. golde crucifixes.
viij. cuppes of sylver.
ii. sylver boxes full of the precious stones tayken from the altars and
robes. Some of great syze.
iii. small boxes of other jewells.”

Continuing, the record stated:

“Of the rest, we left two chalices and other things for the king’s highness, the Abbot knowing well that our house must be destroyed and desecrated, and that we must be scattered. The night was dark, with thicke fen-mist, when we carried forth the heavy chests and let them down noiselesslie into the water at a spotte at the opposite end to where through many years my own treasure lay well concealed. The ponde was deepe, and dried not in summer, beinge fed by many springs, and well fylled wyth good carp for Fridays. Malcolm kept watch by the south door while I, wyth the Abbot, sank owr treasure in the deepest parte of the lake. Then, when we returned in silence, we all three went into the Abbot’s chamber and there swore to Almighty God to ever preserve the secret, tayking oath that neither should seeke to recover the hidden treasure withoute the consent of the other two. We knew that our glorious abbey was doomed, and wished to save what we could for the Church’s benefit. And we were not mistaken, for three dayes later the Commissioners came with Thomas Cromwell himself, and our good Abbot was forced to surrender unto them everything. Thus we monks, to the number of one hundred and sixty and four, were dispersed; and the king’s men stripped our great church, seized all that was of value, sold the bells and the lead, and then broke and battered down the walls. Seeing their ill-intentions, some of us still remayned in refuge in houses of the people in the neighbourhood, I finding hospitality at an inn called The Oak Branch at Eye, while Malcolm was at Thorney, owr abbot having departed to London.

“Through a full month we watched the destruction of owr magnificent Abbey, how that Southwell’s men did break owr statues and tore down the very tower, I lingering there because of my own treasure concealed and unable to recover it lest my actions should be noted. Once I heard rumour that Southwell intended to pump out the lakes, and surely the pump was sette up. Then did I tremble, well knowinge that all that we had hidden must be discovered. Cromwell, however, considered that they had seized all of which we were possessed, and luckily gave orders for the work of pumping to be stopped, an order which pleased me mightily, for every other hole and corner was well searched for anything hidden, especially for books and proclamations against the king’s actions.

“On the fifth of February 1539, my friend Malcolm Maxwell, who like miself had been compelled by the king’s commissioners to discard his habit, came to me, saying that he had decided to return to Scotland, his own country, and offered me asylum in his brother’s house, the castel of Treyf, in Galloway. His invitation accepted, I managed one night by the light of the moon to drag the fish pond, and after many attempts succeeded in recovering the casket of wood and iron that I had brought from Italie, no one knowinge of my actions. To Malcolm, who was older than myself, I declared that my casket contained my Booke of Hours and a relic of Saint Peter—the which I had brought from Rome—for he knew not that it really contained my dead lady’s jewels and her secrete phials. As touching our journey north by the great roade through Stamford and York to Carlisle I will not speak, save to say that we hadde manie adventures, and more than once I was in imminent peril of losing mi precious casket. On the borderlandes all was in disorder, and the moss-troopers were ever ready to steal and kill. While passing by the high road through Dumfries and Dalbeatie we went into the great Abbey of Dundrennan, and prayed before the silver image of Our Lady there; and also we made a pilgramage to St. Ninian’s shrine, afterwards passing across the hills and glens by Auchencaim and over Bengairn, and thence to the river Dee, where, upon an island, stood the greate grim castle of Treyf, once the impregnable fortalice of the Black Douglas, but now in the possession of my Lorde Maxwell of Terregles, an ancient baron of great landes, and brother of Friar Malcolm.

“In this, the wildest part of Galloway, we were received warmly by my lord of Treyf, who on the nighte of our arrival was entertaining in the great banquetting-hall John Gordon of Lochinvar, who had juste been to France with the Scottish King incognito in search of a wife; Gylbert Earl of Cassilis; David Vaus, abbot of Soulseat; his brother John Vaus of Bambarrock; with the lairds of Garlies and Sorby. The talk as we ate our venison with wheat bread was of how the two Galloway lairds the Macdowalls of Freuch and of Mindork were invadinge Arran with fire and sword, and how they had burned the castle of Brodick to the ground. By their conversation I knewe well that although my lord Maxwell was steward of Kilcudbricht (Kirkcudbright) and keeper of Treyf, which the kinge had wrested from the Douglas; he was, however, not truly loyal, and that there was conspiracy against the king just as there had been in that same stronghold in the days of the Black Douglas.

