The Innes Review
Volume 58, Number 1, Spring 2007
Edinburgh University Press
Article

Sixteenth-century Pluscarden priory and its world

Augustine Holmes O.S.B. (bio)

It is difficult to write the history of Scottish monasticism during the centuries before the Reformation, although the late Abbot Mark Dilworth and others have extracted much from the scanty sources.1 Compared to England, little written evidence has survived from the Scottish houses. This makes extant documents all the more precious and demands the use of a wide range of resources, including material from outside Scotland, in their interpretation. There is obviously much that monasteries in different regions of Latin Christendom had in common, but each house was also part of local and national communities; each house had its inner life of prayer and work, but, as a landowner and valuable benefice, it also had social and political significance.

Pluscarden priory in Moray existed in these interconnecting worlds and one document which opens up vistas in all of them is a collection of testimonies, written in a difficult and scrawling secretary hand, which were given before the Lords of Council in 1579–80 during a case concerning the bailiary of Pluscarden.2 This article is based on an annotated transcription of this document, which is given in the first appendix, and it begins by setting the testimonies in context through a study of Pluscarden and its regality in the period. This leads into a deeper examination of three issues: contemporary charter production, the state of the Pluscarden monastic community in the sixteenth century, and the place of novices in late medieval and renaissance Scottish monasticism. Finally, a list of all known monks of Pluscarden priory in the sixteenth century is given as appendix 2. In the [End Page 35] background is the question of the state of the monastic order in Scotland in the decades before 1560, and, while this is a study of less than a century in the life of one monastery, one hopes that it will shed new light on Scottish monasticism as a whole in this period.

Pluscarden and the Dunbars

These testimonies are valuable as, through the recollections of five men, they give a glimpse into the daily life of sixteenth-century Pluscarden and allow us the rare privilege of hearing the voices of those who lived there. Eamon Duffy's The Voices of Morebath (Yale, 2001) has reminded us of the value of listening carefully to those who lived in the sixteenth century and not just concentrating on the opinions of historians. Much of the extant primary evidence for medieval and renaissance Scottish monasticism is impersonal: charters, rentals, registers etc., and few sources allow us such a glimpse into the monasteries as is afforded by Giovanni Ferrerio for Kinloss.3 These testimonies are thus precious evidence.

First, however, their context should be outlined. Pluscarden was founded in 1230 by King Alexander II as a priory of the Valliscaulian order which had been begun during the 1190s at Val des Choux (Vallis caulium) in Burgundy by Viard, a Carthusian of nearby Lugny, under the patronage of Odo III, duke of Burgundy. The order, which followed Cistercian customs with Carthusian elements, was one of the last manifestations of the 'new monasticism' of the twelfth century, and by the mid-1250s it consisted of about twenty priories. Most were in Burgundy, two were in Normandy, one was in the diocese of Liè ge and three were in Scotland: Pluscarden, Beauly near Inverness, probably founded by John Bisset in 1230, and Ardchattan in Argyll, founded in 1230 or 1231 by Duncan McCowll (or McDougall).4 In 1454 a bull of [End Page 36] Pope Nicholas V severed Pluscarden from Val des Choux and united it to the nearby priory of Urquhart, which was dependent on the Benedictine abbey of Dunfermline.5 The last pre-Reformation Benedictine regular superior of Pluscarden was Prior Alexander Dunbar. He had been provided to the benefice in 1529, in succession to Prior George Learmonth who had himself become coadjutor with right of succession to Bishop Gavin Dunbar of Aberdeen – who actually outlived him.6 That Prior Alexander was Bishop Gavin's nephew, and that Gavin Dunbar himself had previously failed in an attempt to become prior of Pluscarden in 1479, suggest an interplay of family politics in these ecclesiastical career moves which was to be reflected in the court case of 1579–80.7 The common factor in the legal moves of 1479 and 1579 was the powerful local family of Dunbar who had previously been earls of Moray, and in particular the descendants of Sir Alexander Dunbar of Westfield (d.1498), sheriff of Moray and son of James, the fifth and last Dunbar earl of Moray.

