Beaulj^PrioryAThe Charters of the Priory of Beauly, with Notices of the Priories of Pluscardine and Ardchattan, and of the Family of the Founder, John By set, by Edmund Chisholm Batten, 8vo, cloth Embracing a narrative of the origin and history of one of the most ancient and interesting of Scottish religious houses, it conveys infor- mation how the brethren lived, and how they exercised an important influence upon civilisation. The materials were collected by years of pertinacious labour. Cornell University Library DA 890.B4C54 Charters of the Priory of Beauly 3 1924 028 091 043 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028091043 I^fc JBcet %tnitns iKltmgtf) tua, tre Ittntatl, q. oMit bii tik ^titmxii a.lJ. m.cccc.Iiiixt. THE CHARTERS Priory of Beauly WITH NOTICES OF THE PRIORIES OF PLUSCARDINE AND ARDCHATTAN AND OF THE FAMILY OF THE FOUNDER JOHN BYSET BY EDMUND CHISHOLM BATTEN PRINTED FOR THE GRAMPIAN CLUB 1877 EDINBURGH PRINTED BY m'FARLANE AND ERSKINE, ST JAMES SQUARE. PREFACE. In performing the task of editing the Charters of Beauly Priory for the Grampian Club, I have added illustrative notices in order to make these documents connected and intelligible. I am sensible that in trying to do this I have not infrequently explained what is obvious, and supplied information which was already possessed by most of our members. But I have felt, in going through the Chartu- laries published by the elder clubs, such a desire to have the explanations and illustrations which a Thomson or an Innes could have given, and such gratitude for the light thrown upon those he edited by the notes of Joseph Robertson, that I shall be rewarded for much labour if every one who takes the trouble to read these illustrations gleans at least some- thing from them that is new to him. The Charters themselves cannot but be interesting ; they tell the story for three centuries and a half of a religious community founded by the wise piety of one of those Great Houses which linked Scotland and England by the silken, yet adamantine, band of family connection, which, untwisted and almost broken for three centuries of — for Scotland — ruin and rapine, fire and sword, when again rewoven, brought back to her a restoration of those good old times when the Alex- anders reigned over a courageous and therefore respected, an industrious and therefore prosperous, and a religious and therefore happy people. The monastery of Beauly was small, and the order to which it belonged neither powerful nor popular ; but amidst the VI PREFACE. havoc and slaughter which the annals of Scotland for the period detail, it is refreshing to trace the quiet flow of the Priory's history, uneventful it may be, yet smooth and clear, and undimmed by stain or crime. Two gentle tastes were cultivated within its walls — the love of gardens and the love of books ; none who have nourished these affections but will reverence its ruins. There, was kept up a monastic school which made the house the Lamp of learning to the North ; and there, the simple life and frugal habits of its inmates enabled them to let their lands to kindly tenants on such easy terms that a perpetual feu at the rent they received was worth some forty years' purchase. I have two duties to perform ; one to apologise for the defective way in which I have done my work, the other to thank those who have assisted me. Unable to give continu- ous attention to it, the notes are disjointed and uneven, and would be of little use but for the abundant kindness which has been shown in giving me materials for them. Among those whom I have to thank, in the text not specially mentioned, are Dr Stuart, Mr W. Fraser, Dr Carruthers, Dr Corbet, Mr R. Matheson, Mr A. Ross, and Mr T. Dickson. Besides these, I have met at every turn in my investigations in the Highlands with constant attention and courtesy, owing, I believe, to the respect and regard there felt for her whose descent from the founder of Beauly Priory first suggested the work. E. C. B. AxHENyEHM Club, Martinmas 1876. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Order of Valliscaulians, Grande Chartreuse, Viard, Founder of Order, 2 ; Bishop Malvoisin, 3; Dominicans, Culdees, 5 ; Alexander II., 6; Site of Beauly, 7 ; Rule of Valliscaulians, 9 ; Transcripts of Beauly Char- ters, Macfarlane MSS., 13. CHARTERS OF BEAULY PRIORY. 1. Bull of Pope Gregory IX., Confirming Endowment of Beauly Priory by John Byset, a.d. 1231, . . . -14 Name of Beaulieu, 15; Beauly Charters, quoted in Wardlaw MS., 16; John Byset, Founder, 18; English Bysets, 20; Fraser MSS., 21; Parishes, of Dunballoch, Wardlaw, 22 ; Kiltarlity, 23 ; Leper House, Rathven; 24; Parish of Fearnua, 26; Possession of Priory, 28; Fishings, 29 ; Forged Foundation Deed, 30 ; Forged Charter, 32. 2. Charter by William Byset of the Church of Abertarff to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1231, . . . . , .33 Seal of Byset, 34 ; Parish of Abertarff, 35 ; Thomas de Thirlstan, 36 ; Scottish Lords of Parliament, 37. 3. Charter by Andrew, Bishop of Moray, of the Tithes of Grain and Salmon of the Parish of Abertarff, a.d. 1242, 38 Appropriation, Simple Benefice, 39; Beaufort Castle, 40; Chapter of - Elgin Cathedral, 41 ; Chapter of Wells Cathedral, 42 ; Murder of Earl of Athol, 43 ; Banishment and Alleged Forfeiture of Founder, 44 ; John Byset in Bordeaux, 45 ; in Ireland, 46 ; John Byset the younger, 47. 4. Charter by Laurence the Knight, Son of Patrick, the Porter of Inverness, of Bromihalu and the Island to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1255, . . . . . .49 Portership of King's Castles, 50; Black Isle, Thomey Island, West- minster Abbey, 51; Vicar of Inverness, 52; Church of Conveth, 56 6o vui CONTENTS. PAGE Origin of the Grants, 53; Three Co-Heiresses of John Byset the younger, Muriel de Graham, Cecilia de Fenton, EliEabeth de Boscho, 5. Charter by Master Henry of Nottingham, Rector of Tarra- DAI.E, TO BeAULY PrIORY, A.D. 1 274, . . • • Tarradale, 57; Master, 58; Cistercian Privileges, 59. 6. Charter by David of Inneri.unan of the Land of Outer Tarradale to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1275, Gillicrist Macgilliduffi, Gilchrist a Rosse, Angus Family, 62. 7. Charter by Andrew de Boscho and Elizabeth Byset of an Annuity to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1278, . . . -63 Customary Terms of Payment in Scotland, 64 ; Value of Money, 65 ; William, third Earl of Ross, Boiamond's Taxation, 67; Lease of Kilcoy, 67 ; Sir David de Graham, 68 ; Excommunication of William de Fenton and Cecilia Byset, 69; Fishings of Kiltarlity Church Lands, 70; Parliament of Brigham, 71. 8. Charter by Cecilia Byset of her Third Part of Altyre to Beauly Priory, c. a.d. 1215, . . . . .74 Grant of Birds' Nests, 75 ; Sir Patrick de Graham, Chapel of Beaufort, 76 ; Parish of Fearnua, 77. 9. Charter by Patrick de Graham of his Third Part of Altyre to Beauly Priory, in Exchange for the Multures OF Lovat, etc., c. a.d. 1325, . . . . .78 The Grants, 80; the Corbets, 81 ; Buildings of Beauly Priory, 81 ; Early English Style, 82. 10. Charter by William de Fenton, Lord of Beaufort, of an Annuity to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1328, . . . '83 Sir Christian del Ard, 85 ; the Forbeses, 86. 11. Charter of Release by the Vicar of Abertarff to Beauly Priory of the Tithe of Fish, a.d. 1340, . . .87 Rural Dean of Inverness, 88 ; Homage of William de Fenton, 88 ; of Hugh Fraser, 89 ; of Alexander de Chisholm, 90. 12. Bull of Pope Gregory XL to Beauly Priory, a.d. 1373, . 91 The Wolf of Badenoch, 92 ; Thomas de Chisholm, 93 ; Alexander de Insulis, 94 ; Alexander del Ard, 95 ; the Stirlings, 95 ; Marriage of ■ Hugh Fraser with Janet de Fenton, 96 ; Thomas Fraser of Lovat, 97 ; Co-Heiresses of Fenton, 98 ; Heiress of Chisholm, 99 ; Lovat Peer- age, 99 ; Vicarage of Conveth, 100. CONTENTS. IX PAGE 13. Collation by William, Bishop of Moray, of the Vicarage of CoNVETH, on Presentation by Beauly Priory, a.d. 1480, . 101 Institution and Collation, 103. 14. Presentation to the Vicarage of Conveth by Beauly Priory, A.D. 1493, . . . . . . . .104 Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Kintail, 105. 15. Bull by Pope Alexander VI., Appointing Dougal Rorieson, Clerk, to the Priorate of Beauly Priory, a.d. 1497, . io5 Admission of a Secular Priest into a Religious Order, no. 16. Form of Oath of the Prior of Beauly Priory on Nomina- tion by the Supreme Pontiff, a.d. 1497, . . .111 Provision against Alienating the Monastic Possessions, 112. 17. Promulgation of the Bull (No. 15) by Andrew, Bishop of Moray, a.d. 1501, . . . . . . .113 Prior Dougal, 121 ; Sits in Parliament, 122; Rebellion of the Isles, 123; Pluscardine Priory, 124; Charters of Alexander II. , 126; and Bishop of Moray, 129, to Pluscardine; Bull of Pope Urban IV., 130; Vallis- caulians submit to Diocesan Jurisdiction, 131 ; Pluscardine and Sir Robert de Chisholm, 133; Election of Prior, 134; Urquhart Priory, 13s ; United to Pluscardine, 137 ; Pluscardine made Benedictine, 137. 18. Commission of Visitation of Ardchattan Priory, sent to THE Prior of Beauly by the General of the Vallis- CAULiANS, a.d. 1506, . . . . . .140 Monastery of Val des Choux, in Burgundy, 142 ; Viard, 143 ; Alien Priories in England, 144; Concordat of Francis I., 14S ; French Revolution, 146 ; Ardchattan Priory, 147 ; Founder, Duncan of Lorn, 148 ; Endowment of Ardchattan, 149 ; Sanctuary, 150 ; Hereditary Incumbents, 151; Tombs of Ardchattan, 152; Priors Duncan and Dougal Macdougall, 153; Amenity of Ardchattan, 155. 19. Letter from the General of the Valliscaulians to the Prior of Beauly, a.d. 1506, . . . . -157 Travelling Priests, 159; Valliscaulians subject to Diocesan, 162; Fox- hunting Antiquaries, 163 n. ; Trade between Beauly and Bruges, 165. 20. Presentation to the Vicarage of Conveth by the Prior of Beauly, a.d. 1512, ....... 167 Bishop Forman of Moray, 169; Seals of Beauly, Pluscardine, and Ard- chattan Priories, 170; Appropriation of Great Tithes, 171; Heirs of Founder of Beauly, 172; the Fentons, 173; the Lindsays of Beaufort, 174; the Haliburtons of Erchless, 175; the Chisholms of Comer, 176. 6 X CONTENTS. PAGE 21. Promulgation of Bull of Pope Julius II. in Favour of Beauly Priory, a.d. 1514, . . . . . -177 Library of the Priory, 182; Rebellion of Sir Donald of the Isles, 184; Cathedral of Fortrose, 185; Bishopric of Ross, 187; Constitution of Chapter of Ross, 190; Buildings of Cathedral, 191; Dilapidation, Existing Remains, 194; Heraldic Bosses, Bishop Bullock, 195; Eufamia Leslie, Countess of Ross, 197; Endowment of Chapter, 200; List of Bishops of Ross, 201. 22. Precept of Sylvester, the Nuncio of the Apostolic See, to THE Abbots of Kinloss and Fearn, in Favour of Hugh, Lord Eraser of Lovat, a.d. 1532, . . . . 205 Thomas, Lord Lovat, 210; Beaufort Castle, 211 ; Kilmorack and Kil- tarlity Church Lands Right of Fishing, 213; Feu of Kilmorack Church Lands, 214; Magnus Waus, 215; Lochslyn, 216; Abbot Donald of Fearn, 217; Bishop Reid, 218; Restores Beauly Priory Church, 219; Ferrarius, 220; Monkish Correspondence, 222; Battle of Blair-na-Leine, 225; Prior Walter Reid, 226; Bishop Reid, Founds University of Edinburgh, 228 ; Alexander, Lord Lovat, 230 ; Reformation, 231 ; Queen Mary, 233; Visits Inverness, 234; Rental of Priory, 235, 236; Conveth, 238; Comar, 239; Abertarfif, 240; Stipends of Reformed Clergy, 242; Union of Parishes, 244; Abertarff and Boleskine, 245 ; Comar, Conveth, and ICiltarlity, 246 ; Results of Union, 246 ; Dress and Diet of the Monks, 247 ; Pension to the Court of Session, 248 ; Tithe Fish of Wardlaw, 249 ; Union of Wardlaw and Fearnua, 250 ; Queen Mary at Fortrose, 25 1 ; probably at Beauly, 252. 23. Tack of Some of the Lands of Bev^ly by Walter, Prior of Bewly, to John and Alex. Clerk, a.d. 1568, . . . 254 Form of Lease, 258; Alehouse of Beauly, 259; Markets and Fairs, 259 k. ; Whisky, 260 ; Macfarlane's List of the Charters, 261. CONCLUSION. Chartulary of Beauly, 263 ; Hugh, Lord Lovat, and Huntly, 264 ; Feu- Charter of Barony, 266 ; Extent of Priory Lands, 269 ; Charter of Prior's House, 272 ; Prior John Eraser, 275 ; Simon, Lord Lovat, 276; Fraser of Strichen, 278; Monastic Schools, 279; Last of the Monks, 280; Priory Buildings, 280; Church, 281; Ardchattan and Pluscardine Churches, 283 ; the Chapels, 284 ; Bishop Reid's additions, 285 ; Kirkwall Cathedral, 286 ; Dilapidation, 287 ; Pennant, 288 • Cordiner, 289 ; the Lovat Tombstone, 289 ; Armour, 290 ; Ruins in 1815, 291 ; Litigation in Court of Session, 292; Crown Lease to Lord Lovat, 293. CONTENTS. / XI APPENDIX. PAGE I. Name of Beauly, ........ 294 2. Lepei-s' Houses, . • 294 3. Castles, .... • 29s 4. List of Bishops of Moray, . 296 5. Extracts from Record Office, London, . 298 6. English Bysets, • 299 7. Scottish Bysets, . . 300 8. Irish Bysets, . 301 9. Chapels, .... • 302 10. Del Ard Family, . • 303 II. Marriage-Contract, Eraser and De Fenton, 1416, • 303 12. Marriage-Contract, Thomas Dunbar, Earl of Moray, and Hugh 1 ^'raser of Lovat, 1422, . . ... • 30s 13. Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Kintail, . 306 14. " Extra Romanatn Curiam," . 308 15. Sanctuary of Ardchattan, . . 308 16. French Priories of the Order, ■ 309 17. Surnames, .... ■ 309 18. Vicars, ..... . 310 19. Note on Luther, .... • 3" 20. Scottish Kalendar, • 3" 21. River Beauly, .... . 312 22. List of Abbots of Fearn, . . 313 23. Church Bells of Scotland, . 316 24. Dress of Beauly Monks, . . 318 25. Chapter of Kirkwall, . 318 26. Diary of Queen Maiy's Journey north, 1562, . 320 27. Abertarff and Boleskine, . . 321 28. Conveth and Kiltarlity, . . 322 29. Wardlaw and Fearnua, . 322 30. The Priory Gardens, • 323 31. Contract betwixt Lord Huntly and Lord Lovat, 1570, ■ 323 32, Scottish Monastic Schools, .... • 324 33. Lease to Thomas Alexander, Lord Lovat of the Priory of Beaul y, 1847, 32s PRIORS OF BEAULY, 329 HISTORICAL NOTICES OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. It is difficult now to conceive of the rapid transmission of opinions and usages, which existed at the time when there was but one Church in Western Christendom. As in the age of the Antonines, a fashion at Rome was soon taken up in distant provinces, so during the pontificate of Innocent III., a novelty in religious practice quickly spread throughout Europe. The imperial roads and post-houses did not more securely send on the orders of the reigning Csesar to Alex- andria or York, than the lines of convents and parsonages passed the fiat of the occupant of St Peter's Chair to the extremity of Scotland or Spain. This is strongly exemplified in the origin of the Priory of Beauly, the religious House whose records are now for the first time collected. He who would judge best of the rigour of the rules of St Bruno, should climb the mountain of the Grande Chartreuse, where the Saint established his Reformed order with vows of unusual austerity, under the protection of the Virgin Mary, and also of John Baptist, whose severity of life was the pattern. " Ora et labora " was the ruling maxim of the Charterhouse, and the wild and desolate region in which it is built, compelled as well as nerved the toil of the brethren. A 2, HISTORICAL NOTICES But very soon was introduced a distinction between the inmates of even Carthusian houses; and in these monasteries as well as others, the brethren were divided into two classes, the brethren of the choir, and the lay- brethren iconversi). The first alone received holy orders, and performed the functions of the priesthood. These offices, and study and contemplation, occupied their time; while the bodily labour, both domestic and agricultural, prescribed by ' the rules, was the duty only of the lay brethren. Viard, a lay brother of the Charterhouse of Louvigny, in the diocese of Langres, in Burgundy, believing himself called to a life of more severity and greater freedom from temporal cares than his position of lay brother allowed, obtained per- mission from the superior to retire as a hermit to a cavern in a wood, a few miles off, and there practised the most extraordinary austerities. He was discovered by the in- habitants of the neighbourhood, and his strict observances soon gained him a just reputation. The Duke of Bur- gundy came often to visit him, and at last vowed that if success should attend the ducal arms in a military expe- dition then projected, a monastery would be founded on the spot which Viard had made holy, and Viard should be its head. Viard, like other hermits, and not forgetful of the maxims of St Bruno, worked in his own garden, and supplied his " vegetable store " by his own labours. In this way, pro- bably, the valley in which his cavern was situated acquired the name of Vallis Caulium, or Vallis Olerum, the Valley of Herbs. The duke returning victorious from his expe- dition, built the promised monastery in the Holy Vale; and Viard, as the Jirst prior, completed the foundation, and, according to an ancient inscription over the church took up his abode there on the 2d November 1193. Viard framed a set of rules for the governance of the new society, and in the Register of the Bishopric of Moray, we have these regulations set out and approved by Inno- OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. o cent III., in a Bull of protection, dated the lOth of February 1205. No house of this order was ever established in England, but within twenty-five years from the confirmation of the new rules by Pope Innocent, three houses of the order were founded in Scotland, and that too in the extremities of that kingdom. This was brought about by William Malvoisin, Bishop of St Andrews. The history of the Alexanders, and of William the Lion, has yet to be written, and when this is done, full justice will be rendered to the character of Malvoisin. Among the band of prelates who surrounded the throne of William the Lion, none stands higher than Bishop Malvoisin, appointed before 11 80 one of the Clerici Regis, or King's secretaries. It is impossible to doubt that even before his elevation to the chancellorship, he exercised considerable influence over the king. As the first instance of William insisting on the election of his own nominee as bishop takes place just about the time that Malvoisin first appears as the king's official, it was probably by his encouragement that the king intro- duced the rule ; for it was a principle established by Charle- magne, and strictly adhered to by the Norman kings of England, that the cathedral chapters, if permitted to elect, should choose the nominees of the Crown as their bishops ; and Malvoisin was a Norman, and doubtless taught this lesson of Norman tyranny, as Giraldus Cambrensis calls it,* to the Scottish king. It is probable that the young councillor supported the king in his resistance to the Pope, who ordered the elect of the chapter of St Andrews to be consecrated bishop in opposition to the king's nominee. The king banished the bishop from the kingdom, and the Pope laid Scotland under an interdict, and excommunicated the king. But in the end the Crown prevailed. And even in the days of Victoria, the queen's irresistible recommendation to a bishopric betokens its Nor- * Giraldus Camb., De Instruct. Princ. ; Robertson's Preface to Stat. Cone. Ecc. Scot., xxxiv., n. 2. 4 HISTORICAL NOTICES man origin by assuming the form of a congi d'elire, with a letter-missive containing the name of the person to be elected.* In September 1199 Malvoisin was appointed Chancellor of Scotland. When made Chancellor he was only in deacon's orders, and not till his election to the bishopric of Glasgow was he advanced to the dignity of the priesthood. On Satur- day the 24th September 1200, he was ordained priest at Lyons by the archbishop of that city; and on Sunday the 25th he was consecrated bishop by the same prelate under the man- date of Pope Innocent III. There is extant a letter ad- dressed by this archbishop to Malvoisin, which shows how anxious the latter was to obtain the fullest information and the best advice as to the duties of the episcopal office he had just undertaken.-(- The archbishop suggests to Malvoisin that on his proposed stay at Paris he would be able to consult those skilled in canon (divine) and civil (human) law. It is probable that Malvoisin was educated at Paris, and he seems to have kept up his connection with the learned there. In 1 201, Malvoisin was translated from Glasgow to St Andrews, the see which, though not yet an archbishopric, constituted its possessor the Primus, or first in dignity of the Scottish bishops. Sent as ambassador^ by his young king to John, sulking in the Isle of Wight after his mortification at Runnymede, Malvoisin proceeded from England to attend the Fourth Lateran Council at Rome in November 12 15. This was the best attended Council of the Latin Church. It consisted of nearly five hundred archbishops and bishops, beside a great multitude of abbots and priors and ambassadors from * The Queen v. the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1 1 Queen's Bench Reports, 483. tThe letter is printed in Appendix to Preface to Stat. Cone. Ecc. Scot., XXX. X Malvoisin went to visit his parents in Normandy in 1212, and probably attended the Council at Paris that year. On his return he presided over a Synod of the Scottish clergy at Perth ; on William the Lion's death, 4th December 1214, he enthroned the young king, with more than usual ceremony. He was appointed ambassador to England 9th July 1215. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 5 most of the Christian courts in the West and East. Next to the recovery of the Holy Land, the reformation of the Church in faith and discipline formed a subject of consultation, and great complaints were made respecting monastic corruption. It was urged that new orders of religious men were too common, and the Council enacted that their foundation should be discouraged, but this enactment could not apply to the orders already sanctioned by Pope Innocent, such as those of St Dominic and the Valliscaulians. Malvoisin saw the fitness of these two orders for Scot- land. The Dominicans, intrepid preachers, to be placed in the towns and cities of the kingdom ; and the Valliscaulians, men of austere lives, whose little communities might attract attention and secure respect, in the wildest and most remote districts. Both orders were in startling contrast to the de- cayed and effete Culdees of Mucross who still remained at St Andrews, at the very gates of the Primus's own cathedral ; a small priestly caste who had lost all voice in the election of a bishop ; and though clinging to their hereditary possessions, had given up their cure of souls and their charge of the hos- pital for the sick and the poor, the pilgrim and the stranger.* In 1225 the Scottish clergy were, by an unusual exercise of the grace and prerogative of the papal see, empowered to meet in council without the summons or presence of a papal legate. Malvoisin secured the precedence of his see in the council : beginning with the Bishop of St Andrews — the Bishop of the Scots, as Malvoisin proudly styled himself — each bishop was in turn to preach at the opening of the council. The Chancellor was upon such friendly terms with the king, whom he had baptized and invested with the ensigns * Yet these clerics, whose name had already become a bye-word, had rights which Malvoisin defended against the dignified Augustinian canons of St Andrews. The hereditary property of the Culdees was possibly attacked, or their right to mutter divine service after their manner in a comer of the cathedral; at all events, in February 1221, the papal legate at Perth heard a litigation commenced by the prior and canons of St Andrews against their bishop and certain clerics of St An- drews, commonly called Culdees — " et quosdam clericos de S. Andrea, qui Keledei vulgariter appellantur " (Theiner, Mon. Vet. Hib. et Scot., p. 16). 6 HISTORICAL NOTICES of royalty, that he must have readily attested the writ which sent two doctors of civil law to attend the council as Com- missioners on behalf of the Crown. And now the monarch and Primus were to testify their sense of the Pope's benefits by establishing the new orders in Scotland. At the end of the year 1229 peace was established throughout Scotland ; for some years before, the towns and the southern part of the kingdom had been freed from war, and had increased in wealth by trade and commerce. The marriage of the young King of Scotland, in 1 221, to the sister of the King of England, and of two princesses of Scotland, sisters of Alexander, to Hugh de Burgh and Roger Bigod, two of the most powerful English nobles, put a stop to all hostilities between the two nations, and introduced a friendly intercourse between their ruling families. The insurrection of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, in 1221, which led to the expulsion of his family from Argyle by Alexander in 1222, freed the vassals of Somerled from their fealty to him, and they were made vassals of the Crown. North Argyle or Wester Ross was given to the Earl of Ross. Lorn was granted to be held of the king in capite by the sons of Dougal. In 1228 the last effort was made by the Gaelic population to place upon the throne the heir of Malcolm Canmore, according to the Celtic laws of descent. Gillespie M'Farlane broke out in open rebellion against the king, killed Thomas of Thirlstane, to whom Malcolm IV. had given the district of AbertarfT, and set fire to the town of Inverness. The king went himself against Gillespie, who was overcome and slain ; the insurrection was completely extinguished ; and the kingdom enjoyed peace. In the year 1230 four monasteries of the Dominicans and three of the VaUiscaulians were founded. The Dominicans, the Preaching Friars, were placed, two by the king himself in Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed, one at Ayr by the king and William Malvoisin, and one by Allan Durward {ostiarius) in Montrose. The VaUiscaulians, almost hermits, were placed, one by the king at Pluscardine in Moray, another by Duncan OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 7 Macdougal of Lorn at Ardchattan on Loch Etive, in Argyle ; and the third by John Byset at Beauly, at the head of the Beauly Firth, in Ross. This House of Beauly is the foundation whose few charters are printed in the sequel. . It was planted in a situation admirably fitted for the object of its institution. Amidst a tract of rich alluvial soil brought down by the river and stretched between the hills and sea-shore, on the great highroad from Inverness to the North, the baron of English descent, who had recently acquired the large possessions of the Aird, built the new monastery. Just where the noble river, after wasting the speed acquired by its rush over the rocks of Kilmorack, in the windings below the founder's new castle of Beaufort, spreads out into the Beauly Firth, and oppo- site the wooded hills of Balblair, open to the sunny south, surrounded by level land productive of the finest wheat and the most luxuriant grasses, John Byset reared his priory and its church, whose walls six centuries and a half have not been able to pull down. He or his proteges, the monks, gave the spot a new name, Bellus Locus, the Beautiful Place, — a name which the queen's father had given some twenty-six years before to the noble monastery he had erected on the shores of the Solent ; and looking at the surrounding scenery, we cannot wonder it should be said that when Queen Mary slept at the Priory of Beauly she, on hearing its name adopted from the language of her beloved France, exclaimed, " C'est un beau lieu."* The Dominicans were bound to be instant in preaching the Gospel. Their founder was distinguished by a fervid and per- suasive eloquence, and feeling the power of this faculty, he * This is the prdbable version of the story of the parish minister of Kilmoraclt. He says : "In the house of the priests who oiBciated in this priory, Queen Mary, it is said, was entertained for a night ; and upon seeing in the morning the beautiful view from its windows, she exclaimed : ' C'est un beau lieu, ' and hence the name Beauly was given to the village and river " (Stat. Acct. Invemess-shire, 1842, p. 366). As this minister supposes the name of his parish, Kilmorack, the church of Mary, to be derived from a lady, a descendant of one of the lairds of Chisholm, we must not give him implicit credence. See the amusing criticism on this. Quart. Rev., vol. Ixxxii., p. 360. 8 HISTORICAL NOTICES established a fraternity devoted to its exercise— a society of itinerant preachers. Accordingly their houses were centres in which the brethren were trained to their profession, and from which they went forth into the streets of towns and the lanes of villages to preach to the poor tidings of salvation. Far different was the rule of the Valliscaulians ; their own salvation, and not the rescue of others, was the object of their retreat from the world. They lived in very small cells, that at the times of prayer, of study, and of meditation, they might be withdrawn from other objects, and alone with God. They kept no oxen, sheep, or any lands cultivated by their own labour, surrendering all possessions which might divert their attention from spiritual exercises by the care which such property required to make it valuable. They had marked bounds outside the inclosure of their priories, beyond which none were permitted to wander, save the prior and those he took with him to visit dependent houses. Personally they worked only in their gardens, and never went even to these but at hours allowed for bodily labour. They were content with such incomes as they could receive without giving them- selves much anxiety — such incomes as provided them with the necessaries of life, and relieved them from the obligation of quitting the precinct to obtain the means of living. They received into the house no more brethren than its revenues could maintain. They wore the dress of the Cistercians. Such is the account given by Helyot,* on the authority of Cardinal Jacques de Vitri, whom he styles a contemporary writer. We find a more elaborate and authentic statement of the rules of the founder in the Bull of Pope Innocent III., to which we have referred. It is recorded in the Register of Moray probably as the Rule of the House of Pluscardine, in that diocese: " Innocent the Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved sons, the Prior and the Brothers of the Valley of Herbs, sends health and the apostolic blessing. The apostolic see is wont to assent to * Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, vol. vi., p. 178. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 9 pious wishes, and to extend to the honourable prayers of those seek- ing it a willing favour. We received from the letters of our very venerable brother G. elect of Rheims, that on his passage through the diocese of Langres, he found that you had in the Valley of Herbs taken upon yourselves the new institution of an order : inquir- ing diligently as to its merits, he found 'nothing in it but what was religious and honourable. He found, indeed, as his same letters express, that among you one monk, whom you, my sons the monks, elect, is by right prior, to whom all the monks, of course, and also the lay brothers, the company of whom may not exceed the number twenty, as to their spiritual father, are to take care to show reverence and obedience. " None of you are to possess any separate property. " In assembling every day, the mass and the canonical hours * shall be sung. Private masses, whoever wish, may also celebrate. "You shall hold a chapter every day, making twelve readings at the appointed times. " You shall work together, and you shall eat together in the refec- tory, not using flesh or fat (sagimine). The prior shall eat with you in the same refectoryt — contented with the like food and clothing as the rest. From the feast of the Lord's Resurrection down to the exaltation of the Holy Cross (14th September), you shall eat twice in the day, passing the rest of the time under the abstinence of fasts, being content on Fridays with bread and water and one relishj to it. On the day of the Lord's Nativity you shall not fast, nor on Friday in summer when a feast shall happen to fall of twelve readings. " You shall live on your revenues {redditibus). " You shall observe silence. Women shall not enter the inner bounds, nor shall you pass the outer bounds, except the prior on the * The canonical hours of prayers were seven, after Ps. cxix. 164 : (l.) at 2 A.M. — the monks went to bed at 8 P.M.; (2.) Matins, at 6 A.M.; (3.) 9 A.M.; (4.) at high noon; (5.)3P.m.; (6.) Vespers, 5 p.m.; (7.)at7P.M. See Concordise Regularum by St Benedict, in Fuller's Church History, book vi. , § 3. + In abbeys, the abbot only on great solemnities graced the monks with his presence in the dining-hall or refectory. % Pulmentum. The ancient Romans lived on the simplest fare, chiefly on pottage {puis), or bread and pot-herbs, hence everything eaten with bread, or besides bread, was afterwards named Pulmentum or Pulmentarium {6\poiviov, opso- nium, called in Scotland, Kitchen). — Hor. Sat. ii., 2, 20; Ep. i., 18, 48. Adam's Roman Antiquities, p. 401. 10 HISTORICAL NOTICES business of the order. The prior, however, if he shall be occupied or sick, and urgent necessity or evident utility shall require it, shall be able to select any other monk, who may pass the outer bounds. " You shall wear hair-shirts next your skin : those, however, who cannot endure these are not to be compelled to do so. You are on no account to put on linen or hempen garments, but to clothe yourselves in white dresses of coarse wool and fur {pelliceas). You shall all lie down in your tunics, with your girdles on, and shoes on. And besides this, you, my sons the monks, with your cowls on, nowhere and never resting upon mattresses. " Your novices shall be in probation for a year. " And you, my sons the monks, from matins to the hour of labour, and from vespers to sunset, shall devote yourselves to reading, prayer, and contemplation, except those whom, at the discretion of the prior, he, for some certain and necessary cause, shall consider ought to be withdrawn from this. " We, therefore, assenting to your just entreaties, take under the protection of the blessed Peter and ourselves, your persons and the place in which you shall give yourselves up to divine service, with all things that you reasonably possess at present, or which by the grant of pontiffs, the bounty of kings or princes, or the oblations of the faithful, or by any other just means, God favouring you, you shall be able to acquire. " Specially, however, we, by the apostolic authority, confirm the order itself, constituted by careful deliberation, with the assent of the diocesan, and we fortify it by the defence of this present script. " It is altogether prohibited, therefore, to any man to violate this page of our protection and confirmation, or to oppose it by any rash doing. If this, however, any one shall presume to attempt, let him know that he will incur the indignation of Almighty God, and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. Dated at Rome, at St Peter's, the i2osth year from the Lord's incarnation, the 4th day before the Ides of February, in the seventh year of our pontificate." The monks wore a white cassock with a narrow scapulary, and over that a black gown, when they went abroad, and a white one when they went to church. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 11 They were daily employed in dressing the gardens of fruits and herbs, which were within the bounds of the monastery, and improved for the use of it.* Such regulations were excellently adapted for a religious establishment to be placed in the remote districts of the Highlands of Scotland, and the selection shows the sagacity of the Primus. I shall now, with a view to throwing as much light as I can on the documents that are printed, illustrate each of them in chronological order by reference to the circumstances under which they were originally produced, and I shall endeavour to give an account of the personages who appear either as parties to the documents, or as witnesses to their execution. Such an account of the history of the Priory of Beauly as is necessary to connect the documents together, I have also thought would not be unacceptable ; and that everything which contributes to the history of the sister priories of Pluscardine and Ardchattan would be properly introduced. The documents are printed from the transcripts of Mac- farlane of Macfarlane in the Advocates Library. An excellent account of him is given in the Chartulary of Cambus- kenneth.-f The transcripts are in the second volume of the MSS. called " Diplomatum Collectio," twenty-three in number, and are the only documents extant of the charters of the Priory. There is no date to the transcripts, but from their juxta- position to the Chartulary of Cambuskenneth, transcribed in 1738, it is probable that they were transcribed shortly before that time. In whose possession the documents were at the time of their being transcribed is not stated. Two of them — one, No. XVII., dated the nth February 1500, and the other. No. XI., dated June 1 340 — correspond with the titles of two of the documents inventoried in the list of Lovat charters, which now belongs to Captain Dunbar Dunbar, and has been * Orem's History of Aberdeen. Bibliotheca Top. Brit., 1790, p. 73. + Preface to the Chartulary of Cambuskenneth, printed for the Grampian Club. 12 HISTORICAL NOTICES kindly lent by him. This list contains the titles of those writs belonging to the Lovat family, which Alexander, Master of Lovat, and tutor to Hugh, Lord Lovat, gave to Mr Alex- ander Abernethie, writer in Edinburgh, in 165 1, before he set out to fight with King Charles II., at the fatal battle of Worcester, and which were restored to him on the 6th November 1652. The Lovat estates passed on quietly from Hugh, Lord Lovat, to his son of the same name, who died in 1696, leaving issue daughters only ; the eldest, Amelia, married, in 1702, Alexander Mackenzie, styled, of Fraserdale. Although Simon, Lord Lovat, soon raised his father's and his own claims to the succession, yet he did not get the papers of the family. On the loth May 1716, he writes to Duncan Forbes, afterwards Lord President, then advocate in Edinburgh : " My service to Mr Macfarlan and his lady. I would wish he would search Fraserdale's right to the estate ; and what we can do to find the old papers of the family." The papers would naturally be with Hugh, the eldest son of Amelia Fraser ; Hugh certainly acted as owner of the estate of Lovat and the superiorities belonging to it. One of the transcribed writs, No. XXII., confirmed on the 26th April 1532, is produced by Hugh, titular Lord Lovat, on 22d July 1729,* in the pleadings of the cause relating to the right to the peerage between him and Simon, Lord Lovat. John Spottiswoode, advocate, wrote notes on " Hope's Minor Practicks," and an account of religious houses in Scotland. In his account of Beauly, he refers to four of the writs which are transcribed, Nos. I., III., XV., XXIII. He died in 1728, though the account was not published by his son till 1734. f He married the mother of Walter Macfarlane, at whose expense the transcripts were made, and there seems every reason to believe that at the time they were seen by Spot- tiswoode, they were in the possession of Hugh, the titular Lord. There was a submission to arbitration between Hugh, Lord * Printed Memoir for Hugh, Lord Lovat, 22d July 1729, p. 22. + Hope's Minor Practicks. Edin. 1734. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 1 3 Lovat, and Simon, Lord Lovat, in March 1733, which was completed by a decreet-arbitral not long before 1738, on the 26th July of which year Simon made up titles to the whole lands of Lovat. At this time it may be supposed that all the writs of 1652 were given up to Simon, Lord Lovat; whether he destroyed any of them is not known. Those which are grants of the Beauly Priory lands after the Reformation such as Nos. XVIII. and XIX. in the Inventory of 1652, being title deeds of the Lovat estate, are now, it seems from Dr Stuart's " Book of Kinloss," in the possession of the present Lord Lovat. But what, on the forfeiture of Simon, Lord Lovat, became of the transcribed writs which concerned the previous history of the Priory, does not appear. No reference is made to them in the publication of the Hon. Archibald Fraser of Lovat, entitled " Annals of the Frasers," so that it seems doubtful whether they ever came into his possession. We can only hope that by calling public attention to the matter, the origi- nal documents may be discovered.* * There are only three places where they can be, if they were in the custody of Hugh, titular Lord Lovat, in 1729: (i.) In the custody of his personal represen- tatives, or their law agents ; (2. ) In the custody of the Crown ; (3. ) In the cus- tody of Mr Fraser of Abertarff. There appears no probability of their being in Lord Lovat 's possession. 14 HISTORICAL NOTICES No. I. BULLA GREGORII PAP^ PRIORI DE BELLO LOCO ORDINIS VALLISCAULIUM ROSSENSIS DIOCCESIS. Ex AUTOGRAPHO [1231]. "Gregorius episcopus Servus Servorum Dei dilectis Filiis priori Fratribus Monasterii de Bello loco ordinis Vallis Caulium Rossensis Dioccesis Salutem et Apostolicam Benedictionem. Cum a nobis petitur quod justum est et honestum, tam vigor sequitatis quam ordo exigit rationis, ut id per solicitudinem officii nostri ad debitum per- ducatur effectum. Ea propter, dilecti in Domino filii, vestris justis postulationibus grato concurrentes assensu, personas vestras et Mo- nasterium de Bello loco, in quo divino vacatis obsequio, cum omni- bus bonis, quae impraesentiarum rationabiliter possidet, aut in futurum justis modis possidere vel adipisci poterit praestante Domino, sub Beati Petri et nostri protectione suscipimus ; Specialiter autem de Sitheney et de Karcurri possessiones, et de forne piscaria, quas nobilis vir Johannes Biseth ad ipsum spectantes vobis contulit, in- tuitu pietatis, sicut in litteris inde confectis plenius dicitur contineri, nee non terras, possessiones, et alia bona vestra, sicut ea omnia juste et pacifice possidetis, vobis et eidem Monasterio per vos auctoritate Apostolica confirmamus, et praesentis Scripti patrocinio communimus. Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostras protectionis et confirmationis, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attemptare praesumpserit, indignationem omnipotentis Dei, et Bea- torum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum ejus, se noverit incursurum. Datum Laterani. . . . Nonas. . . . Pontificatus nostri Anno D. ..." " Not.— The tag yellow silk : no seal." This document is a Bull of Pope Gregory addressed to the prior and brethren of Beauly. It takes their persons and OF THK PRIORY OF BEAULY. 15 monastery of Beauly (de Bella Loco) under the protection of the blessed Peter and of himself, particularly the possessions of SiTHENEY, and of Karcurri, and the Fishings of Forne, which a noble man, John Byset, had given them. Gregory IX. was Pope from 1227 to 1241. The reference to John Byset shows that the Bull was granted by Gregory IX. The transcript has only these words of the final part, — "... Nonas. ... Pontificatus nostri Anno D. . . ;" but as Spottiswoode, who must have seen the originals from which these transcripts are made, speaking of John Byset's • foundation, says his charter is confirmed by Pope Gregory, " 3tio : Non. Julii, pontificatus anno 4to," we may fairly assume that the lacuna after "anno" should be filled up by " quarto," and that the Bull was dated the fourth year of Pope Gregory IX., or 123 1. We here first meet with the name of the House, Bellus Locus, Beau Lieu, the Beautiful Place. This was a not in- frequent title for monasteries in France and England. There was in France a monastery of Beaulieu at Langres ; while King John distinguished his splendid abbey of Beaulieu in the New Forest by styling it Bellus Locus Regis, or King's Beauheu.* A writer who is anxious to vindicate the high claims of the Gaelic language says, the low country etymologists, because they are ignorant of Gaelic, seek in French the derivation of a native name, and grace the Celtic " Beula " with the trans- migration of the French " Beau-lieu." He proceeds : " The name, however, is simple Gaelic. 'B^ul-alh,' the mouth, of the ford, from ' B^ul,' a mouth, or deboucheur, and ' Mh,' pronounced ' ^ a ford. Like all other native designations, it is expressive of a local distinction ; for the Priory and the town * Beaulieu, in Hampshire, is pronounced as Beauly in Inverness-shire is — the Beau like the same syllable in Beauty, and the lieu, "ly." Macaulay's trumpet- stirring lines in the Armada (1832) : " O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, the fieiy herald flew : He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu," prove that he had then learned more by reading than by hearing. 16 HISTORICAL NOTICES are situated upon the mouth of the river, and opposite to the most important ford upon the lower Glass, and which in old times was the principal passage into Ross."* A little historical inquiry would have led to a different con- clusion, and if the name had a Celtic origin we should expect it to be used now by the Celtic population, but it is not so. "Beauly is not the Celtic name of the place, but 'Manachain;' you never hear a Highlander asking in Gaelic ' C'ait am bheil Beauly .■' ' If he is not acquainted with English he does not know what the term refers to. He will ask you in his own language, ' C'ait am bheil a Manachain .'' ' this is the Gaelic for ' Where is Beauly.' ' 'Manach ' is the Gaelic for monk, and ' manachain ' is the Gaelic for priory or monastery." t Of course it is possible that the special name of the place may, though Celtic in origin, have been lost in the more generic title taken from the peculiar purpose to which it was dedicated, and, after all, the Bull of Pope Gregory is the best proof that the Priory was on its foundation called in French the Priory of Beaulieu. Before examining the contents of this Bull, the earliest of the Beauly charters now printed, let us examine the account of the earliest charters given by the Wardlaw MS., which we shall afterwards more particularly describe. This account is as follows : (i.) John Bisset by vow and promise erecting a priory of monks in Beauly, and granting a donation and mortification by charter and confirmation of the lands of Strathalvy and Achinbady or Beauly, to the monks Ordinis Vallis Caulium there. The limits of their possessions about the precinct, speci- fied to be Onach-Tarridel to the east, and Rivulum de Breckach westward. This charter is by the said Dom. Joan. Bisset, apud Cellam de St Durstan, die 9 mensis Julii anno Xti. 1223. + * Provincial Geograpliy, Lays of the Deer Forest, vol. ii., p. 503. Edin. 1848. t Transactions of Gaelic Society of Inverness, vol. i., Mr A. Mackenzie on Local Topography. X Button MS., Add. MSS., B. M., 8144, p. 166; Extracts from Wardlaw MS., by the late Lewis M. Mackenzie of Findon. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 17 (2.) Donation and charter of confirmation of the Half Davoch Lands of Tarridale to the monks Ordinis Vallis Caulium by Gillichrist a Rosse, granted and subscribed in burgo de Inverness, in mense Martis anno Domini 1235.* (3.) Donation and charter of mortification of the multures of several lands within the parochin of Wardlaw and Kiltarlity, by Joannes Bisset to the monks of Beauly, such as : Loveth, Lusfinan, Finasses, Monchitech ex utraque parte rivuli, Foch- ines et dimidias davach de Beaufort et Duary, Davatus de Muy et de Bruchach et de Kenniath, etc.t (4.) Confirmation of all these donations by King Alexander II. to the monks of Beauly, A.D. 123 jj as they are set down at large by themselves. Among the Lovat writs of 1652 we have this entry : "Confirmation by King Alexander of the miln mutors of the Half Davach Lands of Louich and Milne of Dowatrie, dated 20th Dec'^ and 1 7th year of his reign." The seventeenth year of Alexander II. is 1231. Possibly among "the eight and forty pieces of parchment in old character," mentioned in the Dunbar Dunbar MS. as not of any importance in the eyes of Mr Alexander Abernethie, there may have been these charters from John Byset and Gillechrist a Rosse. But to return to the Bull of Gregory IX. It introduces us to the founder of the House of Beauly, John Byset. § The first person of the name recorded in contemporary docu- ments in Scotland is Henry Byset, who is a witness to a charter of William the Lion before 1198. || * Findon Extracts, Wardlaw MS., 1225. + Loveth is Lovat ; Finasses, Fingask ; Monchitech, Moniack Easter and Wester ; Fochines, Phoineas ; Beaufort et Duary, Beaufort and Downie ; Muy, Moy ; Bruchach, Bruiach. { Findon Extracts, 123 1. § The spelling is various, and v^as afterwards corrupted into Bisset; but we shall adopt this form of Byset, as having been used by the founder of the Priory of Beauly, and by writers of contemporary charters. II Chart. Melrose, vol. i., p. 123. B 18 HISTORICAL NOTICES John Byset first appears as the Lord of the Aird in the deeds of arrangement between him and Bricius, Bishop of Moray, who died in 1221, and which are confirmed by King Alexander II. in 1221. Byset must have been the first of the family who acquired the lands of the Aird, for the king's confirmation expressly mentions that the lands had been granted to John Byset personally. When, in 1226, giving the church of Kiltarlity to the leper house of Rathven, he does so, among other objects, for the soul of William, King of Scotland ; so that the grant referred to by King Alex- ander II. had probably been made to Byset by King William the Lion. The Scalacronica states that William the Lion, in 11 74, on his return from captivity at Falaise and in England, brought back young Englishmen of family to seek their fortunes at the Scottish court. Among these are named the Bysets [Biseys].* At this time Henry Byset may have come into Scotland. From II 79 to 11 87 William the Lion was engaged in put- ting down the rebellion of Donald Bane,-f- who, after the Boy of Egremont's defeat, claimed to be the Celtic heir of Malcolm Canmore. William completed with the people of Moray and Ross what his brother Malcolm had begun with the people of Moray, expelling great numbers of the Celtic inhabitants, putting the land under the feudal system, and granting it out in baronies, to be held of the Crown. Among these, in the province of Moray, the barony of the Aird was probably granted to John Byset, to secure his victory over Donald Bane ; and about 11 87 William the Lion founded two castles in Ross, one of which was called Ethirdover. This, * Scalacronica, Maitland Club, Edinb. 1836, p. 41. ■[ It is said tliat Edmund, a son of Malcolm Canmore and St Margaret, joined in the conspiracy of Donald Bane against the succession of King Edgar, and when that king succeeded, Edmund seems to have adopted a course which saved his own life and preserved the honour of his family. He assumed the cowl at Montacute, the Cluniac priory, in Somersetshire. I note the fact as an illustration of the intimate connection then subsisting between England and Scotland, which is like- wise shown in the history of the founder of Beauty. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 19 by the combined light thrown on it by the lease of Kilcoy,* afterwards referred to, and the grant of Andrew de Boscho (Beauly Diplomata, No. VII.), is settled to be the castle of Edirdor, or Redcastle, on the Beauly Firth. In the latter part of his reign, the king probably appointed John Byset here- ditary constable of this castle, and attached to it the lands of Edirdor, and at the same time gave him the barony of the Aird and the lands of Kilravoch, for we find all these — the castle and lands of Edirdor, the barony of the Aird, and the lands of Kilravoch — were the hereditary possessions of the granddaughters of John Byset. The name of John Byset first occurs in contemporary docu- ments in 1204 in the Register of the Abbey of Newbattle, and as a witness to a charter of Henry de Graham.-|- As we find that the papal Bull for translating the parish church of Kirk- hill was obtained in 12 10, just about the time that the insur- rection of the son of Donald Bane broke out in Ross-shire, and as John Byset's confirmation of this translation seems to imply his having promoted it, we may not err in assuming that this grant was made by King William on the quelling of the rebellion in 12 11. John Byset's mother was alive in 1221, as in the deeds of arrangement he grants a glebe to the parish church of Kirk- hill for the soul of his father, who was therefore dead, but not for the soul of his mother, who was therefore living. From the time of these deeds to 1232, we find John Byset witnessing the charters of King Alexander II. with William his brother, and with Walter Byset, who was the lord of Aboyne, in Aber- deenshire. The Bysets in England were a family of baronial rank ; they had the types and insignia of nobility ; they held high office about the person of the Plantagenets; they witnessed the confirmation of Magna Charta, endowed abbeys and priories, and left that indubitable mark of their importance by the additional name which some English parishes have derived * Preface to Orig. Par. Scot., p. xxi. ; Book of Kilravock, p. 109. ■|- Reg. Newbattle, p. 7. 20 HISTORICAL NOTICES from them. Preston-Byset tells the country folks of Bucking- hamshire now, as Combe-Byset informs the men of Wilts, of the days long ago, when a Byset was the lord of Preston and of Combe.* In particular, Manassar Byset, Sewer of the Household to King Henry H., founded a house of lepers at Maiden Bradley, in Wiltshire, and the successive members of his family confirmed and added to the endowment. The pious maid of honour, Margaret Byset, who, passing the night in watching and prayer, saved the life of Henry HI. in 1238 at Woodstock from the hands of an assassin, had some time before added to the possessions of Maiden Bradley. The English Bysets were a united family, each member assisting the other ; and we find Manassar Byset giving the manor of East Bridgeford, Nottinghamshire, to his brother William, and this William Byset obtaining the consent of his son William, his brother Manassar, and his nephew Ernulph, to his grant to the priory of Thurgarton for the souls of his father and mother and wife, and of his brothers Henry and Ausold, and his nephew Henry. It seems probable that Henry Byset of 1198, the courtier of King William the Lion, was a member of the family of East Bridgeford. We may not proceed further without referring to the MSS. which are mentioned by writers on Beauly Priory, while it is impossible to avoid saying that these MSS. are entitled to no real credit. One is a history of the family of Eraser of Lovat, intended for publication, 1749; and the other " a short chrono- logy and genealogy of the Bissets and Erasers of Lovat," t which, although said to be written by Mr James Eraser, minister of Wardlaw, purports only to be a transcript of the Wardlaw MS. by Robert Eraser, 1725. These two MSS. appear to have been written in the interest of Simon Lord Lovat, who wished the history of his family coloured to suit * There is no more certain mark of the early importance of a family than the affix of its name to that of an English parish. It is more to be relied on tl th having the same name as the parish; in the origin of surnames many 'families oTher than the owners of a village took their names from it; but no v'll second name from any family but that of its lords. ' ' ^^^ ^^^^ ^°°^ ''^ t MSS., Advocates Library, Genealogical Collection iS ^ s OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 21 his claims against Amelia Fraser, who, in 1702, pretending to be heiress of line of the Byset, obtained a decree of the Court of Session, for the peerage of Fraser of Lovat. The Wardlaw MS., to which we before referred, was written by James Fraser, minister of Wardlaw from 1661 to 1709. It is probable that he had access to the Lovat Writs of 1652, and so far as he professes to copy actual charters, he may be trusted. We have not seen the MS., but have obtained ex- tracts from it among General Hutton's MSS. in the British Museum, and also extracts made by the late Lewis M. Mac- kenzie, Esq. of Findon, whose loss northern archaeologists have to regret. When the Wardlaw MS. passes from tran- scribing charters or recording the events which passed before the eyes of the writer, it is hardly to be relied on more than the MSS. of 1725 and 1749; but as the compiler died before Simon, Lord Lovat's contention arose, his story is not twisted to suit the claims of rival parties. As a specimen of the inventive powers or credulity of the writer of the Wardlaw MS., he states that John Byset, the founder of Beauly Priory, was the son of Byset, a courtier of William the Lion, which Byset married Agnes, daughter of the king. This marriage is a stupid invention of the seven- teenth century. The daughters of William the Lion, legiti- mate and illegitimate,* are perfectly well known, and duly inquired into on the claims to the crown of Scotland in 1 296. John Byset of Lovat, the founder, makes the arrangement we have alluded to with Bricius, Bishop of Moray, respecting the glebe of the parish of Kirkhill, which cannot be later than 1 22 1. The arrangement is confirmed by King Alexander II., * William the Lion had three legitimate daughters: (i.) Margaret, who married Hubert de Burgh, chief minister to Henry III., and left an only daughter, Magota; (2.) Isabella, married Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, ob. s. p.; (3.) Marjory, married Gilbert the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke ; she survived her husband, and died at London, 1244, s. p. He had four illegitimate daughters : (i.) Isabella, married in 1183 to Robert de Bruce, and in 1191, to Robert de Ross; (2.) Ada, married in 1184 to Patrick, Earl of Dunbar; (3.) Margaret, married in 1 1 92 to Eustace de Vesci ; (4. ) Aufrida, married to William de Say. 22 HISTORICAL NOTICES by a deed dated at Elgin on the 15th October 1221,* just at the time when the king had succeeded in repressing the rising of Somerled in South Argyle and North Argyle or Wester Ross. The arrangement relates to the advowsons of the churches of Conveth (Conway) and Dunballoch (Dulbalach). Shaw, in his " Province of Moray," under the head of Kirk- hill, writes :f "This church stood formerly at Dunbalach a mile up the river, and was dedicated to St Maurice. I have seen in the hands of Mr Fraser of Dunbalach, a papal Bull, dated anno 12 10, for translating the church of Mauritius from Dunbalach to Wardlaw." The charters, of which there are two copies in the Register of Moray, in the first place mention the lands of John Byset as having been granted to him, and as having before that grant been part of the parishes of Dunballoch and Conway. John Byset releases to Bricius, Bishop of Moray, and his successors, the advowson of the church of Dunballoch, and the bishop releases to John Byset the advowson of the church of Conway. The bishop agrees to have the charter confirmed by the chapter of the church of Spynie; and John Byset agrees to have it confirmed by the Crown. Byset also agrees to give seven acres of ground to the church of Dunballoch, in a competent place, and near to the parish church of Dunballoch, when it shall have been translated to Fingask, to the place which is called Wardelaue (Wardlaw). It appears that the translation, which had been provisionally sanctioned by the papal Bull, had not yet been effected. It was afterwards carried out, and the site of the old church of Wardlaw is now occupied by the ruins of that church and its burying-ground. In passing, we may remark the distinction observed in the deed between the Saxon-Scottish and the Gaelic-Scot- tish languages; the Gaelic is called Scots: this was the rule down to the time of the Reformation. The place was called Wardlaw by the Saxons because it was the law pr hill from which ward or watch was kept, probably * Reg. Moray, p. 52. f Shaw's Moray, p. 361. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 2o against a possible incursion from the Gaelic inhabitants, who called it Balblair, or the town of or overlooking the plain, Shaw states* that the parish was called Wardlaw, because the garrison of Lovat kept ward or watch on this law or hill: we find no mention of Lovat till John Byset acquired it ; but being a castle or fort on the plain below, defended by water, it would be convenient for it to have a look-out above, and Byset may have established the watch-tower on the hill to communicate with the fort. As he also had the Red Castle, his positions were strong on the Firth. Byset had, it appears by the deed, the lands of the two parishes of Dunballoch (now Kirkhill) and Conveth (now united with Kiltarlity). There were nine davochs in Kirkhill : Fyngask (Fingask), Morevayn, Lusnacorn, Monychoc and another Monychok (Easter and Wester Moniack), and three davochs of Ferge or Fere (Fearn, Fearnua). There were eleven davochs in Conveth : Gulsackyn (Guisachan), Buntach (Buntait), Herkele (Erchless), Comber (Comerkirktown), Cone- way, two davochs (Easter and Wester Conveth), Bruiach Muy and another Muy, Dunyn (Downie), and Fotheness (Foyness, Phoineas). The lands of Dunballoch and Conveth had been granted by the Crown to John Byset at a yearly rent of ;^io. The bishop of the diocese claimed for the churches of Dunballoch and Conveth a tenth of this rent, under the grant of William the Lion, to the church of Moray, that is, claimed it against the Crown. Byset had retained the tenth out of the Crown rent, but had not paid it to the churches. John Byset next founded the church of Kiltarlity, and gave it a parish out of the parish of Conveth, which before included all that ever belonged to Kiltarlity. The new parish of Kil- tarlity included Erchless, a davoch in the earldom of Ross. A davoch was as much arable land as would employ four ploughs, and this in so hilly a country as Strathglass would carry with it probably a large district of pasture. Erchless was an important part of the new parish, and for this reason * Shaw's Moray, p. 144. 24 HISTORICAL NOTICES the parish may have come within the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ross, which was co-extensive with the earldom of Ross. John Byset, intending to make use of the church of KiltarHty, first secured the patronage by deed from the Bishop of Ross early in 1226.* The Bishop of Ross, Robert, with the consent of the chapter of Rosemarkie and his other clergy, quit-claims to John Byset and his heirs, for their homage, his right of patronage of the church of KiltarHty ; and John Byset and his heirs quit-claimed to the bishop whatever right they had to the kirkland of the said church ; and Byset, beside, for the- purpose of settling the controversy, and as an atonement for his own sins, contributed 15 merks of silver to the fabric of the church of St Peter of Rosemarkie, and a stone of wax yearly from himself and his heirs to the light upon aiifik»i»i$, Adam VofnuM, ike inAffm&f i4 Vku&u^iae, ike ^A&u* n( AbernelS^f OmadsAe, smd L^igpM/ md »yme e»qjske»f mA i» atl uttesied hy » m4»fyp^tiSe. Uwmiuumgikeimt ^fuM Mt» ^ ikevetmiiltAeft^bte, ike fgfemt iM£le *A ike Uni^ Ue died hU 9f Wlmfwtn^ tkkdmntmetititfm » fm/Ae i» ike kamer «A Hke VmetAatf «A1umiA^ify^ 'm i6§i, andhh Hmm 'm¥eiti^ud '.\ **fi, A» Ji^imektitpmlke fijmAa^m 0l eetk^ ordmf'mthe MAmdk 'A ^tsttOf, hf the tkk&ifif tA Mendem md Ksm, dxteA iUk f^lmmy i^f thiiifdMmk»mk^app6iaUddiie€tlyat%mehyike hmfued mmpitkm eiat^Am^ vm^^,Ak!%mderlSm0A, wmpf^n^Apmm^ ►J< I, William, Chancellor of the church of Moray, subscribe. *^ *^ I, William, Archdeacon of Moray, subscribe. ^ ^ I, John of Berewic, Canon of the church of Moray, subscribe.*^ ^ I, Andrew, Canon of Moray, subscribe. (^ ►J< I, Walter, Canon of Kingussy, subscribe. ►J* ►J« I, R., Canon of Duppol, subscribe. ►J* >^ I, John, Canon of Crumbdol, subscribe. ►J* ►J< I, Walter, Subdean of Moray, subscribe. ►J* t^ I, Archibald, Canon of Croyn, subscribe, ►fi " * The bishop perhaps refers to the grant to his see by William the Lion of the tithes of the king's can, or rents in kind, but the bishop's charter seems by Pope Urban's confirmation to have been .sufficient to grant the com tithes. t This is probably Femway, which, according to Mr Forsyth (Acct. Moray, p. 1 73), is the original name of the district of Femoway or Damaway. This district, or the forest part of it, became the property of Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, who is said to have founded Damaway Castle between 1315 and 1331. t Kintessack is the present name of a locality in the parish of Dyke. , § Although Bishop Bricius had erected the canonry of Forres and Logyn- Fythenach for the benefit of the Archdeacon of Moray, yet, for some reason, the gift of Logyn-Fythenach required confirmation. This confirmation was enforced as a condition by Alexander in his grant to the bishop, in the month of September 1236, of Finlarg. He grants Finlarg in exchange for the wood called Cawood, and for Logyn-Fythenach, of which latter place the bishop should be bound to make a full grant to William, Archdeacon of Moray, and his successors for ever. This grant had probably been made in the interval between Septemberi236 and 1237. 130 HISTORICAL NPTICES In 1239 we have Symon, Prior of Pluscardine, a witness to the charter * by which, among other churches, the church of Fernua, formed out of the Byset parish of Dunballoch, was granted by the Bishop of Moray to the canons of Elgin. In 1263 Pope Urban IV. granted a Bull to Pluscardine. He, after the example of Gregory, of happy memory, takes the monastery under the protection of the Blessed Peter and himself. He appoints that the monastic order which has been instituted in the monastery according to God and the rule of St Benedict, and the institution of the Brethren of Val- liscaulium should for all times be observed there. He con- firms the grants made to the house, especially the place where the monastery is situated, with all its appurtenances ; the church situated in the town, called Durris (Dores), with the tithes of sheaves of the same place ; the right of patronage in the church ; the tithes of sheaves in the forests of Pluscar- din and Wthutyr ; the tithes of the mills placed in the same forests, and of the iron dug in the same ; the right of fishing with twenty nets in the Spey ; and the mill with the streams, which the monks have in the town called Elgyn. The lands and possessions in the places commonly called Fernauay, Thulidoui, Kep, the Greater Kintessoch, and Mefth, are con- firmed ; also the land and forest called Pluscardin and Wthutyr. Nobody is to take tithes from their gardens, under- woods, fishings, or meadows. The monks may receive to con- version those flying from the secular power. There are the usual restrictions against leaving the House without the prior's, licence ; and against any monk or lay brother being surety, and borrowing money ; leave to say the holy offices during an interdict ; and no prior is to be placed at their head except he who is chosen by the majority. The Bull is dated at Viterbo, 3d July I263.t Symon seems to have been a long time prior, for Dominus Symon, Prior de Pluscardine, is witness to a charter by John, the son of Malcolm de Moravia, which Mr Innes puts down as of the date 1284, and which is witnessed by William, Earl * Reg. Moray, p. 35. f Spalding Mis., vol. ii.,, p. 404. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 131 of Sutherland, and William, Earl of Ross* In his time the monks of Pluscardine arranged with the burgesses of Elgin, that the monks should have the lands which lay between the two mills of Elgin in lieu of an obligation on the town to repair the mills and stanks, with which the burgh was then burdened. The convention is dated St Nicholas' Day, I272.t Patrick Heyrock was provost, and Hugo Bisset one of the burgesses ; and Hugo Herock, in 1286, has Simon, Prior of Pluscardine, as a witness to his endowment of the chaplains of St Nicholas and the Holy Cross at Elgin, j By 1330 the Heyrocks have become treasurers of the church of Moray, and the controversy between the town and the priory is now as to the multures. The monks are to have the seventeenth vessel or vat of corn in lieu of other multures. § John, Bishop of Moray, and Richard, Bishop of Dunkeld, in a Cathedral Chapter of the Church of Moray, held on the loth of October I34S,|| having before them, summoned by the Bishop of Moray, John Wyse, the prior, Adam Marshall, the subprior, and William of Inverness and Adam Young, monks, of the House of the Vale of St Andrew of Pluscardine, interrogate them, and extract from them this statement — That from the first foundation of the House of Pluscardine, as they have heard from their predecessors and seen in their own time, the Bishops of Moray for the time being, as often as they thought fit, had exercised the right of visitation and correction, institution and deprivation, over the priors and brethren of the House of Pluscardine, and received procura- tions ; and the prior and monks admitted that they had no exemption or privilege against this right, which was now, and had been from time beyond memory, exercised by the Bishops of Moray. Nor was this all. Sir William de Longo Vico, a monk of the Rennard Valley, of the diocese of Toul, as nuncio of the Order of the Valliscaulians, and proctor of the prior of the House of Valliscaulium in the diocese of Langres, stated that the bishops and diocesan archbishops, as well in * Reg. Moray, 462. + Family of Innes, p. 55. J Reg. Moray, 283. § Family of Innes, p. 57. || Reg. Moray, 157. 132 HISTORICAL NOTICES Germany as in other parts beyond the sea, in whose diocese Houses of the Valliscaulian order were situated, down to this time had exercised, and now exercise, in their dioceses, the right of visitation and correction over these Houses, and received procurations. There were present the Chancellor and Official of Moray, the Chancellor of Glasgow, the Treasurer of Dunkeld, and the canons of Moray, specially called to be witnesses. The House of Pluscardine had further troubles in connec- tion with their multures. Robert de Chisholm, who was Lord of Quarrywood, near Elgin, refused to pay multures to the prior. The House appealed to the Bishop of Moray, and Alexander Bar, the then prelate, issued a monition to Sir Archibald Douglas, knight, in April 1390, in the following terms :* " Honourable and Noble Sir, — You and John de Kay, sheriff of Inverness, have determined a certain process in such manner, as God knows, to the grievous injury of the Priory of Pluscardine, and to the great prejudice of the jurisdiction of the Church, which we crave to have by you recalled ; for we assert and declare that Alex- ander, King of Scotland, of pious memory, gifted to the prior and monks of Pluscardine the mills of Elgin and Forres and other mills depending on them, and the mulctures of the lands of those mills which he then received, or ought to have received, as they were for the deliverance of his soul, which mulctures of the lands, when arable, by virtue of the donation, the said prior and monks have received, likeas they yet without dispute receive ; and whereas the mulctures of the lands of Quarrywood, in the sheriiifdom of Elgin, at that time unimproved, but now reduced to cultivation, belongs and appertains to the mill of Elgin, from which it is scarcely a mile distant; because, if it had been at that time cultivated, the mulctures would, and ought to have been, received by the royal granter." The complaint, after stating undisturbed possession, with the knowledge and tolerance of Robert de Chisholm, knight, during the preceding reigns, "further asserts and declares that the said Robert had seized and bound a certain hus- * Reg. Moray, p. 169; Forsyth's Moray, p. 133. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 133 bandman of the lands of Findrassie (Finrossie), to whom the prior had by contract let the said mulctures, and thrown him into a private prison, by which he directly incurred the sentence of excommunication." The complaint proceeds to show cause why the action could not be determined by the civil, but by the ecclesiastical court, and concludes by threat- ening to excommunicate the civil judges if they attempted anything further by which the priory might be wronged or the jurisdiction of the Church marred. On the i6th of April 1390, Sir Thomas, Prior of the House of Pluscardine, records a solemn instrument of protest against the proceedings of Sir Robert de Chisholm.* The prior and the knight, however, attest a charter of John of Dunbar, Earl of Moray, to the burgh of Elgin on the 1st of May 1390, by which the earl discharged to the town for ever the ale of assize belonging to him, as constable of the castle of Elgin. -f Quarrywood is in the parish of Spynie, and is so called from a rich quarry of freestone in these lands. It belonged in 1 365 to Sir Robert Lauder, whose grandson. Sir Robert de Chesholme, then Constable of Urquhart Castle (to whom John Randolph, Earl of Moray, had given in 1 345 1 the lands of Invermoriston and of Lochletter in Glenmoriston, and Glenurquhart), in January 1365, married his daughter to Rose of Kilravock.§ Shaw wonders that Sir Robert Lauder could be alive when his great-granddaughter was married, but the Landers of the Bass were a stout race, and he was not only alive, but able to enter into a deed with his grandson in 1366. Sir Robert de Chisholm's method of taking the law into his * Family of Innes, p. 65. + lb., p. 67. Shaw explains the assize of ale to be the quantity of ale which the burgh was bound to furnish to the earl as constable ; and, as Dr Cowell observes, assisa pants sometimes signifies a portion of bread, and the Doctor derives the expression ' ' sizar " at Cambridge, from the quantity of bread which those students who had sizarships were entitled to receive. But Dr Cowell explains assisa panis et cerevisia as the power or privilege of assizing or adjusting the weights and measures of bread and beer ; this privilege was one belonging to the lord of a town, and was accompanied with a power of demanding fees and fines, and it is probably this privilege which was surrendered by the earl. t Family of Innes, p. 60. § Family of Kilravoclt, p. 37. 134 HISTORICAL NOTICES hands against the Church was a month after outrageously exceeded by Alexander Stewart, the "Wolf of Badenoch," who burned Elgin and the cathedral on St Botolph's Day, 17th June 1390. It seems that among the Bulls, apostolic letters, public instruments, charters, and other writings burned with the cathe- dral, were those by which the rights of the Priory of the Val- liscaulians at Pluscardine, and its privileges and statutes and foundations, could be manifested. Pope Benedict XIII., in 1404, issued a commission to the Bishop of Aberdeen to inquire for any other copies of the evidences burned, but it does not appear that those of the House of Pluscardine were collected.* Whether the prior succeeded in rescuing his multures, we cannot ascertain, but the plea of exclusive jurisdiction set up by the Church when the temporal rights of a monastery were in dispute is not likely to have been sustained. In 1388, the appeal of a monk of the Priory of Urquhart in Moray against the investiture of a Prior of Urquhart by the Bishop of Moray, was finally decided by King Robert III. and the clergy in Pariiament on the 12th March i39i.f The mode in which the election of priors and their confirma- tion by the bishop was managed, is shown by what happened in the Priory of Pluscardine in 1 398. Thomas, the head of the House, on the 7th August 1398I resigns the priory into the hands of the Bishop of Moray; on the 13th of the same month the senior monk announces to the bishop that Alex- ander de Pluscardine, one of the monks, was unanimously elected prior ; that the Te Deum was duly chanted after the election, and that the House in full chapter assembled craved the bishop's confirmation. § And on the Vigil of the Assump- tion (14th August) the bishop II issues an order that anyone opposing the election should appear on the 21st of the same month ; and on the 21st the election of Alexander is confirmed by the bishop, reserving to himself and successors the right of annual visitation. As yet no usurpation by the Pope had * Reg. Moray, p. 422. + Preface, Stat. Eccl. Scot., p. 51, n. (6). X Reg. Moray, 353. § lb., 356. || lb., 357. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 135 taken place of the rights of the Valliscaulian monks to elect their own prior, — a usurpation which we have seen Alexander Borgia attempt in the Priory of Beauly. The Priory of Urquhart was founded by King David I. * and partly endowed by the Abbey of Dunfermline, whose grant the foundation charter confirms. The charter has no date, but is usually stated to be 1125. It is in form a grant to the church of Urquhart and the prior and brethren serving there. The papal Bulls of 1163 and 1182 to Dunfermline include Urquhart and the church of Urquhart among the possessions of the abbey; and in 1234 Pope Gregory IX. expressly confirms it to the abbey as the Cell of Urquhart in Moray, with the church lands and other pertinents.-f- A cell might be a grange | or house, with ample farm buildings, erected upon lands at a distance from the monastery to which the cell belonged ; there two or three of the monks lived, reaped the crops, collected the rents, and remitted them to 4he superior House. Thus Pluscardine had a grange and cell of monks in the parish of Dyke, § who superintended their farm and estate of Grangehill, now Dalvey. || At times a cell was an oratory, where a certain number of monks were allowed to retire for prayer and meditation.lT Urquhart was governed by a prior, who, in 1 343, was suffi- ciently independent to settle the obligation of the priory to pay the expense of serving the chapel of Kilravock ;** but in * Reg. Dunf., 15. t /-J., 151, 154, 156, 175. t Wordsworth has poetically described the office of a cell when a grange, in his poem on the Cell of St Bees : " Who with the ploughshare clove the barren moors, And to green meadows changed the swampy shores, Thinned the rank woods, and for the cheerful grange Made room — where wolf and boar were used to range. " § Forsyth's Moray, p. 77. II In the beautiful gardens of Dalvey there is a venerable apple-tree, which still blossoms richly, and bears some fruit; it is impossible to ascertain its age, but it is conjectured, with some appearance of truth, that it was planted by the monks of Pluscardine (New Stat. Ace, "Dyke," p. 219). IT Ducange in ver6o "Cella." ** Family of Kilravock, p. 112. 136 HISTORICAL NOTICES 1358 the Abbot of Dunfermline asserted that the prior could not be elected without his sanction. In 1429 there is a letter from Columban, Bishop of Moray, authorising the commis- sioner of the Abbot of Dunfermline — the king's assent having been also obtained to the commission — to inquire into, correct, and reform the priorate and prior of the abbot's cell of Urquhart, on account of some crimes come to the ears of the abbot* The bishop at the same time addressed a letter to the Prior of Urquhart, Sir Andrew Raeburn, informing him that the abbot intended, by his commissioner, to hold a visita- tion of the priory, and requiring the prior to attend it. •)" What faults the Prior of Urquhart had committed does not appear, nor the result of the visitation. Great care was taken in the rules of the Benedictine order that cells should not lapse into places where monastic discipline was neglected. Some, twenty -five years later the charms of the Priory of Pluscardine excited the cupidity of a principal officer of the House of Dunfermline. The transaction which followed and gratified the covetous sacristan of Dunfermline is by Shaw and Forsyth attributed to the vices of the Pluscardine monks. " The monks of Pluscardine," writes Shaw, " becoming vici- ous, the priory was reformed and made a cell of Dunfermline." "The Convent of Pluscardine was free from episcopal juris- diction," says Forsyth, " but becoming licentious, soon after 1460 the white monks were expelled, the black were intro- duced, and the priory mad6 a cell of Dunfermline." The property of the House had dwindled, and the priory church and priory buildings had become ruinated in 1398, for the election of Alexander proceeded on his being expected to defend the possessions and to repair the church and dwellings of the monks, j John Benale, Prior of Urquhart, whose con- vent of brethren seems to have consisted of two monks, in 1454 petitions Pope Nicholas V.§ that he would unite the priories of Urquhart and Pluscardine. The petition stated that these * Reg. Dunf., 167. + lb., 282, 283. J Reg. Moray, 356. § Theiner, Mon. Vet. Scot, et Hib., p. 391. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 137 two priories were conventual, curative, and elective, and were acknowledged to be foundations of kings of Scotland ; that by reason of wars, mortalities, and other calamities, the income of the priories had so diminished that they were unable to keep up a prior in each House with a decent and competent number of religious men, or to keep the buildings of each house in proper order, or to maintain Divine service ; so that in Pluscardine there were generally not above six monks, in Urquhart two only. The petition stated that Pluscardine was a dependent member of the Priory of Valliscaulium in the diocese of Langres in France, and on account of the great dis- tance of Pluscardine from Valliscaulium, afid other inconveni- ences, it was unable to be visited by the Mother House or her substitutes, or to obtain any help from her, and that it would be desirable it should be wholly separated from the Priory of Valliscaulium, and that the Priory of Urquhart, which depended on the Monastery of Dunfermline of the order of St Benedict, were annexed and united to Pluscardine. The Pope, on the 12th of March 1454, issued a commission to the Abbot of Lindores and the Chancellor and Treasurer of Moray, stating the petition of the Prior of Urquhart, and authorising them to inquire into the truth of its allegations, and the consent of the king being obtained, to carry out the union. The papal Bull requires the commissioners to assign some proper compensation for the change to the Priory and Order of Valliscaulium. It asserts that Andrew Haag, Prior of Pluscardine, had resigned on a pension of ;^i2, and appoints or authorises the commissioners to appoint John Benale prior of Pluscardine. On the 8th of November 1454,* the Abbot of Dunferm- line granted a commission to William de Boys to receive the professions into the Benedictine order, of the monks of Plus- cardine. John, who was then appointed prior, was apparently a per- son of importance, for Elizabeth, Dowager-Countess of Moray, executing a deedf at Forres on 20th May 1455, says, "The * Reg. Dunf., 333. i Miscellany of Spalding Club, vol. iv., p. 130. 138 HISTORICAL NOTICES said Elizabeth, Countess of Morra, in absence of her own sele, has procurit the sele of a worshippful fader, Done John Benolda, Prior of Pluscardine ;" a curious instance of the translation of the " Dominus." In November 1456 the exchange is completed ; on the 7th* there is a commission of the Abbot of Dunfermline to William de Boys, the sacristan, to visit the Priory of Pluscardine ; it is addressed to John de Benaly, and on the same day,i- on Wil- liam de Boys' resignation, John de Benale is made Sacristan of Dunfermline. On the 8th there is a letter from the Abbot of Dunfermline to the Abbot of Kinloss,| informing him that John de Benaly had resigned the Priorate of Pluscardine, and requesting him to confirm the new prior if elected. With his commission of visitation in his pocket, the influence of William de Boys was enough to procure his election, and in 1460 we find him named Wilham de Boys, Prior of Pluscar- dine and Urcharde.§ He did not allow the rights of his House to be violated, for in 1463 he obtained a declaration from the Chancellor of Moray that the church of Dingwall in Ross- shire, with all its fruits, belonged to the Prior of Pluscardine. How long he continued does not appear, but in 1500, Robert is the Prior of Pluscardine. On the 3d February 1501, this person executed a deed, printed in the book of Kilravock, || which is interesting, not only from the rarity of any documents of the convent of Pluscardine, but also from its throwing some light on the subject of mills and multures, so constantly mixed up with the Valliscaulian priories. " The erecting the machinery of a corn-mill," says Mr For- syth, IT " could not formerly be undertaken by any person in a rank inferior to a baron, a bishop, or an hereditary sheriff." The Pluscardine House, by this deed, thirl all the growing corn of their lands of Penyck** to the mill of the laird of Lochloy, "but the annexation of the foresaid corns to the * Reg. Dunf., 337. t lb; 339- X lb., 339- § I!>; 353. 354. II Family of Kilravock, p. 171. 11 Forsyth's Moray, p. 131. ** Pennik was given to the Abbey of Dunfermline by David I. (Reg. Dunf., 14), and by the Abbey to the Priory of Urqxihart at its foundation (Reg. Dunf., 17). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 139 foresaid myll till indure ay and quhill we or oure successors thinks it speidful to big ane myll of our awin, or caus ony vther to big in our name a myll to grund our foresaid ten- nantes corneys." It concludes thus : " And this contract was maid at Pluscardin undir owre common seill, with our subscriptiones manualle, the thride day of Februar in the yere of God a thousand and five hundreitht year. " Ego, RoBERTUS, prior ad suprascripta subscribe. Et ego, Adam Forman, ad idem. Et ego, Jacobus Wyot, ad idem. Et ego, Andreas Broun, ad idem. Et ego, Johannes Hay, ad idem. Et ego, Andreas Alain, ad idem. Et ego, Jacobus Justice, ad idem." 140 HISTORICAL NOTICES No. XVIII. COMMISSIO VISITATIONIS MONASTERII DE ARDQU- HATTAN DATA PRIORI DE BELLO LOCO PER JACOBUM QUARTUM PRIOREM SEU GENERALEM VALLIS CAULIUM DIOCCESIS LINGONENSIS.— ANNO 1505 [1506]. Ex AUTOGRAPHO. "Prater Jacobus Quartus Prior Vallis Caulium Venerabili in Christo nobis praecarissimo Priori nostro Monasterij de Beuling in Diocoesi Rossensi in Scotia Salutem. Et proximorum utilitati ex caritatis fer- vore diligenter intendere nostras superioritatis officium nos incessanter excitat et inducit, ut ad ea per qua Monasteriorum nobis subjectorum status in utroque regimine salubriae suscipiat incrementa solerter in- tendamus. Hinc est quod vobis, de cujus providentiS, zelo et dis- cretione plenam in Domino gerimus fiduciam, Monasterij nostri de Ardquhattan in Diocoesi Argadiae, nobis et nostro Monasterio Vallis Caulium immediate subjecti, visitationem omnimodam damus et com- mittimus, dantes vobis auctoritatem et nostram plenariam potestatem ibidem, quotiens opus fuerit, in capite et in membris visitandi, re- formandi, corrigendi, emendandi, instituendi et destituendi, quando- cunque, secundum Domus et Ordinis Statuta, visitationis reforma- tionis, correctionis emendationis institutionis et destitutionis Sarculo indigere cognoveritis. Et si contingat, quod dictum Monasterium de Ardcattan, per cessionem, mortem, vel alias viduare pastore, in electione futuri praesideatis, conventui licentiam eligendi conferatis, electam personam si sufficiens et ydonea fuerit, et in Ordine nostro professa, instituatis, installetis, et in possessionem realem et actualem ipsius Monasterij ponatis etinducatis. Si vero jus providendi, nobis, ratione nostras Superioritatis, devolvatur, auctoritate nostra paterna, supradicto Monasterio de persons prasdictis qualitatibus qualificatse provideatis, ceeteraque omnia et singula circa praemissa et ea tangen- OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 141 tia facialis et exequamini, quse faceremus et exequeremur, si prsesen- tes essemus, Salvis per omnia nostri Ordinis et Papal institutis, con- firmatione tamen penes nos reservata; omnibus died loci personis districte praecipiendo, quatenus vobis in omnibus prasmissis et eorum dependentijs pareant et obediant tanquam nobis, praesentibus usque ad nostram specialem revocationem in sue vigore permansuris. Datum in nostro praedicto Monasterio Vallis caulium sub appensione Sigilli nostri die septima mensis Maij Anno Domini Millesimo quin- gentesimo sexto." Not. — The seal wants. It has been oblong on green wax stamped on the paper. This document is a commission, dated the 17th May 1506, from the General of the Valliscaulian Order, the Prior of Val des Choux, in Burgundy, addressed to the Prior of Beauly for the visitation of the Priory of Ardchattan, in Argyle. The commission runs to this effect : " James Quartus, Prior of Valliscaulium, to the venerable and most loved in Christ, Prior of our Monastery of Beuling, in the diocese of Ross, in Scotland, greeting. With a sense of the duty of our superi- ority and of our obligation to see to the sound condition of the mon- asteries subject to us, and of your prudence, zeal, and discretion in the Lord, we give and commit to you the visitation of our Monas- tery of Ardchattan (Ardquhattan), in the diocese of Argyle, imme- diately subject to us and our Monastery of Valliscaulium; and we give this with full power of visiting, reforming, correcting, amending, instituting, and depriving, as occasion may require, both in the head and the members, whenever, according to the statutes of the house and of the order, you shall find there is need of the hoe (sarculo) ; and if it should happen that, by resignation, death, or otherwise, the said Monastery of Ardchattan (Ardcattan) should be deprived of its shepherd, you, the Prior of Beauly, are to preside at the election of a new one, allow the convent the liberty of electing him; and if a proper person, professed in our order, should be elected, you are to institute, install, and induct him into the real and actual possession of the monastery ; and if the right of providing a head should devolve upon us by reason of our superiority, then you are by our fatherly authority to provide for the said monastery a 142 HISTORICAL NOTICES person qualified as before mentioned, as if we were present ; but, in all things, without prejudice to the institutes of our order and the Papal Regulations, reserving, nevertheless, confirmation to ourselves. Given in our monastery of Valhscaulium, our seal being affixed, the 7th of May 1506." What state of things existed at Ardchattan when this com- mission was issued by the head of the order, or what had reached his ears, we cannot tell. The priorate, we know, had become vacant in 1502, and there may not have been another prior appointed since. There had apparently grown up, since the simple rules laid down by Viard for the discipline of the order, laws and cus- toms regulating the relations in which the general of the order stood to the houses, other than the chief house, of which he was the prior. These were probably similar to those in which the Abbot of Citeaux, the General of the Cistercian Order, stood to the other Cistercian abbeys. Notwithstanding the usurpation of Alexander VI., the prior-general still adheres to the rule of the order, election of the head of a house by the members of that house, and asserts, probably in the event of non-election within a given time, that the patronage would lapse, like the patronage of a secular advowson, to himself as the superior of the order. The commission introduces to us two monasteries both intimately connected with the Priory of Beauly, and both requiring some notice ; the Mother House of Val des Choux, in the diocese of Langres, in Burgundy ; and the House of Ardchattan, in Argyle, the only other priory besides Pluscar- dine, of the Valliscaulian order in Scotland. The Monastery of Val des Choux was situated about ten miles from Chatillon-sur-Seine, at the head of a glen watered by a small stream, which flows a little above Vanvey into the Ource, a tributary of the Seine. It was in Burgundy, a name which suggests the sunny land of the golden grape, studded with abbeys and castles, the homes of the most illustrious orders and of the noblest OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 143 knights. Citeaux, Clairvaux, and Clugny, those magnificent foundations whose monasteries extended throughout all Europe, were all Burgundian houses. But the Priory of Val des Choux did not vie, and its rules forbade it to vie, with the splendour of their pride. Although nominally in Burgundy, it was in the poorest district of that province, and where the soil is least generous ; the aspect of the vale where it stood, shut out from the sun by hills, which bound it to the south and west, must have been always gloomy and cold. The spot was selected by the founder as a hermitage, and it could never have been divested of that character. The house is spoken of in 1710,* 1728,-f and 1739,+ as still existing, but small trace of it now remains, and the pilgrim who would visit the site must search for it in the Forest of Chatillon. Its position had little to re- commend it as a residence, and it would seem that when the storm of the Revolution drove away its inmates, and cast down its walls, the spot relapsed into the state of primeval forest in which it was found by Viard, when he first sought its wooded recesses six centuries before its fall. In our account of the foundation, we have followed Hel- yot ; later writers have been more precise, and have named Otho III.§ as the Duke of Burgundy who founded the House of Val des Choux. His title to this honour has been ques- tioned by the historian of the duchy, || but upon insufficient grounds. Viard seems to have taken the name of Guido, on his ele- vation to the post of prior, probably out of compliment to Guido, the Archbishop of Rheims, the " G. elect of Rheims " mentioned in the Bull of Pope Innocent III. Viard is named as prior, it is said, by the archbishop in his charter confirming * Buonanni Ordini Religiosi, Rome 1710, part iii., No. 4, "Vallis Caulium sita est in silvis inter Divionem et Augustodunum. " t Gallia Christiana, vol. iv., p. 742. t Planche's Hist, de Bourgoyne, vol. i., p. 379. § Gallia Christiana, vol. iv., p. 743. II Planche's Histoire de Bourgoyne, Dijon 1739, vol. i., pp. 379, note, 448. 144 HISTORICAL NOTICES the foundation of Val des Choux, dated 1204, and appears to have been prior in 12 13. St Marthe * gives a list of fourteen priors after Viard, the fourteenth being this Jacobus Courtois, who was certainly- prior in 1472, though when he first became so is not re- corded. The relation between the Mother House and the other priories in the Order of Valliscaulium seems to have been of the same character as existed in the rules of the Carthusian Order. They were all priories, but the prior of the Mother House was General of the Order. The Scottish priories of Beauly, Pluscardine, and Ard- chattan, a,lthough members of the House of Val des Choux, were not in the situation of the alien priories of England, or the cells of abbeys in England and Scotland. The Vallis- caulian priories were members of the Mother House, because the head of the Mother House was head of the order ; but they held their possessions quite independentlyof the Mother House, and paid no rent or acknowledgment to it. They elected their own prior from their own body, and the bishops of their respective dioceses being their visitors, they obtained confir- mation of the election from the bishop, although they sought also apparently to obtain confirmation from the prior-general. The prior-general, however, as well as the bishop, had a right of visitation, and of depriving the priors of the subordi- nate houses for any violation of the rules of the order. Pro- bably the visitorial powers of the bishop were directed to preserve general ecclesiastical discipline, while those of the prior-general were intended to keep up the peculiar discipline and rules of the order. One of the principal rules of the order was that the priors of the subordinate houses should attend the chapters of the order, which were held at Val des Choux, and also most pro- bably at the House of St Lieu in Dijon, which was called the Petit Val de Choux, and which was much more accessible than the great house in the Forest of Chatillon. * Gallia Christiana, vol. iv., p. 744. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 145 St Marthe records that a successor of Prior Courtois held general chapters in 1525, 1526, 1527, 1529, 1533, iSS^.and 1541- The concordat of Francis I. and Leo X. in 1516 gave the king the privilege of nominating to the bishoprics and vacant benefices of the first class, abolishing the Pragmatic Sanction, under which every cathedral church chose its bishop, and every monastery its abbot* This change was felt at Val des Choux; the king nominated the prior in 1585, and again in 1595, although the nominee of the Crown in 1595 had already been elected by the monks. The result of this viola- tion of the rules of the various monastic orders in France was the profligate appointment by court favourites of persons to benefices as sinecures. Helyot, in his account of the Valliscaulian order,t says. Car- dinal Vitri, from whom he takes his account of their rules, is mistaken in thinking they followed the institute of the Cis- tercians ; the mistake, however, was frequently made. In fact, the Valliscaulian rule resembled rather the rule of the Chartreuse, in the separation of the abodes of the brethren ; whilst it imitated the Cistercian system, in making them have a common table. Chassanasus, indeed, writing in iS79<\ speak- ing of the small revenues of the Valliscaulian priories and the few brethren in each house, says it would be better that they were entirely brought under the rule of the Cistercians, since they wear their dress. This event seems at last actually to have taken place when at Sept Fonds a new reform of the Cistercian order was carried out by Dom. Dorothee Gallowitz, who was elected abbot of Sept Fonds in 1757, and who afterwards become Prior of Val des Choux, and induced the members of that order to enter into the Reformed Cistercian Rule. The consequences of the vast revenues of the French monas- teries being applied to keeping in luxury and idleness the crea- tures of a profligate court, were seen at the very commence- * Moslieim's Ecc. Hist., vol. iv., p. 14, ed. Mackren. + Helyot, vol. vi., p. 178. $ Catalogus Glorije Mundi, Francf. 1579, p. 119. 146 HISTORICAL NOTICES ment of the French Revolution. Nothing could be urged in favour of such a system, and the usurpations of Francis I. were the indirect cause of the confiscations of the National Assembly. Dom. Dorothee survived till 1790, when on 13th February the Assembly suppressed the religious orders, and abolished the obligation of monastic vows, devoting their property to the service of the State, and charging the communes with the maintenance of religious worship. Many religious took advantage of the law, and the last year of the last Prior of Val des Choux must have been embittered at the destruction of all his hopes. And it must be remembered that he and such as he were the salt of the earth to France amidst the corruptions of those fearful times. The site of Val des Choux is marked on the War Office map of France of 1 843. Apparently nothing remains of the monastic buildings. Too distant from a town to become a barrack or a magazine, and too gloomy to attract the taste of a purchaser, the spot seems to have relapsed into its primitive condition of forest ; and the only traces of the existence of the house seem to be the large fish ponds which afforded to the brethren a plentiful supply of their lenten and fast-day food.* So much for the governing house of the order, from which the commission for visitation proceeded. We will now pass on to the house which was the subject of the visitation, and ' ' In pilgrimage we wend our way, To lone Ardchattan's abbey grey. " The visitor who passes from Oban to Connel Ferry, and walks up the northern shore of Loch Etive, will find himself, after going about four miles, in the estate of Ardchattan, a district perhaps naturally not more beautiful than many in the picturesque county of Argyle, but singularly cared for and tastefully developed. The hills are clothed with wood, leav- ing between them and the water-side stretches of cultivated, * The House of Sept Fonds, sanctified by the priorate of Dom. Dorothee, has lately been restored to its original pious uses. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 147 smiling ground. Passing the parish church, which is such an effort at Gothic as the skill of half-a- century since could be expected in so remote a district to produce, he comes to Ard- chattan Priory, a specimen very rare in Scotland of the domestic buildings of a conventual establishment, preserved and continued from being the residence of the prior of the monastery to becoming the manor-house of the laird ; every- thing in perfect keeping — stone gables and buttresses — whilst the windows are themselves a history, from the Early English lancet of the thirteenth century to the sash of the eighteenth and the revived muUions of the nineteenth, and all points of vantage crowned with the holy emblem of the cross. Let us take a hasty glance at its history. In the Scottish chronicler's account of the year 1230, after stating the foundation of Pluscardine and Beauly, he adds : * " Duncan Mackowle founded in this year the monastery of Ardchattan." The remains of the priory church attest the accuracy of the date. The piscina in the south wall of the chancel is of pure Early English character. The priory seal also seems from its impression to have been a work of the thirteenth century. Who was Duncan Mackowle .' Highland scholars f and Highland peasants tell us that MacCoule and MacDougal are the same name. In 15 12 we have MacDougal of DunoUy recorded as MacCowle. Duncan M'Cowle, the son and heir of Alexander M'Cowle of Dunnoly, is entered as being buried at Ardchattan. I The founder being Duncan MacDougal, in 1231, a little further inquiry will identify him. Somerled, in the time of David I., expelled the Norwegians from Argyle, and became, under the Scottish monarch, the Lord of Argyle. He married the daughter of Olaf, the Nor- * Extracta e Cronicis Scotije, p. 93. t Campbell's West Highland Poetry, vol. iv., p. 27. t His. Ace. of Clan Gregor, p. 44. This young man was killed by Colin M'Eno (M'Ean) of Barbreck (Chronicle of Fortirgall, in Black Book of Taymouth, p. 116). 148 HISTORICAL NOTICES wegian King of the Isles ; and the eldest son of that marriage was Dougal. He, on his father's death in the battle of Ren- frew, in 1164, succeeded to the Sudreys, the southern portion of the islands, as his mother's heir, and to Lorn as his share of his paternal possessions of Argyle, and founded the house and clan of MacDougal of Lorn. Dougal left two sons — Dugall Scray and Duncan — who appear in the Norse sagas under the title of Sudereyan Kings * In 1230, it seems Dugall Scray was taken prisoner by the Norwegians, and Duncan was then the only one of his family who retained any power in the Sudreys. This Duncan, the son of Dougal, was the first who adopted the name MacDougal ; as Duncan de Lorn, witnesses a charter of the Earl of Athol ;■)- as Duncan de Ergalita, signs the letter and oath to the Pope of the nobles of Scotland on the treaty of Ponteland in 1244 ;:j: and was doubtless the founder of Ardchattan. It was probably as a peace-offering to King Alexander II.,' and his chief adviser, William Malvoisin, that Duncan of Lorn founded the priory. The king had, in 1221, made himself master of the whole of Argyle ; and although he had not included Lorn in his new sheriffdom of Argyle, yet he made Duncan MacDougal hold it of the Crown instead of the Lord of the Isles ; and the surest way of cementing the union was by bringing it ecclesi- astically as well as politically into connection with the rest of Scotland. At this time, therefore, instead of the nominal subjection of Argyle to the bishopric of Dunkeld, there was constituted the bishopric of Argyle, whose seat was Lismore, an island close to the mainland where Ardchattan lies, and the placing near it a priory linked with the sister priories of Beauly and Pluscardine served to rivet the union of eccle- siastical strongholds which would bind the country and people to the Crown and Church of Scotland. * Skene, ii. 49. t Cart, de Cupar, 9. X Matt. Paris, 1244, ed. Wats. John Byset the younger, as we have seen, also signed this with Duncan MacDougal. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 149 Alexander II., in 1243, compassionating the poverty of the bishopric of Argyle, granted to the bishop the church of Killean, in Kintyre.* In 1249, the king died in the island of Kerrera, just off the coast of Lorn. By 125 1, Duncan Mac- Dougal must have died, as in that year Lord Ewin, the son of Duncan of Argyle, grants lands in Lismore to the Bishop of Argyle. In 1296, Pieres, the Prior of Ercattan, and the whole con- vent, swore fealty to King Edward I. ; f but the prior did not attend with his brother priors of Pluscardine and Beauly the Parliament of Dreghorn in 1290. It had, however, been well endowed either by the founder, or, as Father Hay implies, by the kings of Scotland ; for in Boiamond's Taxation of 1274, where the bishopric of Argyle is valued at £2<^l, the Priory of Ardchattan is valued at i^200, the same valuation as the Priory of Beauly. Its endowments included salmon fishings, the shell-nets, " the fishings of the Prior Schotts at the mouth of the Water of Aw," just where the tide enters into the river Awe, and where the salmon is found in the greatest abundance and most perfect flavour and condition ; and of Port Verran at the head of Loch Etive, and the teinds of the salmon and herring caught between the Connel and the head of Loch Etive or in the Water of Aw. The priory does not seem to have been endowed with mills or multures, but the monks were secured from the temptation to break their rule and cultivate their land for subsistence by endowing the priory with the tithes, or portions of the tithes, of the churches of various parishes. These were Ardchattan itself, by its name of Ballibodan or Kilbodan, Kilninver, Kilbrandon, in Sell ; Kirkapole, in Tiree ; Kilmonivaig, in Lochaber ; and Kilmarow, in Kintyre. Of these, Ardchattan was completely appropriated, and no vicar endowed, the monks apparently doing the parochial duties. Kilbrandon had a vicar who lived at Sell. The priory seems to have had only a portion of the tithes, * Reg. Mag. Sig., lib. xiv., No. 389. + Ragman Roll, p. 117. 150 HISTORICAL NOTICES whilst there still remained a rector in each parish of Kilmoni- vaig and Kilninver, the advowsons of which rectories be- longed to the priory. In Kilmarow they had a portion of the tithes only, the church of Kilmarow being appropriated, in 1251, to the bishopric of Argyle.* The exact condition of Kirkapole, in Tiree, is very obscurely indicated ; but probably the priory was only a portioner of tithes in this parish, the rec- tory of which was appropriated to the bishopric of the Isles. The island of Tiree belonged to John of Lorn, Lord of Argyle, in the fourteenth century .-f- Father Hay says of the founder : " He joined on to the church dwelling-places moderate indeed, and such as in a short time could be set up ; there the fathers, sighing for the habitations of their heavenly country, despised the comforts {kospitia) of their present life." " Privileges," he adds, " are said to have been granted to the holy house by the pontiffs of Rome and the kings of Scotland. The place given to the devout monks was marked out, instead of landmarks, by fixed crosses." | It is probable this alludes to what would be a great boon to the wild tribes who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Ard- chattan, the right of sanctuary within the girth of Ardchattan. We have seen that this right was to a limited extent given to Pluscardine by Urban IV. " No one," says Pope Alex- ander, in his Bull to Kinloss§ (A.D. 1174), "is to presume to take away a man within the ambit of your church or within your granges." The sacred marks of the bounds were those within which the refugees were free ; what the precise rule at Ardchattan was, we know not ; but at Hexham || there . were three lines of refuge — the third being the Frid-stol, the seat of peace itself, where even the sacrilegious and the traitor could find a safe asylum. * Reg. Mag. Sig., lib. xiv., No. 389. + Hailes' Annals, 2d ed., vol. iii., p. 281. t Father Hay's Scotia Sacra, MS., Adv. Lib., p. 203. The father's Latinity belongs to the kind called by Ducange infimus. § Book of Kinloss, p. io6. || Appendix, No. XV. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 151 For two hundred years no mention is made in the pages of the annalist of the Priory of Ardchattan. " Bene vixit, qui bene latuit," was a monastic proverb ; we will hope it was so. The local historian indeed tells us that Robert Bruce held a parliament here — one of the last, he adds, at which the business was conducted in the Gaelic language.* Bruce's parliament in Lorn, even after his defeat of the Lord of Lorn must have been a mere mockery of a national assembly, and probably was a court only at which he received the homage in their native tongue of the vanquished Highlanders. Just a trace of the existence of the priory occurs in 1470 ; but there is no record relating to it until this commission for visitation in 1506. At the time of this visitation, it is sug- gested that the quiet of the monastery proceeded from the utter decay of its monastic discipline, and from the conversion of its holy precincts into a mere inheritance of a family of priors. In England, at the close of the twelfth century, it is on record that a parish church in Norfolk descended from father to son, from parson to parson, without any presentation.-f In the early part of the thirteenth century we have the Pope complaining to the Bishop of Coventry that when priests and clergymen, holding churches and benefices with cure of souls, died, their sons presumed, sometimes with violence and armed force, to take possession of these churches and bene- fices, and as of hereditary right (etjure quasi hcereditario) to retain them.+ In Scotland, in the diocese of Glasgow, in the same age, says Mr Robertson,§ sons formally claimed their fathers' churches as of hereditary right. In the remote district of Lorn, it is suggested in the " Origines Parochiales Scotise," there might be seen, towards the end of the fifteenth century, a convent descending from * Anderson's Highlands, p. 310. + Selden's History of Tithes, cxii., sec. 4. X Hist. Letters of Henry III., p. 560, app. 41. § Pref. to Stat. Eccl. Scot., p. ccvi. Mr Robertson seems to have had little sympathy with the system of family livings. 152 HISTORICAL NOTICES father to son, in the case of this Priory of Ardchattan. At that time the district was ecclesiastically little subject to ex- ternal influence. Robert, Bishop of Argyle, who had sequestrated some churches in Argyle, belonging to the monks of Paisley, seems, in 149 1, to have repudiated the jurisdiction, and defied, even to excommunication, the decision of the Pope.* The king wisely tried to put Robert's successor, David, Bishop of Argyle, above the temptation to attack the churches appro- priated to Paisley, by appropriating some more churches to the bishopric, grounding his bounty in 1508 on the poverty of the bishopric, " situated among wild and untamable tribes." The writer of the " Origines Parochiales Scotise" says,f " about the end of the fifteenth century, the priory seemed to have been ruled in succession by Somerled or Somherle Mac- dougall, and his two sons, Duncan and Dougal, the last of whom died in 1502, and who are all buried within the church." This seems an extraordinary state of things, reviving, in the fifteenth century, the practices of the twelfth, and we had better examine the evidence on which it rests. It is founded on the figures and inscriptions on two tomb- stones, now within the ruined church of Ardchattan Priory. Dean Howsonj could not read the inscription in the Gothic character on the one, except the words Ardchattan and apud Ardchattan. The stone is broken, and "the fracture," he says, " passes near the figures in the date, but it is certainly either 1400 or 1500. I observed that one end of the stone tapered as if it had stood in a socket; and on turning it over, I found figures which convinced me it was the shaft of a cross. These figures are extremely grotesque. One is a lion, and the other some nondescript creature in a rampant position, like the lion at Mycenae, and enclosing a galley between them." The writer of the " New Statistical Account "§ thought he was able to read the inscription. He says : " The following * Reg. de Passelet, p. 154. + 0. P. S., "Ardchattan," p. 148. X Trans. Camb. Camden Soc, 1845. § New Statistical Account, " Ardchattan." OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 153 letters appear in the old Saxon character : ' Funallus Somherle Macdougallus, Prior de Ardchattan, MCCCCC " I examined the stone in September 1874, and by the kind- ness of Mr Sutherland, the Free Church minister, I have obtained a rubbing of the inscription. One thing only is clear, that the date is 1500. The accounts given of the other tomb differ. Dean Howson says : " It has six figures in relief, each under a crocketed canopy of that peculiarly stiff form which at once fixes the date of the tomb to be not very long anterior to the Reformation. Above these are two female figures, and between, the effigy of Death, with a toad between the knees. Below the armed figures, and between them, an ecclesiastic. The inscription runs round in Roman letters, ' Hie jacent M. Duncanus et Dugallus, hujus monasterii Priores, una cum eorundem patre et matre quorum Dugallus istius monumenti fabricator, obiit 1502.'" In "Ancient Reliques," vol. ii., Lond. 181 3, is an engraving of the tomb. It is there stated : " It contains an inscription in Latin, translated as follows : ' Here lies Macdougal and Duncan, also Dougal, their successor, the first two of whom descended from the same father and mother ; but Dougal, who erected this monument, was by a former mother. He died in the year 1502.'" Lastly, in the account of the monuments at Ardchattan, by Dr Rogers,* we get the description, which states that the monument represents " two dignified churchmen in monastic costume, a warrior in mail armour, and two weeping nuns ; between, a human skeleton. The following inscription, in old Irish characters, occupies the sides and margin : ' Hie jacent nati Somerledi Macdougall Duncanus et Dugallus, hujus monasterii successive priores, una cum eorundem patre matre et fratre Alano, quorum Dugallus hujus monumenti fabricator, obiit Anno Domini MCCCCIL' " These are the circumstances upon which the statement in * Monuments and Monumental Inscriptions in Scotland. Grampian Club, vol. ii., p. 6. 154 HISTORICAL NOTICES the " Origines Parochiales" of the descent of the priorate from father to son, is founded. It is upon these also, I suppose, that the suggestion of the Rev. Mr Fraser of Ardchattan was given to Dean Howson in this note : " It is a melancholy thought that so much of evil was mixed with so much that was good. Nor is this thought arbitrarily suggested or wilfully called up by an angry dislike of monastic institutions ; but on the contrary, forced into the mind by documentary evidence of the state of the religious house shortly before the time when the Scottish Reforma- tion, in rebelling against the evil, did not spare the good of former generations."* Whatever the facts, clearly the prior who died in 1500 could hardly be the father of two priors, the eldest of whom died in 1502, without some special notice of such a mortality. But taking the tomb of 1500 to be the first of the two brothers who were priors, and the five figures on the other tomb to commemorate the five persons mentioned in the inscription, the story is plain enough. From a careful examination I made in September 1874, I found the inscription as given in the " New Statistical Account" to be correct, except that the word "hujus" is " istius," but I satisfied myself that the so-called two nuns are the priors in their cowls and monks' robes. The two armed figures below are their father and brother Alan ; and the dignified ecclesiastic between them is the lady their mother in the full- dress costume of the period. The armed figure of the father shows that he was not the prior, and that the priorate had not descended from father to son. It passed from brother to brother, and the priors were probably often of the same family ; if, in pursuance of a right reserved to the founder, Duncan MacDougal, on the original foundation, or even, if by usage, the MacDougal family had the power of nominating the prior, a power not infrequently given to founders, then the whole thing is explained, and nothing would be more natural than that a member of the MacDougal family should * Camb. Camden Soc, 1845. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 155 be constantly elected as prior upon the nomination of the founder's heir. Certainly few places were more tempting to repose, than the Priory of Ardchattan ; and it cannot excite surprise if from time to time the patron appointed a son or a brother to the post of its head. The arrangement seems to have been made that the church and prior's house should face Loch Etive, and the open country to the south, one of the most beautiful scenes in Argyleshire ; nor did the sense of owner- ship which the continuance of the headship in one family fostered fail to make the possessors more and more careful to add to"the pleasantness and profitableness of the place. Its very description in the old charters when dissolved, tells a tale of care and cultivation ; the " manor or place of old called the Monastery or Priory of Ardchattan, with the build- ings, greens, office-houses, gardens, and orchards, as well within the Inner Precinct or stone fence of the said former monastic place as in those other gardens within the outer precinct and fence, commonly called the Thornedykes and Hedges of the said monastery of Ardchattan." This description is from a deed of 1697, but in 1602 the description is, " The manor or place of Archattane, called the priory, with the houses, mansions, buildings, greens, office- houses, gardens, and orchards, lying within the inner precinct of the monastery, and also within the outer precinct or hedges of the priory." And yet some Anglicising Scotsmen would persuade us that the hawthorn hedge was an introduction at first planted in Scotland by Cromwell's soldiers, as if the party of ruffians, calling themselves English soldiers, who burned the house of Ardchattan in 1654, could be the planters in its gardens of "The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made." The trees that are now round the priory ruins attest the fitness of the soil and climate for their growth : among them an ash-tree, 3 feet from the ground, is 9 feet 10 inches in 156 HISTORICAL NOTICES growth, and a plane or sycamore 9 feet 6 inches ; these pro- bably relics of the monks' planting. Between the priory and the point where the hill rises abruptly from the plain, is a wide extent of pasture ground, level, green, and richly luxuriant ; it is called the " Monks' Garden." We shall add a description of the architecture of Ardchattan Priory church when we give the particulars of the Beauly Priory buildings.