|
EPOCH OF
DEVORGILLA – SHE BUILDS A BRIDGE OVER THE NITH – SHE ALSO FOUNDS A
GREYFRIARS’ MONASTERY IN THE BURGH, AND NEWABBEY IN KIRKCUDBRIGHTSHIRE –
BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF THE BRIDGE UPON THE TOWN – THE SEAL OF DEVORGILLA –
HER DEATH AND BURIAL.
AT the
period now reached – the middle of the thirteenth century – Dumfries would
probably have much fewer than two thousand inhabitants. When Devorgilla
[The lady’s name is variously spelt: on her seal, preserved in Balliol
College, Oxford, it appears as “Dervorgille,” the words added being
“deballio alani de Galawad;” sometimes it is written “Devorgille;” at
Oxford the style used is “Devorguilla.” Dugdale, appending the family
name, calls her “Devorgilla Macdowall.”] visited it after her marriage
with the Lord of Barnard Castle, it must have worn a very primitive
aspect; and she would readily realize the loss to the inhabitants, as well
as the inconvenience to herself, caused by the want of a bridge over the
Nith to connect the town with Galloway. Her family had possessions on both
sides of the river, in England also not less than in Scotland, and as a
ready means of communication between them a bridge was needed; and such a
structure would at the same time promote the well-being of a town in which
she began to take a deep interest. Impressed with this idea, she was not
long in giving effect to it. The Lady Devorgilla belonged to one of the
most opulent families in Europe: she was large-hearted and liberal-minded
up to the full measure of her wealth; and no greater boon could she have
conferred on the Dumfriesians of that and many after-generations than by
linking together the two sides of Nithsdale. The river, a few miles above
the town, when it rolled past Dalswinton Castle – where her future
kinsman, the Black Comyn, resided – and the opposite territory of the
Kirkpatricks, looked very much as it now does, and it then laved the
Abbey-lands gifted by her ancestor, just as it now steals gently past the
ruined house of Uchtred; but when within a stone-cast of the high ground
crowned by the “castle in the shrubbery,” it took a wider sweep eastward
that it does at present. Not that the channel of the Nith, near to and
opposite the town, has been absolutely changed during the six centuries
that have intervened. On this point there is no small amount of popular
misconception. The bed of the river is still essentially the same; but,
down till the reign of William the Lion, its margin next the town had
little natural and no artificial embankment. As a consequence, the upper
sand beds, or Green-sands, and the lower sand beds, or White-sands, were
seriously encroached upon; and a watery dominion, more or less wide, was
established over the Dock Meadow as far down as the other stronghold of
the Comyns at Castledykes – the high rock on which the fortress stood at
this point giving the encroaching element a westward curve, till the river
fringed an ancient mound on the Troqueer side, the mote-hill from which
Devorgilla’s forefathers, as Lords of Galloway, must often have
administered brehon law to their vassals. [The Scoto-Irish colonists of
Galloway and Nithsdale had, for a long period, no written laws; and cases
were usually decided by the will of the brehon or judge, guided by
traditional precedents.]
The rocky
bed of the Nith at Castledykes still impedes the navigation; but it shot
up higher, shallowing the water much more in old times that at the present
day, and a flood in the upper reaches, therefore, ebbed out at a very
indolent pace. A spate in the Nith was, for these reasons, a serious
visitation, seeming, sometimes, as if the Solway had advanced seven miles
further north; the Vennel looking like a miniature canal, and the
impetuous waves threatening to invade the row of little cabins which then
occupied the site of Irish Street. The tides, when high, had a range only
less extensive, depositing a vast accumulation of sand, which still lies
below the herbage of the dock and houses that are now beyond the sweep of
the tidal flux and river. These statements are further borne out of old
sazines, which make the Nith the boundary of certain gardens in St.
Michael’s Street. Under such circumstances, the crossing of the river by
boats or on horseback must have been often dangerous, and sometimes
impracticable, though easily enough effected in these ways, or even by
wading, when the water was in its normal state.
The
bridge was not the only fabric raised for behoof of the town of
Devorgilla. She was full of spiritual fervour; and, quite in accordance
with the practice of her family and of the age, her piety expressed itself
in the erection of religious houses and the endowment of monastic
fraternities. The vast extent of her wealth, and her desire, as she fondly
thought, to store up a portion of it in heaven, were proved to the world,
when a convent at Dundee – with which town she was connected through the
Comyns – another at Wigtown, and Greyfriars’ Monastery at Dumfries, and,
last of all, Newabbey in Kirkcudbrightshire, grew up at her command.
Baliol died in 1269; and we are inclined to think that all these religious
houses were erected after this date. Her affection for him seems to have
been abounded: perhaps she sought, by the building of such expensive
fanes, to promote the eternal well-being of her departed husband.