Scottish monasteries in the late middle ages appointed powerful local lairds as bailies to rule their lands on their behalf, carrying out legal and administrative acts. This office was frequently made hereditary and its holders were often kin to the religious superior or [End Page 37] commendator. While noting that the hereditary nature of the office of bailie gave it certain advantages over that of superior, which required a fresh act of election and provision on each succession, Mark Dilworth stated that, 'the bailieship in a family often preceded an abbacy held by a member of that family', but that when the two offices were held by two different families it could be a cause of strife.8 Both of these were true in the case of Pluscarden priory.

A dispute between Prior Robert Harrower, formerly a monk of Dunfermline, and Sir James Dunbar of Cumnock was settled by a decreet arbitral of 31 May 1499, the terms of which indicate that Sir James was already a bailie of Pluscarden. Following this decision, Prior Robert and the community of Pluscarden issued two charters on 18 January 1500 making Sir James their bailie for life and giving him a grant of fishings on the Spey.9 The grant was given to Sir James in gratitude for services rendered, including 'defence of us and our place'; thus he was appointed as bailie because he could and did defend the priory's interests. The prime service mentioned in the grant, according to the terms of the arbitration, was the overgiving of land and the charters, evidents, reversions, documents and entries of certain other lands on the priory estates in the sheriffdom of Elgin, 'to the augmentation of divine service of the aforesaid place'. Sir James, who died in 1504, certainly fulfilled the criterion of being a powerful local magnate. He was the son of Sir Alexander Dunbar of Westfield, and thus a brother of Gavin who had attempted to become prior in 1479, and he had succeeded his father as hereditary sheriff of Moray (Elgin and Forres) in 1498.10 [End Page 38]

Sir James was made bailie for life and in July 1508 we find his brother, David Dunbar of Durris (d.1522) and his son Alexander, who was buried at the priory in 1527, mentioned as bailies of Pluscarden.11 We thus see three sons of Sir Alexander Dunbar of Westfield involved with the priory over thirty years and also the bailiary in the process of becoming hereditary in the family of Dunbar of Durris, later of Grangehill; this is the background to Sir Alexander's grandson, Alexander, becoming prior in 1529. In 1535 Archbishop James Beaton and George Durie, joint commendators of Dunfermline, constituted Robert Dunbar of Durris, son of Alexander, Alexander Innes, son and heir of Alexander Innes of that Ilk, Walter Innes of Touchs and William Hay of Mayne as bailies and justiciars in the regality of Dunfermline, within the lordship of Urquhart and Pluscarden.12 A regality was a jurisdiction granted by the crown where no royal official could exercise his office, the royal writ did not run, the lord could repledge his tenants from a royal court to his own, and he could judge all cases except treason: 'A grant of land in regalitatem was said to take as much out of the crown as the crown was capable of giving'.13 The term is also used for the land subject to this jurisdiction which was, in a sense, a 'little kingdom'; the lands of the more important monasteries were regalities, which explains the importance of the monastic bailie. Pluscarden was not one of the greater monasteries and the 1535 document indicates the origins of its regality, for which no other evidence would appear to have survived. It, like Musselburgh, was originally part of the regality of Dunfermline. Mark Dilworth's researches have shown that Pluscarden gained de facto independence of Dunfermline during the first half of the sixteenth century, but the rights of regality were retained.14 This origin explains why Urquhart remained in the name of [End Page 39] the regality long after this priory was united with Pluscarden and the site abandoned.15

The four bailies named in 1535 give us more indications of the web of family influence that had been woven around Pluscarden priory. Robert, who married Christine Learmonth, was the son of Alexander Dunbar of Durris, and his son David succeeded him as bailie on his death in June 1582.16 It is probable that Christine was close kin to Prior George Learmonth, though I have not been able to establish this. The wife and mother of two of the other three bailies were also Dunbars.17 The appointment to the office of bailie was not just an empty gesture, as William Hay of Mayne is recorded as acting as bailie in a precept of sasine of 24 June 1548.18 Robert Dunbar of Durris was the last surviving of the four bailies of 1535 and it was a charter of Prior Alexander Dunbar issued in March 1558, making him hereditary bailie and justiciar, that was at the centre of the 1579–80 lawsuit.19