* Before passing to the next document transcribed, we may mention that the papal Bull which we print hereafter, as promulgated in 15 14, was dated in July of this very year iSodf Among the storms of civil war which raged in Ross-shire and the Isles between 1498 and 1506, it is likely that the Priory of Beauly may have suffered from one or other of the contending parties. Thomas, Lord Lovat, their immediate neighbour, was specially associated by the king with the Earl of Huntly to put down the rebellion. It was probably in consequence of the injury which the priory had suffered, that Prior Dougal, who had influence with the Roman Court, obtained from Pope Julius the Bull dated in July 1506, and promulgated in 15x4. * The name Ardchattan is derived from St Cathan the bishop, the uncle of St Blane. To St Cathan were dedicated the church of Kilchattan in the island of Lunig, opposite the coast of Lorn, and other churches, but his reputation in the Highlands led to the adoption of his name by a whole clan. "The Clan Chattan," says the learned and accurate Mr Robertson, "was peculiarly a ghostly tribe. It took its distinctive appellation from a saint, that kinsman of St Blane who was patron of Aberuthven in Strathern, and gave name to Ardchattan and Kilchattan in Lorn, to Kilchattan in Bute, to Kilchattan in Gigha, and to other churches in the West Isles" (Appendix to pref Spalding Miscellany, vol. v., p. 74). + This same year (1506) King James IV. granted to David, Bishop of Argyle, the royal escheats and fines of Argyle and Lorn. or THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 157 No. XIX. LITTERA FRATRIS JACOBI COURTOIS GENERALIS ORDINIS VALLISCAULIUM IN BURGUNDIA PRIORI DE BELLO LOCO. Ex AUTOGRAPHO [1506]. " Nos Frater Jacobus Courtois, humilis Prior Prioratus Monasterij Beatas Marias Virginis Valliscaulium, Caput sive Generalis dicti ordinis Valliscaulium, situati in Ducatu Burgundiae juxta Castillon supra Senam, Notum facimus, quod die datae praesentium comparuit in dicto nostro Prioratu quidam Scotus Presbyter nomine Gulielmus Tomson et certas litteras papireas, non signatas, nulloque Sigillo munitas, de data diei decimi mensis Novembris novissime elapsi, nobis prssentavit. Quas quidem litteras, sic nobis per praescriptum Dominum Gulielmum ex parte carorum et dilectorum nobis in Christo fratrum Prioris et Conventus Beatae Mariae Virginis de Bello loco in Scotiei. situati in Dioccesi Rossensi prssentatas ad longum vidimus ac legimus et ad vos super contentis in hujusmodi vestris litteris respondendum nobis videtur : quod doletis et conqueritis, quod Reverendus in Christo pater Dominus Episcopus Rossensis aut ejus Officialis vult ad volunt ; vos aut supradictum Monasterium visitare, nee non in eodem Monasterio seu Prioratu vestro, jura visitationis ac procurationis solita et consueta capere et levare, et quod eidem non vultis obtemperare, dicentes, vos esse exemptos ab hujusmodi visita- tione, prout vobis videtur, quia Valliscaulium religio, nee non omnia Monasteria ejusdem sunt exempta a Jurisdictione Episcopi. Quod non est verum. Quapropter, et ne vos litibus seu processibus invol- vatis, notum vobis faeimus, et certificamus, quod non habemus in partibus Gallia, nisi tredecim parvas domus ordinis Valliscaulium locatas et situatas in quinque Diocgesibus — Videlicet, Lingonen. Eduen. Senonn. Trecen. et Verdunen. in Lothoringia a quibus 158 HISTORICAL NOTICES Episcopis aut eorum Commissarijs sumus singulis annis visitati, et capiunt expensas et provisiones a nobis; que de re vobis insinuamus, ut in hac materia uti velitis bono consilio. " Item desideratis habere copiam authenticam Institutionis et Confirmationis ac privilegiorum nostri jaiti dicti ordinis Valliscau- lium, quod pro nunc non est possibile, ut relatu dicti Domini Gulielmi percipere poteritis, quia omnes dictas Confirmationes et Privilegia in Nostro Tliesauro apud Divionem consistunt, et ad ipsas, propter instans festum Dominicse Nativitatis, ac adversam nostram valetudinem illo accedere minime possumus. Et vos, Domine prior, non valeraus satis mirari, quo Privilegij titulo munitus potestis regere, et gubernare dictum Prioratum de Bello loco, et alia Monasteria ex eo dependentia, eo maxinie attento, quod hue nunquam venistis aut misistis, pro vestr^ institutione et confirmatione dicti Prioratus ac ejus membrorum habendi. Quare vos monemus sub poenis ordinarijs in nostro ordine factis et declaratis, quatenus vos recipiatis, seu compareatis in Capitulo nostro, quod celebraturi sumus in Festo Inventionis Sanct» Crucis, proxime venturo, aut Festo Johannis exinde proxime insequenti, quia illic vobis mon- straturi sumus Confirmationem Statuta et Privilegia ordinis, favente Altissimo, cui precamur, ut vobis et religiosis vestris det laetitiam, nos nihilominus vestris orationibus commendantes. Dominus Prior quoque, Prsedecessor vester novissimus, nobis promisit, quod ipse aut ejus Procurator de quadriennio in quadriennium comparerit in nostro Capitulo generali : Concessimusque eidem Priori aut ejus Procuratori de gratia nostra speciali, et quia longe a nobis, sive in longinquis partibus estis constituti, terminum comparationis hujusmodi de sex annis ad sex annos. Ipse tamen Predecessor vester aut ejus Procurator, neque vos aut persona pro vobis, minime comparuistis, seu comparuerunt, in nostro Capitulo praedicto, qua re de vobis contentos nos reddere non debemus; Quanquam etiam idem vester Praedecessor seu ejus Procurator nobis promiserit mittere [pisces] Salmones nuncupates, ex partibus, seu rivis et aquis vestris, apud oppidum Brugen. sive Valenthinen. ubi commisimus Mer- catores, qui dictos pisces reciperent, et nobis apud Divionem deferrent, non tamen unquam aliquid ab eodem Prasdecessore aut suo Procuratore exinde percepimus; sed quia prsefatus Dominus Gulielmus praesentium lator asseruit nobis, vos esse virum tantae nobilitatis, veracitatis ac bonae religionis, credimus quod, favente OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 159 Altissimo, non solum pro Praedecessore sed et pro vobis hSc sestate proxime futurU, rationem estis reddituri. Scriptum seu datum apud Valliscaulium die decima octava mensis Decembris anno Millesimo quingentesimo sexto. In testimonium afRxiones Sigilli nostri et signi manualis prsesentibus appositi. "Sigillat. V" necnon subscript, et Signat. Sic, Courtois. " Not. — In dorso litterarum, hujusmodi erat superscript, talis. DiLECTIS NOSTRIS AtQUE BENE AmATIS DOMINIS PrIORI ET CONVENTUI BeAT^E MaRI^E DE BeLLO LOCO DIOCCESIS RossENSis IN Scotia. " Translatio facto est de lingua Gallica in Latinam non mutando rei substantiam, collataque est praesens copia sic translata cum suo originali per me Johannem Bertin Notarium Apostolica et Imperial! Auctoritatibus ac Venerabilis Curiae Episcopalis Tornacens. pub- licum, et concordant. Teste signo meo Manuali. Ita est Joh. Bertyn p^ N""""." This instrument is a translation into Latin from the French of a letter from the same James Courtois, the Prior of Valliscaulium, from whom the last document we have printed proceeded. The translation is by John Bertin, notary public, of the episcopal court of Tournay; but the mistakes of the tran- scriber are most glaring, such as " Bivio " for " Divio," and " Fornacensis " for " Tornacensis." It is dated the i8th of December 1506, about six months later than the commission to visit Ardchattan, and is in answer to a letter from the prior and convent of Beauly, dated the loth of November 1506. On a winter's morning late in December a stranger pre- sented himself at the gateway of Val des Choux. He was not a monk, he was not a pilgrim, but a travelling priest. By travelling priests most of the communication of those days was kept up, especially that spread of public opinions and feelings among the common people, for which, in the absence of a public press, we should otherwise be unable to account. He was received, as all strangers would be, gladly, and he was 160 HISTORICAL NOTICES the bearer of this letter written at Beauly in the preceding month. The prior-general now gives his titles more in full. He styles himself Brother James Courtois, the humble prior of the priory of the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Vallis- caulium (the head or general of the said order of Valliscaulium), situated in the duchy of Burgundy, near Chatillon, on the Seine. He states that on the day of the date of his letter, a Scottish priest, named William Tomson, made his appearance in their priory, and presented certain paper letters, unsigned and unsealed, dated lOth November preceding, which letter, so presented to him by the said Sir William, on the part of the dear and much-loved brethren in Christ, the prior and convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Beauly, in Scotland, situate in the diocese of Ross, the prior-general had seen and read in full, and to them concerning the contents of the letter he thinks this answer should be sent : That whereas they lamented and complained that the Bishop of Ross or his official claimed the right of visiting their monastery of Beauly, and of taking and levying in their said monastery or priory the accustomed rights of visitation and procuration, and they were not willing to submit to the bishop, but maintained that the rule (religio) of the Valliscaulians and the monasteries of the order were exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop, which is not true ; therefore, in order that they might not involve themselves in suits and proceedings, the prior-general informed them that in France the order had but thirteen small houses, situated in the five dioceses of Langres, Autun, Troyes, Sens,* and Verdun in Lorraine, and that these were visited every year by the bishops or their commissaries, who took expenses and provisions from them, wherefore the prior-general suggests that, in this matter, the prior and convent of Beauly should be well advised. The prior-general continues, that whereas they desired an authentic copy of the institution and confirmation, and of the privileges of the order, this was not then possible, as he would * The transcriber has Benonn. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 161 understand from the report of the said Sir William, for all the said confirmations and privileges lay in the treasury at Dijon, and the prior-general, on account of the approaching feast of the Lord's Nativity and his own ill-health, could not go thither. The prior-general proceeds with a more direct address to the head of the monastery from which had come the letter he is answering, in these words : "And, Sir Prior, we are not able sufficiently to wonder by what title of privilege fortified, you are able to rule and govern the said Priory of Beauly, and the other monasteries dependent upon it, most particularly considering this, that you have never come or sent to this house for your institution and confirmation of the holding of the said priory and its members, wherefore we admonish you under the ordinary penalties, made and passed in our order, that you present yourself or appear in our Chapter, which we are about to celebrate at the coming feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross (May 3, 1507), or the feast of John immediately following (June 24, 1507), because there we shall show you the Confirmation, Statutes, and Privileges of the Order, by the favour of the Most High, to whom we pray that He may give joy and gladness to you and your religious, nevertheless com- mending ourselves to your prayers. Moreover, the Lord Prior, your immediate predecessor, promised us that he or his procurator would appear in our General Chapter at intervals of four years, and we con- ceded, of our special grace, to the same prior or his procurator, that, on account of the distance, the term of appearance should be extended to intervals of six years; but neither he, your predecessor, nor his procurator, nor you, nor any person for you, has appeared in our said chapter, for which reason we ought not to rest satisfied concerning you ; and, moreover, although your same predecessor or his procurator had promised to send fish, called Salmon, from your parts, or waters, or rivers, to the town of Bruges, or Valenciennes, where we commis- sioned merchants to receive the said fish, and transmit them to Dijon, we have never received anything on that account from the same predecessor, or his procurator; but the said Sir William, the bearer of this letter, has assured us that you are a man of such nobility, veracity, and of good religion, that we believe that, by the favour of the Most High, not only for your predecessor, but also'for yourself, you will render account this next coming summer. Written L 162 HISTORICAL NOTICES or dated at Valliscaulium, the i8th day of December 1506. In wit- ness, the affixing of our seal and sign-manual is appended to these presents." The signature is the surname only — " CoURTOIS." * A note is added that the translation is from the French into the Latin, not changing the substance, and that the copy- translated is compared with the original by John Bertin, the notary-public we have mentioned. The old prior-general had now been for at least thirty-five years Head of the Mother House and the Order, and his infir- mities might well have prevented his journeying to Dijon in the winter of that part of France. He was, it would seem, under the impression that the Priory of Beauly had some lesser houses dependent upon it ; but this does not appear to be the fact. Pluscardine had, in 1454, ceased to be a monastery of the Valliscaulian order, and had become a Benedictine house, dependent on the Abbey of Dunfermline ; nor whilst it observed the rule of Viard is there any trace of its having been in any way subject to Beauly. The prior-general himself had just before placed Ardchattan, the only other house of his order in Scotland, under the control of the Prior of Beauly, by issuing to him a special commission to visit it, but this is the only instance recorded of any act of supremacy of the Ross-shire priory over the Argyleshire house. The prior-general was naturally anxious that the Prior of Beauly should not raise, on the subject of episcopal visita- tion, a contention, which was contrary to the practice of the order. The Valliscaulians neither were nor claimed to be exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. In the year 601 Gregory the Great (himself for some time the inmate of a monastery) held a council, in which, among many regulations favourable to the independence of monks, rules were laid down, by which the bishop was precluded not * Of course this was not Quartus. The name originally may have been Court- hose ; Robert, eldest son of William of Normandy, was Robert Courthose. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 163 only from all interference in their temporalities, and all exer- cise of jurisdiction over them, but even from the celebration of the Divine office in their churches. But this regulation was not observed ; and afterwards the contrary rule was the rule of the Church ; the bishop, as the ordinary, had juris- diction over the monasteries as well as all other ecclesiastical establishments in his diocese ; special immunities were re- quired to exempt monasteries from episcopal visitation ; and, in Germany, there is not an instance of such exemption till the time of Pope Hildebrand.* There was no such exemption in the confirmation, by Pope Innocent III., of the constitutions of Viard ; and we have seen that the " Register of Moray " contained the record of the appearance, before the chapter of Moray, of monks of Plus- cardine, and of the proctor of the Mother House of Val des Choux, who distinctly repudiated the plea of independence for Valliscaulian priories from diocesan bishops' control, and denied that such independence had ever been claimed by the order. The " Register of Moray " contained also an entry of the Bull of confirmation of Pope Innocent. That register. Prior Dougal Rorieson seems not to have consulted ; and as half a century had elapsed since a Valliscaulian house had been within the diocese of Moray, there was little reason to suppose information would be derived from the records of that bishopric. The prior-general says that there were, in 1506, only thir- teen small houses of the order in France. Miraeus,-f who writes in 1614, and Helyot, who writes in * Waddington's History of the Church, p. 412. + Orig. Benedict. Colon., 1614. The British Museum copy has a book-plate, with a motto which is very happy. The plate represents a person in an ecclesiasti- cal habit seated in a library, with this legend : " IN TALI NUNQUAM LASSAT VENATIO SYLVA." This would have delighted Sir Richard Hoare, the historian of Wiltshire, He said to the late learned antiquary, Mr Joseph Hunter, that no pursuit was so fas- cinating as archaeology, except fox-hunting. Those antiquaries who have assisted in drawing the fine coverts of Stourhead, will appreciate the comparison of the owner. 16-4 HISTORICAL NOTICES 1 7 14, state that there were about thirty priories of the order of Val des Choux in Burgundy, particularly mentioning Vallis Benedict!, near Autun, and Vallis Crescens, near Sedan.* If this number is correct, it must have increased after the time of Prior Courtois. The right of holding Chapters of the Order, if vested in a priory which was the head of an Order, gave to such a priory the title of a Capitular or Chapter priory, which dis- tinguished it from a priory which was subject to an abbey.-f- The exemption which Prior Courtois had given to the Prior of Beauly, from attending the Chapter of the Order more frequently than six years, was analogous to the practice of the Cistercian order as to the abbots of Cistercian monasteries in Scotland, who were exempted from attending the General Chapter of the Order, at Citeaux, oftener than once in four years.J • William Tomson had come from Beauly to Val des Chpux in forty days. He could not have performed the journey entirely on foot in the time ; and was probably not a pilgrim — not one of those whose departure, taking wallet, cloak, cap, and staff, on their journey to Rome, is several times recorded in the Protocol Book of Glasgow.§ He must have come by sea, and probably from Inverness to Flanders, and then on foot, using the hospitality of convent after convent, until he arrived at Val des Choux. And by the same route he must have returned, as he was the bearer of the letter from Prior Courtois, for this was translated in the diocese of Tournay, in Flanders, although the translation may have been sent on by another hand. The Salmon which Prior Hugh Fraser had undertaken to send to the Mother House, was partly a compliment and partly a due. Some slight acknowledgment of dependency in money or kind, was probably customary, from the inferior * Appendix, No. XVI. t Stevens' ed. of Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. i., pp. 20-29. t lb., vol. ii., p. 29. § Diocesan Registers of Glasgow. Grampian Club, vol. i. , p. 489. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 165 houses of the Valliscaulian order to the Head House ; a trace of this we found in the compensation to be awarded to Val des Choux, on the change of order at Pluscardine ; and, here again, we have a sHght recognition of the due, but, as we have seen, the position of the Scottish priories of this order was much more independent of the Foreign House, than that of the AHen priories in England. This notice of the trade between Beauly and Bruges in salmon is interesting, and shows the extent to which the practice of sending these splendid fish then prevailed. Inver- ness was long anterior to this period evidently a colony of busy merchants, whose names, from the earliest date, indicate their Flemish or Saxon descent. Its exports of hides, herring, salmon, malt, etc., were known in the ports of the Continent, even on the shores of the Mediterranean. Boece, who was Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, soon after 1500, states that in ages long before, a concourse of German merchants annually resorted to the town of Inverness for the purposes of trade, bringing with them the manufactures of their own nation, and taking away in return quantities of skins and other products of the Highlands ; but that owing to the frequent burnings and plunderings to which the town had been subjected, its prosperity had been greatly impaired in his time. Even for some years subsequent to the final union of Scotland with England, the merchants of Inverness carried on their import trade with the ports of France and Holland.* We have interesting details, about the date of this letter of the prior-general, of the trade between Scotland and the Low Countries, from the accounts, which have been brought to light by Mr Cosmo Innes,-}* and published by the Treasury, of Haliburton, a Scottish merchant residing mostly at Middle- burgh, but carrying on business at the fairs at Berri, Bruges, and Antwerp, from 1493 to 1503.]: * Anderson's Highlands, ed. 1842, p. 89; Statist. Account, Inverness, 1842, p. 23. + Innes's Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 241. t Ledger of A. Halyburton. H.M. General Register House, Edin. 1867. 166 HISTORICAL NOTICES The shipping employed in the trade with Scotland was partly Scottish, and we find that the import into Flanders included a large quantity of salmon. The first account with the Duke of Ross, who was Archbishop of St Andrews, com- mences with ^43, placed to his credit for the produce of his teiad salmon. The Bishop of Aberdeen exported salmon. Another exporter sent large quantities of skins, and got in return awms of Rhine wine and tuns of Gascon claret (the claret cost £4 the tun), with two butts of Malvissy from Jan Burg. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 167 No. XX. PR/ESENTATIO AD ECCLESIAM DE CONUETH PER PRIOREM DE BELLO LOCO ANNO 1612. Ex AUTOGRAPHO. "Reverendo in Christo Patri et Domino Andrese Dei et Apostolicae Sedis Gratia Episcopo Moraviensi, Commendatorique de Pettinwym Dryburgh et Cottinghame in Anglic, Sancti Andres et Eboracensis Diocoesium, vestri humiles et devoti oratores, Prior et conventus Belli Loci Ordinis Valliscallium Rossensis Dioccesis, reverentias cum omni mansuetudine et honore debitas. Ad Vicariam perpetuam Parochialis Ecclesise de Conueth Moraviensis Dioccesis de jure et de facto vacantis per decessum quondam Domini Donaldi Watsone Presbyteri, ultimi vicarij et possessoris ejusdem, ad nostram praesen- tationem, totiens vacare contingerit, vestramque collationem, de jure et de facto spectantis, dilectum nostrum Dominum Nicholaum Brauchine Presbiterum, vestrae Reverendae Paternitati, animo non variandi, duximus prsesentandum, prout tenore prsesentium prsesen- tamus; eandem Reverendam Paternitatem antedictam humiliter exor- tando, quatenus, dictum Dominum Nicholaum nostrum prsesentatum prsetextu verae pragsentationis ad perpetuam Vicariam praedictam, vel ejus legitimum procuratorem, cum omnibus suis juribus, decimis, oblationibus, emolumentis, et suis justis pertinentijs admittere, illam- que sibi conferre, et ipsum in eodem investiri mandare, aliasque et alia facere et exercere, dignemini, quae ad officium vestrum pastorale in hac parte incumbunt. In cujus rei testimonium sigillum commune nostri Capituli praesentibus est appensum apud locum nostrum Belli Loci die undecimo Mensis Maij Anno Domini Millesimo quingen- tesimo duodecimo." Not. —The seal red upon white wax, representing a St John baptizing Christ, both straight. In a niche under them 168 HISTORICAL NOTICES a monk bareheaded, praying. On the circumference, which is oval, is, " S. commune conventus S'' Johannis Baptistse de Bello loco." The tag of parchment. This instrument is another presentation to the vicarage of Conveth. Donald Walters — that is, Walter's son — seems to have acquired, whilst vicar of Conveth, the corrupted but more euphonious surname of Watson;* and Conway, a name forcibly reminding us of its origin, has now again resumed its older form of Conveth.-f- It was Donald Walteri whose presentation we have printed No. XIV., which was dated 1493. The presentation before us is to the perpetual vicarage ^ of the parish church of Conveth, in the diocese of Moray, now vacant by the decease of the late Sir Donald Watson, priest, the last vicar and possessor of the same. The Bishop Andrew of Moray now, is a different person from the Bishop Andrew of Moray of 1493. The former Bishop Andrew was Bishop Andrew Stewart, son of the Dow- ager Queen of Scotland, Jane Beaufort, and Sir James Stewart of Lorn ; the present Bishop Andrew is Andrew Forman. He was a good specimen of a thriving churchman in those times, a great pluralist, and adds to his title of Bishop of Moray that of Commendator of Pittenweem, Dryburgh, and Cotting- ham in England, of the dioceses of St Andrews and York. Pittenweem was a priory of Canons Regular, in Fifeshire. It was first a cell of Reading, and afterwards of St Andrews. In that old priory a life was passed extending to our days, of one who, in striking contrast to Andrew Forman, was "a bishop of a primitive type " — Bishop David Low.§ Dryburgh in Teviotdale, the wealthiest house of the Prse- • Appendix, No. XVII. t There seems at Tynemouth Priory to have been a feudal service called the Conveyes, which was performed by entertaining the tenants of the priory at Christmas-tide. See Gibson's Chronicle of Tynemouth, vol. i., p. 140. J Appendix, No. XVIII. § Bishop Low lived at Pittenweem for sixty-five years. He was the last sur- vivor of the Scottish Episcopal clergy, who declined to pray for the reigning family till the death of Prince Charles Edward in 1788 (Scottish Nation, iii. 716). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 169 monstratensian order in Scotland, was founded in 1 150 by Hugh de Moreville, Constable of Scotland, and Beatrix de Beauchamp, his wife. Its beautiful ruins are now the resort of pilgrims from all parts of the civilised world, as the burial- place of Sir Walter Scott. Cottingham in England was a priory of Augustiniau canons, otherwise called Haltem Price, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, about five miles from Hull. The expression Commendator of a monastery is not usual in the case of English houses, and some authors suppose Bishop Forman to have been Commendator of Coldingham ;* but we have the bishop on ist April 1509 as Commendator of Pittenweem and Cottingham in England, presenting to chapels, and his seal to the letters of presentation has these titles on its legend.-f- His name does not occur in the list of priors of Cottingham, given by Burton or Dr Huttonj from the registers of the Archbishopric of York. Bishop Forman in 15 14 was translated to the archbishopric of St Andrews, with the power of a legate a latere, and the promise of a cardinal's hat ; not being a cardinal, he could not be an actual legate a latere. In 15 16 he was made Com- mendator of Dunfermline. He was also Archbishop of Bourges, in France, by the gift of King Louis XII., which greatly increased his resources. His arms were emblematic of his ecclesiastical voracity : " A chevron between three fishes hauriant" an epithet which, as heralds tell us, signifies their position, as if they were refreshing themselves by sucking in the air.§ The most interesting part of this transcript is the note of the seal of Beauly Priory. The seal is red upon white wax, representing a St John baptizing Christ, both straight. In a • Preface to Book of Dryburgh, Bannatyne Club. + Anderson's Family of Eraser, appendix. J Dugdale's Monasticon, last edition, vol. vi., p. 519. This may have arisen from his never having been formally instituted to the priory by the Archbishop of York, or never having performed the duties of the priorate, but I have no doubt he received the salary. § Pomy, Elements of Heraldry, Lond. 1795. 170 HISTORICAL NOTICES niche under them a monk bareheaded, praying. On the cir- cumference, which is oval, is : " S. COMMUNE CONVENTUS S" JOHANNis Baptists de Bello Loco." This is a different seal from that which is described by Mr Laing,* as used in iS/i. His description is, " The Virgin and Child sitting within a niche ; below is a monk praying. In- scription not legible." We may here mention the seals of the two other Scottish Valliscaulian priories. The seal of Pluscardinef was a very singular design emble- matic of delivering souls from Purgatory, with the legend : "SiGILL. CONVENTUS VALL. ANDREE IN MORAVIA." The seal of Ardchattan | represents St John Baptist in his coat of hair with the legend : " SiGlLL. CONVENTUS DE Ard- KATTAN IN ARGADIA." Sir Nicholas Brauchine, the presentee, had been rector of Uig, in the barony of Trotternish, in the Isle of Skye, a parish united after the Reformation to the parish of Snizort. In 1 5 12 King James IV. presented Sir Donald Rede to the rectory of Wig in Trouternes, vacant by the demission of Sir Nicholas Brachan.§ Sir Nicholas Brauchine did not apparently long retain the vicarage of Conveth, for among the Lovat Writs of i652,|| we have : " 82. A presentation by James, Bishop of Moray, to Mr Kenneth Mackenzie of the vicarage of Conveth, dated the 27th June 1518." This frequent change shows the poverty of the vicarage of Conveth. This was the natural result of the tendency of all church rulers in Scotland, before and after the Reformation, to depart from the principle of giving the parish minister the parish tithes. It is laid down again and again by Popes and general councils, and edicts of kings of Scotland and statutes of the Scottish Church, that the tithes of a parish * Laing's Scottish Seals, ii., No. 11 10. t lb.. No. 1 1 13. J O. P. S., "Ardchattan." § Reg. Sec. Sig., vol. iv., fol. 201. || Dunbar Dunbar MSS. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 171 belong to the minister of the parish, "decimse debentur parocho." The Priory of Beauly took for its own use the great tithes of the parishes of Abertarff, Comar, and Conveth, and allowed to the vicars of Abertarff and Conveth, and the parochial chaplain or perpetual curate of Comar, small incomes for their maintenance, though to them alone, by original right, belonged all the tithes of those parishes. And it must have followed from this, that either the vicars were men very little elevated above the lowest rank of their parishioners, content with a bare subsistence and unable to afford the charities and hospitalities which are at once the bulwark and the privilege of the parish priest ; or they were men looking out for a change, and who accepted these vicarages as steps to higher and more adequately endowed preferment. We shall see that when the Reformation came there was no improvement in this respect ; when the rectorial and vicarial tithes were alienated to the use of laymen, the covet- ousness of the nobles exceeded the avidity of the monks. Among the Lovat Writs inventoried in 1652 there is an entry as follows : "75. A presentation by the Bishop of Moray to Sir Donald Braichie to be vicar of Beauly, dated the nth of May 1512." * This must be the instrument before us mis-described by the ignorance of the maker of the Inventory, but doubtless the same. There is indeed in the same Inventory a mention of a vicarage of Beauly, as follows : " 68. A presentation by the Prior of Beauly to Sir Donald Dow of the vicarage thairof, dated the 7th of May 1512." But this is probably a presentation to the other vicarage in the gift of the priory, that of Abertarff, as there is no trace of any vicarage of Beauly, which was not a parish, but merely a village gathered round the monastery and within the parish • Dunbar Dunbar MSS. 172 HISTORICAL NOTICES of Kilmorack and diocese of Ross ; and the Bishop of Ross, and not the Bishop of Moray, would have been the bishop to whom the presentation of a vicarage of Beauly would have been made. Comar, the only other church which besides Abertarff and Conveth belonged to Beauly, was never pro- vided with a vicar ; and as this inventoried presentation is dated only five days before the presentation to Conveth, we are led to conclude that the appointment must have been to Abertarff* We may resume the history of the heirs of our founder. William de Fenton of Beaufort of 1403 and 141 6, shortly before 1422 was succeeded in all his estates, including Baky Castle and Beaufort Castle, by his son, Walter de Fenton of Beaufort. Walter de Fenton of Beaufort is so described in 1438, and as being then dead, and he left, as we have seen,f four daugh- ters co-heiresses ; but, according to the custom of Scotland, the eldest daughter took the castles of Baky and Beaufort, as a portion of her fourth share, and accordingly we find him succeeded at Beaufort by his eldest daughter Margaret. She in 1439 married Walter Ogilvy. Walter Ogilvy was the son of Patrick Ogilvy of Auchter- house, and in 1444 styles himself Walter Ogilvy of Beaufort.. He was the bailiff — that is, the steward — of the lands of the Abbey of Arbroath. His sister, Marjory, married Alexander, second Earl of Crawford, and in 1445 Walter Ogilvy was wounded and taken prisoner in defending the monastery from an attack by his brother-in-law, the earl, who was also severely wounded. The chroniclers say Walter was smothered by his sister, the countess, exasperated at her husband's wounds when she heard that the surgeons could cure her brother.J * In 1536, Sir Magnus Vaus was vicar of Abertarff (O. P. S., vol. ii., p. 450), and in 1560 James Dovif (Shaw's Moray, "Abertarff"). f Supra, p. 98. t Extracta e yariis Cronicis Scotias : "Et Ballivus captus Fynecon ducitur, et dum concepit Coraitissa quod sponsus comes morti proximus fuerat, accessit ad cameram ubi erat Ballivus vulneratus jacens, qui et ipse frater erat Comitissae, et dum intellexit quod chirurgicorum arte impensa convalere potuit, superposito lecto OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 173 Margaret de Fenton had by him two sons, Alexander Ogilvy, who was afterwards Sheriff of Forfarshire, and Walter Ogilvy. She married again, her second husband being David Lind- say of Lethnot, and was a widow in 1461 ; she had by David Lindsay a son, David Lindsay, and four daughters. She was living in 1493.* Janet de Fenton was unmarried in 1449, but afterwards married Sir James Douglas or de Douglas of Railstone. Henry her son's style "of Culbirnie," was taken from Cul- birnie, near Beaufort. I think that another daughter was also named Janet, and had the distinction of junior attached to her name. She was in 1471 married to William Hakket or Hacket, was his widow in 1487, and appears to have died in 1491, when her share seems to have descended to Margaret de Fenton, David Name of Sandfurde, and Henry Douglas. The fourth daughter's name has not survived, but she was either the wife or mother of, and her share came to, David Name of Sandfurde. The second son of Countess Marjory and Alexander, second Earl of Crawford, was Walter Lindsay, a man of great energy and unscrupulous ambition, and for forty years under the style of Walter Lindsay of Beaufort, he occupied an important place in the history of the great family of Crawford. James II. of Scotland, by a charter ■[■ dated 7th November 1458, grants and confirms to Walter Lindsay of Kinblath- mount " terras baronise de le Arde et Beuefort," which had belonged by hereditary right to Margaret Fenton of Baky, and had been resigned by her into the king's hands in favour of Walter Lindsay ; he was her first husband's nephew. A fourth portion of the barony was all that passed by this plumali enim, ut aliqui ferebant, adinteritum acceleravit." The "good countess," as she was afterwards called, did not agree with the sentiment of the wife of Intaphemes, " ddeXipebs Sj> dWos oiSevl rpbirif 'yivoi.To" (Herod. Thalia, 119), or of Antigone (Soph. Antig., 909). * For these particulars, see the Crawford Case, by Mr Riddell, and Lives of the Lindsays, by Lord Lindsay. f In the Haigh Muniment Room, Crawford Case, p. 145. 174 HISTORICAL NOTICES grant, but Margaret, as the eldest daughter, had the manor and principal messuage, the castle of Beaufort, as a '^ pr., Wester Ross or North Argyle), when vacant, were to be • Theiner, p. 38. + This name, which in the next Bull is made Legidibride, was then the name of ■ Logie Wester. Its church was probably dedicated to St Bridget or St Bride. . The church stood on the right bank of the Conan at a place anciently known as Logyreth, or Logywreid. There was in Perthshire a parish called Logiebride. t Theiner, p. 69. § This was the then name of the parish of Urray ; it is an early form of Brahan. II Some of the lands of Fairburn were afterwards called Kyrk Farbrone, but the . lands of Ferintosh may be those meant. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 191 common churches ; the greater dean * was to be elected as at Salisbury. These churches of North Argyle, thus given by the bishop to the common use of the chapter of Ross, are specified in a lease fromQueen Mary in i S67,f by which she leases to the bishop the parsonages and vicarages of the common churches of Kintail, Lochalsh, Lochcarron, Gairloch, Applecross, and Lochbroom. Lumlair was thus taken away from the archdeacon, and formed the separate prebend of a canon, who was called the rector of Lumlair. It must have been about the date of this Bull, and at the period of the enlargement and endowment of the cathedral chapter, that the site of the cathedral church was changed from Rosemarkie to Fortrose. The contribution of John Byset {supra, p. 24) to the church of St Peter of Rosemarkie was probably to the new church. No records have come to my knowledge establishing this fact, but the construction of the Under-croft- and Chapter-house which still remain, with their dog-tooth mouldings and pure Early English lancet windows, points to the fact of the Chapter-house being built not later than 1250. We must remember that before the wars of Bruce, the styles of architecture in England and Scotland were con- temporaneous and identical. The rest of the existing remains of the cathedral church of Ross are of the Decorated and Per- pendicular periods. The only portions of the Church mentioned in the Beauly charters are the Consistorial Place of Ross, the place in which the charter we are now illustrating was executed, and " the aisle of the most blessed Virgin Mary within the cathedral church of Ross," which is the place appointed, in the next document printed, for the meeting thereby summoned. It will be interesting to discover, if we can, the position of these parts of the Church. We have very few references in records to the cathedral church. In 1338, Sir Andrew de Moravia, Lord of Avoch, died in Ross, and was buried in the "Kyrk cathedyrale of Ros- * See supra, p. 42. + Reg, Sec. Sig., vol, xxxv., fol. 109. 192 HISTORICAL NOTICES markyne."* In 145 1 a production of charters takes place in the chapel of St Nicholas in the cathedral church of Ross : in presence of Andrew of Monro, Archdeacon of Ross, commis- sary of Bishop Thomas, and auditor of consistorial causes, and of other witnesses, including two chaplains, John Ross, Lord of Balnagowan, produced certain charters, of which a tran- script was then made.-f From the production taking place before the Auditor of con- sistorial causes, and from the transcript being made there — evidently showing that the place was used as a court or ofBce — it seems probable that the " consistorial place of Ross " and this chapel of St Nicholas are identical. In August 1564 Queen Mary, with her court, spent some days at the Chanonry ; and as Bishop Henry Sinclair, in his return to the collector of thirds, not later than 1564, mentions his payments to the vicar of the choir, and his expenses in order to keep up the house and place of Chanonry, it is clear that no destruction had then been done to the cathedral buildings ; but in the north, when the Regent Moray was gone, the pro- tection which the ecclesiastical buildings had received from him was withdrawn. The Regent Morton, who did not hesitate to take to him- self the temporalities of the see of St Andrews, in spite of Knox, assisted his confederates to similar spoliation ; and in the name of the infant king, grants, in 1572, to the treasurer, William, Lord Ruthven, the very lead on the roof of the cathe- dral church of Ross. He granted the whole lead wherewith the cathedral church of Ross is covered, as well principal church as choir and aisles thereof, " ellis tyrvit, tane of, and disponit upoun, as to be in- tromittit with, and in place unhandellit,"| formerly belonging to the bishop and canons, but now in the king's hands, through the forfeiture of the bishop (Bishop Leslie) for treason and * Wynton's Cronykil, ii. 215 ; Fordun, ii. 328. t Balnagown Charters, O. P. S., "Kilmuir Easter," p. 462. t Some spoliator had already begun to strip off the lead : " tyrvit, " slrijit, from iirer (Sibbald's Glossary, Edin. 1802). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 193 lesemajesty, and "throw being of the said cathedrall kirk no paroch kirk, bot ane monasterie to sustaen ydill belleis." * The dilapidation now began in earnest, and the lead being taken off the nave and choir of the church, which was pro- bably not vaulted with stone, the roof would be soon destroyed by a few Ross-shire winters. Something was done to repair and rebuild it after the restoration of Episcopacy, under Patrick Lindsay, about the year 1615 ;-f- and the ruin was not complete even in 1649, for the inhabitants of the Chanonrie that year represented to Parliament that the cathedral church had lain waste since the Reformation, and prayed that it should be declared a parish church. It is probable that the complete dilapidation of the body of the church was effected by using it as a quarry for Cromwell's citadel of Inverness, the founda- tion of which was laid in 1652-34 The remains now standing are a south aisle to the nave, and the chapter-house or sacristy on the north side of the chancel. The church itself, nave, and choir or chancel, has completely disappeared. The aisle remaining is about 100 feet long inside, having a groined roof with stone vaulting, and forms an exquisite speci- men of Scottish Gothic architecture. The minister of Wardlaw, writing after 1661, speaks of the tomb of Bishop Eraser, which now exists on the north side of this remaining aisle, being " extant still on ye north side of ye church [Ross], opposite to ye great door."§ This is the exact description of the position of the tomb at present, and implies that there was in the writer's time nothing to the north of the tomb, so that by 1661 the nave and choir were gone. The foundations have been within the last few years laid * Reg. Sec. Sig., vol. xl, fol. 106. t " My hart ryses at the newes of a ryseing cathedral at Rosse ; in the words of the Psalmist : ' The glorious majestie of the Lord our God be upon it ; prosper the worke, O prosper it ' " ("Letter from John Carse to Patrick Lindesay, Bishop of Ross, loth January 1615:" Letters and State Papers of the Reign of King James VI., Abbotsford Club, 1838, pp. 248, 249). t C/. Old Statistical Acct., vol. xi., pp. 341, 342; New Stat. Acct., Ross and Cromarty shires, p. 351. § Findon MSS. N 194 HISTORICAL NOTICES open by the direction of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Works, and the result is that the ground plan of the cathedral can be accurately ascertained. It has been carefully drawn and engraved by the Edinburgh Architectural Association.* The whole church was about 185 feet long internally ; the choir about 85 feet long, and the nave 100 feet ; its width 25, but this was extended by the width of the aisle to the nave ; the width of the upper part of the aisle being 20 feet, and of the lower part of the aisle 14. Let us see if we can find the place of the aisle of the Blessed Virgin. The foundations of a block of building at the east end of the chancel which is supposed to be the base of the high altar, are only 6 feet from the east wall, so that there was no room for a Lady Chapel in the ordinary position of that chapel to the east of the high altar, and the only aisle that ever existed was that on the south side of the nave. This aisle is divided, like the south aisle to the nave at Melrose,-|- into two parts, the eastern part being wider than the other ; and the east window must have been magnificent, and consisted of five lights. It is wide in proportion to its height, and must, as Mr Neale remarks, have afforded great scope for throwing up the altar beneath ; there is here a piscina in the south wall for use with the altar, and a credence table or awmry on the north side. As there are, as we have said, no aisles except this long aisle divided into two, in which there are no places for altars except under the eastern window, or across the whole space of the aisle * Mr Neale described (Ecclesiological Notes, p. 53), what remains as the south aisle to chancel and nave. It turns out that it is the aisle to the nave only; but in justice to my old class-fellow I must say that. Mr Muir's conception of the plan of the building, which he says Mr Neale has strangely misapprehended, is much further from the truth than that of the late Warden of Sackville College. Mr Muir says " the building originally consisted of choir and nave, with a north aisle to both, but no south one ; a slender spire-capped tower on the south engaged to, and having an entrance from, the choir ; and a detached chapter-house on the north- east " (Characteristics, p. 68). t Rickman's Gothic Arch., ed. iv., p. 200. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 195 at some other part, and as the Lady Chapel is always placed in a position to the east, I think that the aisle of the Virgin must have been the easternmost and wider part of this aisle. It is interesting to inquire when this was built. The architecture of the westernmost part contains adap- tations of older windows and doors, which were seldom adopted in the purest period of Decorated architecture, to which the eastern window belongs, as may be well seen from the drawings published by the Association; and I, examining the buildings in 1873, discovered on looking at the vault- ing in the first bay west of the Bell tower — the point of division of the aisles — and which bay belongs to the narrower and westernmost aisle, that the boss in the centre of the vaulting has carved on it a shield on which is the coat of arms " ona bend, three buckles" the well-known coat of Leslie. Nor does the matter end here : on carefully observing the boss in the centre of the second bay from the west end of the west- ernmost aisle, I discovered carved on it a shield bearing "a bull's head caboshed" * that is, a bull's head without any part of the neck, and full faced. This is the coat of arms of John Bullock, who was elected bishop in 1420.+ As the first connection of the name of Leslie with Ross is Eufamia, the eldest daughter and heiress of William, fifth Earl of Ross, marrying, in 1 366, Walter de Leslie, and as she only succeeded her father in 1372, the insertion of the arms of Leslie shows that this part of the aisle was not built till after that date, and the insertion of the arms of Bullock shows that it was not completed before 1420. Before the war of independence, the correspondence of styles between England and Scotland was so close that I * Neither of these heraldic bosses are noticed in the Architectural Association's publication ; this appeared in 1873, from drawings by Mr A. R. Scott. These drawings contain many minute details of the groined roof, including the mouldings, but omitting all the bosses. + The seal of this bishop is engraved by Mr Laing, vol. ii., pi. ix., fig. 4. His name has been supposed to be TumbuU, but Mr Brady's extracts prove it to have been Bullock (Brady's Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1400-1875, p. 143, "Ross;" from Vatican Consistorial Records, Rome, 1876). 196 HISTORICAL NOTICES should have thought it improbable that the eastern and wider half of this south aisle could have been built after 1372 ; but when the connection with England was broken, the change of style which took place in England was not adopted in Scot- land, and in that country the Decorated or Middle-pointed style seldom passed into the EngHsh Perpendicular style, but rather into the French Flamboyant style. So we may well believe that the eastern part, as well as that which contains these authentic marks of date, was built after 1372. The Wardlaw MS. speaks of Bishop Eraser being buried in the Lady Ross's own chapel ; and modern writers* state that the canopied monument on the second bay from the east window is that of a Countess of Ross, that the date is 1330, and that she was the foundress of the cathedral. No Countess of Ross, before Eufamia Leslie, had the inde- pendent means to execute such a work as even to build this aisle, for, as to the cathedral itself, there is nothing to lead us to suppose this was not of the same date as the Chapter- house. Eufamia certainly had the vast property of the earldom, and may have commenced the building of the aisle in 1372 ; but it is not likely that she would have inserted the arms of Leslie, those of her first husband, Walter de Leslie, without her own arms, those of Ross. He died in February 1 382.+ She afterwards, before July 1382, married Alexander, the Wolf of Badenoch. During the troublous period of her second marriage, she would have neither the means nor the leisure to complete the whole work ; and it is, I conceive, only after the Wolf's death in 1 394, that the westernmost part of the aisle could have been begun. She then exercised all the rights, and was in full and independent possession of all the property of the earldom ; and to this period may be attributed the completion by her of the easternmost and wider part of the existing aisle, the part which we have suggested is the aisle of the Virgin, or the Lady Chapel. * New Stat. Account; Neale, Ecc. Notes, Edin. Architect. Assoc, 1873. + At Perth, February 27, 1382 (Kalendar of Feme, and Ane Breve Cronicle of the Earlis of Ross). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 197 Her first husband, Walter de Leslie, was buried at Perth ; her second husband, the Wolf, at Dunkeld. The latter died, not, as we have stated from the inscription on his tomib, on 24th July 1394, but on the 20th February 1394.* The countess, on his death, took the veil, and became abbess of the convent of Elcho ; and we may well assume that she then, as an act of expiation, renewed the pious work of building the chapel-aisle in Ross Cathedral. The stains of murder and sacrilege and filial disobedience were to be washed out. Her father. Earl William, in that very convent of Elcho, half a century before, had assassinated Reginald, Lord of the Isles. Then in his old age the Nemesis overtook the earl, and he complains to the king how she, his heiress-daughter, had, against his will, married Walter Leslie, and how they, the daughter and son-in-law, had wrung from him grants of all his lands-f- in Buchan. Lastly came the avenger to her ; and in her turn, when she was exposed to the brutality of her rufiian husband, the Wolf, she must have felt herself verily guilty concerning her father. She died before 1 398. The place of her burial is not men- tioned, but it is probable she was buried in the cathedral of Ross, and that the canopied tomb, near the east window, which tradition calls the tomb of the Countess of Ross, is hers. Whether she inserted the boss, with the shield of Leslie on it, is uncertain. On her marriage | with her second husband in 1382, she had a beautiful seal engraved, displaying her own shield of the earldom of Ross between the escutcheons of Leslie and Buchan, her successive husbands ;§ but although she uses this same seal when, acting as Countess of Ross, on * Supra, p. 93. Correct date given in New Stat. Ace, "Dunkeld." ■)• " Querimonia Willelmi Comitis de Ross, Roberto Regi, June 24, a.d. 1371 " (Antiq. of Aberdeen and Banff, vol. ii., p. 387). X Nisbet, vol. ii., p. 299, describes this seal as attached to a charter of Walter de Leslie and the countess dated 20th June 1375, noting that "the other shield on the left vfing had three garbs ; " but this discrepancy is not alluded to by Mr Innes or Mr Seton. § Seton 's Heraldry, p. 268, plate xii., fig. 5. 198 HISTORICAL NOTICES 8 th August 1 394* she makes a grant to her most dear brother, George Lesley of Rothes, yet as Abbess of Elcho, in June 1394, she places over the coat of Lindsay, the founder of Elcho, only the arms of Leslie, and uses the simple legend — " S. EUFAMivE Lescle Abas." f Yet it seems more probable that her son, Alexander Leslie, Earl of Ross, erected her tomb, and inserted his own arms of Leslie in the vaulting of the lower aisle, which was completed by Bishop John Bullock during the troubles which beset the earldom after Earl Alex- ander Leslie's death in 1402 (May 8, at Dingwall). Where, then, was the chapel of St Nicholas, the consistorial place of Ross ? The only other chapel I have found mentioned within the cathedral is the chapel of St Boniface. Now, I should suggest that this was the narrower and lower or western part of the aisle, and that on account of the aisles divided by the Bell tower being dedicated respectively to Our Lady and St Boniface, Bishop TuUoch dedicated the existing bell, which he placed in the tower, to St Mary and St Boniface. The chapel of St Nicholas, then, was probably the crypt, or rather Undercroft,| under the chapter-house ; certainly better adapted for a consistorial office than either of these two chapels open to the nave ; in the crypt there are evident traces of an altar having existed. If the chapel of St Nicholas had been a mere side chapel or recess between the piers, it would not have been large enough for the purpose of an assembly of people, as in 145 1 were collected ; and there were never, as we can now see from the foundations of the whole cathedral being laid open, any aisles or subsidiary buildings to it, other than the undercroft and chapter-house to the north, and the aisle now existing to the south. Alexander, Earl of Ross, the second of the line of the Isles, is said to have died at Dingwall in 1449, and to have been * Book of Kilravock, p. 122. t Laing's Seals, vol. ii., p. 200. On the authority of Mr W. Fraser. t It is not strictly a crypt, because it is above ground. There are similar under- crofts to the chapter-house at Wells, and the chapter-house at Llandaff. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 199 buried in the Chanonry of Fortrose on the 8th of May 1449.* There is no tomb now remaining which can be claimed as his : three only exist, the canopied monument of the countess, and two others, one west and the other east of hers,-f both episco- pal ; the east one probably Bishop Cairncross's, as the western- most is that of Bishop Fraser, which the Wardlaw minister says was opposite (near) the great door. Bishop Fraser's tomb corresponds in style as in date to that of Sir Kenneth Mac- kenzie, in Beauly Priory. On the north side of Bishop Fraser's tomb there is a low recessed arch, which was probably used for the purposes of an Easter sepulchre— it is not large enough for a tomb. I observed at St Duthus' Church, at Tain, on the north side, a similar recess. Before parting with the subject of the cathedral of Ross, we may as well illustrate a passage in the next document we print, in which passage Thomas Stephens, a chaplain of the cathedral church of Ross, records that he served a citation on James, Bishop of Ross, and the dean and the chapter of the same, being present faithfully at their stalls. What was the chapter of Ross } In 1227 the Bishop of Ross releases his rights in Kiltarlity with the consent of his chapter and clergy, and the clergy as well as the canons subscribed the charter.| The subscriptions are as follows : Robert, Bishop of Ross, and canon ; Henry, Dean of Rosemarkie ; William, treasurer of Rosemarkie ; Robert, Archdeacon and canon of the Church of Ross ; Edward Beket, canon of Ross ; Archibald, canon of, Ross ; Maurice, parson of Kincardine ; James, vicar of Alness ; Adam Bur, parson of Alness ; Bryden, vicar of Tain ; John, vicar of Contin ; Mathew, parson of Lochbon (Urray); Donald, vicar of Locunethereth (Logiewreath, Logie Wester) ; William Poer, parson of Lemnelar ; Jerome, parson of Culi- cuden ; Thomas, parson of Sudy ; Andrew, parson of Kel- tierny (Kiltearn) ; Andrew, vicar of Arterbert (Tarbat) ; Maurice, * Chronicle of the Earls of Ross. + Buried in Cathedral (Smyth's Chron. of Kinloss, p. 10). t Reg. Moray, pp. 81, 82. 200 HISTORICAL NOTICES canon of Rosemarkin and parson of Ardrosser ; Peter, canon of Moray and Ross. Vicars are not usually members of a chapter; and the vicars subscribing represent the parochial clergy simply. The parsons of Kincardine, Alness, Urray, Lumlair, CuUicudden, Suddy, and Kiltearn may, even then, have had some capitular position. In 1238 Lumlair was appropriated to the archdeacon, but in 125s it was restored to a separate rector. That year Urray was appropriated to the sub-chanter, and Suddy to the pre- centor, so that these two parsonages were extinguished. In 1588* we find that the following arrangement had existed at the date of the act of annexation as to certain churches. The churches of Kilmuir (Wester) and Ardersier were pos- sessed by the dean ; Killearnan and Fodderty by the arch- deacon ; Tain, Edderton, CuUicudden, Kincardine, Alness, and Roskeen, by the subdean ; Logie (Wester) and Urquhart by the treasurer ; Suddy and Kinnettes by the chancellor ; Kilchrist and Kilmorack by the precentor ; Urray by the sub- chanter ; Rosemarky and Cromarty, one-fourth of each be- longed to the dean, treasurer, chancellor, and precentor. We know that the six western churches were common to the whole chapter ; and thus it appears that, of the whole thirty-five parish churches in the diocese of Ross, only Avoch, which belonged to Kinloss Abbey ; Dingwall, which was origi- nally a chapel in the royal castle {supra, p. 125), and belonged to Pluscardine ; and six others — Kilmuir Easter, Kiltearn, Logie Easter, Lumlair, Contin, and Kirkmichael — were not specifically appropriated to the bishop and chapter, or mem- bers of the chapter. As regards these six, there were rectors as well as vicars ; and all these rectors had manses belonging to them round the cathedral close at the Chanonry,f and doubtless stalls in the choir. * Lords Appeal Cases (1814), x. 637. t Possibly, with the exception of Contin, whose vicar seems to have had a manse in the Chanonry. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 201 The chapter therefore at this time consisted of the bishop and the seven officials — the dean and subdean, the treasurer, the archdeacon, the precentor and sub-precentor, and the chan- cellor — four canons of the old foundation, the Abbot of Kinloss as rector of Avoch, and the six rectors we have named — in all, nineteen persons, to whom, severally or collec- tively, every parish in Ross was appropriated. Every member of the chapter, by the Bull of 1255, was obliged, on being installed in the choir, to take an oath of perpetual residence, and also to have a vicar who had a lower place in the choir, and who ultimately was selected for his skill in chanting, and supplied any deficiency of his lord, the canon, in that respect, being a vicar-choral.* The choir of 85 feet was not too long to provide stalls for the canons and seats for the vicars-choral. Some of the chaplains also were stallars. Other chaplains would have no regular place in the choir. Their duty was to perform masses in their several chapels, which were, in this cathedral, all recesses or side chapels, except the Lady Chapel and the chapels of St Nicholas and St Boniface. I have the satisfaction of concluding this digression with a valuable list of the bishops of the diocese of Ross, far more perfect than any hitherto published, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Major-General AUan.