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The Cross Kirk Of Peeblis owed its foundation to a very common event which yet from the superstition of the times created much popular attention. On the 7th of May 1261 as we learn from Fordun there were dug up at Peebles a certain and magnificent and venerable Cross which was supposed to be the very cross of the martyred St Nicholas during the maximian persecution
There was also found here soon after an urn containing "the ashes and bones of a certain man's body". At the Gadenci town of the Romanized Christians these discoveries were nothing extraordinary Yet was Alexander III induced by William the Bishop of Glasgow to found on this site in 1254 a monastery for red friars. &c
In the Cross Kirk as well as in some other churches in Peeblis there were founded by the piety of ancient times a number of chaplainries and altarages with lands for their support all these were granted by James VI to the Corporation of Peeblis. At the reformation the High Church in the old town was destroyed and the Cross Church was converted into the parish Kirk the
Cloister was converted into houses for the Schoolmasters and public schools, and it was used for this purpose till the beginning of the eighteenth century when the cloister became ruinous
The revenues of the Cross were by reforming Sacrilege assigned in pensions to Walter Henderson and Son whether the famous zealot of the Scottish Kirk appears not. &c, Chambers Caledonia vol. [volume] 11 pgs [pages] 942, 943