It is clear that the Dunbars' hold on Pluscarden was tenacious. By 1560 the prior and the bailie of the regality were of the family, and many of the priory lands had been feued to Dunbars, with most feucharters granted in the period 1555–60 appearing to have been given to those who are said to have been children of Prior Alexander. The Protestant threat to monasteries and, perhaps, the final illness of Prior [End Page 40] Alexander would have influenced this last development.20 An indication of the continuing strength of the Dunbars' hold on Pluscarden after 1560 is that in the Moray wappenschawing of 2 February 1596 the lists for the three main baronies of the lordship of Urquhart (the Pluscarden priory lands), given by bailie Mark Dunbar of Durris, were all headed by Dunbars.21 One also notes that among those named in the testimonies below as being involved in the preparation of the original charter of 1558, most, including the two Gibsons, were related to Prior Alexander. If we knew more about contemporary genealogy in Moray one suspects that even more links would be established.

The dispute: Prior James Douglas

After the death of Prior Alexander on 19 September 1560 the Dunbars continued their control of the priory, but in April 1561 the crown ordered them to leave and the temporalities were given to George, 5th Lord Seton (1531–86) as yconomus or steward, while at about the same time Rome provided William Cranston as prior, with the crown granting him presentation to the priory in March 1562.22 The intruding Dunbars were named as Alexander Dunbar [of Cumnock], sheriff of Moray, and Master George Dunbar; the former was Prior Alexander's cousin and the latter, no doubt, his brother the rector of Kilmuir Wester who gave evidence in 1580. Cranston, a graduate of Paris, was inter [End Page 41] alia provost of Seton collegiate church (1549–62), the presentation to which was in the hands of Lord Seton, and provost of St Salvator's, St Andrews (1553–60); both he and Seton were loyal Catholics and active in Queen Mary's service.23 Cranston died in August or September 1562 and on 17 September 1565 the crown granted the priory to Lord Seton's son, Alexander, then aged about nine.24 He held Pluscarden until 1595 but was deprived of the priory from 1577 to 1581, an interlude that provides the setting of our legal dispute. Alexander was deprived of Pluscarden by decree of the Lords of Council on 16 January 1577 on the grounds that he had never conformed to 'the true and Christian religion', that is Protestantism, and he was replaced as commendator by James Douglas, natural son of the Regent Morton.25

The new prior did not come north to an alien land. Douglases, like the Dunbars, had come up from the south, had been settled as landowners in Moray for a long time, had been earls of Moray for a time and held benefices in the diocese of Moray. Some time before James became prior, his brother Archibald obtained the barony of Pittendreich on the road from Pluscarden to Elgin, which had been held by their father, James, 4th earl of Morton (c.1516–81), and their grandfather, Sir George Douglas of Pittendreich (1490–1552), who had himself obtained it from his wife's father, David Douglas of Pittendreich.26 Mark Dilworth's research has shown that, from the [End Page 42] volume of business transacted, in Commendator James Douglas, 'Pluscarden received an effective, or at least a resident, person in charge', in comparison to the Seton regime.27 As under Alexander Dunbar, we find the prior's relatives benefiting and others of his surname occurring among those granted the offices of the priory. Among such grants, his brother Archibald Douglas of Pittendreich was given lands in the baronies of Pluscarden and Urquhart, mills on Pluscarden lands formerly held by Robert Dunbar of Durris and the priory's salmon fishings;28 John Douglas, parson of Ruffill, was appointed by the new prior as bailie of the lordship of Pluscarden on 21 April 1577 and took his oath at Elgin on 10 May;29 and George Douglas, vicar of Aberchirder, had become chamberlain of Pluscarden by March 1579.30 Giving office to this George Douglas would have been particularly offensive to the Dunbars as on 18 October 1577, a few months after James Douglas became prior, he took part with various Inneses in an attack on the manse of Dean Alexander Dunbar in the chanonry of Elgin. This was a particularly notorious event in the Innes Dunbar bloodfeud as not only was the dean badly wounded but Elizabeth, his thirteen-year-old daughter, was killed.31

