Account of Aug. 2006 visit, part 2. After Rosslyn we returned to Abbotsford, situated on the banks of the river Tweed. It was built, or rather greatly extended and renamed, by the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. Its exterior is a dramatic composition of towers and turrets. Some of the features of its interior, including musician angels on its ceilings, are based on carvings from Rosslyn Chapel. Abbotsford contains also a great library, and a collection of arms and armour, both medieval and Napoleonic. There are other quaint and curious objects, from the crucifix of Mary, Queen of Scots to a cast of the skull of Robert the Bruce. The house evokes Scott’s medieval novels, such as Ivanhoe, where the Templars feature as villains. Scott had a nostalgia for the age of Chivalry, as his eccentric house demonstrates.
A group of German tourists were being shown about the house by a passionate guide, but some of his enthusiasm seemed to be lost in translation. Scott was a popular writer, and also amassed a great library of his own, thousands of books on history and folklore surround his study. He does not seem to have esteemed the historical Knights Templar, perhaps being prejudiced against Catholic institutions (one volume I spotted on his shelves had an un-PC title something like ‘A History of Papist Treason’). Scott’s wife was a Protestant French Huguenot. Scott’s descendants later converted to Catholicism, curiously, and the house contains a quaint Catholic chapel with an altar showing Christ’s ancestry, stemming from a Jesse tree, and with a graceful statue of the Madonna behind it. Intriguingly, set into the house’s garden wall, among other antiquities, is part of a medieval grave slab with the stepped base of a Calvary cross. This design, as we have seen, was favoured by the Templars for their graves.
Finally that day we went to Melrose, famous for its Abbey. (Melrose is a pleasant and attractive town with decent pubs, and is a nice place to stay.) Melrose Abbey was one of the earliest Cistercian foundations in Scotland. It survives in magnificent ruins. Melrose was donated to the white monks by King David I, who also invited the Templars into the kingdom. (An older, Celtic Christian monastery of Melrose had existed nearby since c. 650, and was associated with St Cuthbert.) The first Cistercian brethren arrived from Rievaulx, Yorkshire, in 1136, and founded the new Melrose (the former one having fallen into obscurity). Waltheof, the King’s stepson, became one of the first Abbots. His body was reputed never to have decayed, and he was afterwards revered as a saint. Melrose, meanwhile, became the centre of an extensive estate.
Most of the standing ruins of the present Melrose Abbey postdate an attack on the Abbey by the soldiers of Richard II of England in about 1385. A contrite Richard sponsored the rebuilding work, which carried on for over a century. The decoration, is (in places) reminiscent of that of near-contemporary Rosslyn Chapel, but is executed with greater restraint and refinement. Melrose’s nave contained side chapels and two choirs, the monks choir nearest the Altar, and the screened off lay brethren’s choir behind. The Abbey is reputedly the burial place of the heart of King Robert the Bruce. Numerous grave slabs have also been found at Melrose, including some carved with the sword and elongated Calvary cross often associated with Templar burials. Other interesting features of the Abbey include more carvings of musician angels, and, rather unharmoniously, a gargoyle of a pig playing the bagpipes. Fittingly, that day, there was a pipe band competition on in the town, and while on top of the Abbey we were treated to the sight and sound of the massed bands parading past, through the town, up the hill. It was quintessentially Scottish.
The next day we went to Edinburgh. The Scott Memorial- that great Gothic rocket, was an impressive sight, as was the Castle, which has statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce flanking its gatehouse. Also of interest was the National Gallery of Scotland, with its many art treasures. These included a bevy of antique beauties, Titians’s Venus, Canova’s sublime Three Graces, Boticelli’s Madonna and Sargent’s Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. There was also a bust of the great man, Sir Walter Scott, and a handsome portrait of one of the Sinclair dynasty in military finery. There were also a series of paintings by Nicolas Poussin, an artist spuriously linked to the Priory of Sion/Holy Grail conspiracy. These included a Last Supper, and a scene of Mary Magdalene anointing Christ’s feet. The St John figure from the Last Supper did indeed look effeminate (much like the figure in Leonardo da Vinci’s better known take on the subject, but he was also identifiable in the same painting where Mary Magdalene was present in her own right, pouring cold water, perhaps, on the theory advanced by the likes of Lynn Picknett and Dan Brown. Still, these were engrossing and haunting works. In each a golden vessel featured, calling to mind the Grail.Edinburgh had a vibrant air, the festival being on, and there being bohemian crowds milling about, as well as interesting stands and street entertainers. Particularly good were a band consisting of a bagpiper and three drummers, bashing and blasting out primal rhythms. We also walked down towards Hollyrood Palace and Abbey, unfortunately having to pass the new Scottish Parliament, which is a scar on the otherwise handsome face of the city, and which cannot be pulled down too soon.
We then returned to Melrose, finding a beautiful stretch of river nearby. The following day we set off south, and on the way to our respective homes, stopped at Hexham, Northumbria, to have a look at the Abbey, which gave a clue to what a ruin like Melrose or Whitby might have originally looked like. Hexham was originally a Benedictine monastery and then became an Augustinian Priory (the crypt dates to AD 674, testimony to the fact that Christianity had a long history in Britain while Islam was only coming into being in Arabia).
The choir is primarily twelfth century (with a Victoian East End), while the transepts are thirteenth century work. The nave was rebuilt in 1908. Set into the walls are historic stones including fragments of apparently Templar grave slabs. One shows a shield with a Croix Pattée, above a broadsword. Another, a miniature grave slab like that at Rosslyn, carved with a cross with a stepped base, lay in a chantry aisle. (It was near a tomb carved with curious, dwarf-like and ghoulish figures. One was almost Aztec, with skulls carved at the sides of its head). 
Also on show in Hexham Abbey is a luminous Anglo-Saxon chalice, probably excavated from a priestly grave, which again called to mind the Holy Grail.
So in the end, in a modest way, this sojourn had started to feel something like a Grail quest. At various turns with strange regularity had appeared these Templar (or Templar-like) stones. The symbol of the stepped cross had meaning to the Templars- it was their marker, a sign both of death and of hope for salvation and resurrection.
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