Continued entries/extra info

[Page] 9
Town of Peebles -- Sheet 2 Trace 6

"About a century after the erection of St. Andrews church King Alexander III bestowed on Peebles a particular mark of his munificence. This was the erection of the Cross church and monastery which took place in 1260 for reasons stated my Boece the historian. At that period there had recently been discovered under-ground near at a Spot north from the Old Town a Shrine of Stone Containing the remains of a human body which had been cut in pieces together with a cross bearing the name of St Nicholas
From the latter circumstances the body was believed to be that of St. Nicholas a culdee who was supposed to have suffered Martyrdom about the end of the third century during the persecutions of the early Christians in Britain. Such a discovery was not to be lightly passed over in an age of piety allied with superstition. Accordingly the Bishop of Glasgow urged the young King to found an ecclesiastical establishment on the Spot where unto all time the cross and relics of St Nicholas might lie preserved for the reverence of the people Alexander entered devoutly on the undertaking. A church with convent containing seventy Red Friars was founded and liberally endowed with land still called the Kirkland in the neighbourhood. At the Reformation the Cross-Church or as it was Sometimes called the church of the Holy Rude of Peebles met with the Common fate of ecclesiastical institutions. Its clergy were despersed and the revenues of the establishment less or more appropriated
The building now became the parish church and it served this purpose till 1784 when a new and more spacious edifice was finished at the head of the High Street on Spot formerly occupied by the Castle of Peebles. The ruins of the Cross-church now Known as the Auld Kirk will afterwards be referred to." ___ Guide to Peebles by W. & R.Chambers page 31