The dates
of these erections are unknown, except in the case of Newabbey, which,
Fordun tells us, was built in 1275, [Fordun, in the Scotichronicon, gives
this date twice vol. i., p. 474, and vol. ii., p. 124.]: a period when the
Decorated style of Gothic architecture was just beginning to enrich the
severer dignity of the Early English. The abbey is of this complex
transitional character; and as the monastery was in the Early English
style, no difficulty is felt in determining that is came first into
existence, and that it could scarcely have been built later than 1270 –
the probability being that it had a somewhat earlier origin. There were no
architects among the ordinary Celtic or Saxon population of Dumfriesshire
and Galloway competent to design such buildings – no masons able to
fashion the materials, and weave them, as it were, into the requisite
shape. The Norman nobles and yeoman, who had newly come into the country,
had little relish for such artistic or industrial pursuits: more liking
had they for “the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war,” and the
exuberant pleasures of the chase. When it entered into the mind of
Devorgilla, therefore, to dower her native district with goodly temples
dedicated to God’s service, she had to bring artists and operatives from a
distance before her conceptions could be carried into effect. The lady’s
wealth was a handmaid to her will, which, like the talisman of Aladdin,
brought agents at her call ready and able to do the work assigned to them.
There were building associations in France and Italy formed for the very
purpose of erecting, or assisting to erect, gorgeous religious structures
adapted for the sumptuous ritual of the Western Church. [Appendix A.] Some
of these, on being appealed to, would only be too glad to visit Nithsdale,
in order to realize the grand ideas of this bountiful princess and dutiful
daughter of Rome.
In due
time a band of foreign workmen would arrive at Dumfries; and probably,
after completing their contract there, a portion of them would be engaged
on the greater undertaking further down the river. There is no necessity,
however, for supposing that all the head and hand work employed on these
buildings was furnished from abroad. Some native churchmen may have
co-operated with the foreign architects; and Newabbey, at all events,
manifests some features, such as the depression of the upper window of the
transept, which are never found in French or Italian buildings of the same
style and period.
The site
selected for the Abbey was an admirable one – a pleasant nook of land,
watered by the Glen Burn, and within a short distance of the Solway; and
there arose the marvelous pile which is still charming in its decay,
though sadly changed since the wimpling rivulet an the surging sea sang
responsive to the vesper melody of its inmates.
Its
humble sister building, which has long since disappeared, was a monastic
establishment belonging to an order founded by St. Francis of Assisi, who,
from being a wild libertine, had become an ascetic devotee, and died in
the odour of sanctity about the year 1230. When brooding sorrowfully over
his wasted prime, he heard a sermon on Matthew x. 9, 10: “Provide neither
gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; nor scrip for your journey,
neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is
worthy of his meat.” This discourse fixed the destiny of young Francis
Bernardone – had a wonderful influence too, as we shall afterwards see, on
the fortunes of Scotland; for if he had not established a monastic order
in consequence, there would probably have been no friary at Dumfries, and
in that case no slaughter of Comyn, and the pliant Lord of Annandale might
never have grown into resolute heroism – never have ripened into the Bruce
of Bannockburn. Francis, interpreting the Scriptural injunctions
literally, gave up all his worldly goods, attired himself in coarse
raiment, and, wandering the country round, begged from man and prayed to
Heaven by turns: one of the first specimens of a mendicant friar which
Europe had ever seen. He obtained a numerous train of followers – formed
an order on his own self-sacrificing model, which, in further proof of his
humility, he named Fratres Minores – as if they were too contemptible to
be put on a footing of equality with the other religious brotherhoods.
Devorgilla, a devotee herself, cordially sympathized with these poor
ascetics. She had conceived the idea of building and endowing a
magnificent abbey for monks of a more patrician class – the Cistercians:
she resolved first to found a house for the lowly Franciscans, the fame of
whose virtues and sacrifices had often been sounded in her ears, and had
won her warmest admiration.
This
monastery, though a small building as compared with Newabbey, had a
handsome external aspect. In that respect it had no rival in Dumfries. The
Castle had more strength than ornament; the smaller fortress, southward of
the town, belonging to the Comyns, was a rough piece of masonry; and the
primitive church, erected during the Scoto-Irish period, would be simply a
square or oblong fabric, with probably a roof of thatch, and certainly
with few pretensions to architectural beauty. The new religious house was
erected westward of the Castle, near the head of the oldest street – still
called on that account the Friars’ Vennel. It consisted of a range of
cloisters, a refectory, a dormitory, with other necessary appendages; and
there was added to it a church – not commonplace, like the other church,
but made up of nave and aisle, chancel and choir: all in the Early English
style, with prevailed for about eighty years after the disappearance of
the Norman style, in the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Some time
in the latter half of the same century, swarthy foreigners from the sunny
South was seen mingling with the fair-complexioned Celts and Saxons of the
town – in, but not
of, the ordinary
population. Their language, dress, and mode of life were alike strange:
some of them spoke Norman-French, others the soft Italian tongue – in
curious contrast to their rough attire, which consisted of a coarse grey
grown having a hood of the same stuff, and fastened at the waist with a
hempen cord by way of girdle. These grotesque-looking strangers were the
original Grey Friars, the primitive tenants of the Monastery in the
Vennel. Afterwards they would be joined by numerous recluses from the
neighbourhood; and, when the foreign friars had acquired some knowledge of
the native dialect, the order would enter upon its duties, which, as
summarily expressed in the rules of its founder, were – “To live to
preach, and beg to live.”