The Douglas years at Pluscarden were, however, not to last long. In May 1581, during the imprisonment of the former Regent, the earl of Morton, in Dumbarton Castle and just a month before his trial and execution, he was forced to make his son, Prior James Douglas, restore Pluscarden to Alexander Seton. The relevant documents describe the [End Page 43] Douglas period as a wrongful interruption of Alexander's tenure and, when Morton's sons were rehabilitated in the parliament of December 1585, it was noted that Alexander's right to Pluscarden was not to be prejudiced.32 Robert Dunbar's son, David, was confirmed in his bailiary by the restored Prior Alexander on 16 August 1582, and he was succeeded by his son Mark.33 The regality of Pluscarden, which originated in that of Dunfermline, would appear to have been itself divided as, in connection with the priory lands, we later find references to both the regality of Urquhart, centred on the barony of Urquhart, and the regality of Farneen (Stonny Fornoene). The latter was centred on Grangehill, the main seat of the Dunbars of Durris after Mark Dunbar sold Durris to Sir John Campbell of Cawdor in 1603; Grangehill is in the barony of Fernanan which had been given to Pluscarden priory by King Alexander II in 1236.34

The legal case which produced our depositions, 'prior pluscardie contra dumbar', concerned the authenticity of Robert Dunbar of Durris's letter of bailiary of 10 March 1558, which had been superseded by the new prior's grant to John Douglas. Dunbar produced his charter in evidence of his right and Prior James Douglas wished to [End Page 44] prove that it was a forgery.35 Five men who had been present at its production gave their testimony: the two surviving monks; George Dunbar, parson of Kilmuir Wester, and John Ramsay who were witnesses of the document; and John Gibson, parson of Unthank, a nonparochial prebend of Moray cathedral, who had penned it.36 Each testified in the presence of the Lords of Council in Edinburgh: Ross in July 1579 and the four others in January–February 1580. They were shown the original charter and all testified to its authenticity, recalling the events of the day at Pluscarden, twenty years before, when it was made. Prior Douglas must have been disappointed in the witnesses he produced. Their clear and consistent testimonies proved the authenticity of the letter of bailiary beyond any doubt, as a note on the back of the testimonies states that the prior 'hes faleit in Improbatioun', that is, has failed to show falsity (of the charter).37 The transcription of the testimonies is given in appendix 1.

The manner of making a charter

The testimonies show how this process was actually done on this occasion, as opposed to describing how it should be done. The charter was written by a local notary public, Sir John Gibson, who had close relations with the priory and was probably related to Prior Alexander Dunbar.38 A copy was made on a scroll to be kept by the priory (hence Lord Seton was able to remove it), but the common practice, as indicated by the deleted words in Gibson's statement, was to enter such copies in a book or register (registrum cartarum or cartulary), as was the contemporary practice of the abbey of Dunfermline and the diocese of Moray.39 No cartulary, whether in book or scroll form, has survived from Pluscarden priory, but the compiler of the 1561 Pluscarden rental in the Books of Assumption notes that he used, 'the auld rentallis, registeris and the yeirlie comptis of the chalmerlane'.40 [End Page 45]

Gibson says the charter was written the day it was dated, thus implying that this was not always the case, on clean parchment at the direction of the prior in the 'tour chalmer' (tower chamber) at Pluscarden.41 The obvious 'tower chamber' at Pluscarden is the large room in the church tower, but this is highly unlikely given the difficulty of access through the clerestory passage. It may refer to the main chamber, which had a fireplace, on the first floor of the small tower house joined to the south-east corner of the priory and known today as the Prior's Lodging.42 The prior's brother George, rector of Kilmuir Wester, was present with others such as John Ramsay. After the prior had signed, George, who obviously had an important role in the administration of the priory, took the charter to the chapter house where the community were gathered. It is not noted when the non-monastic witnesses such as John Ramsay signed, although Ramsay's testimony states that Robert Dunbar (of Durris) signed in the chapter house. There are remains of a stone bridge from the main room of the Prior's Lodging to the large vaulted chamber at the south end of the west range (the present refectory), and from there it is only a short walk down the cloister to the chapter house.