-f LIST OF THE BISHOPS OF ROSS in SCOTLAND— ROSMARKENSIS— DE ROS— ROSSENSIS— fromA.D. ii28toA.D. 1596, May 31. I. Macbeth, Celtic priest (perhaps head of the old secular college of Keledei, of Irish foundation, at Rosmarkny), " Rosmarkensis Episcopus," between A.D. 1128 and 1138. * In 1561 the bishop paid ;^20 " to the vicar of choir in the chanonry " (O. P. S., " Rosemarkie," 569) ; the dean paid 20 marks yearly to " the lad of the choir, for his fee;" the precentor's "chorister in the chanonry" had 21 marks yearly "for his fee" {Id., pp. 587, 588); the Abbot of Kinloss paid £6, 13s. 4d. "to the stallar of the Kirk cathederale of Ross, quhilk stallar is for the parsonage of Awache " (Records of Kinloss, p. 159). + I believe we may soon expect from the general's pen, to which, in 1840, we owe the account of the abbey of Fearn in the " New Statistical Account," a com- plete history of the bishopric of Ross, under the title of " Fasti Rossenses." 202 HISTORICAL NOTICES 2. Symeon, " Episcopus de Ros," and " Sancti Petri in Ross," after A.D. 1147 and before A.D. 1150 j apparently successor of Macbeth, and died before A.D. 1161. 3. Gregory, consecrated Bishop of Rosmarlcin A.D. 1161; present at general councilof Lateran A.D. 1 179, March, as " Episcop. de Ros ; " >rj^Kaf (?) about A.D. 1190, 3.-aA died A.T). 1195. 4. Roger I., " Episcopus de Ross" about A.D. 1190, and apparently the Cister- cian prior of Manuel ; resigned or died A.D. 1194. 5. Reginald, dictus "Macer," monk of Cistercian Abbey of Mailros ; elected "Bishop of Rosmarkyn" a.d. 1195, Feb. 27; consecrated Se^temhex 10 following, "Epis. Rossensis," axii died a..t>. 1213, December 13. 6. Robert I., chaplain of King William the Lyon ; elected " Episcopus de Ros " a.d. 1214, about November; died before A.D. 1256, February (certainly after A.D. 1238). 7. Robert II., chaplain of King Alexander I., " Episcopus Rossensis" before A.D. 1256, February 9 (perhaps some years), and died before November 1272 (but is also said to have died A.D. 1270, being succeeded by Robert, Archdeacon of Ross, who sat for two years only ?). 8. Matthew, sub-chanter of Ross ; elected W^o^; confirmed k.ti, 1272, Decem- ber 28, by Pope Gregory X., and consecrated by him at Orvieto ; died at general council of Lyons A.D. 1274, May or June. 9. Robert III., de Fyvine, Archdeacon of Ross; elected hK^o-^; confirmed by P. Gregory X. A.D. 1275, April 8, and cons, in Scotland ; died A.D. 1295. 10. Thomas I., de Dono Dei (Dundemore), canon of Ross, and chaplain to Card. Bp. of Ostia ; elected, but nominated Bp. of Ross by Pope Boniface VIII. A.D. 1295, November 18 ; died in or before A.D. 1325 (sup. p. 80). 11. Roger II., Bishop of Ross about a.d. 1326, and before March A.D. 1328 ; resigned his see " voluntarily for reasonable causes " A. D. 1350 ; date of death unrecorded. 12. Alexander I., Archdeacon of Ross ; notninated bp. by P. Clement VI. a.d. 1350, Novembers; cons, before March following; di^d a.d. 1371, be- tween February and May. 13. Alexander II., Kylquhous (de Culchws), canon of Ross ; elected, but nomi- nated by P. Gregory XI. a.d. 1371, May 9, and probably cons, at Avignon ; died A.T>. 1398, July 6. 14. Alexander III. (Kilbuines ?), Bishop of Ross after A.D. 1398, July, and be- fore A.D. 1404 ; sitting A.D. 1416, March 17, and &a? apparently in that year, or early in A.D. 1417, when vacancy. 15. Llewelyn Bifort, formerly Bp. of Bangor, in North Wales; trans, to church of Ross in Scotland by Pope Martin V. A.D. 1418, February 14, but must have died in the same month at Constance (while attending the general council there as "Ludovicus Bangorensis" A.D. 1416 ; cons. after A.D. 1408). 16. Griffin, Bishop of Ross, and Papal Nuncio to Scotland, A.D. 1418, March i, from P. Martin V. ; resigned, and trans, to see of Hippo i. p. i. by same Pope A.D. 1423, February i ; (/ir>^ before A. D. 1433. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 203 17. John I., Bullock ; nom. by Pope Martin V. to vacant see of Ross A.D. 1423, February I, but styled " Bp. -elect-confirmed of Ross" A.D. 1420, July 16; (/«(/ after September A.D. 1439. 18. Thomas II., de TuUoch, Bishop of Ross A.D. 1440; confirmed by Pope Eugene IV. October 14; cons, before April 3 following; died A.^T). 1463, before October. 19. Henry I. (Cockbume ?), Bisbop of Ross A. D. 1463, " elect-confirmed " Octo- ber 19; cons, before August A.D. 1464, and died A.D. 1477, before August 16 but after April A.D. 1476. 20. John II., Wodman, Prior of Augustinian Monastery of Canons Regular in Isle of May; Bp. of Ross A.D. 1477; confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV. October 16; res. or died a.t>. 1478. 21. Thomas III. (Urquhart ?), Bishop of Ross A.D. 1478, October (but difficul- ties about date of succession here) ; sitting a.ti. 1480; died after Septem- ber 12, A.D. 1481, and before March following. 22. William Elphinstone, Official of Lothian, Bishop of Ross A. D. 1482 ; elect and confirmed hy Pope Sixtus IV. before March 18; but, before consecration, translated to see of Aberdeen by same Pope A.D. 1483, after April 13 and before November 20. 23. Thomas IV. (Hay?), Bishop of Ross A.D. 1484; still j2/a«^ A.D. 1487; but resigned, or died, A.D. 1492, before March, perhaps end of A.D. 149 1. 24. John III., Guthrie, Bishop of Ross ; nominated by Pope Innocent VIII. a.d. 1492, March 26 ; died before July A.D. 1494 (when the see was vacant till A. D. 1498). 25. John IV., Fraser (or Frisaile), Dean of Collegiate Church of Restalrig, Bp. of Ross A.D. 1498; "postulate" February 8; nom. by Pope Alexander VI. March 15; cons, before January 3 following; died A.T>. 1507, Feb- ruary 5, at his see. 26. Robert IV., Cockbume, councillor of King James IV., Bp. of Ross A.D. 1507, before August ; translated to see of Dunkeld by Pope Clement VII. A.D. 1524, April 24; and died there, A.D. 1526, April 12. 27. James Hay, Abbot of Cistercian monastery of Dundrennan, Bishop of Ross A.D. 1524 ; nominated by Pope Clement VII. April 24 ; cons, after Feb- ruary A.D. 1525 ; died A.D. 1538, shortly before December 15. 28. Robert v., Caimcross, Abbot of Augustinian monastery of Holyrood, Bp. of Ross A.D, 1539; nominated hy P. Paul III. April 14; cons, before June 23 following; died A.T>. 1545, November 30, at his see. 29. David Paniter, canon of Glasgow, postulate Bp. of Ross A.D. 1546, before October, but nom. by Pope Paul III. A.D. 1547, November 28; and cons, at Jedburgh (or Linlithgow?) A.D. 1552, November; died at Stir- ling A.D. 1558, October i. 30. Henry II., Saint Claire, Dean of Glasgow, postulate Bp. of Ross A.D. I558"59> "">"■ by Queen Mary; conf. by Pope Pius IV. A.D. 1561, June 2 ; and consecrated in that year? died at Paris A.D. 1565, January 2. 31. John V., Lesley, canon of Aberdeen, and commendatory Abbot of Lindores; 204 HISTORICAL NOTICES nom. by Q. Mary Bishop of Ross A.D. 1566, April 20; admitted \a tem- poralities of see A.D. 1567, January 21 ; conf. by Pope Gregory XIII, A.D. 1575, April 22; and ccKifcraW at Rome (probably on Sunday follow- ing? April 24). Exiled from Scotland from A.D. 1568, and imprisoned in England till A.D. I574> January. Translated by Pope Clement VIII. to see of Coutances, in France, A.D. 1592, December 16 (with retention of his bishopric of Ross). Died at Augustinian monastery of Guirtenburg, near Brussels, in Flanders, A.D. 1596, May 31, aged sixty-eight years ; and interred there, with monument and inscription. Last Catholic Bishop of Ross; a learned historian, divine, and jurist in both canon and civil law. Note. — The authorities for the above list are derived from the various chartularies, Acts of Parliaments of Scotland, Kalendar of Feme, MS. at Dunrobin, Africa Christiana, Theiner's Vet. Monuraenta, Godwin De Pr^sulibus Angliae, Hardy's Le Neve, Chron. Mailros, TumbuU's Fragmenta Scoto- Monastica, Roger de Hoveden, Thomas Walsingham, Consistorial Records in Vatican Library, Archaeologia Scotica, and other sources, both printed and in MS., too numerous to specify separately in this brief notice ; but it is believed that all the dates may be relied on, as far as general accuracy is now attainable, in the absence of contemporary records or diocesan registers of the bishopric of Ross, of which no traces remain, or have been hitherto discovered. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 205 No. XXII. PR^CEPTUM SYLVESTRI, APOSTOLIC^ SEDIS NUNCII ABBATIBUS DE KYNLOS ET DE FERNE, PRO NOBILI ET POTENTI DOMINO HUGONI ERASER DE LOUETT. 1532. " In Dei nomine Amen. Per hoc praesens publicum instrumentum cunctis pateat evidenter, quod Anno Incarnationis Dominicse, Mil- lesimo quingentesimo tricesimo secundo, mensis vero Aprilis die vicesimo sexto, Indictione quintS,, Pontificatus Sanctissimi in Christo Patris et Domini nostri, Domini dementis, diuin& ProvidentiS, Papse, Septimi, anno ejus nono. In mei Notarij Publici et testium Sub- scriptorum prsesentiS. personaliter constitut. Robertus permissione divinS, Abbas Monasterii de Kynlos et Donaldus eadem permissione Abbas de Feme Cistertien. et Praemonstraten. Ordinum, Moraviensis et Rossensis Diocoesium, Judices auctoritate Apostolica ad infrascripta specialiter deputati; universis et singulis Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae filijs ad quorum notitias prsesentes litterae pervenerint, Salutem in Domino. Noveritis nos litteras Domini Sylvestri Dorij Lucanensis Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Papse Capellani, causarum Sacri Palatij Apostolici auditoris, ad invictissimum Principem Jacobum Scotorum Regem illustrissimum, ejusdem Domini Papae et Sedis Apostolicse Nuncij, suo sub sigillo CerS, rubei Albse impressS., filis rubeis sericis, more Romanae Curise, dependentibus, sanas siquidem et integras, non rasas, non abolitas, nee in aliqua sui parte suspectas, sed omni prorsus vitio et suspicione carentes, nobis per nobilem et potentem Dominum Hugonem Fraser de Lovett, principalem in ipsis litteris principaliter nominatum, praesentatas. Nos cum qua nos decuit reverentia noveritis recepisse, hujusmodi sub tenore. "Silvester Dorius Lucan. Sanctissimi Domini Papae Capellanus, Causarum Sacri Palatij Apostolici Auditor, ad invictissimum Princi- 206 HISTORICAL NOTICES pem Jacobum Scotorum Regem illustrem ejusdem Domini Papse et Sedis Apostolicse nuncius, discretis viris de Kinloss et de Feme Cistertiensis et Prsemonstratensis ordinum, Moraviensis et Rossensis Dioccesium, Abbatibus salutem et sinceram in Deo caritatem. Ea quse pro Ecclesiamm quarumcunque commodo vel utilitate pro- vide facta fuisse dicuntur, ut firma perpetuo et illibata persistant, cum a nobis petitur, libenter ex commissa nobis facultate mandamus roborari. Sane ex parte dilecti nobis in Christo Hugonis Fraser de Louet Laici Moraviensis Diocoesis, filij et hsredis quondam Thomse Fraser de Louet, nobis nuper oblata petitio continebat, quod dudum recolendse memoriae Robertas, dum in humanis ageret, Episcopus Rossensis, cum pleno assensu et consensu Decani et Capituli Ecclesise Rossensis, ac matura deliberatione prsehabita, desiderans ejusdem Ecclesise conditionem efficere meliorem, omnes et singulas terras de Kirktoun et Kilmoricht una cum le Craig et piscaria ejusdem vulgariter le Ess de Kilmoricht [nuncupata], cum omnibus suis pertinentijs jacentibus in Comitatu Rossiae, infra vicecomitatum de Innernes, et ad dictam Ecclesiam legittime pertinentes et spec- tantes, dicto quondam Thomse Fraser, suisque hseredibus et assignatis, prout jacent in longitudine et latitudine, cum omnibus Libertatibus, Commoditatibus, Proficuis et Pertinentijs. Reddendo inde annuatim decem libras, sex solidos, et octo denarios usualis monetae regni Scotiae, videlicet quinque libras sex solidos et octo denarios ejusdem monetae pro quatuor barellibus Salmonum secundum communem cestimationem annuae piscationis dictae le Ess, et quadraginta solidos praefatae monetae pro antiqua firma dictae villae et le Craig de Kil- moricht, et tres libras praedictae monetae in augmentationem annui rentalis in certis terminis tantura expressis, ea tantum adjecta con- ditione sive lege, quod Thomas, haeredes, et assignati praedicti de et super terris hujus modi cum omnibus pertinentijs per Robertum, et per saepe exeuntem Episcopum Rossensem et Capitulum praefatos, in omnibus et per omnia, contra omnes mortales, warrantisari, ac- quietari, ac in perpetuum defendi deberent et tenerentur, dedit, con- cessit, assignavit, et in feodi firmam dimisit, prout in instrumento publico sive letteris patentibus ejusdem, sua manuali subscriptione, et Sigillo Communi dicti Capituli, minutis desuper confectis, dicitur plenius continere. Cum autem sicut eadem subjungebat petitio, datio, concessio, assignatio, in evidentem ejusdem Ecclesise cesserint et cedant utilitatem, cupiatque dictus Exponens, qui ejusdem Thomse OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 207 filius et hjeres existit, illas in qusecunque inde secuta pro illorum substantia firmiari, Apostolicse confirmationis munimine roborari. Ideo supplicare fecit humiliter Exponens praefatus, sibi super hijs de opportuno remedio mature provideri. Nos igitur terrarum situationes, confines, valores et limites ac instrumenti seu litterarum prsedic- tarum, aliorumque hie latius exprimendorum tenores et compendia prsesentibus pro sufficienter expresse habentes, ac attendentes, et in hijs quibus Ecclesiarum procuretur utilitas, favorabiles esse debemus, atque benignum ad infra scriptas per litteras dictse Sedis, ad quorum insertionem minime tenemur, et quibus nobis indulgetur, quod nostra assertio in omnibus et per omnia sufficiat, proinde ac si earundem litterarum tenores de verbo ad verbum in litteris per nos exponend. inserti forent, sufficienti facultate muniti, discretioni vestrse con- junctim demittimus, tunc si vocatis vocandis, et juris torma, alijsque solemnitatibus in similibus requisitis debite observetis, dationem, concessionem, et dimissionem hujusmodi in evidentem dict» Ecclesise utilitatem cessisse, et eadem reperientes, super quibus vestram conscientiam oneramus, easdem dationem, concessionem et dimissionem, ac prout eas concernunt, omnia et singula in dictis instrumento seu litteris contenta, alias licita et honesta, auctoritate Apostolica qua fungimur in hac parte confirmetis et approbetis, sup- plentes omnes et singulos tam juris quam facti defectus, si qui in- tervenerint in eisdem. Non obstantibus Apostolicis, ac in provin- cialibus et in synodalibus concilijs editis generalibus vel specialibus Constitutionibus, nee non omnibus illis quae in litteris nostrae facultatis concessum fuit non obstare, cseteris contrarijs quibuscunque. In quorum fidem prsesentes fieri et per nostrum Secretarium subscribi, sigillique nostri appensione fecimus communiri. Datum Edinburgi Sanct» Andreae Diocoesis in domo habitationis nostras residentise Anno Incamationis Dominicae Millesimo quingentesimo tricesimo primo juxta stylum regni Scotise die vicesima sexta mensis Februarij, Ponti- ficatus praelibati Sanctissimi Domini nostri Domini dementis Papae Septimi anno nono. " Post quarum quidem litterarum Apostolicarum praesentionem et receptionem nobis, et per nos, ut prxmittitur, factas, statim requisiti fuimus, per dictum nobilem Dominum Hugonem, quatenus ad exe- cutionem hujusmodi litterarum Apostolicarum procedere dignaremur. Nos attendentes hujusmodi requisitionem fore justam et rationi con- sonam, volentes Mandatum Apostolicum exequi, et justitiam par- 208 HISTORICAL NOTICES tibus exhibere, ut tenemur. Quocirca universis Dominis Abbatibus, Prioribus, Prsepositis, Decanis, Archidiaconis, Cantoribus, Thesaurijs, Sacrificis, Rectoribus, Vicarijs perpetuis, et Curatis Ecclesiarum, ac Notarijs ac Tabellionibus publicis, praecipue per Diocoesem Ros- sensem, ubilibet constitutis, et nostris, immo verius Apostolicis firmiter obedire mandatis, stride praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus visis prsesentibus statim et indilate citetis legittime Reverendum in Christo patrem in Dominum Jacobum Miseratione divina Episcopum Ros- sensem, Decanum et Capitulum ab una, dictum Hugonem Eraser Dominum de Louet ab altera, omnesque alios et singulos seu com- muniter et divisim interesse habentes, seu habere putantes, prime, secundo, tertio, et peremptorie, unico tamen contextu pro triplici edicto, quos nos etiam tenore pr»sentium citamus, ut compareant coram Nobis in insula Beatissimse Virginis Mariae infra Ecclesiara Cathedralem Rossensem de vigesima octava mensis Augusti proxime futura, hora Causarum, ad videndum et audiendum dationem, con- cessionem et dimissionem omnium et singularum terrarum de Kirk- toun de Kilmoricht cum le Craig et piscaria ejusdem, vulgariter le Ess de Kilmoricht nuncupata, per quondam recolendae memorias Robertum, dum in humanis ageret, Rossensem Episcopum, cum pleno assensu et consensu Capituli Ecclaesise Rossensis, quon- dam nobili et potenti Domino Thomse Eraser Domino de Louet, suis haeredibus et assignatis, patri Domini Hugonis, in feodifirma factas, plene coram nobis esse et fuisse in evidentem utilitatem dictae Ecclesiae, et in augmentationem rentalis cessisse et cedere, et qua- tenus est ita dictum feodum seu feodifirmam Auctoritate Apostolica, prout de jure, per nos confirmari, ac alia contenta in hujusmodi litteris fieri et debere, prout in eisdem prascipitur et mandatur, cum intimatione, quod sive in dicto citationis termino comparuerint, sive non comparere curaverint, nos nihilominus in dicto termino pro- cedamus, prout justum fuerit, et ordo dictaverit rationis, sua con- tumacia non obstante, certificantes eisdem quod dictis die et loco producant coram nobis dictas infeodationes et omnia alia jura quibus uti voluerint in hujusmodi causa; cum simili intimatione. Insuper citetis Reverendum Dominum Alexandfum Munro, Joannem Duf, Donaldum Duf, Hugonem Thomae, Maldonyth Macego, Johannem Clerk et Johannem Brechen, Alexandrum Forbes — quod compareant coram nobis dictis die et loco ad perhibendum fidele testimonium veritati in hujusmodi causa, sub poenis Excommunicationis in Laicos OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 209 et Suspensionis a divinis in Presbyteros. In quorum omnium et singulorum fidem et testimonium praemissorum, prassentes litteras, sive prsesens Publicum Instrumentum exinde fieri, et per Notarium Publicum subscribi, nostrisque Sigillis jussimus et fecimus appensis communiri. Datum et actum in hospitio Roberti Waus infra Burgum de Innernes hora quasi sexta post meridiem, vel eocirca, sub anno, die, mense, Indictione et Pontificatu quibus supra; praesentibus ibidem Venerabilibus viris Magistris et Dominis Willielmo Paterson Subdecano Moraviensi, Andrea Cuthbert Vicario de Verlau, Johanne Roy Rectore de Bullesky, Honorabilibus Viris Johanne Waus Domino [de] Lochsliny, Angusio M°Culloch de Tarrell, Roberto Waus Burgensi de Innernes et Roberto Malcomi Notario Publico cum diversis aliis ad prsemissa vocatis pariterque rogatis. " Et ego vero Magnus Waus Moraviensis Dioccesis Presbiter, sacra auctoritate Notarius, quia praedictarum litterarum dicti Domini Sylvestri Darij Lucanensis, Sanctissimi Domini nostri Papas Ca- pelani, Causarum Sacri Palatij Apostolici auditoris, &c., dictis Dominis Judicibus ad infra et supra scripta specialiter auctoritate Apostolica, ut prasmittitur, constitutis, prsesentationi, receptioni, et prassentis citationis concessioni, eorundem Judicum suprascrip- torum sigillorum appensioni, caeterisque omnibus et singulis, dum sic ut praefatur, dicerentur, agerentur, et fierent, una cum prae- nominatis testibus praesens interfui, eaque omnia et singula sic fieri scivi, vidi et audivi, ac in notam sumpsi, et exinde hoc praesens publicum instrumentum, aliena manu, me alijs arduis occupato negotijs, fideliter scriptum redegi, signavi, subscripsi, et publicavi sub meis signo et subscriptione in fidem et testimonium omnium et singulorum praemissorum rogatus et requisitus manualibus solitis et subscriptis. — Waus. " Undecimb die mensis Augusti anno Domini Milesimo quingentes- simo tricesimo secundo. Ego Thomas Stephens Capellanus Ecclesise Cathedralis Rossensis, suprascriptum Reverendum in Christo Patrem Jacobum Rossensem Episcopum, Decanum, et Capitula ejusdem, apud eorundem Stalla devote praesent. citavi, praesentibus Dominis Johanne Spens, Alexandre Spens, Jacobo Yong Capellanis cum diversis alijs. — Thomas Stephens manu propria. " Decimo tertio die mensis antedicti, anno ut supra, Ego Johannes Scot Notarius pubUcus suprascriptos Dominum Alexandrum Munro, Johannem Duf, Donaldum Duf, Hugonera Thomae, Maldonyth 210 HISTORICAL NOTICES M*"Ego, Johannem Clerk, Johannem Brechen, et Alexandrum Forbes, personaliter apprehensos tenore praesentium ad comparen- dum in Ecclesia Cathedral! Rossensi, ad effectum ut supra, citavi. — Teste manu propria Ita est Johannes Scott." Not.^At the syde is " Magnus Waus notarius publicus," with a big M and a V for paraph, above and under " Veritas est Vita:" Waus. There are two Seals appended to the Instrument, the one red upon white wax, representing Our Lady in a niche crowned with an antick crown, standing and clothed with a long robe and pled, holding on her left arme our Saviour. On the dish — " Sigillum Roberti Abbatis de Kynloss." The other seal is round, of red upon white v/ax, and represents a Virgin sitting and crowned, holding on her lap and right arm a babe. On the circumference of the seal — " Sigillum commune Monas- TERii B. Mari^ de Ferne." Both tags parchment. In 1 531, Pope Clement VII., warned by the blows aimed daily at his power by Henry VIII. in England, sends Silvester Darius, high in office at the Vatican, as Apostolic Nuncio to Holyrood, to confirm and enlarge the privileges accorded to Scotland by Rome. From this Nuncio proceeds this document we now print, which, although among the Beauly charters transcribed by Macfarlane, does not relate to the Priory itself, but only to a transaction of one of the heirs of the Founder. Before we enter upon an explanation, we may as well con- tinue the account of those heirs down to its date. Thomas, Lord Lovat, made no further acquisitions than we have mentioned of the property of the founder from his co-heirs. He is said, in what is called the Culduthel MS. by Mr Anderson (p. "jG), which MS. appears to have been full of inaccuracies, to have had, by his second marriage, a son Robert, who married Janet Gelly, the heritrix of Braky in Fife, and to have purchased the estate of Braky Kinnell. We should have hardly been justified in mentioning this Robert OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 211 Fraser, but that the same MS. states that he was killed at the water of Beauly by the monks of Beauly. If this is true, it was probably in some dispute about the salmon fishing.* Thomas, Lord Lovat, died on 2ist October 1524, and was succeeded by his son Hugh, Lord Lovat. It is said Lord Thomas died at Beaufort Castle ; but this is doubtful. Beaufort Castle itself, if inhabited, belonged in property to the Earl of Argyle. The conveyance, indeed, of Culbirnie from Henry Douglas in 1509 {supra, p. 175), included a claim to the hilt on which the castle of Beaufort stood ; and the service of Hugh, Lord Lovat, to his father in 1524, extends to " Culbirnie, with the mount of the castle of the same called Beaufort." It was not till 1542, however, that Hugh, Lord Lovat, got a feu-charter of the lands of Beaufort from the Earl of Argyle. The House of Lovat seems to have been, in Lord Thomas's time, the residence of the family.-)- He was buried in the Priory of Beauly. Hugh, Lord Lovat, married a daughter of the chief of the Grants, the widow of Halyburton of Pitcur, and used the con- nection thus formed with the descendants of the Chisholm co-heirs of the founder of Beauly, to acquire much of the Chisholm portion of the Byset property. In 1528 he induced George Halyburton of Gask to convey to him the lands of Ingliston (Englishtown) and Kingslie (Kingillie), now in the united parish of Wardlaw and Fernua ; and in 1529 he got James Halyburton of Gask to give up to him the whole barony of Erchless created in 1512. Lord Hugh also gets confirmed to him the old Kiltarlity church right of salmon fishing, which had been so hardly * We have, in the Wardlaw MS., a story of the monks killing a gentleman of the Lovat family with a cross bow, who was fishing within their bounds ; but this is stated to have occurred in the priorate of Walter Reld after 1558. + In his time, the House of Lovat is said to have suffered by a fire, which burned down the chapel of St Lawrence, which was on the east corner of the house. In this fire, Roderick, a younger son of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie and Agnes Fraser of Lovat (supra, p. 105), afterwards Roderick Mackenzie of Fairburn, who probably built the Tower of Fairburn now standing, is said to have rushed through the flames, and brought out his uncle's charter chest and other valuables, for which he was rewarded with a present of a bonnet and pair of shoes (Anderson, p. 74). 212 HISTORICAL NOTICES gained by the first Fraser of Lovat in 1380* The Lovat Inventory of 1652 contains the entry of a precept given by Robert, Bishop of Moray, for giving of sasine to Lord Lovat, as heir to Thomas, Lord Lovat, of the half lands of Kinca- lartie and fishing of Ess, dated 2Sth September isadf The monks, as we have seen, are stated to have had the fish- ings on the river from the sea, that is, the Firth,+ to the cruives above the Ford of Dunballoch — the cruives, namely, above the spot where now stands the Lovat§ or Beauly Bridge, built by Mr Telford. Unless their right included the Wardlaw half of the river, they would not have paid, as they did, tithes of fish to the church of Wardlaw. Their right extended across the river, or they could not have erected the cruives. Above these cruives, where the priory right of fishing ended, the right of fishing appears to have belonged, before the foundation of the priory, to the churches of Kiltarlity and Kil- morack. This requires some explanation, which will make in- telligible the transaction recorded in the document now printed. " The church [of Kiltarlity] standeth," says the learned historian of the province of Moray, writing about 1760, "on the bank of the river, a niile above the lower end of the parish, near three miles S.S.W. of Kirkhill, six miles N.W. of Urquhart, and about a furlong E.N.E. of Kilmorack church, that standeth on the opposite bank."|l The site is just on the east side of the present wooden bridge below the lower falls of Kilmorack.lT The site of the present parish church of Kil- tarlity is distant from the river. A church was built there in 1763,** and the change of site must then have been made. * Supra, p. 70. t Dunbar Dunbar MSS., No. 57. X In the Beauly Firth, the fishing seems to have belonged to the riparian pro- prietors, thus the grant of Englishtown and Kingillie of 1528 is "cum lie yairs et piscationibus. " § "At Lovat Bridge," says Southey, in his Journal of a Tour vifith Mr Telford in 1819, "we turned aside, and went four miles up the river along the Strathglass road, one of the new works, and one of the most remarkable, because of the diffi- culty of constructing it, and also because of the fine scenery it commands" (Life of Telford, by Smiles, Lond. 1867, p. 95). II Shaw's Moray, ed. 1775, p. 145. IT Ord. Map. Inverness-shire, x. 6. ** New Stat. Ace, "Kiltarlity." OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 213 The Kiltarlity church land right of fishing extended only to the half of the river which was within the parish of Kiltarlity and opposite the church lands. It, however, certainly included the fishing of the Ess or Fall, perhaps the whole of the Lower Fall. The other half of the river was in the parish of Kil- morack, and adjoined the church lands of Kilmorack, which church lands, and the fishing in the river adjoining them, are the subject of the grant proposed to be confirmed. The salmon fishing was the most important subject included in the grant, and seems to have formed part of the endow- ment of the church of Kilmorack, and that even before the foundation of Beauly Priory. The church of Kilmorack stands upon the heights [le Craig), whose barrier has been broken through by the river, which there forms the upper falls or Ess of Kilmorack. Immedi- , ately below the Falls are pools of great resort for the salmon, and the fishing here is most valuable. Probably the right being attached to the church lands and glebe, extended only half across the river ; the other half belonging to the opposite parish of Kiltarlity, and being called on that side also the Ess or Fall. Or the higher falls may have been the Ess of Kilmorack, for the higher falls are associated with steep craigs ; and the lower falls, where is less steepness, may be the Ess or Fall pertaining to the church lands of Kiltarlity. The priory having the fishing from the cruives to the Firth, it seems probable that the church of Kilmorack was endowed with the salmon fishing before 1230, or the grant of fishing in the Forne (Farrar) given to the monks by John Byset, and confirmed by the Pope,* would have included, at least, all the fishings up to the boundary of their lands, the burn or rivulet of Breakachy or Teanassie.i^ The precentor of Ross had undoubtedly the rectorial tithes of Kilmorack as part of his prebend ; but it seems doubtful whether the Bishop of Ross ever granted to the precentorship the whole endowment of the church of Kilmorack. In 15 15 Master John Calder was the precentor of Ross, a * Supra, No. I. t Appendix, No, XXI. 214 HISTORICAL NOTICES considerable man of the Cawdor family, who provides a dowry for his kinswoman * when she marries Rose of Kilravock, and was not likely to allow any interference with or usurpation of his rights; but in 15x5, without any reference to John Calder, Thomas, Lord Lovat, seems to have obtained from the Bishop of Ross alone a charter of the Kirklands of Kil- morack.-|- This was probably only a lease. In 1 52 1 the same Bishop (Robert) of Ross granted to him and his heirs the same land by the description of the lands of the Kirktoun of Kilmorack, with the Craig and fishing of that town, commonly called the Ess of Kilmorack, belonging to the church of Kilmorack, for the yearly payment of ;^io, 6s. 8d., — namely, ^5, 6s. 8d. for four barrels of salmon, accord- ing to the common valuation of the yearly fishing called the Ess, and 40s. as the old rent of the Kirktoun and the Craig, with £2> in augmentation of the rental. The grant in fee in 1521 was a dangerous attempt to violate the recently made law of the Church ; the fifth Lateran Council, summoned unwillingly by Pope Julius II., had, on the 5th of May 1514, strictly prohibited all kings, princes, and lords to seize or sequestrate ecclesiastical property, except by per- mission of the Pope. No Nuncio had come to Scotland since the grant, but in 1 531 Silvester Darius, one of the Pope's chaplains, and auditor of Palace causes, came as Nuncio to Edinburgh. The oppor- tunity was seized by Hugh, Lord Lovat, to request the Pope's confirmation, through the Nuncio, of the grant of the church lands of Kilmorack to his father. The Nuncio acceded to the request ; and this document is the record of some steps in the transaction. On the 26th April 1532, Robert, Abbot of Kinloss, and Donald, Abbot of Fearn, judges appointed by apostolic autho- rity, testify that they have inspected the letter of the Nuncio, sealed in the Roman manner, presented to them by Hugh, Lord Lovat. They set forth the letter which authorises them — upon the allegation that Robert, Bishop of Ross, with * Reg. Mag. Sig., lib. xx., No. 154. + Laing's Seals, vol. ii., p. 187, OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 215 the consent of his dean and chapter, desiring to benefit the condition of his church, had granted to Thomas, Lord Lovat, lands and others to the effect foresaid — to confirm and approve of the said grant. The letter is dated at Edinburgh, in the house of the habitation of the Nuncio's residence, in the year 1531, according to the style of the kingdom of Scotland, the 26th day of February ; and after reciting the letter, the two judges summon and cite James, Bishop of Ross, and the dean and chapter, on the one hand, and Hugh, Lord Lovat, on the other, to appear before them in the aisle of the most blessed Virgin Mary within the cathedral church of Ross, on the 28th day of August then next, to enable the judges to inquire into the propriety of the grant ; and they also cite eight men, some laymen and some priests, there to attend, as jurors on the inquiry. The instrument is dated in the inn {hospitium) of Robert Waus, in the burgh of Inverness; present, the sub-dean of Moray ; Andrew Cuthbert, vicar of Wardlaw ; the rector of Boleskine ; John Waus, Lord of Lochslin ; Angus M'CuUoch of Tarrell ; the said Robert Waus, and Robert Malcomson {Malcomi), notary public. It is attested by Magnus Waus, priest of the diocese of Moray, notary. The citation, on the nth of August 1532, by Thomas Stephens, chaplain of the cathedral church of Ross, of James, Bishop of Ross, and the dean and chapter of the same, being present faithfully at their stalls, is testified by the subscrip- tion of Thomas Stephens. The citation, on the 13th August 1532, by John Scot, notary public, of the eight jurors to appear in the cathedral church of Ross, is testified by the subscription of John Scot. Attached to the instruments are the signature and motto of Magnus Waus and the abbatical seal of Abbot Reid, and the common seal of the Monastery of Fearn. Magnus Waus was a thriving churchman of a lower class than Archbishop Forman, but apparently he accumulated as many church offices. He appears in 1523 as parish clerk of the church of Inverness, and chaplain of St Peter in the same ; 216 HISTORICAL NOTICES 1525, as vicar of Dalcross and commissary of Inverness ; 1536, rector of Y or Ey in Lewis, vicar of Abertarff, commissary of Inverness, and chaplain of St Catherine's chapelry there ; and also in 1542, provost of the College Church of Tain. Still stands on the shore of the loch of Slyn the castle of Lochslyn, the old dwelling of the witness John Waus of Loch- slyn ; it is in the parish of Tarbat, and consists of two towers 60 feet high, and respectively 38 and 20 feet square. Here was born the first Earl of Cromarty, whose researches as an antiquarian we have had occasion not unfrequently to con- sider. The seals attached to the instrument are interesting. That of Abbot Reid is probably the same seal which is engraved in the Book of Kinloss, as attached to a charter granted by this abbot and his convent in 1537.* The Macfarlane transcriber has not given the full legend, which is, "Sigillum Roberti Abbatis Monasterii de Kynlos ; " and although he faithfully notes the plaid (pled) flowing behind the Virgin's robe, he yet omits the armorial bearings of Reid — a stag's head erased — which are placed under the figure. The seal of the abbey of Fearn is used by Abbot Denoon instead of his own seal. The convent seal attached to a deed of 1577 is, "A front figure of the Virgin, sitting with the infant Jesus in her arms ; on the sinister side a pot, with lilies, and the legend : ' Si. COMNE Capituli et Conventus Monasterii de FERNE."'t We have at some length already enlarged on the Virgin's Aisle of the cathedral of Ross, the place where the Nuncio's commission is to be finally executed, and now we ought to direct particular attention to the persons to whom it is addressed. One of the judges and commissioners was Donald, Abbot of Fearn. The time would fail us were we to dwell on all that these names suggest : the man — Donald Denoon — ascended the steps of the abbot's throne through the ashes of Patrick * Records of Kinloss, pref., p. 64, + Laing's Scottish Seals, vol. ii., p. 200. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 217 Hamilton, the first of Scotland's martyrs ; the place-;— Fearn, the only monastery save Beauly in Ross-shire, founded by Farquhar, the first Earl of Ross, where the White Canons of St Norbert kept alight the lamp of learning for three hundred years ; but their connection with Beauly is not intimate enough to justify our entering on their long and interesting history.* The other judge and commissioner was Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss, the most distinguished ecclesiastic whose name is linked with that of the Priory of Beauly. As the traveller walks up the venerable avenue of lofty and aged elms which leads to the western door of the Priory church, the towering gable attracts his attention ; and as he stands at the great door itself, he can see above it, on a shield, the initials R. R., and below them, a stag's head, with a bishop's crosier issuing in front of the antlers.-f- These are the initials and armorial bearings of Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, Abbot of Kinloss, and Prior of Beauly, one of the first Lords President of the Court of Session, and the first founder of the University of Edinburgh, Robert Reid, according to Ferrarius, his biographer, and the historian of Kinloss.J was born at Akynheid, in Kenneder. His father was killed at Flodden field. His mother was Bessie Schanwell. He was educated and made M.A. at the University of St Andrews, and resided with his uncle, Robert Schanwell, official of that see. He afterwards went to the University of Paris, where he studied civil and canon law. § He was in 1525 sub-dean of Moray, || and in 1526 he was selected by Abbot Chrystall as his successor at Kinloss. In 1527 he went to Rome, in order to get the formal appro- bation of the Pope to his appointment as abbot, and found it just reeling under the sack of the Constable Bourbon. At last, * Appendix, No. XXII. t The stag's head is couped, but on the seal of 1537, and as sculptured on the abbot's house at Kinloss, it is erased (Records of Kinloss, pref. Ixi.). t Records of Kinloss, by Dr Stuart, passim. § Dr George Mackenzie's Scottish Writers, vol. iii., p. 47. II "A.D. 1525.— Maister Robert Reid, Subdene of Murray, was a member of the University of St Andrews " (Lyon's Hist, of St Andrews, vol ii., p. 232). 218 HISTORICAL NOTICES getting his diplomas signed, he in the early part of 1528 came back to Paris, and there met with this Ferrarius, a Pied- niontese ; a little after Easter he came to London by Dieppe and Rye,* and so to Scotland and Kinloss. In the autumn he went from Kinloss to Edinburgh, and there was received into the Cistercian order by the Bishop of Aberdeen, and assumed the Cistercian habit; at the Franciscan or Grey Friars' church, he was anointed abbot by the same prelate, and on the 2d of August came to Kinloss, and re- ceived the vows of obedience from the monks. In the year 1530 he received in commendam the Priory of Beauly, where, says his biographer, he daily did things worthy to be remembered by posterity. No sooner had James V. attained twenty^one than he, in 1532, instituted "ane college of cunnyng and wise men" for the administration of justice in all civil actions, and thus established the Court of Session. Among the persons selected for one of the Senators of the College of Justice and judges of the Court of Session, was Robert Schanwell, the instructor of Robert Reid ; but he pre- ferred that his nephew, Robert Reid, should take his place, which accordingly Reid did at the first meeting of the Court of Session, and ultimately became Lord President of the Court. In 1533 Abbot Reid was sent by James V. with William Stuart, Bishop of Aberdeen, ambassador to Henry VIII., and appears to have gone on to Rome in 1534. In 1535 and 1536 he was sent ambassador to France, to negotiate the king's marriage with Mary of Guise. In 1537 he took five youths into the profession of the Valliscaulian order at Beauly, whom he added to two who had recently professed there, and in the same year he col- lected materials for constructing the nave of the Priory Church at Beauly. He sent John Person, a Cistercian monk from Kinloss, to Beauly, to be the instructor of the novices there. Apparently * Rye harbour has been long ago choked up, and Rye, which was once de- stroyed by .the sea, is now two miles from it (Lyell's Geology, 9th ed., p. 316). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 219 young men of family in the neighbourhood were also educated at Beauly. We shall see that the education of Alexander, second son of Hugh, Lord Lovat, and his successor, seems to have been carried on there, but Abbot Reid could only have given an occasional superintendence to it. He was now one of the chief counsellors of the king, on account of his knowledge of civil and municipal law. He appointed John Grant of Freuchy, the head of the house of Grant, his bailiff at Kinloss. In 1 540 he brought from Dieppe in France, a town which we shall afterwards have to mention in connection with his history, to Kinloss, William Lubias, as gardener, who greatly improved the abbey garden by planting fruit trees of the best kinds, and grafting many more; the improving labours of Lubias extended, Mr Forsyth says,* over the whole of the low part of Morayshire, which since that time has been distinguished for its fruits, particularly for its apples. He did not neglect, as we shall see, the gardens or orchards of Beauly Priory. Ferrarius says that Abbot Reid in 1540 built the nave of the church of Beauly magnificently, and covered it with oak tiles. This date is probably incorrect ; at all events, the work was not completed till he was a bishop, as his coat of arms on the building has the addition of the episcopal crosier, a distinction it did 'not bear whilst he was only Abbot of Kinloss. Ferrarius adds to this statement about the bishop's building the nave, the following paragraph : " The bishop elegantly repaired the bell tower, which had been struck by lightning;" but it was in January 1541 that this accident to the bell tower of Beauly took place. " On the 2d of January 1541, there raged a most great and vehement wind, with enormous rain, which wind destroyed the bell tower of Beauly, and the bells f thereof." This is the account of John Smyth, the contemporary chronicler of Kinloss.^ * Forsyth's Moray, p. 352. t Appendix, No. XXIII. t Smyth's Chronicle, Book of Kinloss, p. 11. Smyth seems to adopt the Roman style, and to begin the year with 1st January. 220 HISTORICAL NOTICES On the 5th April 1541, Reid was selected by King James V. as successor to the Bishop of Orkney, and in his letter to the Pope recommending the abbot, the king expressed his hope that the Cistercian dress of Robert being wholly abandoned, he would be allowed by the apostolic see to adopt the episcopal dress by which he would be able more conveniently to move about in the king's company, and amongst the Orkney Islanders. He was created bishop on 27th November 1541, and consecrated in the Franciscan or Grey Friars' church at Edinburgh on the first Sunday in Advent 1541. That same year he went to Orkney, and on his return he brought the five junior monks of Beauly to Kinloss, that Ferrarius might instruct them in learning, whose names as Latinised by Ferrarius are : Dominus Thomas Tognius, dom- inus David Dason, dominus Joannes Crawford, dominus Jacobus Pont, dominus Gilbertus Gray. They stayed, Fer- rarius says, at Kinloss three years, during which time he lectured to them on various books, among which are not only Aristotle, Cicero, and Virgil, but the work of Erasmus on " Plenty," and the two " Rhetorics of Melanchthon." The death of King James V. in 1542 produced troubles which induced Ferrarius to desire to leave Scotland and go back to France. In 1544, Ferrarius says. Bishop Reid pulled down the old and rickety buildings of the priory at Beauly, and erected a spacious and handsome house with six vaulted rooms on the ground floor. This was that " palace and principal build- ings of the messuage in the place of the Priory of Beauly erected by the late Robert, Bishop of Orkney, and prior of the said monastery, on the east side of the church of Beauly," * of which the keepership was granted in 1571 to Lord Lovat. Doubtless here was also a garden worthy of the palace, and Lubias, the French gardener, would take care to stock it well with apples and pears. Of the palace no trace now remains, but the spot where once the bishop's garden smiled is marked by very ancient trees, an apple and a pear. The pear-tree is a jargonelle pear ; one branch only is now alive, but the * Book of Kinloss, app., p. 97. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 221 original stump is 8 feet 4 inches in circumference. The apple- tree is still standing, its trunk is 6 feet in circumference,* of a size rarely to be found save in " the most fertile of English valleys," Taunton Dean.-f On the departure of the bishop for Orkney in August iS44> Ferrarius tells us, he begged the bishop, Alexander Gum- ming of Altyre then being present, to examine Ferrarius's effects and see that he took away nothing but what was his own; the bishop told him he might not only take away his own things, but any of the bishop's that he liked. Ferrarius, how- ever, declined the favour, and said he would only take those books he had brought with him from France to Kinloss. The presence of Gumming of Altyre is explained by the fact that this year, 1544,! Robert Reid's bailie, John Grant of Freuchy, constitutes " my well beluvit and traist friend," Alexander Gumming of Altyre, his bailie depute. The voice of scandal, notwithstanding, attacked the Pied- montese, and in this way : when the five monks of Beauly returned to their own priory, their tutor did not suffer them to leave without giving them some few little books, one of which, the " Lives of Plutarch," was then in the possession of Adam Elder ; and Adam not only refused to give the book to the young Beauly monk, Thomas Togny, but said that Ferrarius did not possess a single book which was not bought with Abbot Reid's money. Ferrarius prints the letter he thereupon wrote to Thomas Togny at Beauly ; and as monkish Beauly correspondence is rare, although it is given by Dr Stuart in his " Records of Kinloss " (pref p. xvii.), it will be well to insert it here : § " I am not much astonished at what you write of Adam Elder. I thought, however, that in these days, when he drinks milk and •* These were the sizes as measured by me on 23d September 1873. t There is in one of the orchards at Thornfaulcon, on the edge of this vale, " rich witli orchards" (Macaulay, Hist., i. 585), an apple-tree, whose trunk is six feet in circumference, and its head proportionally large. t Forsyth's Moray, p. 23. § This translation is somewhat varied from Dr Stuart's. 222 HISTORICAL NOTICES water, he would not make himself such a fool ; but he goes on, I see, always like himself. The argument by which he defends himself against giving up my books is of a similar stamp to the man himself — weak in the loins — for it does not necessarily follow that books belong to another, although his name be written on them ; just as you ■ and your colleagues, for nearly three years, wore the cowl of the Cistercian order, when you were of a different profession:* for a good part of the books have the name of Abbot Thomas affixed to them by Sir James Pont, when they really belonged to Abbot Robert. Besides, it is untrue that all the books were acquired with the abbot's money, for before I ever knew the abbot I had many books at Paris, and brought more with me at my first coming to Scotland than the abbot himself. Then, while engaged at court, I bought not a few books at Edinburgh with my own money ; and what I procured at Paris during the last four years, many at Kinloss can attest who saw those which I brought with me at my second coming; and if all is taken into account, you may conclude that almost a half of the books were bought with my money. Is not the money my own which I had before I came to know the abbot? or which I afterwards acquired through my own industry? more truly mine than what Adam diverts to his own use, without leave of the abbot, by selling cabbages from his garden. I indeed am of no profession but that of Christ, and what my industry brings to me is my own ; but what a monk acquires is not for himself, but for his monastery. " That I have frequently put the name of the abbot on the books arises from the love which I bear to him, as though I wished all things belonging to friends to be held in common. But I ask you with what front, with what face, does Adam daily approach the altar in such manifest and perverse falsehood ? May Christ grant that here- after he may judge more candidly of our affairs ; and in the mean- time take care, through your Sub-Prior, again to claim the Plutarch which at your departure I, with a good title, bestowed upon you." In October iS44i' Bishop Reid made a new foundation of * In fact it would seem the dress of the Valliscaulians differed from that of the Cistercian habit, although it is usually said they wore the same habit (supra, pp. 8, lo; Appendix, No. XXIV.). t Wallace's Account of Orkney, Lond. 1700, p. 83. As the details of this foundation illustrate admirably those of Rosemarkie and Elgin, I have reprinted Wallace's Account in the Appendix No, XXV. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 223 the chapter of Kirkwall — seven dignitaries, seven canons or prebendaries, thirteen chaplains, a sacrist, and six choristers. His predecessor, Robert Maxwell, had, says Dr Wallace, caused found and made " those excellent bells that are in the steeple of the cathedral" — "a set of as excellent and sweetly- chimed bells as are in any cathedral of the kingdom :"* and thus nobly furnished to be the light and lustre of those dark islands, was left by Reid, " the glorious church of St Magnus the Martyr." t At the time Ferrarius wrote, Thomas Haistie was sub- prior of Beauly.j In 1543, Sir Thomas Haistie, a monk of Beauly, found surety before a civil court for his appearance, to answer being art and part in the oppression done to Master Gawin Dunbar, treasurer of Ross, in coming upon him, with the bishop and his accomplices in the cathedral church, in laying hands upon him, and in cruelly wounding him to the effusion of his blood. § This is the charge in the language of criminal pleading ; whether anything took place beyond a scuffle between the bishop of Ross and his followers and the treasurer of Ross does not appear. The bishop was Robert Cairncross, who died in 1545, and, Smyth says, || was buried in the cathedral church of Ross. This same year (1544) Beauly Priory saw a sad funeral pro- cession enter the restored church, bearing the bodies of Hugh, Lord Lovat, and his eldest son, killed in a clan fight. Such a specimen of civil warfare showed the weakness of the government, and astonished the ambassador of Henry VHI. It arose in this way: the Clanranald estates were in 1542 given by charter to Ranald, the son of a former chief by his second wife, a daughter of Lord Lovat. This Ranald was fostered by his mother's relatives, the Erasers, and thence * Dr Wallace's idea of a fine peal was modest. They seem to have been only three, now happily remaining (Muir's Characteristics, p. 91). t Neale's Ecclesiological Notes, p. 72. t Records of Kinloss, app. to pref. , p. 48. § Pitcaim's Criminal Trials, vol. i. , p. 328. II Smyth's Chronicle, Records of Kinloss, p. to. 224 HISTORICAL NOTICES called Ranald Galla, or the Stranger. By the assistance of the Erasers, Ranald was put into possession ; but John Moyder- lach, who was the bastard son of Ranald's elder brother, and had been put in prison by James V. in 1540, procured his discharge; and being again acknowledged as chief of the clan, he expelled Ranald from Moydart, and forced him to take refuge with Hugh, Lord Lovat. Not content with this, the Clan Ranald, with the assistance of the Macdonells of Keppoch and the Camerons, invaded the country of Lovat; they ravaged Abertarffand Stratherrick, and even attacked the lands of Urquhart and Glenmorriston, which had recently become the property of the Laird of Grant, the brother-in-law of Lord Lovat. They also possessed them- selves of the strong castle of Urquhart, which the Grants had bought of James IV. The Earl of Huntly, the lieutenant-general of the north, with a numerous force, among which were four hundred of the Erasers, the flower of the clan, assembled to drive back the invaders ; Lord Lovat was there and the Laird of Grant. At the approach of Huntly the Highlanders retreated, and the earl penetrated as far as Inverlochy, and Ranald took possession of Moydart. Huntly then returned. On arriving at the point where the Spean joins the Lochy, his forces separated, he and the Grants taking the line of the Spean and the Spey, Lord Lovat going straight to the Aird by Loch Lochy and Abertarff. No sooner was Huntly gone than Lovat, marching up the south side of Loch Lochy, saw a superior force of Highlanders marching up the north side, in seven companies, with displayed banners, to intercept him at the head of the lake (Kin-J.och\), and there they met and fought. Just after the commencement of the action the Erasers were joined, to the great grief of their chief, by his son, the Master, a youth of great promise, lately returned from being educated in Erance. It is said that he had been expressly charged by his father not to join this expedition, and had remained at home ; but, roused by the taunts of his step-mother, Janet OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 225 Ross of Balnagowan, who wished to get rid of him, the gallant youth chose twelve trusty followers, and set out in search of his father and clan, whom he met at the head of Loch Lochy, in time to join in the fray. The battle was almost the last, and certainly the bloodiest of the clan fights in the Highlands. It began with the discharge of arrows at a distance, but when their shafts were spent, both parties rushed to close combat, and attacking each other furiously with their two- handed swords and axes, a dreadful slaughter ensued. Such was the heat of the weather, it being the month of July, that the combatants threw off their coats and fought till nightfall in their shirts, whence the battle-field received the name of " Blair-na-Leine," or the Field of Shirts. All the Erasers were killed, it is said, except James Fraser of Foyers, who was severely wounded and left for dead, and four common men. The bodies of Lord Lovat, his son, the Master, and Ranald Galla, who had all fought with the utmost bravery, and only yielded to superior numbers, were a few days after the battle removed by a train of mourning relatives, and interred in the church of the priory of Beauly.* For two hundred years, and down to 1746, the inscription over Hugh Lord Lovat's tomb was visible. " Hie jacet," so it is said it ran, " Hugo Dominus Fraser de Lovat, qui fortissime pug- nans contra Reginalderios occubuit Julii 15, 1544." -f- Bishop Reid was a great encourager of learning. We have seen what he did at Kinloss, we shall see what he did for Edinburgh. At Kirkwall he built St Olaus' Church and a large court of houses, to be a college for instructing the youth of that country in grammar and philosophy. | Honours and offices crowded upon this remarkable man ; he seems especially to have been linked with the fortunes of the infant Queen Mary. She in 1548 was sent to France for her education, and he seems, from his previous visits there^ ^ * Gregory's Highlands and Islands, 162. + Anderson's Fraser Family, p. 81, quoting MS. in Adv. Lib., 220. J Wallace's Orkney, p. 97. 226 HISTORICAL NOTICES well fitted for the offices he filled In relation to the royal person. In 1549 he became Lord President.* In 1553 he must have resigned the abbacy of Kinloss in favour of his nephew, Walter Reid, as Smyth's Chronicle is as follows: On the 6th of April 1553, Walter Reid, Abbot of Kinloss, received the obedience of the monks, and on the i6th of the same month he received solemnly and honourably the episcopal blessing on his appointment as abbot in the mon- astery of Kinloss from Bishop Reid, in the presence of many noble men, as the Lairds of Innes, of Duffus, of Walterton, and Ochterellane. His appointment doubtless included the priorate of Beauly, held by his uncle with the abbacy. It is probable that the accustomed forms were gone through at Beauly also, and the pupils of Ferrarius were doubtless quite ready to elect the nephew of their patron to the head- ship of their house. It seems doubtful whether Walter Reid was then of age ; probably not, and his duties would be performed at Beauly by the sub-prior. In 1554 Bishop Reid was appointed one of the curators of Queen Mary, and countersigned the infant queen's discharge to the Duke of Chatelherault. In 1556 he was at Inverness with the queen regent. ■!• He placed his nephew, the abbot, Walter, under the tuition of Adam Elder, who had incurred the wrath of Ferrarius, but was employed by the bishop in the office of instructor of the novices both at Kinloss and Beauly ; and about 1556 the tutor and his pupil were sent by the bishop to Paris, in order that the abbot might be instructed in Greek, Latin, and philosophy. In December 1557 he was appointed one of the commis- sioners of the Estates of Scotland to go into France, and there negotiate the marriage of the young queen with the Dauphin. | * 24tli Feb. 1549, Acta Dom. Cone. + Gregory's Flighlands and Islands, p. l86. t Keith, Appendix XIX. The young queen signed the commission at the castle of Fontainebleau (apud Castrum Ponies Blemidi). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 227 Elder published in Paris in 1558 some chapter discourses, partly those delivered at Kinloss and Beauly, and partly com- posed at Paris, with a view to future delivery. Among those not yet, I think, delivered, must be reckoned the one containing an address to his pupil, the abbot, and a eulogium on his patron, the bishop, which is printed by Dr Stuart in the " Records of Kinloss." * It contains allusions to the preacher having just resigned the office of pedagogue, or, as we would now call it, travelling tutor ; and it is quite clear that, between the period of his being made tutor at Paris, and his publishing these discourses, Elder had not returned to Scotland. The epistle dedicatory is dated the ist January 1558. The same year, 1558, Bishop Reid, now Lord President of the Court of Session, was despatched by the Estates of Scot- land to France as one of their commissioners, to consent to the marriage-contract, and witness the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin on the 19th of April 1558. There he would meet Abbot Walter, and his tutor, Adam Elder, and Walter would become acquainted with the rest of the commissioners, and particularly with the half-brother of the queen, James Stewart, afterwards the Regent, then Commen- dator of St Andrews, whom we find on the 28th of April 1558 signing with Bishop Robert Reid an address to the Dauphin.-}* On his return Reid and the Earls of Cassillis and Rothes were all taken ill at Dieppe, and died there after a few days' illness, the bishop on the 6th September, the Earl of Rothes about two days after, the Earl of Cassillis on the 14th of the same month, I not without suspicion of their patriotism causing their removal by poison. . Dr Mackenzie states that the bishop settled two consider- able funds to be given yearly, the one for the maintenance of gentlemen's sons at the Universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews, and Glasgow, " that had good spirits," but had not whereupon * Records of Kinloss, p. 69. t Keith's History, Appendix, book xxxi., p. 21. + Keith, booli i., p. 65. 228 HISTORICAL NOTICES to prosecute their studies. The other was for the education of young gentlewomen who were left unprovided for by their parents.