Abbot Thomas is said to have obtained the privilege of having a tavern and selling wine within the gates of the monastery, and is believed to have raised money thereby for the reconstruction of his church.[377] The quaint language of the ancient _Chronicle of Auchinleck_, translated into ordinary English, means that besides journeying to Rome and procuring the articles mentioned, he carried up the triforium and clerestory, finished the roof, erected a great part of the steeple, and built a stately gate-house. At the death of Abbot Tervas, Pope Pius II. decreed that the disposition of the office and of the whole revenues of the monastery should fall to the Pope, and he appointed Henry Crichton, a monk of Dunfermline, to be commendator of the abbey, and assigned a pension of 300 florins out of the revenues to Pietro Barlo, Cardinal of St. Mark's in Venice, to be paid to him by Henry and his successors at the Feast of St. John the Baptist, under pain of excommunication, in case of his failing to make payment within thirty days after the appointed term, and total deprivation if he persisted in his opposition six months after his excommunication. When he got himself fairly installed as abbot he declined to pay the stipulated pension to the Cardinal of St. Mark's, and made some legal quibble the ground of his neglect. Trouble followed, and since this, the appointment of its first commendator, the rights of the abbey began to be invaded. Abbot George Shaw (1472-1498) endeavoured to guard the monastery against encroachments; he built a refectory and other structures, reared a lofty tower over the principal gate, enclosed the church, the precincts of the convent, the gardens, and a little park for deer within a wall about a mile in circuit.[378] Of this once magnificent wall, with its four-sided beautiful stones and lofty statues, very few fragments now remain, but there are still two tablets that belonged to it. The central shield bears the royal arms, the shields to the right and left of it the Stewart arms and the abbot's own; and there is an inscription by the pious builder himself, which is as follows:-- Ye call it ye Abbot Georg of Schawe About yis Abbey gart make yis waw A thousande four hundereth zheyr Auchty ande fywe the date but veir [Pray for his saulis salvacioun] That made thys nobil fundacioun. It has been thought that this inscription was designed by John Morow, whose name appears on a tablet in Melrose Abbey.[379] "The character of the lettering in design and workmanship is the same as at Melrose. The references to the building operations, the poetical form of the composition, the manner in which the names are introduced, 'Callit was I,' and 'Ye callit,' and the devout expressions with which they close, make it clear that the inscriptions are the work of the same author."