In the chapter house the monks signed the charter. Ross says they signed in order of age, but it is more likely that he means in order of seniority in the habit which the Regula Benedicti says should usually determine community order, although a certain latitude is allowed the superior to vary this.43 Mark Dilworth's study of monastic subscription [End Page 46] to charters suggests that this was the usual practice, although cases of signing out of the usual order are not unknown, perhaps caused by a change in rank or by someone signing late. At Kinloss and Beauly the order breaks down in lists after 1560, implying that this order was indeed related to monastic discipline; for example, the date of clothing in the habit or profession, the community order in processions and so on.44 In pre-Reformation English monasteries monks were listed in order of seniority in notarial records of abbatial elections.45

According to George Dunbar, the prior did not sign the charter with the community, emphasising his distance from them, although the evidence of Ramsay and Artill does suggest that he signed in the chapter house with the brethren. On the day it was signed George Dunbar affixed the seal at the prior's orders and, as Ramsay notes, in the 'ovir chalmer' (upper chamber), which, if it be the same as the 'tour chalmer', suggests that the proposed location for this room is correct. George took a fee for affixing the seal from the chamberlain, Robert Dunbar, and John Gibson, probably also a relation, received the large sum of £5 for writing the charter; a nice family transaction. The impression given is of a definite separation between the prior and the community, with the locus of power being firmly in the prior's chamber and the community in the chapter house being reduced to a rubber stamp. At Melrose in the same period we see a similar separation between superior and community, and the brethren had to remind Commendator James Stewart (1535–57) on 19 June 1556 that he had failed in his promise, 'to have usit the counsall of us brether towart the wele of this place'. There the monks tried to defend the community's interests by resisting the commendator and attempting to refuse to sign charters.46

At Pluscarden, as elsewhere at the time, instead of using officials drawn from the monks the superior seems to have ruled with the help of [End Page 47] a small 'court', here drawn from his kin. This shift both of power and of use of 'space' in monastic government was a feature of the period and is reflected in monastic buildings. A similar process with a similar shift in location is noted at Fountains abbey in Yorkshire where in the late fifteenth century the creation of the 'churche chamber' provided a permanent office for the abbot's secretariat. Glyn Coppack notes that many of Abbot Marmaduke Huby's charters and leases were witnessed there, signifying that 'the Abbot's household was expanding at the expense of the shrinking convent'.47 Pluscarden evidence shows that the priory was thus firmly in the hands of the Dunbars, which suggests that it was natural for George to take it over when his brother had died, as the royal injunction of 1561 notes. James Douglas later ejected the Dunbars in favour of his kinsmen, but it would appear that Alexander Seton retained their services.

The Pluscarden monastic community in the sixteenth century: recruitment

Writing of Fountains abbey, Coppack noted a shrinking community. One interesting feature of Thomas Ross's statement is that he describes the community in March 1558 as consisting of (at least) six priest-monks and three novices. I shall return to the novices later, but such continuing recruitment on the eve of the Reformation crisis of 1559–60 suggests that the monks of Pluscarden did not believe that their way of life was soon to be ended, and even implies a certain vitality in the community.48 Apart from incidental mentions such as these words of Thomas Ross, the main resource for Scottish monastic prosopography is the signatures of members of monasteries appended to charters.49 We should, however, note the problems of using charter subscriptions for determining the personnel of a monastery at a given date, as individuals might have been part of the community but did not sign for various reasons.50 Using such charters and other sources, I cooperated with Mark Dilworth in building up a list of all the known monks of Pluscarden priory in the sixteenth century with their first and last dates [End Page 48] of occurrence which is given in appendix 2. This can be used as a basis for studying the recruitment patterns of the monastery.