* I am especially bound to state, that to the liberality of Bishop Reid is owing the foundation of the University of Edinburgh. He left 8000 marks for that purpose, whereby the magistrates of Edinburgh were enabled in 1581 to pur- chase from the last provost of the Kirk of Field, the site where the first buildings of the university were afterwards erected. To so great and good a Scotsman no monument or me- morial was ever erected in his native land, and it was left to our day and to a foreign hand to mark his last resting-place by a simple inscription. f It is difficult to leave so interesting a personage as Bishop Reid ; and I believe my readers will excuse me for giving as a summary of his life and character, an extract from an article in the Quarterly Review, which bears intrinsic evidence from the knowledge, and still more the scholarly feeling and cultivated taste it displays, that it proceeded from the pen of Mr Cosmo Innes : " Robert Reid, the son of a good gentleman, who fell at Flodden field, was one of a band of regular churchmen, zealously attached to the faith of their fathers, but no less zealous to purify it from error and superstition. With that view they laboured the reformation of the monastic houses ; and, as a first step, tried to restore, by means of foreign teachers, the decayed learning of the Scotch cloister. Reid, at his own expense, brought over an Italian, who taught philosophy and the classics to the young monks and noviciates of his abbeys of * Mackenzie's Scottish Writers, Edin. 1722, vol. iii., p. 27. t In 1870 there was set up in St James's Church at Dieppe, under the super- intendence of M. I'Abb^ Cochet, inspector of liistorical monuments of the Seine Inferieure, a tablet in copper, which bears the following inscription ; ' ' To the memory of Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, President of the Scottish Parliament, Deputy-Commissary of Scotland at the marriage of the Queen Mary Stuai't. Died at Dieppe, September ISS^- Buried in the Chapel of St Andrew (commonly called Chapel of the Scots). Requiescat in Pace. " The tablet is destined to per- petuate the remembrance of an historical fact, whidi was not known at Dieppe until M. I'Abb^ Cochet brought it to light in an article which appeared in the Vigie de Dieppe in June 1870 {Journal Officiel). ' OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 229 Kynloss and Beaulieu in Moray, and has left a minute record of his prelections. Our abbot secured also the services of a foreign artist —pictorem in arte sua egregium — (antiquarian reader, his name was Andreas Bairhum !) to adorn not only the church of Kynloss, but the abbot's apartments, which last were done in fresco. He brought from France a gardener, who exercised his delightful art ungrudgingly for the benefit of the whole province as well as for the monastery. Moreover, he collected a great library at a time, be it remembered, when the books were MSS., or printed volumes almost as costly, and, with a fitting- care for his collection, he built a vaulted fire-proof gallery at Kynloss for its reception. When promoted to the bishop- ric of Orkney (1541), his goodness found a wider field. He was frequently employed on distant embassies, and brought home splendid testimonials of the favour of foreign states and princes. He was made one of the judges of the newly-established Court of Session, and soon its president. Without neglecting his duties as a servant of the Crown, he was assiduous in his care of his diocese. He carried into those remote islands the same zeal for the Church and taste for the refinements of domestic life which had distinguished him when Abbot of Kynloss. He made sumptuous additions to the bishop's palace at Kirkwall, and to that venerable cathedral, still entire, for building which all Christendom is said to have paid a tax. He made a new foundation of the chapter, augmenting the number of prebendaries, and assigning ample funds for their maintenance. He built a college at Kirkwall for instructing the youth of his diocese in grammar and philosophy ; and, amid all these cares of the good bishop, he found means to leave a munificent endowment for a pro- , jected college at Edinburgh. Than such a prelate, religious, learned, and fostering learning, loving the arts, and encouraging them, religion has no shape more dignified and amiable. If we view him, more- over, as the statesman, conversant with courts and the favourites of princes, carrying to those wild isles the manners and usages of civilised life, we may understand some part of the blessed influence such a bishop exercised over such a diocese " (" Ecclesiastical Anti- quities of Scotland," Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxii., p. 379, see pp. 393, 394)- But to return to the instrument vi^e are illustrating. The meeting summoned by it seems to have taken place, and the confirmation of the grant of the church lands and 230 HISTORICAL NOTICES fishings of Kilmorack to have been conceded, for we find the next Bishop of Ross grants a charter of the Kirkton of Kilmorack to Alexander, Lord Lovat, in 1545.* This was the son of the slaughtered Lord Hugh, by that Janet Ross of Balnagowan, who had hurried her stepson, the heir, to the battle of Kin-Lochy. Alexander succeeded on his father's and elder brother's death in that conflict. The family annalist says of him, " The charge of his lordship's education had been entrusted to Robert Reid, who lived in a style of great magnificence in Beauly, where he had built a mansion-house. Several young men of rank were under his paternal care at the same time." How this may be is not clear, but it is certain that Alex- ander, Lord Lovat, received a better education than the other chiefs, his neighbours. He was a " gentleman, clerklike," for among the signatures to the general bond of manrent to the Earl of Huntly at Elgin, 7th December 1544, he writes his name "Alexander Fraiser, Lord Lowet," whilst his neighbours, the chief of Mackenzie and the Chisholm, sign respectively, "Jhone Mackenzie of Kyntaill, with my hand on the pen, led by Mr William Gordon, notar," and " Johne Chislome of Cum- myr, with my hand at the pen, led by the said Maister James, notar publick."-f- Alexander, Lord Lovat, before 1555, married Janet, the daughter of Sir John Campbell of Cawdor. Ten years before the battle of Kin-Lochy (Blair-na-Leine), she had been contracted to marry the eldest grandson of Ewen Cameron of Lochiel. Two years after the battle Ewen Cameron's head was set over the gate of Elgin after he was tried and beheaded for the slaughter of Lord Lovat and his son. Somehow, his grandson, though he became chiefofthe clan in 1552, missed the wife that had been provided for him, and she became the wife of the son and brother of the avenged Lovats, and of the heir of the House which had sustained so heavy a loss at Lochiel's hands. * Laing's Scottish Seals, vol. ii., p. 187. t Spalding Club Miscellany, iv. 213. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 231 In IS 57 Lord Lovat chose the reverend father in God, Robert, Bishop of Orkney, as one of the arbiters in a question between himself and his mother, and in December of that year he died, universally regretted. Before the date of the next document we print, the storm of the Scottish Reformation had begun ; many ardent Re- formers sincerely denounced the " friars as enemies to God's Gospel," * whilst the estates of the monasteries were naturally objects most attractive to the cupidity of those who cared little about the new doctrines : the example of England in monastic spoliation was contagious ; there, in 1536, the lesser monasteries were suppressed, and the greater abbeys in 1539. Bishop Reid, if he had lived, might have diverted the course of the monastic properties by securing, as Wolsey did, to some extent, a large appropriation towards the establishment of colleges and schools. The very year Reid died, friendly articles of reformation were proposed by the Scottish clergy themselves ; and within six months after his death, in March IS 59) a General Provincial Council was held of the Scottish bishops and clergy in the Dominican, or Black Friars', mon- astery at Edinburgh, amongst whose resolutions are provisions for the visitation of monasteries and nunneries, and for enforc- ing the canon, which enjoined that every monastery should send one or more monks to a university. Prior Walter Reid, probably just after the death of his uncle, but at all events in 1558, returned to Scotland, and sat in the Parliament, assembled on the 29th November 1558, as the mitred Abbot of Kinloss. Walter Reid was very likely one ot those "young abbots, priors, deans, and beneficed men," mentioned by Bishop Lesley,"!- who, dreading or disliking the discipline of the Old Church, as promulgated by the canons of 1559, assisted at the overthrow of the Catholic religion. It appears that he was the general legatee and executor of * See in Keith, p. 65, declaration signed i6th March 1557-8, by (amongst others) James Stewart. t Bp. Lesley's Hist, of Scotland, p. 271. 232 HISTORICAL NOTICES Bishop Reid ; and it is notorious that the payment of the bishop's bequest of 8000 marks, to found a college at Edin- burgh, was long deferred by Abbot Walter.* The acquaintance he must have formed in Paris with the future Regent, then, like himself, an ecclesiastic, probably led to his being selected to take a principal part in the changes that followed. As Abbot of Kinloss and lord of Parliament, Walter Reid, in 1560, was appointed one of the lords of the articles, and concurred in framing the famous Act of 24th August 1560, forbidding the celebration of the mass. His signature stands high in the list appended to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1560. On loth February 1561, he, acting as Abbot of Kinloss, showed his complete adoption of the principle of the Scottish Reformation by, at one and the same moment, sanctioning the marriage of churchmen and alienating the property of the Church, for he then commenced the dilapidation of Kinloss by giving the lands of West Grange, part of its possessions, to his sister, on her marriage with Alexander Dunbar, the Sub-chanter, and afterwards Dean of Moray. -f Walter him- self, abbot and prior though he was, carried out his principles with a will, and afterwards married Margaret CoUace, a daughter of the House of Balnamon. Spottiswoode, and Keith and Robertson | on the authority of Spottiswoode, tell us that, in May 1561, the Convention of * "It [the University of Edinburgh] originated in a bequest made in 1558 by Reid, Bishop of Orkney, to the town council of Edinburgh, for the erection of a college. The money was at first retained by the Abbot of Kinloss. After a delay of five years, the council, on the faith of ultimately obtaining the bequest, pur- chased part of the present site of the university. Queen Mary lent her assistance, granting a charter of presentation to some confiscated church property ; but build- ing was not commenced till 1581. In the following year, King James VI. incor- porated the university by royal charter, increasing the grants of Queen Mary " (Edinburgh Almanac, 1876, p. 738). + Records of Kinloss, pref. hex. I ought, in justice to Walter's conduct as executor of his uncle, to mention that there is also secured to his sister, on her marriage, "the one thousand merles, the quhilke the said Katherine hes, siller in her awne hand, left to tocher be ane reverend fader in God umquhile Robert, Bischopp of Orkney, her fader brither." X Spottiswoode, p. 174; Keith, p. 503 ; Robertson, ed. 1821, vol. ii., p. 46. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 233 Estates, considering every religious fabric as a relic of idolatry, passed sentence upon them by an act in form ; and that per- sons the most remarkable for the activity of their zeal were appointed to put it in execution : James Stewart, the Prior of St Andrews, was to put it in force in the north. " Abbeys, cathedrals, churches, libraries, records, and even the sepulchres of the dead, perished in one common ruin." This Act of Convention has never been printed, nor is it known to exist ; and certain it is that the Prior of St Andrews did not put it in force in the dioceses of Moray or Ross, and I doubt its ever having been formally passed. On the 19th August 1561, Queen Mary, at the age of nine- teen, returned to Scotland. That same year, in December, a Convention of Estates was held. A great majority of abbots, priors, and other heads of religious houses, had, with Walter Reid, changed their reli- gion, but retained their offices and emoluments. The Con- vention proposed, and the queen in council ordained, in February 1 561-2, that an exact account of the ecclesiastical benefices throughout the kingdom should be taken, and com- missioners were appointed for that purpose. The present incumbents, to whichever party they belonged, were allowed to retain possession : two-thirds of the whole revenue were reserved for their use, the remaining third, called the Assump- tion of thirds, was annexed to the Crown ; and out of this the queen undertook to assign a sufficient maintenance for the Protestant clergy. The queen visited Inverness in September 1562, but she did not pay that visit to Beauly, to which we have alluded, at that time. " From Stirling," writes Randolph to Cecil, " she taketh her journey as far north as Inverness, the furthest part of Murray ; a terrible journey both for horse and man ; the countries are so poor, and the victuals so scarce." * Mr Chalmers, in his " Life of Mary," gives, from a diary of the places where she dined and slept, the houses where she passed each day ; and I can discover no trace of her having gone * Chalmers's Q. Mary, vol. i., p. 77. 234 HISTORICAL NOTICES beyond Inverness. By the kindness of Mr David Laing, I have printed an abstract of the diary, found among Mr Chalmers's papers.* The diary itself, though stated by Mr Chalmers to be in his library, is missing. She left Old Aberdeen on ist September, and her sleeping places were as follows : Buchan, ist September; Grange, 2d ; Balveny Castle, 3d; Elgin, 4th-7th ; Kinloss Abbey, 8th; Darnaway Castle, f 9th and loth, holding a Privy Council there on the loth ; on the morning of the llth, she goes to Inverness ; she slept that night, in the town, | but in that night the castle of Inverness was taken by her troops, and its captain, Alexander Gordon, who presumed to hold it out for the" Earl of Huntly, was hanged next morning : she slept at Inverness, but whether in the castle or the town does not ap- pear, 1 2th, 13th, 14th ; and on the ijth she went to Kilravock Castle, § and slept there; Darnaway Castle, i6th; Spynie Palace, the seat of the Bishop of Moray, 17th and i8th; Cullen, 19th; Shire Town (Banff), 20th; Gight, 21st; and returned to Aberdeen on 22d September — all performed on horseback by a young lady of twenty. || The adhesion of Abbot Reid to the Reformed party doubt- less preserved the Abbey of Kinloss from being rabbled, and enabled him to offer the use of it to her Majesty. Meanwhile the commissioners appointed by the Act 1561 for taking an account of the revenues of the Scottish Church * Appendix, No. XXVI. + Randolph says, "The place called Tarnway was ruinous, s,2iy\ng the Home, which is very fair and large, built like many that I have seen in England " (Chalm., i. 304). J Tradition says it was in a house at the end of the bridge. § The abstract of the diary says Quittra, whilst Mr Chalmers himself (vol. i., p. 86) says Kilravock. Kilravock Castle had been just enlarged by the Black Baron of Kilravock, who built, in 1552, a manor-place beside his narrow old tower (Innes's Family of Kilravock, p. 209). He was an important personage, Justice-Depute in that quarter, and receives, both from Queen Mary and from her brother, letters, dated at Aberdeen, on their return from the north in October 1562 ; but Mr Innes, although he prints these letters, does not allude to the queen's visit to the castle. II Randolph must have found out now that it was not ' ' a sick, crazed woman " he had to deal with (Robertson, vol. iii., p. 279). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 235 were not idle, and we have the results of their inquiry into the possessions of the Priory of Beauly. We find the following account in the appendix to Keith's " Church History " as from the collector's books of the thirds in the Laigh Parliament House, dated 1562 : "Reformed Cistercian Priory of Beauly in the Shtre of Ross. — Money, ^136, 13s. 4d. Bear, 14c. 2b. 3f. 3^p. Oats, 7b. 3f. 3|p. Mairts, n. 10. Muttons, n. 20. Poultry, 21 doz.* Salmon, 2 lasts 6 barrels." We shall afterwards give the actual return to the controller, but it may be desirable just to ascertain the actual value of this income. The high estate of the Scottish coinage had grievously fallen since John Byset's time, and in 1567 the pound weight of silver was coined into £1% Scots ; but this depreciation of the coin made no difference, except in intercourse with foreign countries, as the prices of food at home were in the same cur- rency. In the same collector's books we have the converted prices thus : Mairts of Aberdeen, £2, 1 3s. 4d. the piece ; ditto of Beauly, £2 the piece ; ditto of Orkney, £\, 6s. 8d. Mut- tons of Aberdeen, nine shillings the piece ; ditto of Kinloss, six shillings the piece. Poultry of Aberdeen, four shillings the dozen. So that the money rent of ;£'i36, 13s. 4d. would represent at Beauly seventy head of cattle ; not that this was the market price, but the customary equivalent. In the bishopric of Brechin, salmon let for £1 a barrel, and in the bishopric of Aberdeen, £\ a barrel. Keith, writing in 1734, says that in 1587 £100 went as far as ;£'700 now; but surely the effect of the discovery of America was so far exhibited in 1587 as to make this state- ment exaggerated. * Keith puts the poultry thus: "C, 2i doz.; S., 24 d.," explaining below that C. means the collector's books of the thirds in the Laigh Parliament House, 1562, and S., the book of assignation, 1594. The S. puzzled Maitland, who, in his " History of Scotland," p. 258, says : " 24 dozen of S. ; what is meant by ' S.' I know not, unless it be scrafish 1 " 236 HISTORICAL NOTICES We shall now give the actual return of the collector of thirds to the controller : " The Rentall of the Priorie of Bowlyne, baith of the maillis, silver, fearmis, teindis, martis, wedderis, and utheris dewties, as after followis : The rentall of silver — Item, in primis the silver maill of the barronie of Bewlyne, with the maynis of the samin, extendis to Ixi lib. — Item, the kirkis of Convith and Cumer sould pay in silver in the yeir the sovi^me of xxxiii lib. — Item, the kirk of Abirtarf sould pay in silver the sowme of xlii lib. — Summa of the haill silver in maillis and teindis extendis to i° xxxvi lib. xiiis. iiiid. The rentall of the victuall of the said pryorie — Item, in the haill victuall of the bar- ronie of Bowlyne, with the maynis of the samin, extendis to iiii oh. victuall. — Item, the kirkis of Conveith and Cummer in victuale ex- tendis to vii ch. xi bs. — Item, the twa mylnes of Bowlyne sett for ii ch. viii bs. meill and malt. — Summa of the haill victuall extendis to xiiii ch. iiii bs. victuale. The rentall of aites — Item, the haill aitis of the said baronie, viii bs. The mairtis — Item in mairtis, x mairtis. The mut- toun — Item in wedderis, xx wedderis. Item in pultrie, xxi dussane. As for the fishing of Bowlyne, it is vncertane, sumtyms les, sumtymis mair, and vther tyms verie lytill; and thir twa yeiris bygane hes scarslie giwin ii last vi barreillis. And sua the haill priorie of Bew- lyn extendis yeirlie in silver, victuale, and wedderis, aitis, mairtis, pultrie, and salmond, as efter followis : Summa of the silver, i" xxxvi lib. xiiis. iiiid. Summa of the victuall, xiiii ch. iiii bs. victuale. Summa of the haill aitis, viii bs. Summa of mairtis, x mairtis. Summa of wedderis, xx wedderis. Summa of pultrie, xxi dosan. Summa of salmond, ii last vi b. Thir ar the thingis that are to be deducit of the money, salmond, and victuallis, aboue specifeit, payit as efter followis : Item in primis to be deducit be payment maid to the aucht brethir for their habit silver, ilk bredir havand in the yeir xls., quhilk extendis to xvi lib. Item, thair is to be deducit for the said viii brethir for thair flesh and fish in the yeir, ilk brother havand for thair flesh iiid. in the day, for thair fish ilk day, iid., extendmg in the yeir to xxix lib. xiiiis. viiid. Item, for the Lordis of the Seit contribu- tion yeirhe, iiii lib. iiiis. Item, Master Alexander M<=Kenzie, for his yeirhe pensioun quhilk he has of the said pryorie, and provydit thairof in Roome, xiii lib. vis. viiid. Item, to the ofificiar of Bowlyne, yeirlie, for his fie, quhilk he hes dureing his lyftyme, xxvs. viiid. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 237 Item, thair is to be deducit for the said aucht bretheris drink in the yeir, v ch. xii bs. victuale. Item, for thair breid in the yeir, Ivii bs. iii fir. i pc. Item, for the ofRciaris fie, i b. Item, thair is to be de- ducit for officiaris fie, i b. Item, thair is to be deducit for the teind- fish of the kirk of Warlaw, iii bs. 3 barrell salmond — summa of the haill victuallis and salmond, deducit as is aboue written, extendis to Ixiiii lib. xiiis. of silver, and x ch. x bs. iii fir. i p. victuale, iii bs. 3 b. salmond ; and sua restis to the prior Ixxii lib. xvid., iii ch. iii bs. iii pc. victuale, and of salmond, ii last ii b. ^ b. salmond. Memorandum, that the kirk "of Conveith was wont to pay for the vicarage thairof the sowme of xxvii lib. xiiis. iiiid., and now gettis na payment of the samin. " W., Abbot of Kinloss. " Memorandum, to tak the salmond, the thrid, not as it is rental- lit, bot as it givis, for this rental is manchHtt. Remember, my Lord Comptrollar, and speir the rental of thir twa, Kinlos and Bevvlyne , for they are suspitious anent the fishing." This rental we print from the " Origines Parochiales Scotiae ;" it is there given as from the Book of Assumptions, but it does not appear in that record in the Register House.* The con- cluding paragraph seems to have been repeated in the rental of the Abbey of Kinloss, which has this conclusion ; " Out of the Fischeing of Bewlie, Remember, my Lord Comptrollare, to speir the rentall of thir twa Kinlos and Bewlie, better, for thay ar suspitious anent the fische- ingis." t Let us examine this account in detail. We see now how the rental given by Keith is made up : of * Per Mr Walter Macleod. + Records of Kinloss, p, 163. The suspicions which the collector had as to the correctness of the returns as to the salmon fishing do not appear to be well founded. The fishings of the Beauly and of the Findhom were probably then "vncertane," as they now are. The quantities of salmon and grilse caught on Burghead and Roseisle fishings in the Findhom district in 1861 and 1862 were 10 tons i5 cwt. and 19 tons 19 cwt. respectively; so in 1867, 9 tons 17 cwt. • in 1868 16 tons 17 cwt. (Scotch Salmon Fishery Inquiry Report, 1871, app. p. 99). So at Beauly, from 1839 to 1848, there were 14,639 salmon and 42,152 grilse, whilst ■ from 1809 to 1818 it was, salmon, 30,823, and grilse, 54,352 (Lords' Report on Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, i860; Evid. 1201, 1202). 238 HISTORICAL NOTICES the £136, 13s. 4d., the money rent (silver maill) of the lands of the barony of Beauly was ;^6i ; the churches of Conveth and Comar paid £53, and the church of Abertarff ;^42 ; as the rental is said to be made up of rent and tithes (mail/is and teindis), we may suppose that the money payments from the churches were either rents or compositions for the tithes in kind, and not rents for the glebe lands of those churches. The payments in grain include payments from the churches of Conveth and Comar, which were probably in respect of the glebe lands of those churches, but there are none in respect of Abertarff. Conveth, or Conway, we have seen, was an ancient parish, existing in 1221 {supra, p. 22). Out of it was taken, in 1226, the parish of Kiltarlity {supra, p. 24) ; the patronage of Conveth belonged, in 1258, to John Byset the younger, the son of our Founder; and between that date and 1274 it had probably been granted to the monks of Beauly, who, before 1274, had endowed a vicar there, with a stipend of five marks and a half — or ;^ II of our coinage, with silver at 60s. a pound — each mark being two-thirds of a pound of silver {supra, p. 53). The rental informs us that this stipend had been increased to ;^27, 13s. 4d. (with silver at 360s. a pound, it is more cor- rect to say reduced) ; for it states that the Kirk of Conveth was wont to pay for the vicarage thereof, ;^ 27, 13s. 4d., but now [the vicarage] gets no payment of the same. We shall see that this was speedily remedied. The church of Conveth was dedicated, it would seem, to St Lawrence* — its ruins still remain in the valley of Glen con- veth. The notion that these are the ruins of a nunnery is incorrect, though it has the authority of the valuable " Guide" of Messrs Anderson. " Glenconveth," say they, " takes its name from a nunnery, the foundations of which, in- the centre of the valley, are still visible." f This is the first occasion where we have explicit mention of the church of Comar. This church of Comar must have * Ancient Church of Scotland, p. 291. + Anderson's Guide to the Highlands, ed. 1842, p. 524. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 239 been endowed in the parish of Conveth, after the parish of Kiltarlity had been taken out of Conveth ; and not only after 1275, when the very careful Taxation of Boiamond discloses no mention of the church of Comar, but after 1350, when the church and vicarage of Conway are mentioned, but no church of Comar.* Comar had an endowment in land ; for we find the kirk land of Comar mentioned in 1576, and for this it was pro- bably indebted to the Fentons, as in 1416 they had not only the lands of Comar-Kirktown but also all the other Byset lands, lying on the south side of the Glass, in the old parish of Conveth, viz., the davochs of Guisachan and Buntait.-f* The monks of Beauly must have concurred in this good work of erecting a church at Comar, and thus providing a resident minister for the upper portion of Strathglass ;- and they must have arranged that the chaplain who served the church of Comar should have a portion of the vicarial tithes , of Conveth. At the same time it is difficult to understand how the church of Comar could have had any land, which, after its endowment, became the property of the Priory of Beauly. The church of Comar was founded before 1416, because the lands round it had by that time acquired the title of Comar-Kirktown, and were granted under that name, by William de Fenton, in the marriage-contract of his sister, as we have seen {supra, p. 96). It must have been founded by one of those Williams de Fenton, who appear in 1359, 1384, and 1403 {supra, pp. 88, 92, 95). William de Fenton of 1359 must have been the same person with the William de Fenton who endowed the chaplain of Baky with land ; J and it is likely he also endowed the chaplain of Comar — " the liberal deviseth liberal things." This church, in 1576, is dealt with as a parish church, but it was probably only a parochial chapelry. A district out of * Reg. Moray, p. 305. ■)- Supra, p. 23. X Supra, p. 76. This endowment of Baky was confirmed by King David II. in 1362, and dated in 1361 (Reg. Mag. Sig., 25). 240 HISTORICAL NOTICES the parish of Conveth was probably attached to it, and naturally Guisachan and Buntait, which with Comar-Kirktown are conveyed in 1416, would form parts of this district. The inhabitants of this district would have the rights of baptism and sepulture at the parochial chapel of Comar, whose minis- ter would be the parochial chaplain, nominated by the vicar of Conveth, or nominated by the Fentons and their suc- cessors, with his approval. No entry is made in the lists of procurations and synodals of the church of Comar. The church of Conway pays the same procurations and synodals in 1350 and 1400, and no mention is made of any payment by the vicar of Conway or the church of Comar. Procurations were the sums paid to the bishop on his visi- tations, and were the substitute for the expenses originally incurred by each parish, of entertaining him and his suite on those occasions. They were also payable to an archdeacon or rural dean, if such dignitary had the right of visitation, which does not appear to have been the case in the px-ovince of Moray. Synodals were the payments made by the clergy who attended the synods or diocesan meetings at the cathedral, the metropolitan church of the province. The vicar of Conway and the parochial chaplain of Comar, if bound to appear at visitations, which the zeal of the visitor seldom extended to each separate church, had no payment to make, their liabilities, in that respect, being covered by the payment made by the priory, as representing the rectory of the mother church of Conway; and I doubt whether these stipendiaries were entitled to appear at synods of the clergy, in the province of Moray.* The church of Abertarff is the other church which was appropriated to our priory. The omission of any grain rent from the church of Abertarff is explained by the circum- stance that the church of Abertarff had no glebe land be- longing to it, at the time of its appropriation to Beauly, by * Amongst the clergy who concurred with the Bishop of Ross, in the release to the Bishop of Moray in 1227, are vicars {supra, p. 199). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 241 our Charter No. II. (supra, p.'-33). The arrangement we referred to (supra, p. 34), as taking place between the Bishop of Moray and Thomas de Thirlestane in 1225, deprived the church of its glebe. It was then agreed that the half davoch of land, which the Bishop of Moray asserted to belong to the church of Abertarff, should be given up to Thomas de Thirle- stane and his heirs, except one full toft and croft for the church of Abertarff and every rector of it. This toft and croft was no doubt given up by the priory to the vicar, on their endowment of the vicarage of Abertarff, between the appropriation and 1274. Let us trace the history of these three parishes a little further down. In 1567 an Act was passed that " the haill thirds of the haill benefices of this realm sail now instantlie, and in all times to come, first be paid to the ministers." * A commission, called a Commission of Plat, was appointed to carry these provisions into effect. We have among the items of the Inventory of 165 1 : " S 5- A tack of the teind sheaves of the parish of Conveth, by the Abbot of Kinloss to Lord Lovat for nineteen years." " 74. A tack, by the Abbot of Kinloss to Hugh, Lord Lovat, of the lands of Conveth for nineteen years." These leases are probably by Abbot Walter, and that of the * 1567, c. 10. In the same session an Act — 1567, c. 12 — was passed, bywhich provostries and prebends of collegiate churches, altarages, and chaplainships were reserved to patrons, in order that they might present to such benefices bursars or poor students, at such university as the patrons chose to name. This is the only legislative provision for advancing education and learning out of the Church revenues. It was exercised by King James VI. by devoting chaplaincies belonging of old in common to the canons of Ross to entertainment at the university of young students. One of these, Thomas Davidson, the son of Patrick Davidson, Ross Herald in 1574, was to be received under the care and discipline of the principal master of Sanct Leonardis College, within the University of Sanctandrois. In 1586 another Thomas Davidson gets a chaplaincy — Saint Lawrence in Ardefaill perhaps the chapel of AUangrange (supra, p. 82) — to entertain him, being a bursar in the College of Cambridge, in England, at the said college, for his better education invertewandguidlettres(0. P. S.,"Rosemarkie," 584, 585). O 242 HISTORICAL NOTICES teind sheaves, probably the instrument to which the seal is attached (supra, p. 1 70), being a tack of the teinds of Conveth to Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, by Walter Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and Prior of Beauly, A.D. 1571. Though granted for nineteen years only, they were no doubt usually renewed upon favourable terms. In 1573 the clergy were promised by the Regent Morton that the stipend of each parish should be paid out of its own tithes, and under the Commission of Plat the stipends were modified in 1574. We have the modification in 1576 of the stipends to the churches of Conveth, Comar, and Abertarff, as follows : " Conveth. — Mr John Fraser, minister. His stipend, the haill tua pairt of the priourie of Beauly, newlie providit to him. " Reidar at Conveth. His stipend, xx merkis, with the kirkland, to be payit out of the thrid of the Priorie of Bewlie, etc. " Cummer. — Reider at Cummer. His stipend, xx merks, with the kirkland, etc. " Aberiharff. — James Duff, minister. His stipend, Ixx U., and the kirkland of Boleskine, quhairof he is parsone." * The incumbent must have been the Prior of Beauly at the passing of the order in Council of 156 1, and also of the Act of 1567, and as Fraser gets the two-thirds of the benefice, which, by the order in Council of i8th February 1561, was reserved to the incumbent, he has the prior's rights. James Duff or Dow is entered in the register before, under Dores (Durris) : "Durris — Boleskine — Abertharff. — ^James Duff, exhorter, xx li., and XX U. mair for AbirtarfF, sen November 1569. " Durris — Bokskin. — James Duff, Reidar, xx H." In 1 581 an Act of Parliament, c. 100, was passed, that every parish should have its own minister, and c. loi was passed pro- hibiting any dilapidation by grants of tithes. In 1 61 7 an Act passed enabling the Commissioners of Plat * Register of Ministers, Maitland Club, p. 65. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 243 to modify entirely out of the teinds of the parishes a perpetual local stipend, which should override the grants of tithes to the Lords of Erection, and all other laymen who had received grants of tithes. The provision was not very luxurious : 500 marks was the minimum stipend {£2T, iSs. 6d. sterling). In order, however, to compensate the lessees of tithes, power was given to the commissioners to prorogate or extend their leases if they were compelled to pay more stipend than the amount of the reserved rent.* The nineteen years' lease of the corn tithes of Conveth, by Abbot Walter Reid to Hugh, Lord Lovat, expiring in October 1576, Mr John Fraser, Prior of Beauly, on 13th October 1576, granted a lease of those tithes to Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat,f at a rent of 80 marks, for his and his heirs' lives, and for nineteen years after.J: He also granted a similar lease of the vicarage teinds of Conveth. On the same day a tack of the teind sheaves of Abertarff was granted by the same John Fraser, Prior of Beauly, to the same Master of Lovat, for the same term, at the rent of 63 marks. § * Archbishop Spottiswoode says : " For what augmentation soever was granted, the same was recompensed to the givers by prorogation of their former leases for - a number of years, and thereby the Church more damnified than bettered " (p. 364). The archbishop was, I conceive, much mistaken ; the Act of 1617 is the Bill of Rights of the Kirk of Scotland ; the principle that the first charge on the tithes was the maintenance of the clergy was by it clearly established, and to the Church it was matter of indifference who got the surplus, whether the tacksman, or the Crown, or its grantees ; and the rule thus laid down in 161 7 was adhered to, when, in 1690, all teinds not previously granted away were given to the patron ; the obligation of providing for the minister was then again expressed, whilst the tacks granted after 1617 generally contained a clause, throwing the burden of augmen- tations on the tacksman, so that thete was no room for any claim of prorogation. The enforcing the principle of maintaining the parish minister out of the parish tithes, coupled with the provisions for valuing or commuting the tithes introduced by Charles I., has made the average endowment of the parish minister in Scotland more advantageous to himself and less burdensome to the people than in England, where the condition of Vicars and perpetual Curates has been the shame of the Church, and their right to a maintenance out of the great tithes appropriated by the monasteries persistently denied. + He was then four years old. X Appendix, No. XXVII. § Appendix, No. XXVII. 244 HISTORICAL NOTICES Shaw says, " James Dow, vicar, sold the vicarage of Aber- tarfif to the Tutor of Lovate about the year 1570; and, for want of a living, Abertarfif was annexed to Boleskine." * There was no Tutor of Lovat in 1570, nor till 1577, but Shaw may- have been informed of the tack which was made by the vicar of Abertarff of his teinds, on 31st March 1580, to Thomas Fraser of Strichen, then tutor of Simon, Lord Lovat. f The commissioners had other powers which they exercised too freely. They had the power of uniting parishes. Calder- wood says : J " They united sometimes two, sometimes three, kirks into one. The bishops consented to these unions to currie the favour of noblemen and gentlemen, or for gaine, for by these unions multiplication of stipends was spared." Short as the operations of this commission were, and few as were the decrees pronounced by them, unfortunately, among the small number of parishes whose stipends were awarded throughout Scotland, were included the seven parishes which we have seen so nearly connected with the Priory of Beauly — Abertarfif, Boleskine, Fearnua, Kirkhill, Kiltarlity, Conveth, and Comar. Scant justice was done to the claims of the clergy and the people, and at the instance of Simon, Lord Lovat, § who had acquired leases of the tithes of all these seven parishes, and the rights of the Priory of Beauly over Abertarff, Conveth, and Comar, the seven parishes were reduced to three. Boleskine was a parsonage, that is, a parish where the rights of the rector to the whole of the endowment of the benefice, glebe as well as tithes, and tithes great and small, remained in full force, not diminished by episcopal or capitular or mon- astic usurpation. It was in the patronage of the Bishop of Moray, and was included in the grant of patronages of that bishopric to Lord Spynie by James VI. in i590,|| the land of Boleskine being part of the episcopal barony of Kilmylies. * Shaw's Moray, p. 363. t Anderson's Family of Fraser, p. 178. J Calderwood's History, p. 697. § It should be mentioned that he exercised "mibounded hospitality." II Forsyth's Moray, p. 90. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 245 The patronage of Abertarff belonged to the Priory of Beauly, but it was only a vicarage, as appears from the extracts already given. In 1569 the vicarage of Abertarff was held by the parson of Boleskine, James Dubh (Dhu) or Dow, and he appears to have been also appointed exhorter and reader at Durris, the parish at the north end of Loch Ness, which belonged to the cell of Urquhart (supra, p. 135). This temporary joint holding of Abertarff and Boleskine was made perpetual on 14th July 1618, and the lease to Lord Lovat extended for loi years after its expiration (as events happened, till 1766), though the permanent union of the parishes was most injudicious, " there being a hill seven miles long intervening between the inhabited districts of the two parishes, and the greater part of the intervening space being, from its height, frequently impassable in winter." -f The uniting of Fearnua and Wardlaw was effected on 14th July 161 8, so that instead of two ministers — one for each parish, and each with the legal salary — one only was allowed for the two parishes. But the worst case was the union of Comar and Conveth and Kiltarlity, and the destruction of the pious work of the founder of Beauly Priory. Comar was the upper part of Strathglass, on one side of the river only indeed, but stretch- ing up and including Guisachan, and some twenty miles above the church of Kiltarlity ; Conveth was separated from Comar by high hills, and stretches away to Glenurquhart ; three mini- sters with three stipends then existed. We have quoted from the register for 1576 the names and provisions for the mini- sters at Conveth and Comar — we have also this entry in the register : \ " Kintallartie. — Johnne Wricht, reidare at Kintallartie. His sti- pend, the haill vicarage," § etc. * Appendix, No. XXVIII. t New Stat. Acct., " Invemess-shire, " p. 91. X Register of Ministers, Maitland Club, p. 94. § This is the only notice of the vicarage of Kiltarlity {sufra, p. 26). 246 HISTORICAL NOTICES But three ministers' stipends were too great a burden, and so on the 3d July 1618,* these three parishes were united, and one stipend of 520 marks provided for one minister. The result of this forced abolition of what would have been so many strongholds of the Reformed religion was, as might have been expected, that the ancient faith still kept its hold on the people, whose right to have a teacher of religion pro- vided for them, and maintained out of the tenth of the pro- duce of their labour, was so rudely violated. Abertarff and Strathglass, left to their own voluntary efforts, adhered to the Catholic faith. Shaw speaks of the large num- ber of Catholics in those districts in his time. A missionary since 1739, supported from the royal bounty, at Fort Augus- tus, still supplies the place of the parish minister of Abertarff, who had there a pleasant glebe and ancient church ; and the writer of the "Statistical Account," in 1831, states that the number of Papists in that parish is 318, f the whole popula- tion being 1873. "The mission of Strathglass," says the minister of Kiltarlity in 1841, " has a district, nearly one-half of the population of which belongs to the Roman Catholic faith ;"| but the missionary, with his three preaching places, could not occupy the position of the resident incumbent of Comar. Nor was this all. The Act of 1696, establishing schools in Scotland, took for its stand-point the parish, and appointed that there should be one school in every parish supported by the heritors. Such a provision was a delusion for parishes like the united parishes of Abertarff and Boleskine, and of Conveth, Comar, and Kiltarlity ; and the first school estab- lished by voluntary efforts in the province of Moray, that of the Christian Knowledge Society, was placed in Stratherrick in 1708, whilst the upper portions of the modern parish of Kiltarlity have been supplied with the means of education from voluntary efforts mainly, until the evil in this respect of the work of the Plat in 161 8, demanded and obtained in 1870 a legislative remedy. * Appendix,' No. XXVIII. t Stat. Acct., " Invemess-shire," p. 62. I Id., p. 500. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 247 The rental being stated, the next items are the deductions from the rental before the thirds were to be calculated. These deductions throw a good deal of light on the state of matters in the priory. The first deductions are the payments to be made to the brethren of the house. There were eight monks who each received 40s. a-year for habit-silver or clothes-money. Their garments were of wool, no linen, and consisted only of a close-fitting gown, resem- bling the modern cassock, and a tippet or scarf, with a cloak, when they went out of doors, and sandals. No shirt, no drawers, no stockings. We may compare their dress with their neighbours. At Kinloss, which was a Cistercian house, with a costume almost the same as the Valliscaulians, the allowance was Sos. a-year for their habit-silver. Each monk at Beauly had, for his flesh meat, 3d. a-day, and for his fish, 2d. a-day. The more luxurious Kinloss monk had 8d. a-day for meat, but the same daily (2d.) for fish. This rate of payment must have assumed as many fasting days almost as Viard prescribed, considering that the pound of silver was then coined intO;£'i8, each penny being only the sixth of a penny sterling. The allowance for bread is given as a yearly allowance : at Beauly, for all the monks — at Kinloss, for each monk, of so many bolls, firlots, and pecks, of bear and oats. The delicate habit of allowing the monks of Kinloss white bread was introduced about 1500 by Abbot Thomas Chrystal, who gave them 32 ounces of wheaten bread each daily, instead of oatcake;* but no provision for con- tinuing this seems to have been made. They lived on their allowances in kind : cakes of bear and oatmeal for bread ; bear malted and brewed for drink ; their allowance for drink exceeded that for bread.-f Such luxuries as the Kinloss brethren had a slender provision for * " Mos fuit ante, lato pane, hoc est lagano ex avenis ad ignem super laganario formato monachos vesci" (Ferrarius in Hist, of Kinloss, p. 29). + The hospitable Lord Simon expended an equal quantity of meal and malt, seven bolls of each per week (Anderson, p. 102). 248 HISTORICAL NOTICES — of ;^I2 among thirteen monks, to supply fire, butter, candle, spice, and Lenten meat — were not allowed to the inmates of Beauly, but they had their fine old gardens to make up the deficiency of their allowances. The contribution for " the Lordes of the Seit," yearly ;£■ 4, 4s., is the same kind of payment as was made out of the revenues of the Abbey of Fearn to the College of Justice.* The ex- pression, " Lords of the Seit," became afterwards the present form " Lords of Session."-!* Bishop Reid, as we have seen, was one of the first Senators of the College, and he doubtless assisted the king as much as he could in getting the tax on ecclesiastical benefices for the support of the College agreed to by the Pope, and confirmed by the General Provincial Council at Edinburgh in 1536. Among the prelates of the Church, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and prioresses, who contribute to the tax, we find " the Priour of BewHng, iv li. ivs." J The sister Priories of Plus- cardine and Ardchattan are rated — Pluscardine at £!•], 4s., and Ardchattan (Ardquhottarne) at £i^, 4s. — showing something of the same relative proportion of property to each priory as existed at Boiamond's Taxation, three hundred years before. The yearly pension to Mr Alexander Mackenzie, which was provided to him in Rome, is an instance of the then recent usurpation of power over monastic revenues assumed by the Pope, who gave pensions out of them. The officiar of the priory was the ground officer. Beauly does not seem to have been burdened with a bailie until afterwards. The bailie or steward was an important person. The office was often held by a neighbouring proprietor. Thus at Fearn, Ross of Balnagowan was bailie of the abbey ; § and at Kinloss the Laird of Grant was the bailie, with Cumming of Altyre for his bailie-depute. The fee of the bailie of Kinloss was £10^, 6s. 8d., whilst that of the officiar was in * O. p. S., vol. ii., part ii., p. 438, " Tarbet in Ross-shire." + In Act 1543, c. 9, a pension is mentioned to "the Seit of Sessioune and College of Justice." t Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club, vol. ii., pp. 51, 53. § O. P. S., vol. ii., part ii., p. 437. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 249 money, £\, 6s. 8d., but aboil a-month for his bread and drink, his less fortunate brother in our priory only getting a boll in the year. The last deduction is for the teind fish of the kirk of Wardlaw. In 122 1, as we have seen {supra, p. 22), our founder, John Byset, released to the Bishop of Moray the advowson of the church of Dunballoch. The bishop immediately established a vicar there ; and when the parish of Fearnua was taken out of Dunballoch, and the site of the church was changed from Dunballoch to St Mary's Hill or Wardlaw, this vicar became the vicar of Wardlaw {stcpra, p. 26). The vicar of Wardlaw was a witness to the promulgation of the Nuncio's letter in 1532. The tithe of fish was a vicarage tithe,* and the person entitled to the tithe of fish in the parish of Wardlaw was the vicar of Wardlaw, who, being a resident minister, would per- haps not have leased it, but received it in kind. The circumstance that the only deduction in respect of tithe fish is that payable to the church of Wardlaw is remark- able, because Wardlaw had only the half of the river from Dunballoch to the sea ; the other half, being in the parish of Kilmorack, would be tithable to the vicar of Kilmorack. It would seem, however, that the vicar of Kilmorack had been negligent in asserting his rights to tithe of fish against Beauly Priory ; for when the Bishop of Ross became entitled to the rights of the chantry of Ross in the church of Kil- morack, he, in 1636, raised an action against Lord Lovat, for the tithes of fish in the Beauly, which Lord Lovat could only and successfully defend, by borrowing the tack of the vicar- age teinds of Kilmorack, prorogated in i6i8.-f- The vicarage of Wardlaw and the parochial chaplaincy of Fearnua were still separate benefices ; and as to Fearnua, there is this entry in the Register of Ministers, 1576 : J * Teind-fish were found to appertain to the vicar of the parish, Haddington, Sth July 1610. + Chisholm MSS. I Register of Ministers, Maitland Club. 260 HISTORICAL NOTICES " Fernway. — Andro Makphaill, minister. His stipend the haill common kirk of Fernway, extending to xi li. vis. viiid." The great tithes of Wardlaw were leased on the loth of June 1585, by George, Bishop of Moray, with consent of the dean and chapter of the cathedral church of Moray — being ten persons — to Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, at the rent of ;^40, for the lives of himself and any heir nominated by him, and the life of the survivor, and for nineteen years after. This lease was confirmed by Alexander, Bishop of Moray, in 1607 ; and the vicarage and small tithes of Wardlaw were leased, in 1617, by Alexander, Bishop of Moray, to the same Lord Simon for life, and to his heirs-male for nineteen years after, at the rent of £^. The Act of Prorogation of the Tack of the Teinds of Con- veth (Appendix, No. XXVIIL), mentions a prorogation of a tack of the teinds of the parish of Fearnua. This is probably the tack mentioned in the Inventory of 1652 * as : " 66. Tack of the Teinds of Lowat, sett to Dame Janett Campbell and her heirs for her life time, and nineteen years, be Mr Andro Makphail, daittit 10 Feb'y 1579." The maker of the Inventory must have misdescribed this document. The lands of Lovat were in the parish of Ward- law, of which Donald Dow was minister. -f* This is the lady who was destined for Lochiel, but married Alexander, Lord Lovat {supra, p. 230), and her heir would be Lord Simon. The parishes of Wardlaw and Fearnua were united by the Commission of Plat, on 14th July 1618. The church of Fear- nua seems to' have been dedicated to a saint named Corridon, according to the Wardlaw MSS. ;| and the light of Christi- * Dunbar Dunbar MSS. t Anderson's Family of Fraser, p. 100, citing Reg. of Decreets, 78, fol. 321 ; in Register, p. 64, " Wardlaw. — Donald Dow, minister ; liis stipend, xl lib." X At p. 112, according to tlie Findon MSS. This seems to be the same name as is Latinised in Queritenus (supra, p. 185), and to point to St Boniface of Rose- markie as the patron saint of Fearnua j but the histories of the Celtic saints of Scotland and Ireland and Wales are yet to be written. We are persuaded that many saints lived even in Scotland before St Columba, though they have not had their lives written by the sacred hand of Adamnan, nor their names recorded in the Chronicle of St Bede. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 251 anity, which had been burning there, dimly it may be, for four hundred years, was suddenly extinguished by this Commis- sion for the Plantation of Kirks.* On the i8th July 1618, the commissioners provided a stipend of 620 marks for the minister of Kilmorack, the parish of our priory, payable as to 465 marks out of the par- sonage or rectorial tithes, by George Monro of Tarrell, prin- cipal tacksman of the chantry of Ross, and as to 155 marks, by the tacksman of the vicarage teinds ; and the lease was prorogated as compensation for the charge.f And now to return to the year 1562, the date of this rental. Queen Mary, in 1563, hunted and took her summer journeys in the west and south-west of Scotland ; but her brother James, the new Earl of Moray, came north to Inverness late in the autumn, with his two brothers, to hold courts and con- solidate his power, and there first put in execution the new Act against witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy, by burning two old women as witches. On the isth October 1563, Campbell of Cawdor was served heir before him as sheriff-principal by a jury, including of the family of the founder of the priory, William Fraser of Struy, uncle of Hugh, Lord Lovat, now a minor ; Hugh Fraser of Guisachan, whose father had died fighting beside his brother Hugh, Lord Lovat, at the battle of Lochlochy ; Alexander Chisholm of Comar; and Kenneth Mackenzie ofKintail. It was probably in 1564 that Queen Mary paid that visit to Beauly Priory, the memory of which is preserved in local tradition. | She left Edinburgh on 22d and Perth on 31st July, and proceeded to Athole to the hunting ; she then passed the Mounth into Badenoch, and thence to Inverness, and from Inverness to the Chanonry of Ross. * Appendix, No. XXIX. t George Monro had married Mariot M'CuUoch, the heiress of Angus M'CuI- loch of Tarrell, one of the witnesses to No. XXII. The vicarage tack then belonged to Duncan Bayne of Tulloch, who, in 1628, assigned it to Alexander Chisholm of Comar. $ Supra, p. 7. 252 HISTORICAL NOTICES She was certainly in Ross-shire in August, for Maitland writes to Cecil in September acknowledging receipt of Cecil's letter of the 8th ult. "at that time they were in Ross." * She was on her return at Gartly, where there was a castle belonging to the Earl of Huntly, on the 24th of August if at Dunottar on the Sth September ;| and at Dundee § on the 9th September. Mr Chalmers suggests, with considerable probability, that her object was to inquire into the nature and value of the earldom of Ross, which she meant to settle upon Darnley, || whom she had determined to marry, and she would naturally go to Dingwall, which was the head of the earldom, the castle of Dingwall being its manor-place. Going to Dingwall from Inverness, she must have passed by Beauly ; and it was therefore, probably, on a bright morn- ing in August 1564 that she opened the window at the prior's house, and looking out on the gardens.lT eulogised the beauty of the spot and the appropriateness of its name. Abbot Walter would have preserved the priory from any injury ; and the queen's experience of his hospitality at Kin- loss in 1562 would induce her more readily to avail herself of it at Beauly in 1564. The queen's progresses in 1562 and 1564 were according to the fashion of her royal ancestors. Lesley, speaking of the progress of James IV. and his queen in 1505, says : " For the use observed in Scotland was at that time, as it was many years before, that the king, the queen, and their court travelled for the most part of the year through the realm, and lodged in the abbey places, or with the bishops and prelates, where * Letters Domestic, Queen Eliz., 1564. + Letter from Q. Mary to Q. Elizabeth in Calendar of State Papers, Elizabeth, 1564, dated Gartly, 24th August 1564. J Chalmers, vol. i., p. 116. § Labanoff, vol. i., p. 221, Q. Mary to the Duke of Savoy. II She, when preparing for her journey, told her servants she was going into Argyle. Inventories of Mary Queen of Scots, p. 149: " Jttly 1564. — Plus a Baltase 1 1 pieces d'estamine blanche pour mettre a un coffre pour porter au voy- age que la Royne fait en Arguylle." She had gone to Argyle in 1562. t Appendix, No. XXX. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 253 they were well entertained certain days ; and at their depart- ure, the bishop or abbot, master of the place, gave a purse to the king, and another to the queen, with certain quantities of gold contained therein, which extended yearly to a great sum."* In 1566, Hugh, Lord Lovat, although not of age, was served heir to his grandfather ; he got seisin of the lands of Kinmylies from the Bishop of Moray in March 1567; this included Kintallartie, " cum piscaria de Ess,""!- the salmon fish- ing of the Falls of the Beauly. Mary, the queen, was now compelled to resign her crown in favour of her infant son, on 24th July 1567 ; and the power of the kingdom was actually exercised by her brother, the Regent Murray. We can only glance at Mary's escape from Lochleven, and her gathering up those Scotsmen who cared for the good old cause and the Catholic Church : then came the fatal battle of Langside, and that gallop from the field on the 13th of May 1568, of sixty miles, J till she descended at the Abbey of Dundrennan, and received from the abbot that hospitality which, whatever faults they may have had, was always shown by the Abbeys and the Priories of Scotland. * Lesley's Hist, of Scotland, 1505. + Dunbar Dunbar MSS. t It seems hardly possible that Mary could have ridden so far, but she expressly says in her letter to Elizabeth from Workington, on the 17th of May, that she had accomplished this distance the first day : "Car je n'ay chose du monde que ma personne comme je me suis sauvfe, faysant soixante miles a travers champs le premier jour, et n'ayant despuis jamaiss ose aller que la nuit " (Autograph letter from Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth in the British Museum, Cotton Col- lection, Caligula, c. i., fol. 65), printed by Prince Labanoff, vol. ii., p. 77: "She was of tall stature and large size. " Chalmers, i. 1 29, says : " Of the largest size of women." Dr J. Robertson (Inventories, pref., p. cxx.) speaks of " her large stately figure. " She was fond of exercise, and capable of great exertion. Her gallop of forty-five miles, at five in the morning, on 2d July 1565, from Perth, through Kinross to Queensferry, and then to Callander House, and her forty miles' ride from Jed- burgh to Hermitage Castle and back, on the i6th October 1566, show the power she possessed of making long and rapid journeys on horseback; at the same time, this ride to Dundrennan, prolonged into the night, must have been very trying to her, for of a previous night ride she writes, on 15th March 1566, " We are so tyrit and ewill at else quhat throw rydding of twenty milles in five hours of the nycht ' (Inventories, pref., p. xxxi.). 