Kelso Abbey - Sixteenth Century Destruction

Sixteenth Century Destruction

Kelso Abbey effectively ceased to function as the result of a combination of events in the mid sixteenth century. First, in the 1540s, the building sustained major damage in attacks perpetrated under the orders of the English king, Henry VIII, part of the so-called Rough Wooing, in which most of southern Scotland's abbeys, including those at Melrose, Dryburgh and Jedburgh, were targeted for destruction by forces under the command of the Earl of Hertford. This physical assault was followed around ten years later, in 1560, by monastic disestablishment under the Scottish Reformation, from which time the Tironensian community at Kelso was no longer officially recognised.

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