In 1558 Cardinal Guise was Commendator of Melrose, and, in 1559, the abbey was taken possession of by the Lords of the Congregation. In 1560 it was annexed to the Crown; but an allowance was granted to eleven monks and three portioners, being apparently all who survived of the inmates of the monastery, who, in 1542, numbered one hundred monks and as many lay brethren. Under Queen Mary the estates were granted to the Earl of Bothwell, with the title of Commendator, and, after passing through the hands of Douglas of Lochleven and Sir John Ramsay, they were ultimately acquired by the Scotts of Buccleuch. The abbey appears never to have recovered the destruction of the sixteenth century, and gradually fell into decay. The materials of the buildings were used for the erection of other structures, and Douglas, the Commendator, built a house for himself out of the ruins. The masonry long continued to form a quarry for the supply of the locality, being used, amongst other purposes, for the erection of the Tolbooth and for repairing the mills and sluices. In 1618 the portion of the structure which still remained was fitted up as the parish church, and, in order to render it secure, a plain pointed barrel vault was thrown across the nave, and was supported by plain square piers built against the old piers on the north side. The original vaulting seems to have been previously demolished. By remarkable good fortune the statues and images which filled the niches escaped destruction till 1649, when they suffered at the hands of an iconoclast, but by whose orders it is not known. The charters of the abbey have been kept amongst the archives of the Earl of Morton, and form “the finest collection of ancient writs preserved in Scotland.”[133] Of the once extensive structures connected with the Abbey of Melrose there now only remain the ruins of the church. The domestic buildings and cloister, including the hall of Abbot Matthew above mentioned, were situated, somewhat contrary to the usual practice, on the north side of the church. The course of the Tweed has altered since the thirteenth century; and possibly this arrangement of the plan may have had some connection with facilities for water service in the then course of the river. A mill-lade still flows along what would formerly be the north side of the monastery; but [Illustration: FIG. 763.--Melrose Abbey. Plan.] the domestic structures have now entirely disappeared, leaving only a portion of the cloister to indicate their position on the north side of the nave. A door at a high level in the north transept shows the access of the monks to the church from the dormitory, which lay to the north. A similar high door, leading from the dormitory to the church by a straight stair, still exists at Pluscardine Priory, and there is a corresponding doorway at Dryburgh Abbey; but in these convents the monastic buildings lay on the south side of the church.