the income from those. Dryburgh's records had all been lost at this time and it is only from what is known at Melrose that Dryburgh's position can be traced. The wool export trade and the resultant customs duty was important to David and so the Border abbeys who produced large amounts of wool were encouraged to use the Scottish ports and at the expense of Edward's Berwick. The 1360s and 1370s saw the English hold over the Border areas diminish until it was basically the castles at Berwick, Jedburgh and Roxburgh with the county of Berwick and the eastern part of the county of Roxburgh still in their grip. Pressure on these bastions intensified during 1384 and 1385 and Scottish raiding parties moved deep into England forcing Richard II to launch his army on a hugely damaging incursion through the Borders to Edinburgh which he burned. On the way he ordered the sacking of Dryburgh, Melrose and Newbattle. It was while Richard was in Newbattle Wood in August 1385 that he took reprisals against all those in Teviotdale who had returned to the Scottish cause. Turning point The damage caused to Dryburgh was great and influential nobles seemed to have played a significant part in its restoration—in the closing years of the 1380s it seems that Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife, Archibald Douglas, 3rd Earl of Douglas and Walter Trail, Bishop of St Andrews all had roles in assisting the abbey to extricate itself from this disaster. King Robert III, in a charter dated 9 March 1391, granted to the canons all the very substantial income-rich possessions of the Cistercian nuns of South Berwick which had been destroyed by Richard II in 1385. The family of the Black Douglases continued with their support and in around 1420 Archibald, fourth earl of Douglas gave Dryburgh the income from the possessions of Smailholme parish church. The fifth earl continued the grant of Smailholm and went further in 1429 by asking the pope to formally confirm this together with the inclusion of the hospitals of St Leonards of Lauder and Smailholme. In 1443, the canons suffered once again when fire destroyed the abbey, evidently by accident yet eighteen years later in 1461, the abbey is recorded as requesting protection from Pope Pius II inferring that the canons were finding it difficult to finance the repairs. The final century The abbey lost the patronage