254 HISTORICAL NOTICES No. XXIII. TACK OF SOME OF THE LANDS OF BEWLY BY WALTER, PRIOR OF BEWLY, TO JOHN AND ALEX^- CLERKS, 19 NOV"'- 1568. Ex AUTOGRAPHO. " Be it kend till all men be yir present Lettres, ws, Walter, Abbot of Kinloss and Prior of Bewlie, with express consent, assent, decrete, and determinatioune of our Breyir and Comient of cure said Abbay and place of Bewlie, being chapturlie gaderit, and yairwith riplie aduisit, the utilitie and profile of us and our saide Abbay, forseyne and considerit, and for gude and thankful serwice done till ws and our predecessours in tyme byegane, to haue sett and for mail! lattin, and be ye tenour heirof settis, and for maill letts to our louit seruent John Clerk in Bewlie, and failying of him, to Alexander Clerk his lauthefulle sonne, and to ye langer Livar of yame twa, yair airs and assigneis, of na grater dygre nor yame selfis. All and haill ye Auch- tant pairt of owr toune and landis of Reyndoun, lyand within ye Baronie and Priourie of Bewlie and Sherifdome of Invernesse : Togiddir with all and haill ane pace [of] land callit John Clerks land, lyand betwix our said Abbaye and place of Bewlie, betwix the twa getis, Eist and West, ascendant up fra the Croft, callit Alexander Writhtis croft, to ye get passand Eist and West throch ye Cuthill, as ye said auchtant part and pate [pace of], callit John Writhts [Clerks] land lyes in lenth and braid, occupit yis lang tyme bygane, as ye samyn is as yett at yis present tyme, be ye said John Clerk, with yair pertinaintis : Togyddir with killhouse, barne, toftis, waystis, and byginnis, usit and wont, with power to ye said John, and Alexander his Sonne, yair airs and assigneis of na grater degre nor yame selfis, to brew and sell ye malt yat grouis to yame selfis, prouiding yat ye samyn be not hurt nor prejudice to ye priuilege of owr principall OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 255 Aillehowse in tyme comyng, for all ye dayes, termes, and space of Nyntyne yeiris nixt, and immeditly following ye feist of Witsoundaye in ye yeire of God one thowsand five hunderid and saxtie aught yeiris, quhyike Feist, God willing, sail be ye said Johnnes, and Alex- ander his sone, yair Entries to and in ye saidis auchtant pairt of Reyndoun and Pate [pace of] land caUit Johne Clerks land, with yair howses, toftis, croftis, yairds, Kille, Barne, Ailehouse, and per- . tainentis ; and to bruick, joyse, occupie, mannure, and possesse ye samyn, induring ye said space of nintyne yeris, frelie, quyetlie, rele, and in pace, butt ony obstacle, impediment, or agayne calling of yis our assedatioune, or lice of tack in ony tyme cuming, during ye said space of nyntyne yeris. Payand yairfor yeirlie, ye saids John Clerk and Alexander Clerk, his sone, yair airs and assigneis, of na graiter dygre nor yame selfis, till ws and our successouris Priors ol Bewlie, viz., for ye said auchtent part of Reyndoian, the soume of twelff shillings six pennies usual money of the Realme, twa bollis twa pekkis ferme, ane firlet aitis, ane quarter of Mart, thre quar- ters of Mutoun, sax pultrie, ane Kid, with twinty four eggis for ane penny ; and for ye said pate [pace of] land callit John Clerks land, yeirlie, four pounds money forsaid, ane dousane of Pultrie, ane to ye water, and ane huick in heiruest. Extending to the haill in muney to the soume of foure punds twelfif shillings and sax pennies, usuel muney of yis Realme, to be payd at twa usual termis in ye yeir, Witsundaye and Martimes, be equall portiounes ; and ye saids ferme, custumis, and dewties yierlie, at termes equal and wount, togiddir with arrage, carrage, and dew seruice, conforme to our rental of sameikle land, use and wount ; and we foirthwith, ye said Walter, Abbot of Kinloss and Prior of Bewlie, for ws and our successouris Prioris of Bewlie, sail warrand, mentaine, and defend yis our Assedatioune and Lettre of Tack of ye saidis auchtent pairt of Reyndoun and pace of Land, callit John Clerks land, with Killhouse, Barne, Byggings, toftis, croftis, yairds, and pertaynentis, with comun pastur, fre ische and entre, with all fredums, aysiamentis, and commodities pertayn- ing to ye saids lands, for all ye days and termis of nintyne yeris, aboue mentionat, to ye said Johne Clerk and Alexander Clerk, his sone, yair airs and assigneis forsayds, contrair all Mortill as Law will : Prodding alwais that, give it sail happin, the said Johne, and Alexander his sone, yair airs & assigneis forsayds, to faylzie in gude and thankfuU payment making of ye saids Maillis, fermis, Custumes 256 HISTORICAL NOTICES and Dewties, yeirlie and temilie, as said is, swa yat ye termis rynn togiddir successively unpeyit, yan in yat case, yis present Asseda- tioune and Lettre of nintyne yeris tack to be null, inualidat, of na force, strenth or effecte in ye selff, but ony foryer process of law. — In Witnesse of ye quhiike thyng, to yis our present Assidatioune and Lettir of tak subscriuit with our hand, with ye subscriptiounes manual of our said Conuent, in signe and taking of yir consents, our commoune Saill of our Chapture of Bewlie is to hungyn. At Kin- loss, the nynteine day of Nouember, ye yeir of God ane thousand flue hundereth saxtie aught yeiris, befor yir Witnessis, Adam Dun- dass, Archibald Inness, and John Jaradic,* and uyers diuers present. 1. Walterus, Abbas de Kinloss. 2. Ego, Dominus Johannes Palendi,! subscribo. 3. Ego, Dauid Dauisone, Subscribo. 4. Ego, Frater Johannes Crawfurde, Subscribo. 5. Ego, Jacobus Rox, Subscribo. 6. Ego, Dominus Thomas Tuynam, Monachus, Subscripsi. 7. Ego, Georgius Moray, subscribo," etc. Not. — The tag parchment, and no seale. The abbot's and monks' names subscribing scarce legible. On ye bak of the charter, in a recent and distinct hande : " Tack of some of the Lands of Bewlie, &c. — before yat in the body of the charter they appear to have been granted to John and Alexander Clerks." This document is the last, in date, of those transcribed by Macfarlane. It is a lease, by the prior and convent of Beauly, of part of the property of the House. It is dated the 19th November 1568, and at Kinloss, although it is stated to be with the consent of our brethren and convent of our said abbey and place of Beauly, being chapterly gathered. It commences in a like form with the deed by the prior and convent of Pluscardine in 1501 (supra, p. 139), which runs thus : " Be it kende till all men, be this present writ, ws, Robert, be the permission of God, Prior of Pluscardine, and * Probably Paradise. John Paradise, a servant of the abbot, is a witness to a charter by him at Kinloss, in 1565 (Records of Kinloss, p. 154). + Probably "Roland." OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 257 the convent of the samyn, chaptourlie gaderit, riplie auisit, our utilitie and profitt considerit ; " * and in 1559, when Walter and his monks, as abbot and convent of Kinloss, give a pre- cept to their bailiff, to deliver possession of lands leased, they recite, " Forsamekill as we, with avyis, consent, and assent of the said convent, being chaptourlie gaderit, and ryeplie aduisit heirvpon." f The term granted is for nineteen years, from Whitsunday 1568, which feast was to be the entry. The lessees are John Clerk, whom failing, to Alexander Clerk his son, their heirs and assignees, " of no greater degree nor themselves." So the Countess of Crawford's lease of the Castletown of Rait, in 1572, is to David Hay, his heirs, assignees, and sub-tenants, "of no higher degree nor himself; "J: and even Dallas, in his "Styles " (a.d. 1693), inserts, as an ordinary form of tack, the letting to a tenant, "his heirs and sub-tenants, of no higher degree than himself." " It was the most material of circumstances for the proprie- tors of land, in ancient times, to have nobody round them but friends, vassals, and tenants, composing what was termed their following ; " § and to secure this, the restraint upon assignment and sub-tenancy was inserted. The subjects let are the auchtant (eighth) t| part of the lands of Rheindoun, within the Barony and Priory of Beauly, and a pace (piece) of land called John Clerk's land, lying between our said abbey and place of Beauly, between the two gates east and west, ascendant up from the croft called Alex- ander Wright's croft, to ye gate IT passing east and west through the Cuthill, and with the kilnhouse, barn, and ale- house. Power is given to the lessees to brew and use the malt grown, providing that the same should not hurt the privilege of our principal ale-house in time coming. The rent is, for the eighth of Rheindoun, 12s. 6d. money, two * Family of Kilravock, p. 171. + Records of Kinloss, p. 151. t Family of Kilravock, p. 261. § Ross's Lectures on Law of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 482. II Not eighteenth, as suggested in O. P. S., "Kilmorack." IT " Gate " here means road, and not entrance. R 258 HISTORICAL NOTICES bolls two pecks ferme — this probably implies bear — and one firlot oats, and one-quarter of a mart or ox, three-quarters of a mutton or wedder sheep, sax poultrie, ane kid, with twenty-four eggs for a penny ; for the pace of land, £4, a dozen poultry, and ane [oar (?)] to the water, and ane hook in harvest. In respect of this service in kind, the lease was like the leases referred to by Mr Loch, in his account of the improve- ments in Sutherlandshire.* The money rent was to be paid at the two feasts of Whitsunday and St Martin's in winter — that is, St Martin of Tours ; the rent in kind once a-year, with a provision for forfeiture of the lease on non-payment of the rent, so that the terms run together successively unpaid. It is subscribed by Walter Reid and Sir John Palendi (Roland), David Davison, Brother John Crawford, James Rox, Sir Thomas Twynam, monk, and George Moray. Of these, David Davison, John Crawford, and Thomas Twynam, had been all pupils of Ferrarius in 1540-43. The common seal of our chapter of Beauly is said to have been added, but it was not attached at the time of transcrip- tion. The bear was used instead of barley for malting — a practice peculiar to Scotland,f and provided for in the Acts imposing the Malt Tax. The kilnhouse was used not only for drying the oats before making oatmeal, but also for making the bear into malt. This malt the lessees were allowed to sell, but apparently not to brew into ale for sale ; the privilege of sell- ing ale being reserved to the principal ale-house of the priory. The principal ale-house of Beauly must, in those times, have been an important hostelry. Here was the principal road into Ross and the north. The ford of the Beauly river was called the Stock-ford of Ross, and was the spot where, accord- ing to Wynton, Alexander I. had finally defeated the High- * Loch's Lord Stafford's Improvements, 1820, app. i. t In 1738, the "Account of the State of Scotland," published in London, says : " Besides barley, they have great quantities of beer or bigg, which makes good bread but better malt, and of this they make good bread, broth, ale, and beer." OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 259 landers, in 1116; and the fairs of Beauly* which have sur- vived to our time in addition to the monthly Muir of Ord market, required, and doubtless obtained, under the statute of James I., an ample hostelry, having stables and chambers, and provision for man and horse f — in bread, meat, and " ale " — according to the statute of 1424. Ale is again mentioned in the statute of 1535, respecting inns ; but I find no mention of whisky (agua vites) until 15914 It was a common drink in i622.§ By 1690, a cen- * Cross Fair, established on 3d May, the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross {supra, p. 97), is said, by the MS. historian of the Erasers, to have been estab- lished also by Lord Hugh, who fell at Kin-Lochy ; he adds, that he procured an Act of Parliament for a weekly fair, every Wednesday; he mentions also, the Fair of St Mauricius (festival, September 22), at Downie — this was the patron saint of Dunballoch parish {supra, p. 22) ; All Saints (November i), at Kilmor- ack ; and Michaelmas (September 29), at Beauly (Anderson, p. 80). It will be remembered that the MS. of 1728 states {supra, p. 28) that, before the foundation of the priory, there stood a chapel of St Michael on its site. In fact, whatever customary fairs might have been held, the weekly market was first established by Act of Parliament in 1685 (Acta Pari. Scot., vol. viii., p. 574). It runs thus : " Warrand to Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, for ane yearly fair at the Mure of Lovat, and a Weekly Mercat at Beauly. " Our Soveraigne Lord and Estates of Parliament, considering that the Mure above Lovat, belonging to Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, lies conveniently for fairs and mercats to the ease of His Majesty's lieges, and advantage of the place : Therefore, our said Sovereign Lord, with advice and consent of the said Estates of Parliament, gives and grants to the said Hugh, Lord Frazer of Lovat, his aires and successors, ane free fair in the yeare. To be holden upon the eight day of August, to continue for the space of days ; with ane weekly mercatt on , at the Town of Bewly, with power to the said Lord Lovatt and his foresaids, or any other whom they shall appoint. To uplift and exact all tolls, customs, and other casualitys belonging to the saids fair and weekly mercat, and apply the same to ther own proper use; and to enjoy all other privileges, libertys, and immunitys therewith appertaining, sicklike and as freely as any other subject has done or may doe, in the like case. " t See note i to Marmion, canto iii., " The Hostel or Inn." Act 1424, c. 25. X Sketches of Early Scottish History. Though there is plenty of wine — AH- cant, Bastard, Muscadine, and Cyprick — in the House of Petty in 15 13, there is no whisky. See the inventory, Family of Kilravock, p. 188. In 1591 a mutch- kin (quarter pint) of aqua vitce (whisky), was 6s. ; French wine, 6s. 8d. a pint ; Spanish wine, 20s. a quart ; and ale, 2s. a quart, whisky being twenty-four times as dear. § Appendix to Burt's Letters, vol. ii.,'p. 245. 260 HISTORICAL NOTICES tury after its first mention, the practice of distilling it had be- come so common, that Forbes of CuUoden was amply compen- sated for a loss of ;^ 54,000 Scots, by being allowed to brew aqua vitce from the grain of the barony of Ferrintosh, at a duty of £■266, 13s. 4d. Scots ; * and by 1720, the practice of drinking it had increased to such an extent, that Burt says, " Some of the Highland gentlemen are immoderate drinkers of usky — even three or four quarts at a sitting." f I am afraid they corrupted their inferiors. The invention of distillation by Raymond Lully, just after the foundation of our priory, was not, it is said, taken much advantage of in Scotland prior to the Reformation. Colonel Stewart of Garth says, writing in 1822: "It was not till the beginning, or rather towards the middle, of the last century, that spirits of any kind were so much drank as ale, which was formerly the universal bever- age. Every account and tradition go to prove that ale was the principal drink among the country people ; and French wines and brandy among the gentry. . . . Whisky-house is a term unknown in the Gaelic. Public-houses are called Tai-Leanne — that is, ale-houses." J Here ends the roll of charters transcribed by Macfarlane. We have printed them in their chronological order ; but this is not the order in which they are transcribed ; that is best indicated by the table of contents prefixed to the tran- scripts, probably by Macfarlane. There is first this entry : § " In hoc volumine continentur Diplomata Prioratus de Bello loco a Pag. 369, ad Pag. 443." And there is afterwards the following table of contents or list of the diplomata: FOL. I. Carta Willielmi Byseth de Ecclesia de Aberterth facta Fratribus de Bello loco ordinis Vallis Caulium. — Ex autographo, ...... 369 * The brewhouse of Kinkell or Ferrintosh, is mentioned in 1584(0. P. S., vol. ii., p. S49). + Vol. ii., p. 161. J Sketches of the Highlanders, vol. i., p. 196, note. § Adv. Lib. MSS., Diplomatum Collectio, vol. xi., 35, 2, 4. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 261 2. Carta Willielmi de Fenton Domini de Beuford de duabus Marcis singulis annis percipiendis de Molendino de Beu- ford fratribus de Bello loco, . . . '370 3. Carta Patricij de Grahame de parte sua de Altyr facta Fratribus de Bello loco in Excambio pro Multuris de Loueth, &c. — Ex autographo, . . . -372 4. Bulla Alexandri Papae 6*' Andreae Moraviensi Episcopo de Prioratu de Beaulieu in favorem Dougalli Roderici Clerici ad annum 1500 XI™" die Februarii. — Ex autographo, . 374 5. Forma Juramenti Prions B. Johannis Baptistae de Bello loco Cistertiensis ordinis Rossensis Diocoesis sub Regula Valliscaulium a summo Pontifice nominati, . • 39° 6. Bulla Julij II<" Pontificis Romani Roberto Fresell Decano et Officiali Rossensi missa in favorem Prioris de Bello loco i8™ die Januarii Anno Dom. 1513, . . 392 7. Tacfk of some of the Lands of Bewly by Walter Priour of Bewly to John and Alex'' Clerks, 19 Nov"^ 1540-1568, . 400 8. Pragceptum Sylvestri, Apostolicae Sedis Nuncii Abbatibus de Kynlos et de feme, pro nobili et potenti Domino , Hugone Eraser de Louett, , . . . . 403 9. Bulla Gregorij Papae Priori de Bello loco ordinis Vallis- caulium Rossensis Diocoesis. — Ex autographo, . .412 10. Carta Laurentij Militis, filii Patricii Janitoris de Innernes Priori de Bello loco 1255. — Ex autographo, . .413 11. Carta Magistri Henrici de Tottyngham Priori de Bello loco 1274. — Ex autographo, .... 414 12. Carta Andreae de Boscho Domini de Edirdor facta Fratri- bus de Bello loco ordinis Valliscaulium Anno 1278. — Ex autographo, . . . . . -417 12. Carta David de Innerlunan de terra de Ouchterwaddalle, seu Orach - teroadal, ex Dono Gillechrist Magilledufti Fratribus de Bello loco. — Ex autographo, . .418 13. Carta Johannis de Urchard Vicarij de Abbertherff Priori de Bello loco de quieta Clamatione Decimarum Salmo- num de Abbertherff 1340. — Ex autographo, . . 420 14. CoUatio Ecclesiae parochialis de Conueth ad Conventum de Bello loco spectant per Willielmum Episcopum Mora- viensem Anno 1480. — Ex autographo, . . .421 15. Commissio Visitationis Monasterij de Ardquhatten data 262 HISTORICAL NOTICES Priori de Bello loco per Jacobum quartum Priorem seu generalem Vallis Caulium Diocoesis Lingonensis Anno 1505. — Ex autographo, ..... 424 16. Bulla Alexandri Paps sexti pro Dougallo Roderici Clerico Rossensis Diocoesis de Prioritata de Beaulieu ordinis Valliscaulium Anno 1497. — Ex autographo, . . 425 17. Bulla Gregorij XI. Papse Priori et Conventui Belli loci ordinis Valliscaulium, . . . . .431 18. Carta Andreas Moraviensis Episcopi de Decimis Garbarum et Salmonum Parochiae de Abertarf. — Ex autographo, . 432 1 9. Praesentatio ad Ecclesiam de Conueth per Priorem de Bello loco anno 1512. — Ex autographo, . . . 434 20. Praesentatio ad Ecclesiam de Conuay per Priorem et Con- ventum de Bello loco Anno 1493.— Ex autographo, . 436 21. Littera Fratris Jacobi Courtois Generalis ordinis Vallis- caulium in Burgundia Priori de Bello loco. — Ex auto- grapho, . . . . . . .437 22. Carta Dominae Ceciliae Byseth Fratribus Valliscaulium de Bello loco de tertia parte terras sua de Altir. — Ex auto- grapho, . . . . . . .441 The headings of all these transcripts, except five, state that they are ex autographo ; one only of these five (No. XXL), appears to have been transcribed by Macfarlane, from a copy ; and there is nothing to lead us to suppose that the transcripts were made from a Chartulary or Register of Beauly. It is to be feared there is little hope of satisfying the expectations arising from the language from time to time held by Scottish antiquarians respecting the records of Beauly. Mr Cosmo Innes wrote in 1861 : "The Register of the Priory of Beauly of Benedictines of Vallis Caulium, the foundation of the old family of Lovat, is still hid in some northern charter-room. It has not been seen since the days of Sir George Mackenzie, who quoted its contents. Copies of a few of the priory charters are preserved." * Mr Brichan says : f " The records . . . of the Priory of Beauly and the * Sketches of Early Scottish History, 1861, p. 21, note. + Preface to part ii. of vol. ii. of Grig. Par. Scot. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 263 Abbey of Fearn, the former of which were extant in the seventeenth century, cannot now be found ; the principal materials of their scanty early history existing in copies of some Beauly charters, preserved by Macfarlane, and in the original of, at least, one of the later Fearn charters, preserved at Balnagown." Dr Stuart says : * " The registers of the following religious houses cannot now be traced, although some of them were quoted by writers of the last century. ... XL Beauly." The origin of these statements must be the mention by Rose of Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbet's " report," as to the foundation deed of Beauly Priory (supra, p. 29). I have been unable to find any reference to the Register, or Chartulary, or Records of Beauly in any printed work, of either Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh or the Earl of Cromarty, nor in any of the Rosehaugh MSS. in the Advocates Library. There is a general belief that every monastery had its chartu- lary or register — that is, a book in which the charters relating to the house were transcribed for preservation ; but this was not always the case. We know that the charters of Cambus- kenneth were not registered in a chartulary: the register printed, was made in 1535, by royal authority, at Cambus- kenneth ; down to that time the charters and evidents belonging to the abbot and convent were kept in the abbey ; what was the practice there, was often that of smaller monasteries, like Beauly ; and we may be pretty confident that a Chartulary or Register of Beauly, in the strict sense of the term, never existed. All we can hope for is, that the priory charters, described by the minister of Wardlaw {supra, pp. 16, 17), or copies of them, may yet be discovered. We can hardly part with the charters without carrying on the history of the Priory down to the present time ; its sub- - sequent annals are short and simple enough ; they mainly consist of the account of the acquisition of its lands by Hugh, Lord Lovat, and of the state of its existing remains. * First Report of Commission on Historical Manuscripts, appendix. 264 HISTORICAL NOTICES Lord Hugh did not attain his full age till after May 1568 ; before that time, in 1567, he signs, or authorises his name to be attached to the Bond of Association, which Murray pro- cured after the queen's abdication.* Notwithstanding this,, we find him of the queen's party in July 1568, after the defeat of Langside. In June 1569, the regent and his Privy Council sat at In- verness ; and after his assassination, in January 1569-70, his widow writes to Rose of Kilravock : " Thair is mony a noble, man has promessit to be my friendis in thay pertes, sik as my Lord off Huntlie, my Lord Atholl, my Lord Lovatt/'i* The Earl of Huntly, son of that earl who had been killed on the queen's visit to the north in 1562, had been quickly received into her favour, appointed to the charge of the castle of Inverness by her, and after the death of the Regent Murray, constituted her lieutenant in the north. He was supported by the Earl of Athole, and was very anxious to get together as many friends as he could, against those who, under the patronage of Elizabeth, had, on the 1 2th July 1570, appointed Lennox, Regent of Scotland. Lord Huntly was then at Aberdeen, endeavouring to concen- trate all his strength ; and on the 26th and 27th of July 1570, he treats with the more powerful people in the north. On the 26th he makes terms with the young Lord Lovat.J Lovat took the opportunity to get Huntly's assistance in securing the possession of the Priory of Beauly, and they enter into a solemn contract ; § the earl " binds and oblesses him to assist, fortifie, and maintaine the said Hew, Lord Lowat, in all his honest, lauchful actions and causes, as he happens to have ado, and requires the s"^ Erie thereto ; and also sail, at his uttermost, labour and procur the Abbot of Kynloss, to gif and set in feu-farme, to the said Hew and his * Crawford's Officers of State, app. 442. + Family of Kilravock, p. 252. t In the "Estimate of the Scottish Nobility " for 1577, printed for the Club in 1873, mider " The Lord Lovat " is, " This Baron is of goode lyvinge and power in the North, allied and a dependaunt vpon the Erie of Huntley." § Appendix, No. XXXI. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 265 aires, all and haill the landis and mainis of Bewlyne, with the salmond fischeing * thereof." The next day Huntly writes to Kilravock, informing him of the summoning of a Parliament at Linlithgow on the queen's behalf, on the next month ; and as a rebellious fac- tion had lately gone about to treat • a new pretended form of government, established in the person of one who has sworn and professed his obedience to a foreign prince, he begged Kilravock, accompanied with his honourable household, kin, friends, and tenants, "bodin jn feir of weir," to meet him at Cupar, on the I2th day of August, with twenty days' provision. The Wardlaw minister states, that it was by the influence of Abbot Walter Reid's wife, that he was induced to agree to grant the property of the Priory of Beauly to Lord Lovat, and that she was connected with Lord Hugh through his grandmother, Janet Ross of Balnagowan. " My Lord Lovat," says this reverend gossip, " takes occasion by familiarity with Sir Walter's lady, and broaches his resolution to her, of feuing the barony of Beauly ; she assured him that his lordship would be preferred to any whomsoever in the bargain, and that she would secure her, husband of all importunities that might assault him upon that head ; she actually effected and guided him so, that the next time Lovat paid a visit to Sir Walter, they came to such an agreement, that a minute of sale was drawn up betwixt them and subscribed ; and John, Earl of Athole, and Mr John Campbell of Calder, were both witnesses to the paper, so that all was out of doubt and hazard for the future." f * This is the first time that the noble fish, whose capture constituted the value of the fishings of Fome three hundred and fifty years before, and which had caused the lord and lady of Beaufort in old time to brave excommunication and interdict, is expressly named as comprised in them. It had been discovered to be a royal fish, inter regalia — a jewel of the crown — and needed, crown lawyers said, to be expressly named, to pass to a subject. We have seen enough to show that, if the Highlander "never held it theft to take a tree from the wood or a fish from the water" (Family of Kilravock, p. 241), the property in salmon fishings was, from the earliest times, regarded as of great value : at Abertarff they are expressly named in 1242 {supra, p. 38). t Findon MSS. 266 HISTORICAL NOTICES The manner of carrying out the transfer of the property was peculiar. There was a feu-charter of the barony of Beauly — a charter making hereditary the ofHce of bailie of the barony or regality of Beauly ; and the creation of a new office, that of constable and keeper of the Palace in the place of the priory of Beauly erected by Bishop Reid, which office was also made hereditary. The feu-charter of the barony is by the prior and convent to Lord Lovat. We have from the " Records of Kinloss " a note of it, which, when collated with the Act of Parliament of 1584 confirming it, is as follows : " Charter by Walter, abbot of Kinlos and prior of the monastery of Bewlie, in favour of Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, of the barony, town, and lands of Beulie,* — namely, the village and lands of Ardin- grask [Ardnagrask], Rewindown [Rheindoun], Incherorie [Inch- rorie]. Alter [Altyre], Craigscorie [Craigscorry], Platchayth [Plat- chaig], Grome [Groam], Fernelie [Farley], with the forests and woods; Thaynok [Teachnuick], with the pendicles, — namely, Owr- croarss, the Relict [Ruilick], and Grenefauld [Greyfield], with the cottage of the same ; the lands of Vrquhany, with the woods ; the half Davoch ; the lands of Lie Boycht and Conharbrie ; third part of Meikle Culmulang [Culmil] ; third part of Eister Glen of Conveth ; fourth part of the lands of Faynblair [Fanblair] ; Lie Ferriehouse, with its croft ; Lie Amonth or Ainocht [Annat] ; Lie Auldtown, called the Common pasture ; Thacfreshe [Teafrish], with the cottage ; the lands called Lie Mason's land; the lands called Johane Clerk's Land ; a croft called M'Hucheon's Croft, and common cottage ; the dominical lands called the Mains of Bewlie, with the yards and orch- yards belonging to the Priory, and the pertinents and crofts of the said lands and lordships ; a croft called Dean James Pape's Croft ; a croft called MerscheUis Croft j a croft called M'Alesteris Croft, then occupied by Sir David Dawson ; and also the two mills called Thaynok [Teachnuick] and Bewlie Mills, with the thirled multures of the whole barony of Bewlie, and of all the lands above written, with their sequels ; and also the whole salmon fishing on the water of Forne, marching from Cairncot to the sea, or sjiywhere else on the said water between the salmon fishings of the said noble lord, Hugh, * We insert the present names in brackets. OF THE PRIORY OF EEAULY. 267 Lord Fraser of Lovat, from Kilmorak to the sea, with the cruives and other commodities lying within the Priory of Bewlie and shire of Inverness : To be held of the granter and his successors, in feu- farm fee and heritage for ever, for rendering to the granter and his successors, viz., for the toun and lands of Ardingrask, ^4, 6s. 8d. Scots, and 8s. 4d. for each boll of 12 bolls of farm victual, 3s. /[A. for each boll of 2 bolls of market wheat [oats], 30s. for each mart of 2 custom marts, 5s. for each of 4 custom sheep, i6d. for each kid of 8 custom kids, i6s. for each dozen of custom poultry, and 8d. for custom eggs. For the said town and lands of Rawindown, etc., ;^s : ^6, 3s. 4d. for 16 bolls of farm victual, 6s. 8d. for 2 bolls of custom wheat [oats], ^^ for 2 custom marts, 20s. for 4 custom sheep, IIS. 4d. for 8 kids (price of each, i6d.), i6s. for 4 dozen custom poultry, and 8d. for custom eggs. For the said town and lands of Inchrorie, 43s. 4d. : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls of farm victual, 3s. 4d. for 1 boll of custom wheat [oats], 30s. for i custom mart, los. for 2 sheep, Ss. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For the said town and lands of Alter, 56s. Sd. : sos. for 6 bolls of farm victual, 3s. 4d. for i boll of wheat [oats], 30s. for i mart, los. for 2 sheep, ss. 4d. for 2 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For the town and land of Craigskorrie, 43s. 4d : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls of farm victual, 3s. 4d. for i boll wheat [oats], 30s. for I mart, los. for 2 sheep, ss. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For town and land of Platchayth, 43s. 4d. : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls victual, 3s. 4d. for i boll wheat [oats], 30s. for I mart, los. for 2 sheep, ss. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For town and lands of Grome, S6s. 8d. : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls farm victual, 3s. 4d. for i boll wheat [oats], 30s. for I mart, los. for 2 sheep, ss. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For the town and lands of Femlie, 56s. 8d. : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls farm victual, 3s. 4d. for I boll wheat [oats], 30s. for i mart, los. for 2 sheep, ss. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for 2 dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For the town and lands of Tharknok, ;^S- For Wrquhanye, 53s. 4d. For the said half davach lands, 40s. : 33s. 4d. for 4 bolls farm victual. For the Boytht, 26s. 8d. For Conharbrie, 13s. 4d. For third part of Mekel Culmulyne, 40s. For third part of Eister Glen of Conuetht, 40s. For fourth part of Faynblair, i6s. 8d. For Lie ,Amonth, 26s. 8d. For the Fenie hous and croft, 20s. For Lye Aldtoun, 268 HISTORICAL NOTICES 26s. 8d. For Tharfreysche, 20s. For the Masonis lands, 40s., and i6d. for I kid or lamb. For Johane Cwkis [Clerk's] lands, ;^4, and 4s. for I dozen poultry. For M'Huchonis croft, 26s. 8d. For the Mayns of Bewlie, 40s. : j£;i, 6s. 8d. for 8 bolls farm victual, 3s. 4d. for I boll custom wheat [oats], 30s. for i mart, los. for 2 custom sheep, 5s. 4d. for 4 kids, 8s. for a dozen poultry, and 4d. for custom eggs. For dene [Dean] Jame Papis Croft, 46s. 8d. For MerchelHs Croft, 6s. 8d. For M'Alesteres Croft, los. For the mills of Thar- knok and Bewlie, ;^i6 : 13 s. 4d. for 40 bolls victual. And for the salmon fishings on the water of Forne, sos. for each barrel of 30 barrels of salmon ; with duplication of the said silver duties of the .whole foresaid lands at the entry of each heir; and the said lord and his heirs rendering one suit or personal presence at one of the prior's head courts, to be held at Bewlie every year, after the feast of Pente- cost. — Dated at Bewlie and Petlathie respectively, 6th and 12 th November 1571. " Walter, Abbas a Kinloss, ac commendatarius de Bewly. Ego, Dompnus Johannes Roland, subscribe. Ego, Dompnus Thomas Twynam, subscribo. Ego, dominus Iohannes Crauford, subscribo. Ego, dominus Dauid Dauson, subscribo." We can now see the extent of the endowment of the priory. Ardnagrask and Rheindoun, I conceive, are the lands of Ouchter Waddale (Outer Tarradale), granted by Charter No. VI. {supra, p. 60). They are now in the parish of Urray, and were in the parish of Kilchrist before its union with Urray. Tarradale belonged to Gillichrist Macgilliduffi about 1235 (supra, p. 61). He, by descent, was the son of one calling him- self Gillie Duffi, the servant of Duff, that may be of Duff, Earl of Fife, one of the seven earldoms of Scotland ; and he took for his name that of Gilliechrist, the servant of Christ, and showed his attachment by erecting his property of Tarradale into a parish, building a church for it, and dedicating it to his Saviour, calling it Kilchrist, the Church of Christ. The other lands, except those in the parish of Conveth, co- OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 269 incide in extent with the description of the foundation charter in the Wardlaw MS. (supra, p. i6), as extending from Outer Tarradale to the burn of Teanassie (Rivulus de Breckacfi). They are the whole of the low grounds of the parish of Kil- morack from the bounds of the parish of Urray to Teanassie, and include the line of hills above Beauly and the Beauly val- ley in Kilmorack parish, running from the heights of Rhein- doun (the King's Hill) along the ridge which takes its name of Farley (Fearnly) from the alders {Fearn) that crowd over the shallows of the lovely river as it emerges from the pinnacled rocks of the entrance to the Dhrium, and which ridge has been again in our day clothed with wood by the most zealous planter in the north,* and the Priory Hillground finishes with the Hill of the deer forest of Urchany. The lands in the parish of Conveth, which are included in this charter, are the third of Meikle Kilmoling (Culmil), the third of the Easter Glen of Conveth (Convinth), and the fourth of Fyndblair (Fanblair), all lands now in the parish of Kiltarlity. The mode of acquisition of these lands by the Priory does not appear by the transcribed charters, but some indication of the period when they must have been given to the monks appears from their description. They are described as thirds and fourths of lands ; they could not have been part of the kirklands of Conveth, if that church was granted to the priory by John Byset the younger, as is possible (supra, p. 5 3), as before his time the Bysets were owners of the entirety of those lands ; and it seems much more likely that the thirds of Kilmoling and Easter Glen of Con- veth were granted by some of the three co-heirs of the Bysets after 1259 (supra, p. 54), and that the fourth of Fanblair was granted after 1438 by one of the four co-heirs of Walter de Fenton (supra, p. 98). As we find no mention now of any lands being thirled to the mills of Beauly except those comprised in the barony of Beauly, the lands of which barony were all in Kilmorack * The late Lord Lovat : his neighbour, the late Alexander William Chisholm, M.P., followed his example, and planted the great wood at Erchless in 1834-37. 270 HISTORICAL NOTICES parish, except these third and fourth parts of lands, which were in Conveth parish — if the grant of multures by the Founder to the monks is correctly given in the Wardlaw MS. {supra, p. 17) — it is probable that these Conveth lands were granted in exchange for some of the multures of lands in Con- veth parish* after the fashion of the exchange of Patrick Graham effected by Charter No. IX. For some reason, a separate charter seems to have been taken of these Conveth lands, though they are included in the charter of the barony. This separate charter is doubtless the same as that inventoried in 1652 as No. XV., though the writer styles the lands as of " Kilmorra." -f Farley and Urchany, we may observe, are granted — Farley with the forests and woods, and Urchany with the woods. The monks probably encouraged the clothing of those heights with timber and trees, protecting the arable lands from the winds that sweep down from the mountain range of Beneva- chart (nearly 3000 feet in height). The name Dean James Pope's croft indicates a croft once occupied by James Pope {dominus Jacobus Pop'), one of the junior monks sent to Kinloss in 1540 to be taught by Fer- rarius {supra, p. 220). James Pope seems to have been after- wards dean, perhaps of the priory, though we have no other notice of the office. The occupation of this croft by him, and of another by the monk David Dawson, one of his fellow-pupils, who still survived, with what Ferrarius says about Adam Elder and his garden produce {supra, p. 222), indicates a departure from the pristine rules of common work for the common good. The last subject conveyed is the prime jewel of the whole setting, the salmon fishings in the waters of Forne, that is, the salmon fishing granted by the Founder to the monks under the title of the Fishings of Forne {szipra, No. I., * It may be that " Kermiath," mentioned among the lands of which the mul- tures were granted, is really " Conveth." t The separate charter is noted, without date, by Dr Stuart (Records of Kin- loss, p. 97), and the entry No. 15 in the Inventory is "ane charter be the Abbot of Kinloss to Hew, Lord Eraser of Lowet, of ye lands of Kilmorra, daitit ye day of " (Dunbar Dunbar MSS.). OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 271 p. 15), and extending from Cairncot* to the sea. These, added to the fishings of the church lands of Kilmorack and Kiltarlity, already acquired by the Lords Lovat, secured the whole lower fishings of the river Beauly, with the cruives. The charter is signed by Walter Reid, who styles him- self "Abbas a Kinloss ac commendatarius de Bewly," and four monks, who sign, each with the prefix of dominus — John Roland, Thomas Twynam, John Crawfurd, and David Daw- son. These are doubtless four of the six monks who signed the lease to the Clerks three years before ; and three — Twynam, Crawfurd, and Dawson, were old pupils of Ferrarius thirty years before. It seems that the feu-duties or ground rents made payable by this charter were the then existing rents payable by the then tenants of the priory, converted into money when not money rents, and this conclusion is arrived at from comparing the lease No. XXIII. with this charter. By the charter, Rheindoun pays ;£'s in money, 16 bolls of farm victual, 2 bolls of custom oats,-f- 2 custom marts, 4 custom sheep, 8 kids, 4 dozen custom poultry, and fourpence for cus- tom eggs ; now this is just the rent payable by the Clerks multiplied by eight : nor is this all, Johane Cwkis lands, by the charter, pay £,\ and 4s. for one dozen of poultry ; John Clerk's land, by the lease, pays £if in money and a dozen of poultry. * The Cairncot was probably some point or cottage opposite the cairn of which the minister of Wardlaw speaks. He says the mother of Hugh Eraser of Lovat, who is recorded in 1367 (supra, p. 89), intended to have built a stone bridge over the water of Beauly, for which purpose a great heap of stones was collected, " still to be seen in ye river, called Caim-na-baintigheama " (the Lady's Cairn), but was prevented by her death from executing the work. The spot would probably be not far from the cruives, where the boundary lay between the monks' rights of fishing and the churchland rights belonging to Kilmorack and Kiltarlity. + Dr Stuart calls this custom wheat, but if he had had experience of Rhein- doun husbandry he would have suspected the true correctness of his reading. The 2 boUs of custom (wheat) are really eight times the ' ' one firlot aites, ' ' payable for an eighth of Rheindoun. A boll of wheat in ijgi was estimated at five marks, or £},, 6s. 8d., while a boll of oats was only estimated at £\, los. (Family of Kilravock, p. 278). 272 HISTORICAL NOTICES The services exigible by the lease were of course of no use to the superior, and no equivalent for them is given by the charter. And we may also compare with advantage the feu-duty reserved by the charter, with the rental of 1562, and we shall find that the feu-duties reserved by the charter for money payments amount to the same as those given in the rental ; * so the chalders of victual are 4 in the rental, and by the charter 4, less 2 bolls ; for the custom oats (not wheat) 8 bolls ; the marts the same, and the sheep the same, and even the poultry exactly the same ; of kids it appears the collector of thirds took no account. The two mills of Beauly are put in the rental as sett (let), for 2 chalders 8 bolls meal and malt, which is no doubt the same rent as the 40 bolls victual for the mills of Tharknok and Bewlie. Notwithstanding the suspicions of the comptroller, it was thought better to take the salmon at the quantity given up as correct to him, 2 lasts six barrels, or 30 barrels — a last being 12 barrels. The other charter, dated the same day, is noted by Dr Stuart as follows : • " Charter by Walter, abbot of Kinloss and prior of the monastery of Bewlie, in favour of Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lowatt, for certain great sums of money, and for other reasonable causes, of the oiHce of con- stable and hereditary keeper of the palace and principal buildings of the messuage in the place of the Priory of Bewlie, erected by the late Bishop of Orkney and prior of the said monastery, on the east side of the church of Bewlie ; also, of the office of hereditary baiUe, within the bounds of the lands of the said priory, with the power of minister- ing justice, of apprehending and punishing malefactors according to law, of holding courts, etc., etc., within the bounds foresaid : To be held of the granter and his successors in feu and heritage for ever, render- ing for the said office of constable and keeper foresaid, two silver pennies, in name of blench farm at the feast of Pentecost, if asked ; * In fact the money rent by the charter is only ;fS9i ^os., whilst the rental gives ;f6i ; but the number of marts in the rental is only lo, whereas in the charter it is ii, and the commuted price, £i, los. makes up the deficiency. OF THE PRIORY OF EEAULY. 273 and for the office of bailiary, two pence of the usual money of Scot- land, in name of blench farm, at the said feast, if asked. Dated at the monastery of Bewlie and Petlathie respectively, 6th and 12th November 1571."* It was probably a real advantage to Lord Hugh to get the excellent house erected by the bishop. Lord Hugh seems to be residing at Beauly, and dating his deeds there, in May 1573 f and November iS/S-j It seems that before this time Lord Lovat had lent Abbot Walter, on the security of the barony of Beauly, 4500 marks, had paid him in November 1571 4500 marks more, and that he was bound to complete the purchase by paying a third 4500 marks at Whitsunday 1572, or else the charter of November 1571 was only to be a security. The minister of Wardlaw says that it was of importance in those times to get the prior's charter confirmed by the Crown, which was not then a matter of course ; but Lord Lovat had just married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Athole. We will let the chronicler tell the story : " The Lord Lovat and his lady design to go south in May : in the very interim of preparing and making ready for the journey, a sudden disaster and indisposedness seized upon my lady, so that she could not travel. He was loath to leave her, but she told him she might recover, but occasions lost were irrecoverable. He wondered what might be under this reply and ambiguous sentiment, and asked her seriously what she meant. She told him that Colin Mackenzie of Kintail was still his competitor, and he might be too cunning for him, as she feared that he and his party were contriving a plot to apply to and prevail with the regent, their relation, anent the right of Beauly ; the court was changeable, courtiers flexible, donations and pactions alterable. He yields to her advice, and presently takes horse, and, at Inverness, is informed that Colin of Kintail had taken the start of him, and was gone on the journey south. Lovat, being well acquaint with the road, cuts short, and arrived by a day's journey before him at Edinburgh, some saying they were a night in one and the same lodging, or perhaps in one town on the way, unknown to one * Records of Kinloss, pp. 96, 97. t Family of Fraser, p. 86. J lb., p. 99. S 274 HISTORICAL NOTICES another. But, be sure, Lord Lovat had his intelligence of the other'i motions, and made but short stay in any part till he came to hii journey's end; and, in short, he secured his object and got his righ of Beauly through the seals before Mackenzie came to Edinburgh The day after, they met together in the open street, and the whoh matter came above board, and Kintail found himself outwitted." * In point of fact, the charters of confirmation under th( Great Seal of these charters of the prior and convent o November 1571 were granted on 14th February following February 1 57i-2.-t- The regent was then Lennox. We have the note of a receipt on 30th April 1572 : " Discharge by Walter, Abbot of Kinlos and Prior of Bewlie, t( Hew, Lord Fraser of Lowet, for 4500 merks contained in a reversioi made by the said lord to the said abbot, for redemption of the lands mains, fishings of Bewlie, and their pertinents, in case of non-pay ment of the said sum before the feast of Whitsunday next, the saic 4500 merks being complete payment of 13,500 merks promised bi the said lord to the said abbot for the feu of the said lands, mains and fishings of Bewlie. Dated at Dundee, 30th April 1572."! Lord Lovat seems to have got some of the money paid tc the prior in November 1571 on a wadset to the Countess o Crawford, Janet Campbell, his mother's sister,§ and some the money paid in May 1572 on a security to David Waus o Leith, a merchant, who took salmon (fifty-six barrels), full rec and sweet, at Lammas 1573, of Lord Hugh, probably in pay ment of interest, and who exchanged with his lordship sail for salmon.jl Lord Hugh conveyed away Rheindoun the same year ir June to Bain of Tulloch, and Ardnagrask was also shortlj afterwards conveyed away. It is probable that the energj displayed by Lord Hugh in the acquisition of Beauly wa; due to the zeal of his wife. It seems that this 13,500 marks, or ;^9000, was mainly paic * Findon MSS. t Dunbar Dunbar MSS., 1652; Inventory, Nos. 16 and 44. J Records of Kinloss, p. 98. § Dunbar Dunbar MSS.; Inv., Nos. 81 and 71. || Family of Fraser, p. 87. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 275 for the house of the prior, and the difference between the rental and the actual value, which would be paid on the exist- ing leases being renewed : as the process of getting the full benefit of the priory's rights over the parishes, whose rectories she had appropriated, was not yet accomplished. And now Walter, the prior, having taken his 13,500 marks out of the property of the priory by selling it under a feu- rent to Lord Lovat, was content to give up the office of prior to a Fraser, doubtless a faithful and obedient vassal of the chief On the 29th April 1572,* the day before his receipt of the last instalment of the purchase money, Walter Reid executes a procuratory of resignation into the hands of the king of the benefice, priory, and monastery of Beauly, in favour of Mr John Fraser. The Earl of Mar was then the regent ; and on his death on the 29th October 1572, it was thought ad- visable to obtain a new resignation, which was signed by Walter Reid on the 25 th November, the day after the Earl of Morton was elected regent.-f- He, anxious to conciliate the Huntly party, followed up the resignation, by directing, in the name of the king, on the 8th January 1573, a precept to the superintendent of the churches within the diocese of Ross, to instal Mr John Fraser in possession of the Priory of Beauly, the said Mr John Fraser being found by his ordinary of sufficient literature and ability for the said priory. Mr John Fraser, within a few months after his presentation, executed a new charter of conveyance of the barony of Beauly to Lord Lovat on 8th June 1573 and in June 1575, a charter of the Dominical lands and the salmon fishings, on which sasine was duly given.| It seems probable that this Mr John Fraser was the vicar or minister of Conveth {supra, p. 242) ; Mr John Fraser, the minister, takes the priory's portion of the Conveth living, and then grants to the Master of Lovat all the leases § which we have before specified, including that of the vicarage of * Records of Kinloss, p. 98. t Lovat Titles, Dunbar Dunbar MSS., No. 26. X Dunbar Dunbar MSS., Lovat Titles^Nos. 6, 7, 9, 25, 31. % Supra, 243; Appendix, No. XXVIII, 276 HISTORICAL NOTICES Conveth, which, although he professed to grant as prior, yet it could not have been effectual except as granted by the vicar. Hugh, Lord Lovat, died in January iS 77; and Simon, his infant son, in his sixth year gets sasine of the lands of Beauly on loth November 1578, and a confirmation under the Great Seal of the charter of Prior Walter Reid on the 1 0th August 1579. The collector-general of Thirds, Robert, Lord Boyd, seems to have taken the hint given by the local collector as to the doubtful accuracy of Prior Walter's return of the produce of the fishings, to have improved on it, and to have questioned the right of the young lord's tutors to limit their payment in respect of Beauly to a third of the feu-duty reserved by the charter of November 1571, which we have seen was equivalent to the rental given up by Prior Walter to the collector ; but Lord Boyd was unsuccessful. The principal Tutor of Lovat was Thomas Fraser of Knockie (afterwards of Strichen), his uncle, the founder of the Strichen family, which in 18 16, just 240 years after his tutory began, succeeded to the estates of his ward. Strichen upheld the rights of his ward against all comers, and got a decree of the Court of Session against Lord Boyd, declaring that the third of the benefice of the Priory of Beauly was to be considered a third of the feu-rent reserved by the charter of Prior Walter. This decision confirms the view we have already taken, that this feu-rent corresponded to the actual rent paid by the tenants of the priory ; the benefit of the transaction lay in the reversionary profit expectant on the determination of the leases of the occupying tenants, in the acquisition of the palace or prior's house of Beauly, and in the secured power of obtaining those beneficial leases of the appropriated rectorial tithes of Abertarff and Conveth, which were imme- diately granted by the new prior. Some hold was also got in this way over the glebe lands of Conveth and Comar ; the kirklands mentioned in the register of 1576 — which hold OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 277 seems to have prevented their falling to the Crown by the Act of Annexation. In 1584, by an Act of Parliament, the King and Estates, reciting the good service done by the deceased Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, and his son and heir, Simon, then Lord Fraser of Lovat, confirmed the charter of Prior Walter, the sasine following given to the said Hugh, and the other sasine given to his heir Simon, and the charter of confirmation of 1579; directing the third to be paid according to the infeft- ment, together with the decreet against the collector-general to pay only according to the infeftment ; and ordaining the third to be paid after the rate and quantity of the feu-duty ; and ordering the said decreet, given by the Lords of Session, to have the force of a decree of Parliament.* The reference to good service done by the boy lord is a mere form of the lawyer who drafted the Act of Parliament ; Lord Simon was only twelve years old,-f and at King's College, Aberdeen, which he left without the knowledge of his tutor, in July 1586, and wrote to his tutor six months after, from the north of Ireland, that he was visiting there. The person with whom he was staying was Sorley Buy, who styled himself Lord of the Route, and is named with Macangus M'Onell of the Glens, as witnesses to a bond of interdiction, executed by Lord Simon, in September 1587. The connection between them was the marriage of Janet Campbell, Lord Lovat's grandmother, to Donald Macdonald. Thus, three centuries after John Byset, the founder of our priory, retired to Ireland, and obtained from Henry III.j a grant of the lands, some of which were now possessed by the Macdonalds of the Route and the Glens, claiming under John Byset's Irish descendants § — his most important descendant in the Highlands took refuge with them. The youth's mother * Acts of Pari. Scot., iii., p. 356. t In the "Estimate of the Scottish Nobility, 1683," the entry is : "Louet.— Hew Fraser, a childe of xii yeres of age, sonne to her that is now Lady of Arran, ane auncient house, and of good power of Hilandmen in the North." t Supra, p. 46. § Appendix, No. VIII. 278 HISTORICAL NOTICES may have driven him to this, for his tutor seems to have up- held the position of his ward against her and her infamous husband, the Earl of Arran. The writer of the Wardlaw MS. says the tutor's first act of kindness was to reinstate in their cells the monks of Beauly who had been dispossessed by Act of Parliament, and to see a provision assigned them for the remainder of their days.* There was no Act of Parliament dispossessing them except the Act obtained by the tutor himself, but this act of kindness was done before its date. The kindness was probably con- firming the allowances mentioned in the rental. If dispos- sessed, they must have been so treated by the new prior or Hugh, Lord Lovat, but without any warrant, as the charters of Prior Walter do not include the priory buildings. In 1587, the year which saw the judicial murder of his mother, King James procured the Act for the general annexa- tion of the Church lands to the Crown. This included all that belonged to the Priory of Beauly which had not been granted to the Lovat family, and the feu-rent. The Wardlaw MS. tells us of another act of the good tutor : "While the Tutor of Lovat was thus discharging the duties of his important trust, his paternal cares were nearly overturned by the following incident : It happened that no marches were settled between the priory lands of Beauly and their neighbours to the north, t The Laird of Kintail having an eye upon these, assembled his vassals, with the intention of appropriating them to himself. The tutor, hearing of this disturber of the general peace of the country, rendezvoused his followers at Beauly. The Laird of Foulis, his staunch friend, advanced to the banks of the Conan with three hundred men, to support his cause. Alarmed at the intrusion of so formidable an array into his territories, Mackenzie had recourse to pacification ; and the terms being such as were consistent with their rights, the tutor drew off his forces, and all differences were forgotten." J It was probably a part of these terms that the young lord * Family of Fraser, p. 92. + The line of hills mentioned supra, p. 269. X Family of Fraser, p. 93. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULV. 279 should marry Catherine, daughter of the Laird of Kintail, which he did when he was not more than seventeen years old. The entry as to him in the " Present State of the Nobilities in Scotland, 15192,"* is : "Lovatt . . . Frasir . . . Prot. of23 yeres ; his mother, Stewart, aunt to Atholl ; his wife, the Laird of Mackenzie's daughter." Again, in 1602, the entry is : " The Lord Lovet, callit Fraser : Protestant, of small action." f He built the castle of Dalcross in 1620. | It is said that in 1626 Sir Alexander Fraser of Doors having lost his lady, came to visit Lord Lovat, and died, whilst his guest, in May that year, and was interred in St Catherine's aisle in Beauly Priory, his lordship's own burial-place. Lord Lovat died in April 1633, and was buried, it is said, in the priory church.§ We may assume that Crawford and Twynam would not have added, the one the word " friar," and the other the word "monk," to their names, in 1568, unless they had still retained the Catholic faith; they were both monks in 1540, if not in 1557. Half a century elapsed before the Act of Annexation in 1587 ; till that time the brethren at Beauly were entitled to reside in the priory buildings, although they were forbidden by the Act 1567 to say mass in the priory church. Perhaps the pupils of Ferrarius still gave some instruction to some of the young gentry of the north, as before the Reformation (supra, pp. 1 82, 230), seeing that for a time nothing was done to supply the place of the monastic schools. || The Act of Annexation excepted church property granted for the entertainment of masters and students in colleges, but it com- pleted the destruction of the provision for primary education that existed in the monasteries, which the profuse grants of the abbots and priors had begun. In 1587 Simon, Lord Lovat, was an exile in Antrim, and the tutor, Strichen, managed his estates. As long as the tutor lived, the monks would not be disturbed. He appears in 161 1 * Estimate of Scottish Nobility, p. 70. t li-, P- 78- t Family of Lovat, p. 169. § lb., p. loi. II Appendix, No, XXXII. 