The papal bull of 1454 uniting Pluscarden and Urquhart noted that there were at Pluscarden no more than six monks and this same number is found signing charters of 1476, 1500 and 1501.51 Using the charter subscriptions and evidence of absentees from the lists, those who did not sign but occur in documents before and after the date of the list, it is clear that the community expanded in size in the sixteenth century. In addition to the prior, there were a minimum of seven monks in 1501, nine in 1503, ten in 1508, twelve in 1524, fourteen in 1529, thirteen in 1545, twelve in 1548, ten in 1555, eleven in 1556, ten in 1558 and also in June to September 1560.52 Three monks of Dunfermline who lived for a time at Pluscarden are included in the lists, but we have already mentioned that in the sixteenth century Pluscarden was regarded as a separate community and not as part of the Dunfermline conventus. Most new monks who had or may have had a connection with Dunfermline occurred under Prior Robert Harrower (1487–1509) who had himself been a monk of Dunfermline before he was provided as prior. The figures suggest a deliberate campaign to increase numbers under Harrower and his successor, Prior George Learmonth (1509–29), formerly a cleric of St Andrews. Under Prior Alexander Dunbar (1529– 60) recruitment continued but there seems to have been a slight decrease in numbers and no new names occur after 1556. This latter may be because the community was full after a period of active [End Page 49] recruitment in the mid-1550s, or it may reflect a sense of impending crisis and be connected with the extensive feuing of monastery lands to the prior's relatives which began at this time. The data is too patchy to draw definite conclusions and some monks are probably unrecorded, but the number of new names occurring in each period suggests an average recruitment rate over the whole period of about one novice every two years.53

Barrie Dobson has noted that in the Middle Ages, 'entry to even the largest English religious houses was overwhelmingly local', and Mark Dilworth wrote that, while some monks came from other parts of Scotland, 'much evidence points to monks being local men', and, 'they certainly behaved as if they were of the same social class as the [local] townspeople'.54 Apart from the presence of the three monks who were normally resident at Dunfermline abbey, however, the only definite evidence of origin and class are for monks from outside the North-East: Hector Freeman, whose father held land in Dundee, and John Blacater, whose father held land in Dunfermline. To these can be added Henry Harrower who was probably related both to his prior, Robert Harrower, and to the Dunfermline monk William Harrower. Blacater and Freeman both came from landowning families in towns and Dilworth notes that while most evidence about monks' families is urban, this is due in part to the nature of the extant evidence.55 Among the surnames of Pluscarden monks listed in appendix 2, Tarras and Birnie are topographical, taken from the area around Pluscarden; such locative surnames do not necessarily indicate a local origin, but they probably do here as members of these families occur in contemporary local documents.56 There is a sixteenth-century monument to the Lyell family at Pluscarden and the names Lyell and Fothringham are also found among the surnames of contemporary monks of nearby Kinloss. Lyell, together with four other surnames of Pluscarden monks, is found among the fifty-eight surnames of tenants in two Pluscarden rentals written in 1527–40 and 1545, and ten of the Pluscarden surnames are found among the 101 in the 1565 rental of the bishopric of Moray [End Page 50] which mainly concerns baronies close to Pluscarden.57 A fair number of otherwise unidentified monks may be of local origin, but many names are common ones and a look at the indices of personal names in the printed volumes of Elgin and Dunfermline burgh records reveals that the majority of the monks' surnames occur in both places.58