“Still far from it that I, a houseless fryar, should utter complaints, for mi lord, not havynge seen his brother for fifteen years, treated us both with greatest courtesy, and gave us asylum for as long as we wished, assigninge to us rooms in the tower that commanded the sweep of the river lookynge up towards Greenlaw. Through a full year I remained with my lorde Maxwell, riding often against the Gordons of Kenmuir, the Douglases of Drumlanrig, and the Agnews of Locknaw, having well concealed my treasure-casket in a safe spot upon the island. Old in yeares, yet much fierce warfare did I see across the hills and treacherous mosses of Galloway, often ridinge over the border against the English with Malcolm, who, like myself, had readilie doffed the habit for the breastplate. We besieged the castle of Kenmuir, and took its lord prisoner to Stirling, as also we did the lord of Orchardton, Willyam Cairns.

“At this time our King Henry of England had shaken off the Holy Father’s authority, and the doctrines of the reformed religion were widelie spreading among the people. In Scotland, too, a greate national change was unavoidably approachinge; for religious reformation had been long advancing, and doctrines in opposition to the Romish Faith had been propagated in Galloway by the Gordons of Airds. The Bible, which had been locked up from the laity by the clergy, was now procured in numbers, and secret meetings were beinge held in the woods to read it, for even possession of a copie of the sacred book was a penal offence. Of a verity the persecution was terrible, for many were imprisoned or committed to the flames.

“Treyf was a goodly stronghold, square, surrounded by a barbican and flanked at each angle by a circular tower, secured in front by a deep fosse and vallum, while the island itself was surrounded by the rapid waters of the Dee; and my lord Maxwell, with the kinge’s authority behind him, was the most powerful of the lords of Galloway. One night, however, we returned from ridyng against the English from Lochmaben. Our Galloway troopers, with Lochinvar at their head, had utterly routed a large body of Somerset’s men, and as in the sundown my charger’s heels clattered on the drawbridge of Treyf, Malcolm, who had remained, came forward to greet me with pale face, and took me up into my chamber where we could speak privately. He told me that the conspiracy against the kinge, formed by his brother, had been discovered, and that a mounted messenger had arrived from Helen Lady of Torhouse, who was with the Court in Edinburgh, to warn him that his majesty had sent an armed force on his way to us. My lord Maxwell’s intentions regarding an alliance with Somerset to the detriment of the Scottish king had been betrayed by one of the conspirators, Johnston of Lockwood, and the messenger alleged that five thousande men were already at Dumfries wyth orders to storm and take Treyf, with my lord Maxwell, his brother Malcolm, and myself, who, cominge from England as we dyd, were beleeved to have been in the plot, and to also arrest young Gordon of Lochinvar, Abbot Vaus of Soulseat, and Gylbert Earl of Cassilis, at their various houses. My lord Maxwell was absent wythe James Earle of Bothwell at Earlston, but a messenger was sent in hot haste to him, while Malcolm and myself tooke counsel as to how we should act. My lord’s fair daughter Margaret was in the castle, and we saw that to save her and ourselves we must all three flie. They were hastily preparinge while I had gone in secret to secure my precious casket, when the guard suddenly announced that the advance guard of the kinge’s army was already at Treyf Mains. Not an instant was to be lost, therefore, compelled to leave my ladie Lucrezia’s jewels in their safe hiding-place, I sprang into the saddle of a fresh charger, which one of the troopers led to me, and, following Malcolm and the fair Margaret, dashed across the drawbridge and along the frail wooden brydge that connected the island wyth the opposite banke. Scarce had my horse’s hoofs touched the road than the weak supports of the bridge were knocked away, fell in pieces in the river, and were swept down the stream, while at the same instant the portcullis fell, and the rattling of chains told that the drawbridge was drawn up and the stronghold isolated and rendered impregnable.

“The fair daughter of Maxwell proved a good horsewoman, and through the long dark night we all three rode our hardest, well knowinge that capture meant either death or imprisonment in the dungeons of Edinburgh. Indeed, our departure was noted, and for some hours we were hotly pursued; but Margaret Maxwell knew the countrie as well as any moss-trooper, and she led us safely through the Glenkens into the giant solitudes of Carsphairn; then, after a rest, taking a circular route, we rode along the wild shore of Loch Doon, over the Rhinns of Kells, and across to Auchenmalg Bay, where we arrived in sadde plight and exhausted on the second night. Through the whole of Galloway the kinge’s men were searchinge for us, and we heard that my lord Maxwell had already fallen into their hands near Loch Ken, while Treyf was holding out against the besiegers. To remain in Scotland longer was impossible, although I grieved in secrete that I had no means by which to recover my precious casket. Ours was truly a position of gravest peril.”