280 HISTORICAL NOTICES to have buried his wife in the priory church. He himself died in 1612. By the time of the death of Lord Simon in 1633, the last monk of Beauly would have disappeared. There are no remains of the priory buildings except the church, and some fragments clinging to the walls of the church, from which it would appear that the priory buildings were attached to it at the south-west end of the nave, and at the south end of the south chapel or aisle. The build- ings probably formed a square, having the south wall of the nave, which is eighty feet long, for one side of it, and were two stories in height at the points of connection with the church. There was a cloister against the nave, which was sixty feet long on that side, and this cloister probably ran round the whole square enclosing the Cloister Garth. The general arrangement 'may be understood from the annexed sketch of ground plan, where the dotted lines indi- cate the priory buildings, and the lines the existing remains of the priory church. Scale — 208 feet to an inch. And now we may inquire into the actual extent of the restoration of the church, which was executed, according to Ferrarius {supra, p. 219), by Bishop Robert Reid. Before we examine the traces afforded by the building itself, we may obtain help by the account Ferrarius gives of his patron's architectural work in Orkney. Bishop Reid, the Piedmontese tells us, greatly enlarged Kirkwall Cathedral, the cathedral church of Orkney, adding OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 281 three pillars (piers) to the former fabric, and decorating the entry with a magnificent porch. Mr Neale, speaking of Kirkwall Cathedral, mentions * that Bishop Robert Reid, who succeeded in 1540, is said to have erected the three Romanesque western pillars of the nave, and the First Pointed western porch, and he adds : f " Popular tradition says that Bishop Reid added the new bays, and was prevented by the progress of the Reformation { from vaulting them in, but granting that in his new piers he did imitate the old work, and that this is one of the few instances in which Third Pointed restoration fell back on Romanesque, he would not have imitated First Pointed in the new portions of his aisles, and Middle Pointed in his west window ; nor could he, if he would, have made the beauti- ful western porch a gem of First Pointed ; add to which, that, as I am fully satisfied, the vaulting has been complete, and then pulled down, not left incomplete." Now I have faith in the contemporary account of the bishop's friend and companion, Ferrarius, and we shall find, on exam- ining the architecture of the priory church at Beauly, that it is probable the bishop extended both the cathedral church and the priory church in the same fashion. The ground plan will help the reader to understand the priory church of Beauly. From the wall, at the eastern end of the choir or chancel, C, down to a point about fifty feet from the western door, the work is pure Early English work, of the style which was pre- valent in England and Scotland in the year 1230, and for thirty or forty years following it. This no doubt is the original work executed after 1230, and in the lifetime of John Byset and his son, and it corresponds to the earliest work at Pluscardine, and to all that remains of the church at Ardchattan. Even here there is a difference between the easternmost, * Ecclesiological Notes, p. loi. + Id., p. 103. J Tlic progress of the Reformation could not affect the bishop's work. 282 HISTORICAL NOTICES and presumably the first, work — that to the east of the tran- septs, and that to the west of them. The earlier windows are not foliated. The later windows on the north side are trefoil headed above the muUion, and on the south side there is the remarkable feature of three windows externally spherically triangular, but the opening for light trefoil-shaped — a style nearly resembling windows of the same date at Westminster Abbey (where the spherical triangle encloses a foliated circle), and in design like some at Pluscardine, and which style was adopted by the architect, in order to leave room for the cloisters below, although the cloisters were probably roofed with wood, resting on the corbel stones, still to be seen in the wall. There is a beautiful double piscina, S', in the south wall, exe- cuted in the very best style of the Early English period, and under the east window is an awmry. The remains of the east window show that it must have been altered after the original erection of the choir ; this is a large window, with a fragment attached to the spring of the window arch, which shows that the head must have been filled in with tracery. This implies a window of the style of Scottish architecture which prevailed after the Baliol wars were over. The Wardlaw MS. speaks of the wife of the first Eraser of Lovat as filling the east window of the priory church with baken glass. It puts the first Lovat much too far back ; but there may have been some true tradition of this beautify- ing the choir. The style of the east window would corre- spond with work done between 1367 and 1384, when Hugh, the first recorded Eraser of Lovat, was in possession ; and it is not improbable that he or his wife took down the combina- tion of separate lancet windows, which would form the east window of the Early English period, and inserted one large window of several lights, with the head pierced by flowing tracery, and full of stained glass. The side windows of the choir have over them a bead mould- ing forming an arcade, and resting upon small corbels, which seem now to be simply balls. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 283 So little remains of Ardchattan Priory that it is only a trace here and there which indicates the period of its erection. What is left appears to be the chancel of the church, with an aisle or chapel on the north side, and in the south wall of the chancel there is a piscina or ablution drain under an arch, with a credence table, which arch is ornamented with the Early English toothed ornament. The east windows of the chancel are gone. At the end of the chancel are some re- mains of strong, piers, which suggest a xentral tower there. The "Old Statistical Account" of 1793 says: "What now re- mains of the priory is converted into burying-ground, in which are two monuments in niches in the walls. Each has a stone coffin, and one of them is ornamented with a font and in- scription in the Runic character. On two gravestones are effigies of priests in their pontifical robes, with inscriptions in the same character." There appears to be an Early English lancet window in the prior's house, and in the church there are no indications of buildings of a later period.* In Pluscardine, the Early English style marks much of the building, as may be seen from Mr Billings' engravings, in his handsome work on " Scottish Architecture." At Beauly there is still on the first floor at A a fireplace and a garde-robe, which is continued to the ground, and close to which are the vestiges of a staircase. There is said to be a drain running from this point in the direction of the Beauly. This fireplace had the chimney standing above it at the times that Cordiner and Cardonnel took their views of the priory. At B there is a door which must have led to the priory buildings in that direction ; and there are masses of stone, showing that the walls were pulled down to this point. The tradition of the village is that here was the Infirmary. Pro- bably the Dormitory was at D — a continuation of the same * General Hutton inserts, in his MSS. in Brit. Mus., an extract from a letter of August 1798 by a lady, who had just visited Ardchattan Priory. She says : " The place has been destroyed by the possessor for the sake of the stones, much to the regret of the inhabitants. The old tombs, therefore, are almost the only remains of what it once Was" (B.M., Add. MSS., 8142). 284 HISTORICAL NOTICES building with steps leading down into the South chapel or vestry, for the use of the brethren at midnight and early- prayers. At R would be probably the Refectory, and at E the en- trance to the priory. At P and P" there are doors from the cloister into the church, probably processional doors. The South chapel, V, is by some supposed to be the St Catherine's Chapel mentioned in the Wardlaw MS. (supra, p. 279) as where Sir A. Fraser of Doors was buried when on a visit to Simon, Lord Lovat. It was probably the Vestry or place where the vestments were kept, as it must have been too low for divine service, and there is now no trace of an altar there. The North chapel or aisle is said by tradition to have been the Chapter-house, and also St Catherine's Chapel. It was quite large enough to contain the brethren of the house when "chapterly gathered." It had a stone-groined roof, with ribs springing from corbels, and these are of later work, apparently, than that of the choir. Hugh Fraser of Lovat, who married Janet Fenton in 1416, is said to have built the north work of the church and the Chapel of the Holy Ghost. The wall on the north side, which divides the North chapel from the nave, appears to be con- tinuous with the wall of the nave, and so is the wall on the south side ; although there is a large arch opening into the South chapel of later construction, it seems to have been an opening into the upper part of the transept only, which was divided horizontally into two floors, the lower being little more than seven feet high. The north work of Hugh Fraser must have been the north transept, with the turret at its north-west corner, up which is a stair, and which was pro- bably a bell-turret for the bell summoning the chapter. The Chapel of the Holy Ghost was external to the present church, and the piscina or water stoup, s, still remains in the external wall of the nave, twenty-two feet from its junction with the north transept, showing that the altar of the Chapel was near this spot, at right angles to the piscina ; and OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 285 this altar would probably have been to the east, for, in 1416, the practice of having side altars facing the north or south was not common. On examining the external walls, we find traces of the extent to which this Chapel of the Holy Ghost went ; it seems to have ended easterly, just beyond the piscina, so as not to darken the beautiful two-light windows of the nave, and to have extended westerly to the then depth of the nave. The alterations made by Prior Mackenzie (supra, p. 105) were simply confined to piercing the walls between the tran- septs and the nave, to afford room for his own tomb, and for his brother, the Knight of Kintail's tomb. It is perfectly clear that the latest alteration in the church was a very extensive addition, amounting to a lengthening of the nave by upwards of thirty feet below the present door, p', leading into the cloisters. The windows in this western part of the nave are poor and late imitations of the Early English work at the east end. The two on the north side are clumsy single-light windows ; whilst of the two on the south side, the western one is a two-light window of debased workmanship, and the other is ill-shaped but large, as if to throw increased light, suggesting the posi- tion of a rood loft : so the windows in the western gable itself are, if to be considered Gothic at all, only a base kind of Romanesque-Gothic* But the internal arrangements of the nave show not only the fact, but the reason of its prolonga- tion. Not far above the junction of the prolonged walls there is a double piscina, s", and awmry, showing that at this point there must have been an altar stretching across the church. The work of this piscina is a faithful, but yet ineffectual, imitation of the pretty piscina in the choir. * Captain White, R.E. (Proc. S. A. Scot., June 13, 1870), maintains that this western gable is Early English work. He says it "is almost an exact counter- part, only in miniature, of the window arrangement in the west front of Wells Cathedral, which is known to be Early English." Whatever may be said to the similarity of the window arrangement of the two fronts, I fear that the shade of Bishop Josceline would arise if the comparison were extended to the workmanship. 286 HISTORICAL NOTICES I take it, Bishop Reid extended the choir of the church from the transepts down to the point where he erected a new altar, probably for the use of the villagers of Beauly, whilst he increased the space for the monks, the brethren of the choir, and, as a memorial of his work, he put up his initials and arms on the outside of the new western gable. One of his objects probably was to extend the space for processions at the greater festivals. There may have been a western bell-tower before,* and the cloister square was pro- bably not extended. The upper floor, however, at A in the plan, was most likely added by the bishop ; and the room there may have served for the residence of the sub-prior. Precisely the same desire to afford longer space for proces- sions would have induced him to prolong the nave of the cathedral at Kirkwall. He had, on becoming bishop, largely increased the chapter of the cathedral by instituting a com- plete set of officials, on the scale of the most liberal establish- ments of England and Scotland (supra, p. 222 ; App., No. XXV.). It appears by his work at Beauly that the bishop was not unskilful in imitating the early and simpler style of Gothic ; and I conceive that he added the three western bays to Kirk- wall Cathedral, whilst he probably reinserted there the Early English western door which had stood in the western gable before he pulled it down, to prolong the nave. In fact, the construction of the western gable of Kirkwall Cathe- dral, as engraved by Mr Billings (vol. iii., plate 44), seems to indicate that the great portal had been removed from a thicker wall than that in which the transomed window above it is placed ; and there is a, somewhat unadorned and inartistic triangular projection brought out to make the wall below thick enough to receive the great portal. Simon, Lord Lovat, was succeeded by his son Hugh, whose retour gives the feu -rent of Beauly at ;^ 2 11, iSs.-j- This does not correspond accurately with the rent reserved by the charter of 15 71 ; but on comparing that with the return in the * Supra, pp. 93, 219. t Inq. Ret., Invemess-shire, May 19, 1635. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 287 MS. in the Register House of the charge of the Temporalitie of Kirklandis, north side of the Forth, we find that Lord Simon's rent had been sHghtly augmented, and slightly varies from the charter, which omits the interesting item of " The common brew-hous in money, xvis.," found in the return. On the 22d December 1639, King Charles I. granted the Priory of Beauly to the Bishop of Ross.* The effect of this was to give the bishop the feu-rent oi £211, iSs., to make him the superior of the lands, and to vest in him the property of the priory church and priory buildings, other than the prior's house built by Bishop Reid, which was detached from the monastery proper. The Bishop of Ross was at that time also entitled to the feu-rent of ;^io, 6s. 8d., payable by Lord Lovat, in respect of the kirklands and fishing of Kilmorack {supra. Charter No. XXII.). Cromwell's citadel at Inverness, which is said to have been partly built out of the ruins of the Cathedral of Fortrose (supra, p. 193), is reported to have laid the Priory of Beauly under contribution for stone. The rights of the Bishop of Ross would be then vested in the Government, and the property of the priory buildings would belong to Cromwell as Lord Protector. On the Restoration, the Bishop of Ross resumed his rights over the priory ; for example, in 1688, James, Bishop of Ross, as superior, with consent of his chapter, as having right to the Priory of Beauly by grant from King Charles I., con- firms a charter of Rheindoun,-f- part of which lands were leased to John Clerk by the Charter No. XXIII. The buildings would be used without licence from bishop or chapter as a quarry for stone ; and most likely Hugh, Lord Lovat, who, about 1665, is said to have erected a mansion-house at Beauly, and to have demolished the House of Lovat, for the sake of using its oak rafters for his Beauly house, took largely of the priory buildings for the purpose. He may have only enlarged the prior's house at Beauly. In 1691, on the abolition of -Episcopacy, the feu-rent, and * Hutton's MSS. in Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 8144, p. 142. + Chisholm MSS. 288 HISTORICAL NOTICES the church and priory buildings, if any remained, reverted to the Crown, of whom the Lovat family would hold the Beauly lands, until their forfeiture in 1746. We hear nothing more of Beauly Priory until Pennant, in 1769, inserts the entry : "August 17. Ford the Bewley, where a salmon fishery, belonging to the Lovat estate, rents at ^^ 120 per annum. The country on this side the river is called Leornamonach, or the Monks' land, having formerly been the property of the Abby of Bewly."* On his return from Rbss-shire, August 29, he enters : " Pass near the Abby of Beaulieu, a large ruin ; cross the ferry, and again reach Inver- ness,"-f- with a note, "Founded about 1219, by Lord Patrick Bisset, for the Monks of Vallombrosa." Pennant's allusion was followed up by the Rev. Charles Cordiner, Episcopalian minister at Banff, who published his "Antiquities" in 1780, and dates one of his letters to Pennant, "Abbey of Beaulieu, June loth." We may quote his de- scription, as showing the reviving interest even then in eccle- siastical antiquities in Scotland : " Round this ruined monastery at present, nothing but rural images invite attention. The venerable boughs of aged trees cast their shade on either hand. Within all is silence and desolation. Decaying monuments of saints and heroes are but as ' the clouds of other times,' and give a transient solemnity to the recollection of past ages. The thought of these courts having often echoed with the glad Te Deums of thousands who, along with their temple, are now mouldering into dust, deepens the veneration which these hallowed ruins inspire. " The whole floor of the abbey is crowded with tombstones of various ages, many of them, I should suppose, nearly co-eval with itself, which was built in the thirteenth century. The most ancient of these appear to have been the lids of stone coffins. On each is a large cross, orna- * Pennant's Tour in Scotland, Chester, 1771, p. 140. t Ii-1 p. 161. His entiy of tlie then price of provisions at Inverness is interest- ing: "Beef (22 ounces to the pound), 2d. to 4d.; mutton, 2d. to 3d. ; veal, 3d.to6d.; chickens, 3d. to 4d. a couple; fowl, 4d. to 6d. a piece; goose, I2d. to I4d.; ducks, IS. a couple; eggs, seven a penny; salmon, of which there are several great fisheries, id. to ijd. per pound." OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 289 mented with various flowerings, sometimes with swords, and other emblems, at the side; and, as there is not along with these any vestige of letters, it is a tacit acknowledgment that writing was little practised at the time when these monuments were carved; for, as many of them must have been cut under the eye, and by the direc- tion, of the clergy, and as monasteries were in this country the first seats of learning, and where the fine arts were principally studied and encouraged, it must place the era of these stones at least five hun- dred years back. At the same time, a degree of neatness and elegance, which prevails both in the design and execution of the carvings, implies a refinement in taste and progress in the arts at that period, which certainly had much declined in later ages. In the vaults of the abbey there are some remains of bodies found in the stone coffins. On the lids of these are warriors, well carved and in fine relief; these have Latin inscriptions in old characters round the margin, which seem to be dated in the fifteenth century, but are in general so much defaced, it is impossible to copy them. " A few of the most distinct figures on the older gravestones are marked in the foreground of the view of the abbey." He gives two views of the ruins ; and one of the figures in the foreground deserves attention : it seems to be a represen- tation of the then state of a large tombstone now lying on the north side of the chancel : this has on it a figure in armour, and an almost illegible inscription, of which, however, the words " Simon Dus. de Lovit "* may be distinctly made out. This must be the monument of Lord Simon, who died in 1633, or of a more interesting person — Simon, who is supposed to have been the predecessor and elder brother of Hugh Fraser of Lovat of 1367 {supra, p. 89). On the one hand, as Captain White remarks, + the correct style, after the elevation of the family to the peerage, was " Dominus Fraser de Lovat ;" and this very style is given as the inscription on the tomb in the Priory church of Hugh, Lord Lovat, who fell at Kinlochy (supra, p. 225). On the other hand, the only existing memorial is much more likely to be that of the last Fraser of Lovat who was buried there, * No other words can be relied on except " obilis vir." t Proc. S. A. Scot., June 13, 1870, p. 456. T 290 HISTORICAL NOTICES than of the first; and the whole cutting is so obliterated that we can place little reliance on the supposed details of the armour, such as the "roundels" on the shoulders, on which Captain White relies for attributing an earlier date to it than 1633- Armour was used down to 1633 ;* and the helmet, in the form of a conical steel cap or bascinet, though, strictly speak- ing, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is almost in- variably the monumental type of helmet of every age in the North of Scotland, f We have certainly this form of helmet on the monument of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, A.D. 1491 (see frontispiece), and on the armed figures on the monument of the Macdougals at Ardchattan, A.D. 1502 {supra, p. 153). The heraldic bearings on the stone are, on one side the head, a shield quarterly, with a faint indication of " fraises " in one quarter, and " crowns " in another ; and on the other side a stag, the crest of the Frasers of Lovat ; but this quarterly shield appears as early sis 143 1 (supra, p. 97) ; and an instance of the bear- ing a crest detached from the shield on a tombstone is given by Mr Cutts % in the case of Gilling of Gilling, in Yorkshire, about 1400. In 1774 the forfeited estates of Lovat were restored to General Fraser. Cardonnel published in 1788 " Etchings of Antiquities in Scotland," and gives one of the priory church, with this short description : " Beaulieu. " This priory, commonly called Bewly, is situated upon the river of the same name in Ross-shire, about eleven miles from Inverness, and was founded, according to Fordun, in the year 1230, for monks of the order of Vallis Caulium, by John Bisset, whose charter is con- firmed by Pope Gregory III. " At the dissolution of monasteries, Hugh, Lord Fraser of Lovat, * The portrait of Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy, who died in 1631, given in the Black Book of Taymouth (Bann. Club), represents him in full armour. + Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. ix., p. 28. + Cutts' Sepulchral Slabs, 1849, p. 87, plate 66. OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 291 acquired this priory from the last prior, to which family it at present belongs." The family of Gairloch, who, being descended from Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Kintail, had continued to use the priory as a burial-place, which Mackenzie of Seaforth, the elder branch, had abandoned for the cathedral at Fortrose, repaired the walls and windows of the north chapel or chapter- house, so as to preserve it from spoliation. The ruins, however, seem to have been in a disgraceful state in 1 815, for in May of that year subscriptions were invited for repairing the breaches in the walls, and particularly for rais- ing and building up the east end of the church, by which idle persons enter and loiter about, to the detriment of the place, and to prevent any access but by the west door. The parties to be consulted were the families of Lovat and Gairloch, the Chisholm, Maclean of Craigscorrie (we may recognise the Karcurri of Pope Gregory III., supra, p. 14), and the Frasers of Newton, Aigas, and Eskadale. In August 1844 the following paragraph appeared in the Inverness papers : " The interesting ruins of Beauly Priory are also carefully protected and kept in order, and Lord Lovat, we understand, intends throwing down some unsightly build- ings close to the priory, that its ancient and picturesque walls and its noble trees may be seen to more advantage." In 184s the rights of those claiming an interest in the ruins were tested by application to the Court of Session. Lord Lovat presented a note to the Court, in which, after setting forth that he was proprietor of the barony of Beauly, and of the heritable office of constabulary and keeper of the palace building and principal messuage of the Priory of Beauly; and that the Priory of Beauly was in a ruinous state, and that he had determined to prevent further dilapidation, and to put the ruins into a state of repair and order, so as to preserve them as long as possible ; and that he had addressed circulars to parties, claiming right to interfere with his proposed opera- tions on the plea that they had right to the area of the church as a burying-ground and that certain of their ancestors had 292 HISTORICAL NOTICES been interred there, intimating that he was resolved to pre- vent interments taking place for the future within the precincts f the priory ; he prayed an interdict to restrain the defenders from interfering with his proposed operations, and from intrud- ing into the priory for the purpose of using the same as a burying-ground in future. The defenders denied Lord Lovat's title to the Priory of Beauly, which they alleged to have passed to the Crown by the Act of Annexation 1587, and they stated that an imme- morial usage of sepulture had existed within the priory, the area being covered with tombstones of remote antiquity. Lord Jeffrey, before whom the case first came, said, " There would seem to be better ground for an interdict at the instance of the respondents, and this is not a shape in which the rights of the noble complainer can be determined. He must proceed by declarator, to which the representatives of the House of Kintail, Gairloch, Chisholm, etc., as well as those charged with the interests of the Crown, must be made parties ; " and, as Lord Ordinary, he refused the interdict. Lord Lovat afterwards commenced an action of declarator, and reclaimed (appealed) against Lord Jeffrey's order. The Lord Justice-Clerk said, " The right of interment may have had its origin long anterior to Lord Lovat's right," and the Court, on the 19th of December 1845, adhered to the Lord Ordinary's judgment.* It soon became evident that no case could be made out on the declarator, and ultimately an arrangement, much for the benefit of all parties, was made in the spring of 1847; on the iSth June 1847 the Lords of the Treasury authorised the Commis- sioners of Woods and Forests to grant a lease to Lord Lovat.f and a lease was accordingly granted, of " all and whole the ruins of the old church and monastery of Beauly, ground within the same and burying-ground adjoining, belonging to her Majesty and her royal successors, as the same are deline- * Lord Lovat v. Alex-ander Fraser and others, viii.. Bell's Sessions Cases. t Appendix, No. XXXIII, OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY. 293 ated by the red lines on a plan docqueted by the Commis- sioners and Lord Lovat." The term is for thirty-one years from Whitsunday 1847. The right of the Crown to restrict and permit interments is reserved. The rent is ;^i, and Lord Lovat agrees " to main- tain and keep the premises in their present state and condi- tion as a venerable monument of ancient times and an object of interest." APPENDIX. No. I. NAME OF BEAULY (p. 15). In Migne's " Dictionnaire des Abbayes," Paris 1856, eight French monasteries of this name are mentioned : i. Beaulieu (Diocese de Limoges), Benedictine A. ; 2. B. (D. de Langres), Cistercian A. ; 3. B. (D. de Troyes), Praemonstratensian A. ; 4. B. en Argonne, Benedictine A. ; 5. Beaulieu-lez-Duant (Pas de Calais), Augustinian A. ; 6. B. prfes Loches (D. de Tours), Benedictine A. ; 7. B,-lez-le- Mans (D. du Mans), Augustinian A. ; 8. B.-lez-sur-le-Noble (a Douai, Nord), Augustinian Nunnery. The oldest Beauly is B. en Argonne, seven leagues from Verdun, founded in 642 by St Bodan, who came to France a short time after St Columba. It was called Beaulieu by St Bodan by reason of the great beauty of the situation. Amongst the Cistercian abbeys founded in the kingdom of Cyprus is mentioned, Beaulieu, Bellus Locus, founded in 1237. Migne's account of our priory is as follows : " Beaulieu. — Bellus Locus (ancien diocfese de Rosse, Ecosse). Abbaye de I'ordre de Citeaux fondle vers I'an 1263. Elle jouissait du titre abbatial, bien qu'elle ne fut cependant qu'un prieur^." No. II. LEPERS' HOUSE (p. 24). This foundation by John Byset is the earliest recorded in Scotland. Some others, besides Maiden Bradley, had been founded earlier in England. APPENDIX. 295 Hugh de Wells, Bishop of Lincoln in 1211, gives, by his will, one hundred marks to be distributed among the leper houses of that bishopric, and three marks to the leper house of Frome Selwood in Somersetshire ; three marks to the leper house, without Bath ; and three marks to the lepers of Ilchester, in the same county. There were three other leper houses in the county of Somerset alone. One of them, whose endowment now includes a field within the parish of Thorn Faulcon, where this note is written, is first recorded as a leper house in 1236, when King Henry III. grants a protection to the master and brethren of the leper hospital of St Margaret of Taunton, In 1280, 141 8, it is similarly styled. In 1472 the indwellers are called " the poor, infirm, and leprous people " of the hospital ; in 1544 simply "the poor persons of the spittel house." In 1548 the entry is, "Ther be w'Hn the same hospital vi poore lazare people." It was saved from forfeiture to Edward VI. by being recognised as an alms-house, which it now is ; and, from these notices, it would appear that by 1472 the disease had become less frequent in its ravages, and had ceased in 1540.* No. III. CASTLES (p. 40). The old castles of Lovat, Beaufort, and Erchless have all dis- appeared ; all that remains of the old castle of Urquhart is the ditch. The tower of Beaufort, occupied by Simon, Lord Lovat, is described by Ferguson the astronomer, who visited it, as " a rude tower " {tnfra, p. 302). The present Erchless Castle was erected between 1594 and 1610, and completed by John Chisholm. In his grandson Alexander's time, in 1689, it was (as appears from Mackay's "Memoirs") alter- nately occupied by the contending troops of James II. and Wil- liam III. ; and whilst Lord Strathnaver's regiment was at Inverness, two companies were lodged in the castles of Urquhart and Erchless. Castle Urquhart is a very prominent object from Loch Ness, and, as Mr G. T. Clark observes {Builder, Feb. 17, 1872), combines, * The Hospital of St Margaret, Taunton. By the Rev. T. Hugo, Somerset- shire Arqhffiological Society's Proceedings, 1872, 296 APPENDIX. in a very remarkable degree, natural and artificial defences upon its enceinte, and within its area. It has a gatehouse, and is far more extensive than most Highland castles. The keep is an excellent example of the stern rectangular Scottish fortalice of the fifteenth century. It is about 40 feet square, of four stages. " The remains of the castle now standing," says Mr Clark in his exhaustive article, . "can scarcely be older than the fifteenth century, and probably it was one of those built about the middle of it, in accordance with the strong recommendation published by James I. on his return from his captivity in England." No. IV. LIST OF THE BISHOPS OF MORAY— DE MORAVIA— MORA VI- ENSIS — FROM A.D. IIIJ TO A.D. I573 (p; 4I). 1. Gregory, " Episcopus de Moravia," " Gregorius Moraviens. epc," a.d. iiiJ, sxA after K.'D. 1125. 2. William I., "Epis. Muraue.," "W. Moraens.," "Will. epis. Moru.," "de Muref," ante A..D. 1155, Feb. 27; Papal Legate of Scotland A.D. 1159-1161, from Pope Alex. III.; ob. A.D. 1162, Jan. 24. 3. Felix, Bp. of Moray, between K.T>. ii62andA.D. 1171. 4. Symon I., de Tonei ("de Toeny"), Cistercian monk of Mailros, and Abbot of Cogeshale in Essex, England, to A.D. 1168; el. Bp. of Moray a.d. II 71; cons. a.d. 1 1 72, Jan. 23, at St Andrews; ob. 1 184, Sept. 17. 5. Andrew I., said to have been Bp. of Moray between A.D. 1184 and A.D. Il85 (but apparently a mistake in Shaw for Andrew, Bp. of Caithness; and see vacant A.D. 1184-1187). 6. Richard, chaplain to King William the Lyon, "clericus Regis," "epis. Moraviensis de Moravia;" el. A.D. 1187, March l; cons. 15th of same month at St Andrews; ob. a.d. 1203. 7. Brice de Douglas (Dean of Moray? ante A.D. 1200), Prior of Lesmahagu, O.S.B., Tironen. ; suc.a.T). 1203; "Epis. Moravien. Moravie" at Lateran Gen. Council A.D. 1215-16; ob. A.d. 122 , "Bricius epis." 8. Andrew II., de Moravia, Parson of Duflfus; el. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1223, anteMay 12; cons, ante A^ril 10, A.D. 1224; ob. A.D. 12^2, post July. 9. Symon II., Dean of Moray {ante a.d. 1232); sue. a.d. 1223; cons. Bp. of M.ora.y ante A.B. 1224; ob. A.D. 1251. 10. Ralph, Canon of Lincoln Cathedral, in England (probably Ralph de Leicester, treasurer of Lincoln, A.D. 1248; ob. March 22, A.D. 1253), "electus est inEpiscopura Morafensem in Scotia, M. Radulphus ecclesiae Lincolenensis canonicus," A.D. 1251 ; elect. Bp. of Moray, but not consecrated. APPENDIX. 297 11. Archibald, Dean of Moray; cons. Bp. of Moray A. D. 1253; ob. A.D. 1298, Dec. 9. 12. David I., de Moravia, Canon of Moray; el. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1299; conf. by Pope Boniface VIII. June 30, and cons, at Anagni by Card. Bp. of Porto, 28th of that month; ob. A.D. 1326, Jan. 9. 13. John I., de Pylmore, Canon of Ross, and Bp.-e/eci of that see (but uncon- firmed'); el. Bp. of Moray, but prov. by Pope Jolm XXII. A.D. 1326, March 31 ; cons, at Avignon by Card. Bp. of Palestriaa, 30th of that month; ob. A.D. 1362, Sept. 28. 14. Alexander I., Bur, Archdeacon of Moray; prcw. to see by Pope Urban V. A.D. 1362, Dec. 23, ^■a&cons. at Avignon 24th of that month; ob. A.D. 1397, May 5. 15. William II., de Spynie, Prsecentor of Moray and Canon of Caithness; cons. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1397, Sept. l6, by Pope Benedict XIII.; ob. A.D. 1406, Aug. 2. 16. John II., de limes, Parson of Dufiiis, Canon of Moray, and Archdeacon of Caithness; cons. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1407, Jan. 23, at Avignon by same Pope; ob. A.D. 1414, April 25. 17. Henry de Lychton; elect. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1414, May 18; cons. A.D. 141S, March 8, at Valencia, in Spain, by above Anti-Pope; 3.yA trans, to see of Aberdeen A.D. 1422, April 3. 18. CoLUMBA de Dunbar, Dean of Collegiate Church of Dmibai (fd. by his father, George, Earl of March, A.D. 1392), and Dean of Dunkeld; prov. to see by Pope Martin V. A.D. 1422, April 3; ob. 1435. 19. John II., de Winchester, (English) Chapl. to K. James I., Canon of Dunkeld, and Provost of Collegiate ch. of Lincluden; el. Bp. of Moray; conf. by Pope Eugene IV. A.D. 1436, April; cons. A.D. 1437; ob. A.D. 1460 (or 1463?), April I, having apparently res. his see A.D. 1458, May 9, at Cambuskenneth monastery. 20. James I., Stewart, Dean of Moray, Bp. of the see a.d. 1460, ante Dec. 12, and. probably from A.D. 1458-1459? res. after May 13, A.D. 1461 (ap- parently); ob. A.D. 1466, Aug. 5. 21. David II., Stewart, Parson of Spynie, and Prebendary of Moray ;/j-ow. to this see by Pope Pius II. a.d. 1462, July 27; cons, post Jime et ante Dec. A.D. 1463; ob. A.D. 1476, jSffj-; Sept. 5. 22. William III., de TuUoch, Bp. of Orkneys, from which trans, to see of Moray by Pope Sixtus IV. A.D. 1477, March 31; ob. A.D. 1482; ante July. 23. ANDREVir III., Stewart, Sub-dean of Glasgow, and Provost of Lincluden; el. Bp. of Moray ante July A. D. 1482 ; conf. and ccns. at St Andrews A.D. 1483, /orf Jan. ; ob. A.D. 1501, Sept. 29, lEtat. 58. 24 Andrew IV., Foreman, Prior of Pittenweem, O. S. Aug. Can. Reg., Proto- notary Apostolic of Pope Alex. VI., and prov. by that pontiff to this see A.D. 1501, Nov. 26; cons, post Sept. a.d. 1503? Abp. of Bourges, in France, A.D. 1513, Sept. 12; and trans, to St Andrews A.D. 1514, Dec. 25. 25. James II., Hepburae, Rector of Dairy and Partoun, Abbot of Dunfermlyn 298 APPENDIX. (1514-15); el. Bp. of Moray A.D. 1516, ante Oct.; cons, in A.D. 1517; ob. A.D. 1524, ante Nov. 26. Robert Schawe, Abbot of Paisley, O. S. B., Cluniac; prov. to this see by Pope Clement VII. a.d. 1525, May 18; cons, ante Jan. 15, 1526; ob. A.D. 1528, ante May 31. 27. Alexander II., Stewart, Dean of Brecbin, Abbot of Inchaffray (1514), and of Scone (1518); prov. to this see by Pope Clem. VII. A.D. 1529, Sept. 13; cons, ante July 18, A.D. 1530; ob. a«fe May 31, A.D. 1538. 28. Patrick Hepbume, Prior of St Andrews and Abbot of Scone ; prov. to this see by Pope Paul III. A.D. 1539, June 14; cons, ante April 16, A.D. 1540; ob. A.D. 1573, June 20.* No. V. EXTRACTS FROM RECORDS (pp. 45-47). The following extracts from, and notes of the records in the Record Office, London, I owe to the kindness of Sir Thomas Hardy : "Fat. &' Chart. 27 ffen. III., p. 739.— Pro Johe. Byset. Rex. Justiciario nro. Hibern. sal. Sciatis quod si Johannes Byset ad nos ad partes transm. venire vol. in servit. nostr. ; bene volumus quod feodum habet a nobis sicut Jacobus de Savill quondam miles vester idem vobiscum locutus est et potestatem vobis damus daudi illi feodum praedictum. Teste apud Burdegallam xvii die Dec. (1242. Note: Henry III. accession, 28 Oct. 12 15)." "Pat. &' Chart. 27 Hen. III., in. 4. — Pro Waltero Byset. Rex comisit Waltero Byset manerium de Ludeham cum pertinenciis ad se sustentando in servicio Regis quamdiu R. placuerit. In cujus, &c. Teste Rege apud Burdegal, xxviij die Aug. (1243)." " Close Rolls, 2%~Hen. Ill.^John Byset. M. 17. Grant of robes for himself and his three knights. Grant of three does. M. 9. Ten casks of the king's wines in Ireland. Justice of Chester to find him a ship for his passage to Ireland as the king's messenger." " Close Rolls, 29 Hen. Ill, m. i. — The King. The Justiciary of * I have to thank General Stewart Allan for this list. As regards Bishop Brice (No. 7), in I2i8 the Pope directs three Scottish abbots to inquire into the com- plaints of the archdeacon and chancellor of Moray, that this bishop was leading a licentious life, and keeping their rents from them ; and in that year, according to Chron. de Mailros (p. 135), he went to Rome to procure absolution. APPENDIX. 299 Ireland is commanded to find a safe passage for John and Walter Bysd from Anglesey to the king, at Ganock, 7 Oct. (1245)." '•' Close Rolls, 29 Hen. III., m. 7. — Byset, Walter. B. de Sabaudia is commanded to deliver to him two of the king's shields in his custody in Windsor Castle, to go into the king's service in Ireland." " Close Rolls, 30 Hen. III. — Pension given to Walter Byset."- ^^ Chart. 31 Hen. III., mem. 13. — Sciatis nos dedisse concessisse et hie carti nostra confirmasse Waltero Byset manium. de Ludeham cum ptinentiis. habend. et tenend. de nobis et hsereds. nostris eidem Waltero et hgeredibus suis donee idem Walterus vel hseredes sui recuperaverit terras suas in Scotia quasi volumus, etc. Teste Willi- elmo Longespe, Rado. Fil. Nicholai, Bertramo de Coyey, Johane de Plessi, Hugo de Vinovar, Polino Peyuer, Roberto de Leegos., Roberto Waleraund, Radfo. de Wormey, Roberto le Norris, et aliis. Datum pen. maner. nostr. apud Clarendon 8 Die Deer. (1246)." "■ Close Rolls, 31 Hen. III. — Walter Byset. 30 oaks in Sherwood Forest." " Patent Rolls, 36 Hen. III., m. 12. — Pro Alano filo. Thom. R. omnibus ti. sal. Sciatis qd. ad instanc. Margar. Regine Scotie fil. nre. pardonamus Alano fil. Thom. Comit. de Athoell de Scoc. transgr. ei impositas intficiendo. quosdam homines Johis. Biset in Hibn. in quodam conflictu habito ibidem int. ipsum. Johem. t. pacum. Alan. t. capiendo hostiliter a quibusdam mercatoribus Hib. sex dol. vini t. qudam. partem bladi in obsidione t. expugnacone. cast, de Dunandin. . . . Ita tm. qud. stet recto in cur. nra. si qs. erga eum inde loqui volint. In cujus t. T. me ipso apd. Wude- stok XXX die Jan. p. Reg. (1252)." No. VI. ENGLISH BYSETS (p. 47)- The grant to the Priory of Thurgarton is confirmed, 14 Hen. II., 1168. William calls himself William Carpenter — Carpentarius — not Byset, but calls his father William Byset (Dugdale's Mon., vi. 192). Nash, in his " Worcestershire," ii. 36, says Manassar Byset, whom he 300 APPENDIX. calls Manser de Biset, " assumed the name of Biset from a place of that name, near Alveston, in Warwickshire." I can find no mention of such a place. The Irish tradition was that the Bisets were a Greek family, which came in with the Conquest (Reeves' Down and Connor, 388). A Byzantine family named Dassiotes, bore arg. a bend gu. (N. and Q., 4th S., ii. 525). The name is spelt Busei {supra, p. 75) in 1294. It may have been Buo-tnjTos, from Pvcra-os, fine linen. There was John Byset in Kent (6 Ed. I., Inq. p. m.). John, husband of one of the Byset heiresses of Maiden Bradley, assumed the name of Byset a.d. 1305 (Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, Mere Hundred, xxi.). William Byset, son and heir of Robert Byset (25 Ed. I., 1302), has lands in England and Scotland (Palgrave, p. 189). This William had been taken prisoner in 1296, and liberated in 1297 on condition of serving the English king in France (Rymer's Feed., ii. 773). No. VII. SCOTTISH BYSETS (p. 48). Walter Byset founded the Preceptory of the Knights Templars at Culter between 1221 and 1236. See his oath to Herbert, Abbot of Kelso (Reg. de Kalchou, 191), respecting the building he had con- structed for the use of the Templars (Templar ioruni), in the territory of the church of Culter (Maryculter). Alexander II. granted them charter of liberty to acquire lands, 12th January 1237 (Reg. Ab., ii. 269). The building included a chapel (Reg. de Kalchou, 182). Walter gave to this preceptory the church of Aboyne (Reg. Ab., ii. 271). The Templars are called " Brothers of the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon," or, " of the Temple of Jerusalem," in these instruments; so in Dugd. Mon., vi. 817. In 1296, Walter Byset, of, the county of Aberdeen, swears fealty to Edward I. (Ragman Rolls). Nisbet, in his "Heraldry" (2d ed., 1802, p. 91), says, Bisset of Lessendrum is chief of the Bissets. Lessendrum is in parish and barony of Drumblate, county Banff. The first Byset of Lessendrum assumed the name in 1364 — "Walterus dictus Byseth dominus de APPENDIX. 301 Lessendrum" (Liber Ecc. de Scon., p. 92). In 1355 Walter Byset dominus de Lessyndrum is lieutenant of county Banff (Coll. Aber. and Banff, i. 477). In 1379 Walter Byset of Lessendrum by deed surrenders his whole lands to the legate of Pope Clement VII., to be held by {qii. of) the Holy See (New Stat. Ace, Drumblade). In 1387 it is Patrick Byset de Lessendrum (Reg. Ab., i. 107). In 1403 the superiority of Lessendrum was among the estates par- titioned between the Fentons and Chisholms (supra, p. 95). In 1652 we have Alexander, heir of Robert Bisset of Lessendrum (Inq. Ret.), and so on to William Bisset of Lessendrum (New Stat. Ace, 1840), and the present Mr Bisset of Lessendrum, the popular master of the Devon and Somerset staghounds — by whose covertside at Bagborough at the Easter Monday meet of the Vale foxhounds, from an odd coincidence, the proof-sheet of supra, p. 163 («) was corrected. No. VIII. IRISH BYSETS (p. 53). The Bysets of England were connected with the De Lacys. Henry Byset married the sister of John de Lacy, constable of Chester (Thoresby's Notts, 339). Hugh de Lacy died 1243, and was suc- ceeded in the earldom of Ulster by Walter de Burgh. John de Courcy had given the lands of Ardes or Le Arde, in Ulster, about a.d. i i 76, to the alien priory of Stoke Courcy, in Somersetshire ; and Hugh de Lacy founded a cell there to Stoke Courcy (Drummond's Noble Families : De Courcy). John Byset the younger's inquisition {supra, p. 54) finds tliat he died seised of, amongst other lands in Ulster, Glenarm, held under Richard de Burgh, the infant heir of Walter. The second family of John Byset, the founder, seems to have got hold of his Irish lands. The Bysets in Ireland, though said by Barbour, in his " Bruce," to have fought against Edward Bruce, in fact sided with him, and Rachrin was forfeited to and granted by Edward II. in 13 1 8 (Patent Rolls, 12 Ed. II.). Dr Reeves says : " From the first John, the family in after-times received the patronymic of MacEoin, and the Four Masters style them MacEoin Bisset, or simply MacEoin 302 APPENDIX. (a.d. 1383, 1387, 1422, 149s, 1512)." Their territory was called the seven lordships of the Glynns of Antrim. The inheritance parted by the marriage of Maria Biset, the daughter and heiress of MacEoin Biset, to Eoin Macangus Macdonnell. Their son and heir was Donald Balloch, who had also his father's patrimony in Scotland and the Hebrides (Reeves' Down and Connor, pp. 325, 388). This is the connection referred to supra, p. 277. At Glenarm the Bissets founded a monastery. No. IX. CHAPELS (p. 76). There was a domestic chapel in the House of Innes. In 1490 mention is made of " capella infra locum sive mansionem de Inneys" (Family of Innes, Spalding Club, p. 124). There was a chapel in Cawdor Castle. Generally there was no room, for the castles in the north of Scotland were only towers, not so extensive as the keeps of a Welsh or English castle. What space was there, for instance, in the castle of Beaufort, where Simon, Lord Lovat of 1745, resided, for a chapel ? " It was a rude tower, having but four apart- ments on a floor, and none of these large " (Anderson's Family of Lovat, 157). In a large castle like Castle Urquhart, there was opportunity for including a place for Divine service ; accordingly we find there arrangements indicating its existence. " The third floor [of the keep] or fourth stage," says Mr Clark (Builder, February 17, 1872), " differs from the rest, in that a small chamber is contained in the south-eastern angle, the door into which is in the south wall, near its east end. This may have been an oratory." * The old chapel of Allangrange (supra, p. 82), in the parish of Kilmuir Wester, county Ross, is near the House of Allangrange ; and Bishop Forbes, in his journal of 1770, says he was told, when staying at the House, that it was the Bishop of Ross's country seat. It is fifteen feet in width. The east gable remains, with three Early English lancet windows, whose base is four feet from the ground j there is an awniry under- • Kildrummy, Dunstaffnage, Linlithgow, Rothesay, Tantallon, Boithwick, and Doune Castles had chapels (Muir's Characteristics, pp. 47, 56, 73). APPENDIX. 303 neath the windows. I did not notice a water drain. The good bishop says he went before breakfast to say his prayers in the chapel. Dr Johnson kept his hat off while he was upon any part of the ground where the cathedral of St Andrews had stood (Boswell's Journal, by Carmthers, p. 40). No. X. DEL ARD (p. 85). The entry in 1296 is : " William fitz Steuene de Arde del Counte de Inverness." The Orkney tradition said that Malise, who was Earl of Stratheam, Orkney, and Caithness, 1334 (Lib. Ins. Miss., app. to pref ), had, by a daughter of the Earl of Monteith, a daughter, Matilda, who married Weland de Ard, and had a son, Alexander de Ard (supra, p. 95). John de Cheseholme de le Arde is one of the three persons mentioned supra, p. 93. In the Chamberlain Accounts for 1342, there is an entry : " Godefridi del Arde t. Isabellae sponsae suae ratione dictse sponsse." Without more documents from northern charter chests, the origin and history of this family cannot be traced. No. XI. MARRIAGE CONTRACT, 1416* (p. 96). Jacobus Dei gracia Rex Scotorum Omnibus probis hominibus suis ad quos presentes litere pemenerint clericis et laicis Salutem. Sciatis nos quasdam indenturas factas inter Willelraum de Fenton de eodem ex parte vna et Hugonem Eraser de Lowet ex parte altera super maritagio inter dictum Hugonem et Jonetam de Fenton sororem dicti Willelmi de mandate nostro visas lectas inspectas et diligenter ex- aminatas non rasas non abolitas non cancellatas nee in aliqua sui parte viciatas sed omni prorsus vicio et suspicione carentes ad plenum in- * Reg. Mag. Sig., iii., No. 95. 304 APPENDIX. tellexisse in hunc modum. This indentur made at the Baky, the third day of the moneth of Marche, the zher of our Lord a thowsand four hundreth and xv, betuyx thua nobil lordis and mychty, Villiame of Fenton, lord of [that] ilk, on the ta part, and Huchon Fraser, lord of Lowett, on the tother part, proportis and berys wytnes in maner, forme, and effect efter folowand ; that is for to say, that the sayd Huchon Fraser, lord of the Lowet, God grantand, sal lede in to wyf, Jonet of Fenton, the syster of the sayd Villiam of Fenton, lord of that ilk ; and in recompensacion and assytht for the sayd manage to be made with the sayd Huchon Fraser, the forsayd Villiam of Fenton, lord of that ilk, haf giffyn and grantit in joynt fethment, and throw this composicion has confermyt to the sayd Huchon Fraser, and to Jonet of Fenton, hys syster, and to the langar liffand of thaim thua, and to the ayris betuyx thaim to be gottyn, thir landis vnder- wryttyn j that is to say, Ensowchtan Kyrkomyr, Maule and Westyr Eskdole, lyand in Strathglas, within the barony of the Arde, in name and assent of xx" markis. Also, the sayd William of Fenton has grantit to the sayd Huchon and Jonet, in joynt feftment, twa Bown- tactis in the extent of ten marcis, in maner as is befor wrytyn, of the landis of Strathglas, vnder this condicion, that quhat tyme that the landis of Wchterach be recoueryt, the sayd Huchon Fraser and the sayd Jonet sal resayf tha landis in to joynt feftment in the extent of X marcis ; and gif tha landis of Vchterach be nocht fundyn of the extent of x marcis be auld extent, the forsayd Villiam of Fenton sal assytht in conuenable place the vaut of that x marcis, and than the sayd Huchon and Jonet, and thair ayris, sal frely delyuer vp and gif to the sayd Villiam of Fenton, or til hys ayris, the sayd landis of Bowntacte, wythoutyn ony clame of the sayd Huchon, or of Jonet, or of thair ayris, to be made. Als, it is accordyt betuyx the sayd partis that the forsayd Huchon sal dow and gif, in name of dowry, to the forsayd Jonet, xx" lb. in to the lordschip of Golford, lyand wythin the shirefdome of Name, and quhair it vaictis of xx" lb. of that land, he sal assytht and gif hyr dowar of the landis of Dalcors, quhil scho be fully assytht of xx" lb. Alsua, the forsayd Villiam sal gif chartyr and possession to the forsayd Huchon and Jonet, and to thair ayris, as it is forspokyn and falzeand of the ayris betuyx thaim of thar body lauchfully gottyn. I, Villiam of Fenton, lord of that ilk, wil that al the forsayd landis, wyth the resort and retour agayne to me, and to myn ayris. And this thyng lelely to be done and fulfilUt, both APPENDIX. 305 the partis hav gyfin thar bodely athe on the haly evangelis. And to the mare sekyrnes, to the part remanand of this indentur wyth the forsayd Huchon, the sele of Villiam of Fenton, lord of that ilk, is to put ; and to the part remaynand with the forsayd Villiam of Fenton, lord of that ilk, the sele of Huchon Fraser, lord of the Lowet, is to put. Thisthingisdonetheyheir, day, themonethbeforwrytyn. Quas quidem literas donaciones concessiones et condiciones in eisdem contentas in omnibus punctis suis et articulis condicionibus et modis ac circumstanciis suis quibuscunque forma pariter et effectu in omni- bus et per omnia approbamus ratificamus et per presentes confirm- amus saluis nobis wardis releuiis ac aliis seruiciis de dictis terris de- bitis et consuetis. In cuius rei testimonium presenti carte nostre magnum sigillum nostrum apponi precipimus testibus reuerendo in Christo patre Johanne Episcopo Glasguense cancellario nostro Johanne Forestarii camerario nostro Valtero de Ogilby thesaurario nostro et Magistro Villelmo de Foulis custode priuati sigilli nostri preposito de Bothwel. Apud Edynburgh xvj die mensis Septem- bris anno regni nostri vicesimo quinto. No. XII. MARRIAGE- CONTRACT — THOMAS DUNBAR, EARL OF MORAY, AND HUGH FRASER OF LOVAT (p. 96). "At Elgine, the ninth day of the month of August, the yere of our Lord a thousand four hundreth and twenty two yere, betwix ane noble Lord and ane mighty, Thomas of Dunbar, Earle of Mur- reffe, on the ta part, and ane nobyl man, Hucheon Fraser, Lorde of the Lovet, on the tother part, it is traitit, concordit, and impointit, in form and manner as efter follows, that is to say, that the said Lorde of the Lovet is oblyst, and by this letter oblysis him, that his son and his ayer will name and take to wyff ane dochter of the said Lord the Erie, gotin or to be gotin on Isobell of Innes ; and the dochter gotin betwix the said Lord the Erie and the Isobell of Innes, failiand, as God forbid they doe, the said Lord of the Lovet is oblyst that the said his son and his ayer sail marry and tak to wyff ane dochter of the said Lorde the Erie, to be gotin betwix him and his spousit wyff; and this ayer, the son of the said Lord of the u 306 APPENDIX. Lovet, failiand, as God forbid he doe, but if he lyf ane dochter ayer or dochters ayirs, the said Lord of the Lovet is oblyste, as before, to give that dochter, his ayer, or his dochters ayirs, to the said Lorde the Erie son, or son to be goten betwix him and his spousit wyiF; and tbir ayirs, male or female, sons or dochters of the said Lord of the Lovet failiand, as God forbid they doe, the said Lord of the Lovet is oblyst, and by thir letters oblyses him, that his ayirs, what- soever they be, sail hald and fiilfyl the trety, concordance, and impointment, now as before written, to the said his Lord the Erie of Mureff; for the whilk marriage, lelely and truly, to be keepit in form and manners, as is before written, to the said Lord the Erie, bot fraud or gyle, the said Lord the Erie has geffin and grantit to the said Lord of the Lovet, and till his ayers, the baronye of Abertarch, in blench farm, aftir the tenor of his charter perportint in itselfe, and the warde and the relief of umquhile William of Fenton, Lord of the Baiky, and of Alexander of Chisholme, Lord of Kinrossy, per- tainand to the said Lord the Erie, within the Ard and Strathglass, in the schirefdome of Inverness, within the Erledome of MurrefT, after the tenor of the evidence made to the said Lord of the Lovet thereupon, and fifty marks of the usuall monyth of Scotland, after the tenor of his obligation made thereupon. In witnes of the whilk thing, the sealys of the s"* Lord the Erie, and the s** Lord of the Lovet, interchangeably are to put, the place, day, moneth, and yhere before written" (Spalding Club Miscell., v. 256). The dominium utile of Abertarflf must have belonged to the Erasers before this ; they probably derived it from a daughter of Patrick Le Grant, Lord of Stratherrick (Stratharthok) (Forsyth, 21). He and Simon Fresel witness Randolph's grant in 1345 (supra, p. 93). No. XIII. SIR KENNETH MACKENZIE OF KINTAIL (p. 105). From an old MS. discovered by Lewis M. Mackenzie of Findon, written by John M'Ra, minister of Dingwall 1704. Alexander, laird of Kintail, married Anna, M'Dougal of Lorn his daughter, who was mother to Kenneth, his eldest son, heir and suc- cessor. He made the match between him and Margaret, daughter to the Earl of Ross. Kenneth was a bold and stout man, impatient APPENDIX. 307 of an affront, and resentive of injuries. The Eari of Ross, living at Balcony, invited several of his friends to a Christmas feast ; among the rest invited Mackenzie, his son-in-law, who coming late, and the earl getting notice he brought not his lady with him, sent word that others had taken up his apartment, and willed him to take up his quarters elsewhere* till the next morning. He went straight home and caused saddle his lady's horse, and desired her keep Christ- mas with her father, but never see his face again, and so instantly did repudiate her. The poor lady behoved to give passive obedience, and went home to her father, who was highly offended, and vowed a revenge. Kenneth shortly after goes to Lovet's house and sends a message that he will destroy his country and bum his house unless Lovet gives him his daughter to wife. Lovet, helpless, is overawed, and asks his daughter if she is content ; finds her " most willing," and " lets her furth to Kenneth." It seems that Mackenzie knew nothing of M'Donald coming against him tin he was within a day's journey, and then he got together some six to seven hundred men by the fiery cross. The battle took place somewhere about Strathpeffer, probably where two upright stones are at Fodderty Church. Kenneth sent his old father, who was blind, with two attendants, away to a craig near by, that was called the Corbie's Craig, during the battle. He then put about two hundred of his archers in a wood in ambush, and fell on with the rest, so paltry a force that the Macdonalds laughed at them. A sharpened bloody conflict ensues, but the Macdonalds get discouraged, and are at that moment set upon by the ambushed force, and they give way and flee towards the ford at Moy, where twenty-four Kintail men meet them, and kill every one that crossed the water. Alexander died, and Kenneth served heir to him, 2d September 1488. Kenneth, called Jolair or the Eagle, after this lived peaceably with his neighbours, and died at Killin. He was knighted by King James IV., and had his children by Agnes Eraser legitimated by the Pope. Another writer says, "He dyed the 11 February 1491, as appears by an inscription on his tomb, which is to be seen in an arch broken out and built on the east side of the door of St Katherine's Chapel, built by Mary Bisset(?)." It was February 1492. In September 149 1 he is named as witness, Kinzocht M'Kenzecht of Kintaill. * Other accounts say at Killichudden (CuUicudden, supra, p. 200), a fisher village nigh by. 308 APPENDIX. No. XIV. "EXTRA ROMANAM CURIAM" (p. no). Curia Romana, or the Roman court, is wherever the Roman Pon- tiff actually is, whether at Rome or elsewhere. Clement IV. reserved all benefices, and John XXII. all monasteries, held by persons dying within the Curia Romana (Paul, Benefices, ii., p. 171); but in that case the Pope was bound to confer the vacant benefices within a month (Corvini Jus Canonicum, lib. ii., tit. 29). I am indebted for this information to Mgr. Capel. Later popes, from a variety of grounds, assumed the right to appoint to monasteries when vacant ; and they insert the statement of the death occurring without the Roman court (see many instances in Theiner) perhaps to point out that the delay in the appointment, as the right to appoint did not arise from a vacancy in curia, was no objection to its validity. The bull " Execrabilis " was against plurali- ties. The annual value of the priory is stated to fix the amount of , the first-fruits or first year's profits which was paid to the Pope. No. XV. SANCTUARY OF ARDCHATTAN (p. 150). The privilege of sanctuary at Hexham extended for a mile round the priory church (Dug. Mon., vi. 180); so at Ripen a mile round the town, marked by crosses, one of which was called the Cross of Athelstan, who gave the privilege ; such a sanctuary cross at Arm- athwaite is depicted {Gent Mag., 1755). At Glastonbury, by grant of King Edgar, confirmed by Pope John, it extended to the whole hundred of Glaston Twelve hides, containing seven parishes (ib., i. 3). There were Frid-stols at Ripon, Beverley, and York. Spelman (Gloss., in verba) says there were many such chairs in Eng- land ; but neither are they, nor is the privilege of sanctuary, frequently mentioned among the privileges of English houses in Dugdale. Beau- lieu Abbey in England had the privilege ; and Margaret of Anjou sought refuge there. Mr Sutherland reads the inscription — " . . . Somherle . . . ior APPENDIX. 