But the
liberal lady who brought the brethren to Dumfries did not wish them to
interpret these words too literally: she fancied that a fixed income would
be an acceptable addition to precarious doles given by the charitable;
and, accordingly, the house was endowed by her with the customs extracted
at the bridge. The Nith was now no longer wild, untrammeled vagrant river,
rioting wantonly over its eastern bank, playing at high jinks when it
pleased, dashing its spray upon the lieges as they looked out of their
little domiciles, and saying complacently to itself, “I shall have these
encroaching houses down some day.”
The river
was bridged; a beginning had been made of the embankment townward at the
bottom of the Vennel; and though spring tides and Lammas freshets still at
times turned the stream into an island sea, its destructive power was
sensibly reduced, and, rage and foam as it might on such occasions, it
could not get rid of the curb put upon it, or break the bond of stone
which rose above its subject billows to unite Dumfriesshire with Galloway.
The bridge was a colossal one, of nine arches, having no equal at that
time in Scotland. [Appendix B.] Some of the workmen, who literally left
their mark on the monastery, would probably be employed in its
construction also. Three years were spent, fully five centuries
afterwards, in erecting the new bridge over the Nith; and we may
reasonably suppose that the building of the old bridge would occupy a
still longer period. This latter structure helped to make Dumfries: it was
thereby brought into a close relationship with Galloway, and became an
important station on the leading highway between England and Scotland. The
founder of Dumfries is unknown; its first royal patron was William the
Lion, and the person to whom it was indebted next to him in medićval times
was Devorgilla. Before the charters and the bridge a humble village –
after them a thriving burgh.
In or
prior to 1282, when other ten years or less had elapsed, Devorgilla gave
yet another proof of her extraordinary munificence by establishing Balliol
College, in the University of Oxford, so called in memory of her deceased
husband, who was rarely absent from her thought. [The original building
has long since disappeared, and in the existing College there is nothing
earlier than the middle of the Fifteenth century. The foundation at
present comprises a master, twelve fellows, and fourteen scholars, besides
exhibitioners. – Walk through
Oxford, p. 103.] The original deed embodying the statutes of the
foundation is still extant, with an impression of Devorgilla’s seal
attached – both precious relics. [Appendix C.] The impression of the seal
– a double one, reproduced on the title page – is especially interesting:
one side exhibits the arms of Baliol impaled with those of Galloway, the
other a full-length figure, doubtless her own, holding up the shields of
both families, one in each hand, with two more shields below; one
consisting of three garbes, the other of three piles conjoined in point,
and representing respectively the related house of Chester and Huntington.
Wyntou [Cronykil, Book viii., e. 8.], Prior of Lochleven, states that
Devorgilla was a comely personage – “rycht pleasand of bewté;” that
“A bettyr ladye than she, wes nane,
In all the yle of Mare Bertane.”
Pity that
some of the lines in this miniature likeness have been so obliterated by
“time’s effacing fingers,” that the nobility of mind which made her higher
and richer far than her princely rank or her boundless wealth is not seen
imprinted on the features; but the reflex of the eloquent eyes has been to
some extent preserved, and the soul of the sainted lady seems, as it were,
to look through them still, and through the mist of the long cycle that
has intervened since she passed away from earth.
Devorgilla breathed her last at Barnard Castle in 1289. Her husband, John
Baliol died at the same place twenty-one years before, and was buried
there – all except the heart: which symbol of our emotional nature the
sorrowful widow caused to be embalmed, and placed in a little ivory
casket, and kept beside her as a daily companion, till the erection of
Newabbey furnished for it a fitting shrine. It was built in over the high
altar of that magnificent monumental fane: hence the romantic name it ever
afterwards bore, Dulce Cor, or Sweetheart Abbey.
[“That ilke hart than, as men sayd,
Scho bawmyd, and gert it be layd
In-til a cophym of evore,
That she get be made there-for,
Annamalyd and perfectly dycht,
Lockyt and bwndyn with sylver brycht;
And alwayis quhau scho ghed til mete
That cophyne scho gert by hir sett;
And till hyr Lord, as in presens,
Ay to that she dyd reverens.”
Wyntoun’s Cronykil.]
They
brought the body of Devorgilla to her native Nithsdale, burying it within
the walls of the Abbey, and placing upon the lady’s bosom her husband’s
heart, in obedience to her dying wish: another affecting illustration of
the strong love which made them one. A tombstone, of which there is left
no certain trace, marked the spot, bearing upon it an inscription, which,
unlike most epitaphs, did not recount one half of the virtues possessed by
the lady who slept below. The epitaph, composed by Hugh de Burgh, Prior of
Lanercost, ran as follows: -
“In Devorvilla moritur sensate
Sibilla,
Cum Marthaque pia, contemplative
Maria;
Da Davorvillam requie, Rex summe
potiri
Quam tegit iste lapis cor pariterque
viri.”
“In Devorgil, a sybil sage doth die,
as
Mary contemplative, as Martha pious;
To her, oh! Deign, high King, rest to
impart
Whom this stone covers with her
husband’s heart.” |