309 DE ArDCHAT . . . QUI OBIT APUD ArDCHATTAN ANNO DOM. 1500." Ardchattan was annexed to the see of the Isles in 1617 by James VI., under the Great Seal, at Blandford in Dorsetshire (Acta Pari. Scot., iv. 554). No. XVI. FRENCH PRIORIES OF THE ORDER (p. 164). I have been unable to procure any more accurate information con- cerning the French priories. They are not mentioned in "Gallia Christiana," which treats of abbeys and conventual priories only ; and Migne, although promising future particulars of the order of Val des Choux, does not give any. From his lists of the French MSS., it seems there are none relating to Val des Choux in the public library of Dijon. We must wait the results of the constant investi- gations made by the antiquarians of France. No. XVII. SURNAMES (p. 168). In the clan system there were no surnames ; every one was known by the name of his father, so that Celts have names as long as their pedigree. There were often surnames given to individuals, but they were not at first descendible. The forms of the Church show that there were no surnames when these forms were first established. In the marriage ceremonial, Christian names only are used. The incon- venience of the clan system led, among the Celts in Ireland and the Highlands, to the adoption of the name of the founder of a family, , not only by his descendants, but by those who followed him in war, or held property under him in peace ; whilst among the Celts in Wales the son took the father's Christian name, with the mark of filiation added. There David's son John was called John Davies, and John's son David was called David Jones ; and this was often repeated in successive generations. Under the feudal system, the lord of a place was styled of that place — in French de, and in German von; and when the French or German was translated into Latin, these prefixes became de. It olO APPKNDIX. was this surname which first became descendible ; and on the entry of the Normans into England and Scotland, hardly any other sur- name than these territorial ones are borne. Soon, however, the desire to follow the example of their superiors induced men to convert the surname of the father into that of the son, and make it descendible. The simplest form of surname is the father's name with a mark of affiliation, as Watson in the text. We have in No. II. Gillanders Macysac or Isaacson, Augustini or Austin's. In No. VII., Macgill and Isaac Macgillanders, perhaps the son of Gillanders Macysac, after the Welsh fashion. In No. XIII. we have Jakson or Jackson, Alex- andri or Alexanderson. Verstegani's " Restitution of Decayed Intel- ligence" (1634, p. 307), gives nineteen Christian names as the fount of a large number of surnames. Then the surname was often derived from the country or place where the man came from. In No. II. we have Flandrensis or Fleming. That distinction was of no use unless he had migrated. Also the office held, or trade or occupation, of the man. In No. II. we have Godfrey Arbalaster, the cross-bowman ; Henry Cuch, the Cook; Yvo Venator, the Hunter. In No. VII., Molenctinarius, the Miller. Again from some personal characteristic of body or fortune. The Norman Anglo-French Le Graund, or Le Graunt, is expressly trans- lated by the Inverness-shire scribe into dictus Graunt, and is the origin of Grant. Thierry ridicules the condition of the conquerors of Ireland under Strongbow, and says one of the leaders was known as Le Poer, now one of its proudest names. Fuller, in his "Worthies," ed. 1662, p. 51, points out the changes of surnames from (i.) concealment in time of civil wars, or (2.) for advancement when adopted into an estate. This may explain the change of Sir Christian del Ard into De Forbes, {supra, p. 85). No. XVIII. VICARS (p. 168). The term vicar was originally, in ecclesiastical matters, applied to the person who, when a parish had been appropriated to a religious body, actually performed the duties of the parish priest. Sometimes when the religious body was a monastery or cathedral chapter, the APPENDIX. 311 service was done by a member of the body; more often it was deputed to a chaplain, the tenure of whose office, as well as his stipend, was at the wUl of the appropriators ; and the word vicar, then and about the time of the foundation of our priory, became restricted to mean a minister, who was endowed, and not removable at will. Thus the vicar of Inverness (supra, p. 52), was endowed in 1248, and the vicar of Duffus before 1274 (supra, p. 58), and the vicar of Conway before that time. The ordination of vicar was a constant subject of papal and episcopal inquisition. In England, in Richard II.'s and Henry IV. 's reigns, the obligation to endow a vicar on the appropriation of a benefice to a religious house was enforced by Act of Parliament. No. XIX. NOTE ON LUTHER (p. 181). "Anno post natum Christum rsi3 Leo X™^ Pontifex Romanus, nominatus ante Johannes Medice^ famili4 Cardinalis, Julii 2'*' Legatus anno superiore ad Ravennam tunc quidem a Gallis captus, sed ex eorum manibus artificiose nonnihil elapsus, circumagente tandem anno, in defuncti Julii 2"" locum a Collegio Cardinalium electus, hoc die 3"° nempe Iduum Aprilis qui est XI""= dies Aprilis, Pontifica Thiara exornatus est. Ut scilicet dies, quem prior annus ipsi in- faustum obtulerat coronationis suae celebritate ex atro in candidum verteretur. Anno vero post natura Christum 152 1 obijt idem Leo X. Calendis Decerabris, sub cujus Pontificatu Martinus Lutheris contra Pontificias Indulgentias, quas in Saxonicis passim locis scurriliter ad modum exaggerabat Johannes Tetzelius Dominicaster primum scripsit, quae res postea multas et varias de Doctrina Ecclesiastica dis- putationes, quae nunc etiam ob oculos quotidie cernimus, excitavit." * - No. XX. SCOTTISH KALENDAR (p. 184). The Scottish church and kingdom (supra, p. 207), still kept up the rule of commencing the year with the 25th of March, which had * There are some references to Pope Julius II. not worth printing. 312 APPENDIX. been given up at Rome. The feasts by which, or by reference to which, the earlier documents are dated are not peculiar to Scotland. Nos. IV. and VII. are dated respectively the Thursday and Friday before the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. No. V., Thursday, within the Octave of the Epiphany. No. XI., by the vicar of Abertarf, on a Sunday, the Sunday before the feast of St Peter ad Vincula. No. X. is on Valentine's Day; and Alexander de Chisholm's homage (supra, p. 89) is performed on Trinity Sunday. Deeds and charters were often executed on occasions of festivals, as the great men who were the witnesses of the actions to be recorded in them would be present. No. XXI. RIVER BEAULY (p. 213). It must be remarked that the river between Beauly Bridge and Kilmorack church has somewhat altered its course, so that portions of the parish of Kiltarlity here lie on the left bank. The river, from the junction of the Farrar with the Glass, seems, in John Byset's time, to have been called the Farrar. The name Beauly seems, until lately, only to have been given to it up to its junction with the Teanassie Burn. The description of the saw mills at the end of the Dhruim in Forsyth's " Moray " mentions them as being on the Glass. In the "Index to the Wells Chapter Records," 1876, p. 33, there is a commission of Bishop John, in 1389, to the abbots of Athelney and Muchelney to pronounce sentence of excommunication against any who should catch fish in the Tone river, within the manor of North Curry. Unless at that time this river abounded with salmon, the ecclesiastical thunders were invoked to protect the dace and gudgeon of the Tone, as well as the salmon of the Beauly (supra, p. 69). APPENDIX. 313 No. XXII. FEARN (p. 217). LIST OF THE ABBOTS OF FEARN— NOVA FURNIA, IN ROSS— PR^MONSTRATENSIAN CANONS -REGULAR (WHITE) OF ORDER OF ST AUGUSTINE. 1. Malcolm I., of Galloway, a canon of Whithem — Candida Casa — nont. first Abbot, on foundation by Ferquhard, Earl of Ross, circa A.D. 1221-22; died at "Fame," c. A.D. 1236, and after his death "was holdin be his peopill as a sand. " 2. Malcolm II., of Nig, sue. c. a.d. 1236; transferred abbey from "beside Kincardin in Stracharrin" to present site of New Fearn, c. A.D. 1238; died there before A.D. 1252. 3. Macbeth Mackherstn, siic. before a.d. 1252, under whom, a.d. 1258, William, Earl of Ross, confirmed his father's donations to abbey, and between a.d. 1261-1264 the convent was finally established there, and rules confirmed by Pope Urban IV. ; died after A.D. 1274 (erroneously called Bp. of Ross, as "Matthseus, or Machabeus," A.D. 1272-74, vide Bp. Matthew in List, supra, p. 202). 4. Colin, sue. after a.d. 1274, " dompno Colino abbate de Nova Femia ;" wit- ness to charter of William, Earl of Ross, c. a.d. 1281 ; "Sir Colin " died c. a.d. 1298. 5. Martin (Martein), a canon of Whithem, in Galloway, nom. by Maurice, Prior of St Ninian's, c. a.d. 1299 (without election by canons of Fearn, who claimed that right) ; died c. A.D. 131 1. 6. John I., a canon of same priory, by which nom. abbot c. A.D. 131 1 (though not elected by the canons), and invested as abbot against their wishes and protests; died a.d. 1320. 7. Mark (son of Sir Mark Ros), a canon of Whitheme, and also not chosen, but presented by prior, a.d. 1321 ; rebuilt abbey A.D. 1338 and following years ; died and interred there c. A.D. 1350. 8. Donald I., of Peibles, elected by the canons (according to their constitutions and Papal decrees), and confirmed, after some opposition, by Prior of Whithem, A.D. 1350; . I541, Feb. 9 (but in the " Kalendar of Feme " is recorded : " Obitus bone memorie quondam don- aldi denoun abbatis be feme qui obiit Infra monasterium eiusd. nono die APPENDIX. 315 mensis februa. anno dni. millesimo quad™" quadragesimo Cuius anime ppiciet. deusamen;" unless the year is a mistake — 1440 for 1540-41 — this might refer to another abbot during the vacancy of 1436- 1441, but it appears to be intended for 1540 ?). 19. Robert Cairncross (Camecross), Abbot of Holyrood — St Crucis de Edwinesburg (from Nov. 26 a.d. 1528) and Bp. of Ross (from April 14 A.D. 1513), also Abbot of Fearn m commendam A.D. 1541 (perhaps 1539-40 by resignation of Donald?) ; wanted to cede this abbey, April I A.D. 1545, to James Carnecors; and died Nov. 30 following, as recorded in "Kalendarof Feme" — "Obit= bone memorie Reuerendi in Christo pris. et dm. Robti. camcorss epi. Rossen. ac cmedatarii. de feme qui obiit apd. canonia de Ross ultimo nouebris. ano. dm. mcccccxlv". " — David Panitar obtained a grant of temporalities of this abbey in December A.D. 1545 from Crown (as well as Bishopric of Ross, a.d. 1546), but ?-e«^«fi!? Fearn before A.D. 1547' 20. James Carnecors (Cairncross), Glasguensis clericus, was conf. as Com- mendatory-Abbot of Fearn by Pope Paul III. before A.D. 1547, but resigned after a.d. 1550 (though an inscription at entrance of Abbey Church formerly existed, as follows: "Jacobus Cairncors abbas hoc templum finivit anno mdxlv ; sue. 1545?). 21. Nicholas Ross, Provost of Collegiate Church of Tain {pres. A.D. 1549, res. 1567); Commendator of Fearn; sue. after A.D. 155° > sat in Parliament at Edinburgh in August, A.D. 1560, as " Nichol, Abbot of Feme;" resigned K.V. 1566-7; and (Sf.^ at Fearn, Sept. 17, A.D. 1569 ("Nicolas ros comedator. of feme, provest of tane, decessit the xvii day of Septem- ber the yeir of god 1569 quhom god assolze " — " Kalendar of Feme"). 22. Thomas Ross (of Culnahal), Parson of Alnes (from before A.D. 1560), Pro- vost of Tayne, and also nom. Commendatory- Abbot of Fearn, A.D. 1566-67; exiled to Forres A.D. 1569-79; res. abbey and provostry A.D. 1584; and died at Tayne, Feb. 14, A.D. 1596; interred in St Michael's aisle at Fearn {"Obitus magistri Thome Ros, Abatis Feme, qui obiit in Tayne 14 die Februarii anno 1595, et sepultur in Feme " — "Obitus Isobelle Kinnard, Spouse ma. thome ros abbatis Feme apud tane et sepulta in feme 5 Octobris 1603 " — " Kalendar of Feme "). 23. Walter Ross (of Morangy), sue. as Commendatory- Abbot and Provost of Tayne on his father's resignation, a.d. 1566-7; was last titular of Feam, as the lands were resumed by the Crown a.d. 1587; abbey granted to Patrick Gordon of Letterfourie a.d. 1591 ; erected into barony of Geanies, in favour of Sir Patrick Murray, by King James VI. A.D.. 1598; and annexed to see of Ross A.D. 1609 (for Bp. David Lindsay), A.D. 1616 (to Bp. Patrick Lindsay), as confirmed Tjy Act of Parliament, June 28 A. D, 1617; which grants were confirmed to Bp. John Maxwell by King Charles I. a.d. 1633. The annual value of Abbacy, a.d. 1561, was — money, £\(>$, 7s. i^d. ; bear, 30 ch. 2 bolls 2 pecks ; oats, I chalder 6 bolls ; and in "Liber Taxa- tionum," 400 marks Scots. 316 APPENDIX. Authorities. — (i.) "The Kalendar of Feme," MS. fol. at Dunrobin Castle; (2.) "Ana Breve Cronicle of the Earlis of Ross, including notices of the Abbots of Fearn," etc., cr. 4to, Edinb. 1850, pp. 8, 46 (privately printed from MS. at Balnagown Castle, of which an imperfect abridgment vyas published in "Miscellanea Scotica," 8vo, Glasgow 1820, vol. iii.); (3.) Macfarlane's "Genealogical Collections," MS., Advocates Library, Edinb.; (4.) Lieutenant-General Hutton's MS., ibid., vol. xi.; (5.) "Registram Episcopatus Moraviensis, " 4to, 1637; (6.) "Originales Parochiales Scotia," vol. ii., part 2, 4to, 1855; (7.) "Acts of Parlia- ments of Scotland," fol. i.-v.; (8.) "Liber Cartarum S. Crucis de Edwinesburg," 4to, 1840; (9.) "Liber S. Marie de Calchou," 4to, 1840; (10.) "Liber Domus de Soltre, and Charters of Collegiate Churches of Midlothian," 4to, 1861; (11.) "Epistolae Regum Scotorum," Edinb. 1724, vol. ii. ; (12.) "The Bruces' and the Cumyns' Family Records," 4to, 1870; (13.) " Historical Records of Family of Leslie, " 8vo, Edinb. 1869; (14.) Historical Works of Sir James Balfour," Edinb. 1824; (15.) Morton's "Monastic Annals of Teviotdale," Edinb. 1832; (16.) Crawfurd's "Lives of Officers of State in Scotland," fol., Edinb. 1726; (17.) Skene's "Highlanders of Scotland," London 1837; (18.) "Registers of Great and Privy Seals;" and (19.) "Book of Assump- tions" (MSS., Register Office, Edinburgh).* No. XXIII. CHURCH BELLS OF SCOTLAND (p. 219). One effect of the Reformation in Scotland was to put an end to "the country's best music," that of peals of bells — "music which, though it falls upon many an unheeding ear, never fails to find some hearts which it exhilarates, and some which it softens." t And so completely was the knowledge of bell-ringing extinguished in Scotland that Scott could write : " Though pealed the bells from the holy pile With long and measured toll,"tj as if pealing and tolling bells were the same thing. This was not so in Scotland in Catholic times ; the text tells us of the bell-tower of Beauly, and the bells thereof; and the report sent * I have to thank General Allan for this list also. + Southey's Book of the Church, ii. 121. X Lord of the Isles, canto iv. 11. APPENDIX. 317 to Rome * on the Abbey church of Arbroath speaks of its excellent tower, containing many bells of the best kind ; and on the Abbey church of Kelso, it describes the two towers— the central and western tower — the latter containing many and well-sounding bells. As the use of towers was always for hanging bells, wherever in Scotland we find a pre-Reformation tower, we may be sure there was at one time a ring of bells ; and we may confidently assert that the .towers of Pluscardine and Ardchattan, and of the cathedral church of Ross, contained suitable peals of bells. Church bells are first mentioned by Bede, a.d. 680 ; and the first peal in England was put up by Abbot Tunstal in Croyland Abbey, ante 870.! I know of no ring of mediaeval bells now remaining in Scotland save those at Kirkwall Cathedral (supra, p. 223). There are four bells — the largest, or tenor, originally given by Bishop Maxwell in 1328, but recast; second bell given by Bishop Maxwell; first, or treble, given by Bishop Maxwell ; small bell, without inscription or date, not hung. They are not, and probably never have been, rung by the common processes of wheel or crank, but by a rope applied so as, by a lateral traction, to make the tongue strike the side. The small bell is called the fire-bell, and in the seventeenth century was called the skellat-bell. This is extracted by Mr Ellacombe % from an article in the Orcadian for October 1861, by Sir Henry Dryden. Now compare this with an English county, say Somerset, where the spoliation of its duke, the Lord Protector, who thought one bell enough to summon the people to church, was checked. It had in Camden's time 385 § parishes. It has now among its churches 393, none of which have less than three bells ; 43 churches having two bells, and 72 new and old churches with single bells in towers IT or bell-cots; altogether, there are 2064 church bells in Somerset (Ellacombe, p. 20). * Theiner, p. 525. + Godwin's English Archaeological Handbook, 1867, p. 269. t Church Bells of Somersetshire, p. 131. § Brit., 1610, p. 240. IT I presume these are new churches. 318 APPENDIX. No. XXIV. DRESS OF THE MONKS (p. 222). The difference between the dress of the Valliscaulians and Cister- cians is difficult to ascertain. The descriptions {supra, pp. 10, 247) are equally applicable to both ; they are both called White Monks (supra, p. 136), and are said by monkish historians to wear the same dress {supra, p. 145). But the text speaks of a difference in the cowls of the two orders, and perhaps it is here the distinction lies. There is a print of a Valliscaulian monk in " Buonanni Ordini Re- ligiosi," part iii., No. 4 (Rome 17 10) which would be described as a white cassock with a narrow scapulary. No. XXV. CHAPTER OF KIRKWALL (p. 222). Bishop Robert Reid made a new erection and foundation of the chapter, viz., seven dignities, whereof the first was a provost or dean, to whom, under the bishop, the correction and oversight of the canons, prebendaries, and chaplains waste belong; (2.) An arch- deacon, who was to govern the people according to the canon law; (3.) A precentor, who was to rule the singers in the choir in the elevation or depression of their songs ; (4.) A chancellor, who was to be learned in both laws, and bound to read in the pontifical law publicly in the chapter to all that ought to be present, and to look to the preserving and mending the books of the choir and register, and to keep the common seal and key of the library ; (5.) A treasurer, who was to keep the treasure of the church and sacred vestments, and to have a care of the bread, wine, wax, oil, and lights for the church ; (6.) A subdean, who was to supply the place of the provost in his absence; (7.) A sub-chanter, who was bound to play on the organs each Lord's Day and festivals, and to supply the place of the chanter in his absence. Likewise he erected seven other canons and prebendaries, to wit : (i.) The prebendary of Holy Cross — he was to be a special keeper APPENDIX. 319 of holy things under the treasurer, and was to take care of the clock and ringing of the bells at hours appointed, and to take care that the floor of the church was cleanly swept ; (2.) The prebendary of St Mary — he was to have a care of the roof and windows of the cathe- dral, and to have them helped if need were; (3.) The prebendary of St Magnus — he was to be confessor of the households of the bishop, provost, canons, and chaplains, and their servants, in the time of Easter, and to administer the Eucharist to them ; the 4th prebendary was to have the chaplaincy of St John the Evangelist in the said cathedral church ; the 5 th prebendary was to have the chap- laincy of St Lawrence; the 6th was to have the prebend of St Katharine ; and the 7th prebendary was to have the prebend of St Duthas. Besides these, he erected thirteen chaplains : to the first was allotted the chaplaincy of St Peter, and he was to be master of the grammar school ; to the second was allotted the chaplaincy of St Augustine, and he was to be master of the singing school ; the third was to be Stallarius, or the bishop's chorister; the fourth the pro- vost's chorister; fifth, the archdeacon's ; sixth, the precentor's ; seventh, the chancellor's ; eighth, the treasurer's ; ninth, the sub-dean's ; tenth, the prebendary's of Holy Cross ; eleventh, the prebendary's of St Mary; twelfth, the prebendary's of St Katharine; thirteenth, the chaplain's of Holy Cross. To these he added a sacrist, who was to ring the bells, and light the lamps, and carry in water and fire to the church, and go before the processions with a white rod, after the manner of a beadle. He moreover ordained six boys, who were to be taper-bearers, and to sing the responsories and verses in the choir as they were to be ordered by the chanter (Wallace's " Orkney," pp. 85-87). There were no ringers of the peal of bells. " This ringing prevails in no country so much as in England, which is called the ringing island. It is said that bells were applied to church purposes as early as the sixth century even in the monastic societies of Caledonia " (English Encyclopaedia, i. 663). 320 APPENDIX. No. XXVI. DIARY OF QUEEN MARY'S JOURNEY NORTH, 1562 (P- 234)- A MS., being the Book of the Master of the Household, Sir J. Ogilvie, of Queen Mary, contains the following journey of that queen. The book is in French, and begins the ist of August 1562, the queen and court being then at Edinburgh : "The queen remained at Edinburgh from the ist to the nth of August; but on the nth of August she left Edinburgh with a part of her train, and dined at Calder. After dinner, she set out for Lithgow, where she was joined by the rest of her train, and where she supped and slept. On the 12th, the queen and a part of her train dined at Callendar, and slept at Stirling, where she was joined by the rest of her train, who had dined at Lithgow. She continued at , Stirling till the i8th of August, when she set out from thence with a part of her train and dined and supped at Kincardine. On the 19th she left Kincardine after dinner, and slept at St Johnston, where she remained till the 21st, when she departed after dinner, and slept at Cowpar in Angus. On the 22d she set out from Cowpar after dinner, and slept at Glammis. On the 23d she left Glammis after dinner, and slept at Guelles [perhaps Edzel]. On the 25th the queen, after dining at Pitarrow, proceeded to Dunotter, where she supped and slept. On the 27th she set out after dinner from Dunotter, and supped and slept at Aberdeen. She remained at Aberdeen till the ist of September, when she departed after dinner, and slept at Bou- quhain. The 2d she left Bouquhain after dinner, and supped and slept at Rothiemay. The 3d she set out after dinner from Rothie- may, and supped and slept at Grange, in Strathisla. On the 4th, after dining at Grange, she set out for Balveny, where she supped and slept. On the 6th, after dining at Balveny, she set out for Elgin, where she supped and slept, and where she remained till the 8th, when she set out after dinner, and supped and slept at Kinloss. On the loth, after dining at Kinloss, she set out for Tarnway, where she supped and slept. On the nth, after dining at Mernes, she supped and slept at Inverness; here she remained till the 15th, which she left that day after dinner, and supped and slept at Quittra. On the 1 6th she departed from Quittra after dinner, and supped and slept APPENDIX. 321 at Tarnway. On the 17 th, after dining at Tarnway, she went to Spynie, where she supped and slept. On the 19th she departed from Spynie, dined at CuUen, and supped and slept at Craig ol Boyne. On the 20th, after dining at Graig of Boyne, she proceeded to Banff, where she supped and slept. She left Banff on the 21st, dined at Turreff, and slept at Gight. She dined at Lessmoir, and supped and slept at Aberdeen on the 2 2d. "At Aberdeen the queen remained from the 2 2d of September till the 5th of November, when she departed. after dinner, and proceeded to Dunnoter, where she slept on the 5th. She left Dunnoter after dinner on the 7th, and supped and slept at Crag. On the 9th, after dining at Crag, she proceeded to Boneton, where she slept. On the loth, after dining at Boneton, she slept at Kinnairde, whence she departed after dinner. On the nth to Arbroath, where she slept. She left Arbroath after dinner on the 12th, and slept at Dundee. On the 13th ishe departed from Dundee, dined at Quillespyndy, and slept at St Johnstown, where she continued till the i6th, when she departed after dinner, and slept at Tulliebarne. On the 17 th she proceeded after dinner to Drummond, where she slept. On the i8th she departed from Drummond after dinner, and slept at Stirling. On the 21st she left Stirling, and slept at Lithgow, whence she departed after dinner, and slept at Edinburgh. " On the 28th of December the queen went from Edinburgh to dinner at Haddington, and to sleep at Dunbar. On the 30th she departed from Dunbar after dinner, and slept at Bylle ; and on the 31st she dined at Haddington, and slept at Edinburgh." No. XXVII. ABERTARFF AND BOLESKINE (pp. 244, 245). This and the two following Acts of Prorogation of Tacks of Teinds are recorded by Lord Prestonhall, 9th June 1708, under Act 9, 1707 ; and this Act records that the kirks of Abertarff and Boleskine " are unite in ane conjunct parochine," modifies 520 marks stipend to be paid, 310 out of the "teind sheaves and parsonage teinds of Abertarff, alias Kilquman, by Simon, Lord Eraser of Lovat, notwith- 322 APPENDIX. Standing the tack thereof of the 13th October 1576, subscribed by Mr John Fraser, prior of Beauly for the time, and by three persons of the chapter thereof," and prorogates the tack, as mentioned in the text. The modification ordains the minister to furnish, the elements to the celebration of the communion at the said kirks. No. XXVIII. CONVETH AND KILTARLITY (pp. 243-246). This Act records that these kirks are united " in ane conjunct parochine," and the service appointed to be at Conveth ; modifies 520 marks stipend to be paid, 381 marks, 6s. 8d. out of the teinds, parsonage and vicarage, of the said parochine of Conveth, by Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, notwithstanding the tack of the teind sheaves thereof, of the 13th October 1576, and notwithstanding the tack of " all and sundry the teind lambs, kids, calves, wool, butter, cheese, lint,, hemp, and all small teinds whatsomever of the vicarage and par- sonage of Conveth," subscribed by the said prior and three persons of the chapter, the 13th October 1576, and prorogates both tacks. The payment is again stated to be to the minister serving the cure at Conveith, whereunto Kiltarlity is now unite; he was to furnish communion elements. No. XXIX. WARPLAW AND FEARNUA (p. 251). This Act records that the kirks of Wardlaw and Fferneway are unite, the stipend, 520 marks to the minister serving the cure at Wardlaw, 410 marks out of the teinds, parsonage and vicarage, of the said paroch- ine of Wardlavf, by Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, that is, 50 marks out of the vicarage and small teinds of the parochine of Wardlaw, and 360 marks out of the parsonage teinds of the said parish, notwithstand- ing the tacks mentioned in the text, which were prorogated ;. but the rent of ;^4o Scots was to be paid to the bishop in addition to the stipend to the minister, wliich, in the other cases, included the rents payable under the leases. APPENDIX. 323 No. XXX. THE PRIORY GARDENS (p. 252). Queen Mary must have thoroughly appreciated the stately gardens of Beauly Priory. In her gardens she delighted to receive and con- verse with ambassadors and other public men on business, and one of her gardens at Holyrood was the old garden of the abbey. She had gardens at Linlithgow Palace, Stirling Castle, and Perth.* The Wardlaw MS.,t speaking of Lord Lovat in 1450, says, " This Lord Lovat planted the first orchard in Lovat, having brought with him several spurs of pears and apples from the south, and helped to plant and enlarge the monks' orchard in Beauly." The " Old Statistical Account of Elgin " says : " A fig-tree was at Pluscarden a few years ago, which annually produced fruit." No. XXXI. CONTRACT BETUIX MY LORD HUNTLY AND LORD . LOWET, 1570 (p. 264).f "At Aberdeine the xxvi day of Julii, the yeir of God M'v" thre scoir ten, it is appointit, agreit, and faithfuUie oblist betuix nobill and mychte lordis, George, erlle of Huntlie, lord Gordoun, and Badzenocht, etc., on the one parte, and Heow Lord Lowat on the wthir part, in maner, forme, and effect as efter follows, that is to say, the said erlle binds and oblessis him to assist, fortefie, and maintaine the said Hebw Lord Lott'at, in all his honest, lauchfull actionis and causis, as he happinis to have ado, and requeris the said erlle tharto, and also sail, at his uttermaist, labour and procure the abbot of Kynloiss to gif and set in fewferme to the saidis Heow and his airis, all and haill the landis and manes of Beowlyne, with the salmond fischeing therofi etc., for the quhilk cause the said lord Lowatt, and for the special luif which he beris to the said erlle, and conserua- * Chalmers' Qiieen Mary, vol. i., p. 72. + Inverness Courier, 22d January 1845. Other transcripts of the MS. have "sealed "for "several." X Spalding Club Miscellany, vol. iv., p. 227. 324 APPENDIX. tione of mutual amitie and kyndnes betuix thame in tyrais cuming, bindis and oblissis him to concur, assist, and tak paift with his kyn, frendis, serwandis and assistaris, with the said erll, in quhatsumevir ^ his awn particular actionis and caussis, lelelie and treulie, as he happinis to be require! tharto, aganis quhatsumevir persona or per- sonis within this realme of Scotland, the authoritie only being exceptt, &c. In werefecatione heirof, baithe the saidis parteis hes subscriuvit the present witht thar handis, day, yeir, arid place forsaidis, befor thir witnessis, Adam Gordoun of Auchendoun, William Frasser of Strowy, master Duncan Forbes of Monymusk, and master Donald Frasser, archedein of Ross, witht utheris diuerss. " George, erll of Hwntlye. Hew, lord Fraseir of Louet." No. XXXII. SCOTTISH MONASTIC SCHOOI^ (p. 279). There are some observations deserving record on this subject, in a late article in the Edinburgh Review : " Previous to the Reforma- tion, the whole educational institutions of Scotland were under the superintendence of the clergy, or more correctly speaking, of the monastic orders. ... In 1241 . . . the care of the school of Roxburgh had been entrusted to the monks of Kelso, and the ' rec- tor of the schools ' was an established officer. . . . The master of the schools of St Andrews appears between 121 1 and 12 16. At Ayr there was a 'master of the schools in 1234,' who took rank with the deans of Carrick and Cunningham in a commission from the Pope.* In 1256 the statutes of the church of Aberdeen imposed on the chancellor of the chapter the duty of attending to the regimen of the schools, and to seeing that the boys were taught grammar and logic. " Earlier still, in 1224, there was a similar officer at Abernethy, in our day a country village, and even then probably fallen from its earlier grandeur. The schools of Perth and Stirling were attached to the monastery of Dunfermline, and we read of their existence so early as 1173. These and others were all burgh or grammar schools. * Innes's Scotch Legal .Vntiquities, p. 214. APPENDIX. 325 " But there was another and higher class of schools within the walls of the monasteries, chiefly designed, no doubt, for the education of the clergy. To them, however, it would appear that the sons of the nobility were occasionally sent; and in the Chartulary of Kelso an instance occurs in the year 1200, of the grant by a noble woman of a rent to the abbot and monks, on condition that they should board and educate her son with the best boys entrusted to their care. It was in these latter schools, which perished in the wreck and plunder of the Reformation, leaving no substitutes behind them, that the rudi- ments of the scholastic philosophy were taught, and that such men as John of Dunse must have been prepared for the brilliant careers on which they immediately entered at Oxford, Paris, and Bologna. Nor was this the only direction in which their influence may be traced. Law can scarcely have been taught at the burgh schools, and, as in 1496, the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow had only been recently founded, it has always seemed probable to us that it was to these monastic schools that the expression ' schules of art and jure,' which occurs in the remarkable statute of James IV. with reference to the education of the sons of barons and freeholders, was intended to apply. " * No. XXXIII. LEASE BETWEEN ,THE COMMISSIONERS OF HER ■ MAJESTY'S WOODS, FORESTS, ETC., AND THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS ALEXANDER, BARON LOVAT, OF THE PRIORY OF BEAULY (p. 292). It is contracted and agreed upon betwixt the Right Honourable George William Frederick, Earl of Carlisle; Alexander Milne, Esq., and the Honourable Alexander Gore, Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, Land, Revenues, Works, and Buildings, on behalf of her Majesty, her heirs and successors on the one part, and the Right Honourable Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat of Lovat, in the county of Inverness, on the other part, in manner following, that is to say, the said Commissioners, on behalf foresaid, considering that the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, has made * Bdinburgh Review for Apfil 1^6. 826 APPENDIX. application to the said Commissioners for a lease, on the terras and conditions after mentioned, of the Priory of Beauly, in the county of Inverness, which application the said Commissioners have, with con- sent of the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury, as signified by their warrant dated the 15 th day of June 1847, agreed to grant. There- fore the said Commissiqners, on behalf of her Majesty, have set, and in consideration of the tack-duty and other prestations, particularly after specified, hereby set, and in tack and assedation let to the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, and the heirs succeeding to him in the lands and barony of Lovat, but expressly excluding assignees and sub-tenants without permission specially granted in writing by the said Commissioners or their successors in office. All and Whole the ruins of the old church and monastery of Beauly, ground within the same and burying-ground adjoining, belonging to her Majesty and her royal successors, as the same are delineated by the red lines on a plan docqueted by us, the said Commissioners, and the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, as relative hereto, and that for all the days, space, and term of thirty-one years, from and after the term of Whitsunday last, 1847, which is hereby declared to have been the term of the said Thomas Alexander Baron Lovat's entry thereto, by virtue of these presents, and from thenceforth to be peaceably pos- sessed and enjoyed by him and his foresaids during the haill space of the said tack, freely, quietly, well, and in peace, without any revo- cation or impediment whatever. But reserving to her said Majesty and the said Commissioners, and her successors in office, full power to permit or to restrict interments within the said premises as they shall think proper ; and, in respect that the floors of -the interior of the said ruins are now encumbered with rubbish, and that the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, is to expend a sum, not exceeding the sum of ;^2o sterling, in clearing away the same, the said Commissioners bind and oblige themselves and their successors in office to pay to the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, a sum not exceeding the foresaid sum of ;^i2o sterling, on his producing proper certificates or other evidence of the said clearance being effected ; for which causes, and on the other part, the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, binds and obliges himself and his heirs succeeding to him in the lands and barony of Lovat, to make payment to her Majesty and her successors, or to the said Commissioners and their successors, or to any keeper, collector, or receiver, or other person or persons, whom the said Com- APPENDIX. 327 missioners may from time to time authorise to receive the same, the sum of ;^i sterling yearly, in name of rent or tack-duty, payable the said tack-duty at the term of Whitsunday yearly, beginning the first term's payment thereof at the term of Whitsunday next for the year immediately preceding, and the next term's paymentthereof, at the term of Whitsunday thereafter for the year following, and so forth yearly thereafter during the currency of this tack, with a fifth part more of each termjs payment of liquidate penalty in case of failure, and the legal annual rent of the said yearly payments from the time the same became due during the not payment thereof. And the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, also hereby binds and obliges himself, his heirs and successors, that he and his foresaids shall and will, from time to time, and at all times during the said term hereby granted, use his and their best endeavours to preserve and keep the said ruins and grounds from spoil and injury, and shall keep and preserve in good repair the walls at present erected on the outside of the said red lines, which walls are the property of the said Baron Lovat, and shall not, for want of care and due attention, permit the said ruins to fall into greater dilapidation and decay than must naturally occur from the effect of time and the increasing antiquity of the buildings, and shall not, nor will convert or use the said premises or any part thereof into or for a residence or dwelling-house, or barn, stable or outhouse, of any kind or description, but maintain and keep the same in their present state and condition, as a venerable monument of ancient timesj and an object of interest, and shall not, nor will permit or suffer any alteration to be made thereon, or any additional building or erection, to be made or set up on any part of the said premises ; and that it shall be lawful for the said Commissioners of her Majesty's Woods, Forests, Land, Revenues, Works, and Buildings for the time being, or such other person or persons as they shall appoint, at seasonable and convenient times in the day, yearly or oftener during the said term hereby granted, to enter into and upon, and to view and inspect the said ruins and premises hereby let, and to take a map or maps of the same, if they shall think fit, and to give notice in writing to or for the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, his heirs, executors, and successors, of any neglect or want of care of the said ruins, fences, trees, or premises, which may be found on any such view ; and the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, hereby binds and obliges him- self and his foresaids to amend and make good all such damage as 328 APPENDIX. shall have been caused by such neglect or want of care, within three months after notice thereof, given or left as aforesaid, and at the end of his possession, by virtue of these presents, to leave, surrender, and yield up the said whole premises in as good a state of preservation as the same now are (decay from time and damages by storm or tempest excepted), unto the Queen's Majesty, her heirs and successors, or to the Commissioners for the time being of her Majesty's Woods, Forests, Land, Revenues, Works, and Buildings, or to such person or persons as the Queen's Majesty, her heirs and successors, or the said Commissioners for the time being, shall authorise and appoint to receive the same ; and further, the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, binds and obliges himself and his foresaids, on each day of the week, or on such days in every week, and at such hours in the day, and subject to such restrictions and regulations as the said Commissioners for the time being of her Majesty's Woods, Forests, Land, Revenues, Works, and Buildings, shall from time to time prescribe or approve . of, or deem fitting for the preservation of the said ruins and premises, and the prevention of injury and disorder thereon, permit and suffer all and every persons and person whomsoever, upon request made to him or them for that purpose, to enter and remain upon the said site and premises, and view the said ruins, and make drawings or sketches of the same, or any part thereof ; and the said Thomas Alexander, Baron Lovat, binds and obliges himself and his foresaids to flit and remove himself, his servants, goods and gear, furth and from the pos- session of the said ruins at the expiry of this tack, and to leave the same void and redd, to the effect the said Commissioners and their successors iii office, or others on behalf of h6r Majesty and her royal successors, may enter thereto immediately, and peaceably possess the same in all time thereafter, and that without any previous warning or process of renioving to be used against him or them to that effect. And lastly, both parties bind, etc. In witness whereof, etc.* * The area of the church is given as 31 poles 25 roods. Captain White states the length of nave and choir to be 138 feet by 21 in breadth, inside walls. The Ordnance Survey measurement is followed in the ground, plan, supra, p. 280. Mr Muir says, " in length as to breadth Beauly is nearly six and a quarter times : " apparently the largest proportional length in Scotland. PRIORS OF BEAULY. A.D. 1222. GlACOMO Battista, Wardlaw MS. DUVALLUS MATHESON, . »j 1279. Reg. Moray, 140. } J; nor 01 Dcauiy, . 1289. > j» Acta Pari. Marg. Reg. 1341- Robert, ,, Balnagown Charters, O.P.S., ii. 2, 509 1356- )) J) >J yj I3S7- t) J) >> a 1362. Symon, „ . . Coll. Ab. and Banff, ii. 384. 1371. Alexander Frisale, Kalendar of Fearn, supra, p. 90. 1372. Sir Maurice ,, Balnagown Charters, O.P.S., ii. 2, 509. 1440. Thomas Fraser, . Wardlaw MS. I479- Brother of Sir Kenneth Mac- Supra, p. 105. kenzie of Kintail, 1480. Sir John Fynla, . Supra, No. XIII. 1497. Hugh Frezel, . Supra, No. XV. "498. DOUGAL RoRIESON, . Supra, No. XV. 1514. It . . . Stipra, No. XXI. 1525- NiCHOLAUS, . . . . Lovat Charters, Findon MSS. 1529. Master James Haswell, Reg. Sec. Sig., L. viii., fol. 59. 1530. Robert Reid, Supra, p. 218. 1553. Walter Reid,* Supra, p. 226. 1573- John Fraser, . . . . Supra, p. 275. John Fraser was the last clerical Prior of Beauly. We find mention of Adam Gumming, Commendator of Beauly in 1613, as being represented by his wife, Elizabeth Home, Prioress of St Bothans, in granting a lease of some of the pos- sessions of that priory (Scots Acts, v. 135 ; N. Stat. Ace, Berwickshire, 105). The commendatorship expectant upon his decease seems to have been given to the Hays by James VI. ; for we have a letter of provision under the Great Seal of the Priory of Beaulieu in Ross-shire, on loth May 1607, in favour of Sir James Hay of Kingask (Douglas' Peerage, Earl of Kinnoul, citing L. Mag. Sig., Ixiv., No. 4). There is an entry in the Scots Acts, dated 1612 (vol. iv., p. 522): "Ratification to the Lord Hay of Sala of his erection of Beaulie." But there must be some mistake here, for Sir James Hay's son was not created Lord Hay of Sauley, county York, till 29th June 1615. He was ultimately Earl of Carlisle, and after spending ;^400,ooo worth of royal grants, on his death in 1636, " left," says Clarendon, "not a house nor acre of land to be remembered by." Beauly fell back again, doubtless, to the Crown, so as to enable Charles I. to annex it to the bishopric of Ross in 1639. * Forsyth mistook Ferrarius' expression "Abbot Walter," and made Walter Hetton Abbot of Kinloss. Mr Walcot makes him Prior of Beauly, but Walter Hetton was only the Precentor of Kinloss, and not at all conhected with Beauly, INDEX. A. Abertarff, parish of, 240-246, 306, 321, 322. Alexander I., 258. II., 17-19, 28, 36, 124-127, 148, 149. III., 6. III., Pope, 296. IV., Pope, Bull of, 191. VI., Pope, Bull of, 106-no, 113- 120, 297. AUangrange, chapel of, 302, 303. Annexation, Aet of, 278. Ardchattan, Priory of, 146-156, 248, 283, 308, 309. seal of, 170. Priors of, 149, 152-154, 156, 181. Ardnagrask, lands of, 274. Argyle, David, Bishop of, 152, 156. • Robert, Bishop of, 152. Armour, 290. Athole, David de Hastings, Earl of, 45. John, Earl of, 264, 265, 273. Patrick, Earl of, murder of, 43-45. Thomas de Galloway, Earl of, 24, 299. B. Baliol, John, 54. Battista, Giacomo, Prior of Beauly, 329. Bar, Alexander, Bishop of Moray, 132. Beaufort Castle, 40, 76, 211, 295. chapel of, 76. Beaulieu, Abbey of, Hampshire, 15. Beauly, charter-roll of, 260, 262. extension of priory church, 281, 282. fairs at, 259. form of prior's oath, III, 112. origin of name, 7, 294. Priors of— Nicholas, 329; Robert, 329 ; Simon, 329. pronunciation of name, 15. revenues of prioi-y, 235-238, 247, 248, 257-260, 271, 272. Beauly — continued, salmon-fishings of, 29, 87, 88, 165, 212, 213, 237, 253, 265, 266, 270, 271, 288. seal of, 170. tack of lands, 254-256, 265-268, 272, 291-293, 325-328. Bells in Scottish churches, 316, 317. Benale, John, Prior of Urquhart, 136. Benedict XIII., Pope, 297. Bifort, Llewellyn, Bishop of Ross, 202. Bigod, Roger, 6. Boleskine, parish of, 242, 244, 245, 321, 322. Boscho, Alexander de, 85. Andrew de, 54, 63, 64, 67. Elizabeth de, or Byset, 67. John de, 67. Joneta de, 67. Mariota de, 67, 95. Bourdeaux, John Byset in, 45. Boyd, Robert, Lord, 276. Boys, William de, Prior of Pluscardine, 138. Bruges, trade of, to Beauly, 165. Bullock, John, Bishop of Ross, 195, 198, 203. arms of, 195. Bulls, Papal, of Alexander IV., 190, 191. Alexander VI., 106-109, II3-II9. Gregoiy IX., 14. Gregory XI., 91. Innocent III., 8-11. Julius II., 177-181. Bursaries, Church, 241. Buy, Sorley, Lord of the Route, 277. Byset, origin of name, 300. arms of, 34. Bysets (or M'Eoins), the, of Antrim, S3, 301, 302. Bysets, the, in England — Alfreda, 47. Ausold, 20. Christiana, 36. INDEX. 331 Bysets — continued. Emulph, 20. Henry, 17, 20. John, 20, 45, 300. Manassar, 20, 299, 30 1. Margaret, 20, 45. Walter, of Lowdham, 46, 47. William, of East Bridgeford, 20, 299, 300. Bysets, the, in Ireland — Henry, 301. John, 46, 298, 299, 301. Maria, 302. Walter, 298, 299. Bysets, the, in Scotland — Agatha, 53, 54. Alexander, 301. Anselm, 24. Cecilia, 54, 64, 68, 69, 73-76. Elizabeth, 54, 64, 75. John, of the Aird and Lovat, 7, 14, 16-19, 21, 23-26, 28, 37, 40, 43, 47, 48, 52, 53- 54- John, the younger, 4. Mary, 55. Muriel, 54, 64. &« De Graham. Patrick, 288, 301. Peter, 24. Robert, of Upsetlington, 25, 36, S3. 300, 301- Thomas, 48. Walter, of Aboyne, 19, 25, 35, 36, 43-48, 300. Walter, of Lessendrum, 300, 301. William, 24-26, 33-36, 44, 48, 301. CAIRNCROSS, James, Abbot of Fearn, 315. Robert, Abbot of Fearn, 315. Robert, Bishop of Ross, 199, 203, 223, 230. Calendar, Scottish, 31 1, 312. Cameron, Ewen, of Lochiel, 230. Campbell, Duncan, of Glenorchy, 290. Janet, 230, 250, 274, 277. Sir John, of Cawdor, 230, 251, 265. Cardonnel's "Etchings of Antiquities in Scotland," 290, 291. Carrick, Nelo de, 67. Cassilis, Earlof(A.D. 1558), 227. Cattanach, Thomas, Abbot of Fearn, 3 15. Chapels, domestic, in Scotland, 302, 303. Charters, forged, 29, 31. the, of Lovat, 11-13. Charters of Alexander II., 125. Andrew, Bishop of Moray, 38, 39, 128, 129. Andrew de Boscho, 63, 64. Charters of — continued. Cecilia Byset, 74. David de Innerlunan, 60, 61. Henry de Totyngh am, 56, 57. John de Urchard, 87. Laurence, the knight, 49. Patrick de Grahame, 78, 79. William Byset, 33-37. , William de Fenton, 83, 84. Chartreuse, the Grande, I. Chisholm, Alexander de (1368), 88, 96, 98, 306. Alexander, of Comer, 251, 295. Alexander W., M.P., 269. John, of Comer, 230, 295. Robert de, 90, 93, 132, 133. the, 291. Thomas de, 90, 92, 93, 96. Weland, 176, 184. Chrystal, Thomas, Abbot of Kinloss, 217, 247. Cistercians, 59, 145. Clanranald, Ranald. See Ranald Galla. Clement IV., Pope, 308. VII., Pope, 205, 207, 298, 301 314- Clerk, Alexander, 254, 257. John, 254, 257. Cockburn, Henry, Bishop of Ross, 203. Robert, 203, 206, 214. CoUace, Margaret, of Balnamoon, 232. Comer, parish of, 238-240, 242. Contract between Lords Huntly and Lovat, 323, 324. Contract of marriage. Eraser and De Fenton, 303-306. Conveth, collation of, 101-103. presentations to, 104, 105, 167, 168. lands of, 23, 269, 270, 322. revenues of, 238, 241-243. Corbet, Sir Archibald, 81. Sir Hugh, 81. Corfe Castle, 84. Cordiner's "Antiquities," 288, 289. Council, fourth Lateran, 4. fifth Latferan, 214. Courtois, Jacques, 143, 159, 162, 164. letter of, 157-159, i6i, 162. Craigscorrie, Maclean of, 291. Cromarty, first Earl of, 29, 30, 2 1 6, 263. Culdees, the, 5, 186. Culter, preceptory of Knights Templars at, 300. Cumin, Walter, Earl of Menteith, 127. Gumming, Adam, Commendator of Beauly, 329. Alexander, of Altyre, 221, 248, Curia Romana, 308. 332 INDEX. D. Dalcorse (Dalcross), lands of, 304. Darius, Sylvester, Papal Nuncio, 205, 210, 214. Darnley, Lord, 252. David I., 186, 187. Deans, Christian, 42. De Burgh, Hubert, 46. Hugh, 6. Richard, 301. Walter, Earl of Ulster, 301. De Courcy, John, 301. De Lacy, Hugh, Earl of Ulster, 301. John, Constable of Chester, 301. De Toesny, Simon, Bishop of Moray, 296. Del Ard, barony of, 304. Alexander, 94, 95. Christian, 77, 84, 85. Donald, 77. Godfrey, 303. Harold, 77. Isabella, 303. John, 79, 97, 303. Margaret, 90, 94. Weland, 303. William, 84, 303. Denoon, Donald, Abbot of Fearn, 214, 216, 217, 314. Diary of Queen Mary's northern jour- ney, 320, 321. Dominicans, the, 5, 6. Donald Bane, 18. Douglas, Archibald of, 127, 132. Brice, Bishop of Moray, 22, 24, 34, 41, 129, 296, 298. Henry, 98, 173, 175, 211. Mariota, 98. Sir James, 98, 1 75' Dow, Donald, vicar of Wardlaw, 250. James, vicar of Abertarff, 244, 245. Dunballoch, lands and parish of, 23. Dunbar, Alexander, Dean of Moray, 232. Captain Dunbar, 11. Columbade, Bishop of Moray, 297. John de. Earl of Moray, 133. Patrick, Earl of, 45, 127. Thomas, Earl of Moray, 96, 305, 306. Durward, Allan, osliarius, 6. Edinburgh, University of, founded by Prior R. Reid, 228. Elder, Adam, 221, 226, 227. Elgin, cathedral chapter of, 41. Elphinstone, William, Bishop of Ross, 203. Erchless, castle and lands of, 23, 295. " Estimate of Scottish Nobility," 264. Eugene IV., Pope, 297. Fearn, Abbots of — ^ Colin, Donald, John, Macbeth, Malcolm, Martin, 313; Finlay, 314. lands of, 23, 322. Fearnua, parish of, 26, 249, 250. Fenton, Cecilia de. See Byset, Cecilia. Janet de, 96, 98, 173, 284, 303, 304. John de, yz. Margaret de, 98, 172. Walter de, 98, 172, 269. William de, of Baky, 239, 303, 304, 30s, 306. William de, of Beaufort, 54, 68, 69, 72, 83, 84, 96. Ferrarius, historian of Kinloss, 218-222. Fleming, Bartholomev?, the, 34. Finlay, Sir John, Prior of Beauly, 329. Forbes, Duncan, 12, 260, 324. John de, 85. John, of Pitsligo, 50. Margaret de, 86. Sir Christian de, 85. William of Kinaldie, 50. Forman, Adam, 119, 121, 123. Andrew, Bishop of Moray, 168- 170, 297. Fome, salmon fishings of, 29. FouUs, Lord, 278. William de, 305. Fraser, Agnes, 307. Alexander, of Lovat, 12, 93, 219, 230, 231, 250. Amelia, 12, 21. Donald, Archdeacon of Ross, 324. General, 290. Hon. Archibald, of Lovat, 13. Hugh, of Fraserdale, 12. of Foyers, 255. of Guisachan, 251. of Lovat, 12, 89, 92, 95:99, 174, 205-208, 211, 214, 223, 224, 241, 242, 251, 253, 259, 263-265, 272-277, 282, 284, 286, 287, 289, 291-293, 295, 303, 305. 323, 324- James, of Foyers, 225. John, Bishop of Ross, 193, 196, 199, 203. John, minister of Conveth, 275. John, Prior of Beauly, 243, 329. Mr, of Abertarff, l6. Robert, 210, 211. Simon, of Lovat, 12, 243, 244, 247, 250, 276, 277, 279, 280, 286, 289, 302, 321, 322, INDEX. 333 Fraser — continued. Sir Alexander, of Doors, 279, 284. Thomas, of Lovat, 56, 97, 98, 174, 175, 184, 206, 208, 210, 211, 215, 326. Thomas, of Strichen, 244, 276, 278-280. Thomas, Prior of Beauly, 329. William, of Stray, 251, 324. Frasers, annals of the, 13. the, of Aigas, 291. the, of Eskadale, 291. the, of Lovat, arras of, 97 ; crest of, 290. the, of Newton, 291. Fresel, Hugh, no, 164, 329. Robert, Dean of Ross, 183. Simon, 93, 306. Frisale, Sir Maurice, Prior of Beauly, 329. Frisel, Alexander, Prior of Beauly, 90, 329- G. Galloway, Alan de, 47, 290. Gardens of Priory, 221, 252, 323. Gilchrist, Earl of Angus, 62. Gillanders, 33, 310. Giilebride, Earl of Angus, 62. Gillechrist A Rosse, 17. Macgillidufii, 61, 62, 268. Giraldus Cambrensis, 3. Glasgow, John, Bishop of, 305. Glenarm, lands of, 301, 302. Glenmoriston, Grants of, 224. Golford, lands of, 304. Gordon, Adam, of Auchindean, 324. , Alexander, 234. George, Earl of Huntly, 323, 324. Janet, 175. Patrick, of Letterfourie, 315. Gorrie, family of, 94. Graham, Margaret de, 89. Matilda, 303. Muriel de, or Byset, 55. Sir David de, 54, 67, 68, 71. Sir Patrick de, 68, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78-80. arms of, 68 (».). Grants, origin of the, 53. Gregory le, 55. John and Andrew le, 80. John, of Freuchy, 184, 219,221,248. Patrick le, 80, 306. Robert le, 53, 55. Rodolph, 80. Sir Laurence le, 53. William le, 47. Gregory IX., Pope, 14, 15, 189, 190. XL, Pope, 91. Guthrie, John, Bishop of Ross, 203. H. Haag, Andrew, Prior of Pluscardine, 137- Halyburton, George, of Gask, 211. James, of Erchless and Gask, 175, 211. John, of the Aird, 99, 175. of Pitcur, 211. Walter, 98. Hamilton, Patrick, Abbot of Fearn, 314- Hastie, Thomas, Subprior of Beauly, 223. Haswell, James, Prior of Beauly, 329. Hay, James, Bishop of Ross, 199, 203, 209, 215. of Sauley, Earl of Carlisle, 329. Sir James, of Kingask, 329. Thomas, Bishop of Ross, 203. Hepburne, James, Bishop of Moray, 297, 298. Patrick, Bishop of Moray, 298. Hetton, Walter, Precentor of Kinloss, 329- Home, Elizabeth, Prioress of St Bothans, 329- I. Innerlunan, David de, 60. Innes, chapel of, 302. John de, Bishop of Moray, 297. Innocent III., Pope, I, 4, 8-n. Inverness, vicar of, 52. Islands, peninsulas called, 51. James II., 173. IV. 122 12^. John XXII., 'Pope, 308. Julius II., Pope, 177-181, 214. K. Kelso, Herbert, Abbot of, 300. Kilcoy, lease of, 67. Kilmorack, church of, 213, 214, 249 fishings of, 213. Kilravock, Rose of, 214, 234, 264. Kiltarlity, church of, 23-27, 36, 212, 245, 322. fishings of, 170, Kingillie, 2U. Kinlochy, battle of, 224, 225. Kinloss, Abbey of, 200. Abbots of, 201, 205, 217, 226, 247. Book of, 13. revenues of, 247-249. Kirkhill, parish of, 23, 322. Kirkwall, chapter of, 318, 319. 334 INDEX. Langside, battle of, 253. Lascelles, Alan de, 81. Lauder, Sir Robert, of the Bass, 133. Lennox, Earl of. Regent, 274. Leo X., Pope, 311. Leper houses in Scotland, 294, 295. Leslie, Alexander, Earl of Ross, 198, 199. ■ George, Earl of Rothes, 198. Walter de, 195-197. Lesley, John, Bishop of Ross, 188,. 192, 203, 204. Lessendrum, Bissets of, 95, 300. Lindsay, Alexander, Earl of Crawford, 173- David, of Lethnot, 98, 173. Sir David, of Edzell, 174, 175. Patrick, Bishop of Ross, 193. Walter, of Beaufort, 173. Lochslyn, castle of, 216. Lords of the Isles — Alexander, 93, 94. Angus, 94. Donald, 122, 123, 184. Godfrey, 94. John, 94, 122. Reginald, 197. Somerled, 6, 147, 148. Lorn, Dougal of, 6, 7, 148. Duncan Macdougal of, 147, 148. Ewen of, 149. John of, 150. Lovat, Master of (1554), 224, 225, 276. Castle, 295. Low, Bishop, 168. Lowdham, manor of, 46, 298, 299. Luther, Martin, 311. Lychton, Henry de. Bishop of Moray, 297. M. MacConnell, M 'Angus, 277. MacCulloch, Thomas, Abbot of Feam, 314- Macdonald, Donald, 277. Macdonnell, Donald, 302. John Angus, 302. Macdougal, Anna, of Lorn, 306. Macdougals, the. Priors of Ardchattan, 152-154, 156, i8i. MacEoins (or Bysets), the, of the Glynns, 301, 302. Macfarlane, Gillespie, 6. John, 30. Walter, his MSS., II, 12, 30. Macintagart, Sir Ferchard, 187. Mackenzie, Alexander, of Fraserdale, 12. Mackenzie — continued. Alexander of Kintail, 105, 306. Catherine, 279. Colin, of Kintail, 273, 278, 285. John, of Kintail, 230. Lewis, of Findon, 306. Prior of Beauly, 105, 285. Roderick, of Kintail, 230. Sir George, of Rosehaugh, 263. of Tarbat, 29, 30, 262, 263. Sir Kenneth, of Kintail, 105, 21 1, 251, 290, 291, 306, 307. the, of Gairloch, 291. Macranald, Alexander, of Glengarry, 184. Maiden Bradley, Bissets of, 20, 300. Maitland, Richard, of Thirlstane, 35. Malvoisin, William, Bishop of St An- drews, 3-6, 127. Mar, Earl of, Regent, 275. Margaret Atheling, Queen of Scotland, 186. Martin V., Pope, 297. Master, title of, 58. Matheson, Duvallus, Prior of Beauly, 329- Maxwell, John, Bishop of Ross, 315,317. Robert, Bishop of Orkney, 223. M'Culloch, Angus, 251. Marion, 251. Monilaw, Adam, Abbot of Feam, 313. Monro, George, of Tarrell, 251. Montealto, William de, 30, 61. Monteith, Earl of, 302. Moravia, Alexander de, 92. Andrew de, 61, 191. John de, 130. Malcolm de, 130. Moray, Alexander, Bishop of, 296. Andrew de, Bishop of, 25, 27, 34, 38, 104, 128, 129, 168, 296. Archibald, Bishop of, 28, 69, 72, 296. David de. Bishop of, 297. Felix, Bishop of, 296. Gregory, Bishop of, 296. Ralph, Bishop of, 296. Richard, Bishop of, 296." Simon, Bishop of, 241, 296. William, Bishop of, 296. Moreville, Hugh de, 169. Morton, Earl of, Regent, 192, 242, 275. M'Ra, Rev. John, 306. Murray, Sir Patrick, 315. N. Narne, David, of Sandfurde, 173. W ottyngham. See Tottyngham. INDEX. 335 o. Ogilvy, Alexander, 173. John, 174, 175. Marjory, 172. Patrick, 172, 174, 175. Walter de, 98, 172, 175, 305. Orkney, Robert Maxwell, Bishop of, 223. Robert Reid, Bishop of. See Ro- bert Reid. P. Panter, David, Bishop of Ross, 203; Abbot of Feam, 315. Parliament, Scottish, Lords of, 37. Paul III., Pope, 298, 315. Pennant, account of Beauly, 288. Person, John, instructor of novices, 218. Pilmore, John, Bishop of Moray, 297. Pius II., Pope, 297. Pluscardine, Priory of, 123, 124, 248, 287. Charter of Priory, 125-127. Priors of — Alexander, 134. John, 137. Robert, 123, 138, 256. Symon, 130. Thomas, 133. William, 57, 58. seal of, 170. Presentations to church of Conveth, 104, 167, 168. Pylche, Alexander, 85. William, 85. Q- QUERITINUS (Curitan), founder of Rosmarkyn, 185, 1 86, 250. Quinci, Roger de, 127. R. Raeburn, Sir Andrew, Prior of Ur- quhart, 136. Ranald Galla, 224, 225. Randolph, John, Earl of Moray, 93, 183, 306. Thomas, Earl of Moray, 96, 129. Rathlin (or Rachrin), isle of, 46, 301. Record OflSce, extracts of, 298, 299. Reformation, the, in Scotland, 231-233. Register, the, of Moray, 2. Reid, Katherine, 232. Robert, Abbot of Kinloss, Bishop of Orkney, etc., 205, 210, 214- 223, 225-232, 248, 318, 319, 329. Walter, Prior of Beauly, 226, 227, 231, 232, 234, 237, 241, 242, 252, 256, 265, 271, 272. Rheindoun, lands of, 274, 287. Roll, Bagimont's, 66, Rolls, Ragman, 84. Rorieson, Dougal, Prior of Beauly, no, 120-123, 182, 329. Rose, Hugh, of Kilravock, 67, 95, 105. Thomas, of Geddes, 29, 30. William de, 95. Ross, Bishops of (Catholic), 187-204. Alexander, 202. David, 203. Gregory, 202. Griffin, 202. Henry, 203. James, 203. John, 203. Macbeth, 187, 201. Matthew, 202. Reginald, 202. Robert, 24, 27, 199,202, 203. Roger, 202. Simeon, 187, 202. Thomas, 80, 184, 203. William, 203. Ross, Bishops of (Episcopal) — James, 287. Patrick Lindsay, 193. Ross Cathedral, church of, 191-196, 198, 199. diocese and chapter of, 199-201. Stockford of, 258. Ross, Earl of, 306. Euphemia, Countess of, 92, 195- 198. arms of, 197, 198. Farquhar, Earl of, 24, 187, 313. Hugh, Eari of, 50, 84, 89. Hugh, of Philorth, 50. Janet, 225, 230. Joanna de, 50. John, of Balnagowan, 192, 248. Margaret, 306. William, Earl of, 30, 50, 66, 91, 131, 195. 197, 313- Rothes, Earl of (1558), 227. Ruthven, William, Lord, 192. Sanctuary, right of, 308. Savill, Sir James de, 46, 295. Schools, Scottish monastic, 324, 325. Seaforth, M'Kenzie of, 291. Schanwell, EHzabeth, 212. Robert, 217, 218. Shaw, Robert, Bishop of Moray, 298. Sinclair, Henry, Bishop of Ross, 192, 203. Sixtus IV., Pope, 297. Spottiswoode, John, 31. 336 INDEX. Spynie, Lord, 244. William de, Bishop of Moray, 297. Stewart, Alexander, Bishop of Moray, 298. Alexander (the Wolf of Badenoch), Earl of Buchan, 92, 196, 197. Andrew, Abbot of Feam, 314. Andrew, Bishop of Moray, 297. David, Bishop of Moray, 297. James, Bishop of Moray, 297. Sir David, of Rosyth, 98. St Ninians, Maurice, Prior of, 313. Strathbolgy, David de, 24. Strathglass, bees of, 26. lands of, 304. Strathnaver, lands of, 295. Strivelyn (Stirling), Alexander de, 67. John de, 95. Peter de, 95. Stuart, Elizabeth, 273. Henry, Lord Darnley, 252. James, Earl of Moray, 232, 233, 251, 253, 264. Mary, Queen of Scots, 7, 225, 226, 227, 233, 234, 251, 252. William, Bishop of Aberdeen, 218. Surnames, origin of, 309, 310. Sutherland, William, Earl of, 61, 131. T. TARLOGIE, Feams of, 314. Tarradale, parish of, 268, 269. Thirlestane, Thomas of, 6, 34, 35, 241. Thornfaulcon, 221, 295. Tithes, law of, 243. Tomson, William, a travelling priest, 160, 164. Tottyngham, Henry de, 56-59. TuUoch, Thomas, IJishop of Ross, 198, 203. William, Bishop of Moray, 297. Bain of, 251, 274. Tunstal, Abbot of Croyland, 317. U. Urban IV., Pope, 130. Urchard, John de, Vicar of Abertarff, 87, 88. Urquhart, Adam, 30. Agnes, 29. Castle, 224, 295, 296, 302. Priors of, 136. Priory of, 135. Thomas, Bishop of Ross, 184, 203. V. Val des Choux, Monastery of, 142- 146. Gallowitz, Prior of, 145, 146. Valliscaulians, order of, 2, 6, 8, III, 112. priories of, in France, 309. dress of, 318. Viard, 2, 143, 144. Vicar, office of, 310, 311. Vitri, Cardinal Jacques de, 8. W. Walters, Donald, 104, 169. Wardlaw MS., the, 16, 20, 21, 269. parish of, 249, 250, 322. Waus, David, 274. John, of Lochslyn, 209, 215, 216. Magnus, 209, 210, 215, 2l6. Robert, 209, 215. Wells, cathedral chapter of, 42. Hugh de. Bishop of Lincoln, 295. Whisky, 260. William the Lion, 3, 4, 18, 21, 52. Winchester, John de. Bishop of Moray, 297. Wiscard, William^ 54- Wodman, John, Bishop of Ross, 203. Woods of Farley and Urchany, 269. Wyse, John, Prior of Pluscardme, 131- M'Farlane &= Erskine^rinters, Edinburgh. il