Whatever the juridical relationship of Pluscarden and Dunfermline in the sixteenth century, it is clear that personal links were maintained, not least because of the almost sixty years in the monastic habit at Pluscarden of the Dunfermline man, Dene John Blacater. This suggests a modification to the thesis that recruitment was predominantly local. A monastery was part of a number of social networks, some of which extended beyond the immediate locality. These could be directly monastic, as Pluscarden was linked to Dunfermline and monks of Cistercian Kinloss came from the environs of the Cistercian abbeys of Culross and Coupar Angus which were also part of the Melrose filiation; or they could have a more directly kin-based origin as when three Hamiltons came to Paisley abbey from Glasgow, Bathgate and Linlithgow at the time when John Hamilton was abbot.59 Prior Harrower came from Dunfermline and in his last eight years in office we see Blacater and two monks come north from that town and the entry of a man who was probably his relative. There is no direct evidence why Hector Freeman came from Dundee to enter Pluscarden, but a study of the burgh of Elgin in the sixteenth century has shown that while Elgin traded with all the main Scottish burghs, Dundee was its main partner and there was migration between the two burghs.60 Recruitment, therefore, probably reflects the social networks centred onx [End Page 51] the monastery, in which local connections were obviously prominent but not necessarily dominant.

A minor web of patronage, of which few traces remain, may thus be presumed to lie behind the giving of the monastic portion (portio monachalis).61 This was the personal allowance given to each monk and to which the monk had a legal right, a right that ensured they continued to be paid after the Reformation. A monk or canon could have a double portion or, as in the case of the novices of Tongland abbey, a half portion, and monastic portions could be given to seculars.62 The 1561 rental gives the annual Pluscarden portion per monk as £16 'kitchen and habit silver' and 1 chalder 5 bolls of victuals (grain), which in its monetary element seems to have been about average for the period.63 For comparison one can note that £16 was the annual pension, payable by burgh authorities, for friars after the Reformation and the recommended minimum salary for a pre Reformation curate was £13 6s 8d.64 Prior Harrower certainly seems to have had a say in who obtained a portion, and the example of Melrose suggests that the monks themselves were able to exercise patronage as happened in England.65 While there is less evidence for the origins of those who entered in the period 1510–55, we can expect that the patronage of Priors Learmonth and Dunbar was involved.

The numbers listed above show an increase in the Pluscarden community in the sixteenth century, more than doubling its fifteenth-century size at times, with a slight decline in the second part of our period. Numbers were dependent on economic means reflected in the number of portions and it is thus probable that the number of portions were increased in this period, as they were under Abbot Thomas [End Page 52] Crystall (1504–35) at neighbouring Kinloss abbey.66 At Melrose, when the number of monks had fallen from thirty-five to twelve between 1527 and 1556 due to war and superiors whose concern was for their own profit, the community persuaded Commendator James Stewart to establish an income sufficient for sixteen monks, 'to stand futuris temporibus for uphald of God service'.67 At Pluscarden, as well as the increasing numbers, there is the persistent number of six which is found in the early documents, but also in the testimony of Thomas Ross where there were six priests and three novices, and in a document of 1560 signed only by six monks;68 after the Reformation we find in The Books of Assumption only five portions being paid in 1561.69 Was there a distinction between the six who had the original portions and others such as the 'novices' who had another means of sustenance? Did this mean that only those with a legal right to one of the six portions were able to stay on after 1560? Mark Dilworth once suggested to me in conversation that this may have reflected the continuation of a possible Valliscaulian practice of giving 'half-portions', but there is no evidence for a conclusive answer. This does, however, raise the question of the status of the 'novices'.

The monastic community: what is a novice?

In his statement, Thomas Ross mentions that the Pluscarden community in March 1558 included three novices, the only mention of novices I have encountered in Pluscarden documents. That there were three novices seems a straightforward claim, but it raises a number of questions. Firstly there is some confusion, even among ecclesiastical historians, about the meaning of the term 'novice' in monastic documents of our period; it is not widely known that the term referred both to those in the initial stage of formation before profession (taking vows) and to those after profession who were preparing for priestly ordination, even after which one may remain a novice for a while.

The former is the classical and modern use of the term, as found in the sixth-century Regula Benedicti which is followed by Benedictine and Cistercian monks. The Rule prescribes that the noviciate last for a [End Page 53] year and culminate in a profession rite in which promises are made for life and the new monk is clothed in the monastic habit.70 By our period the 'clothing' came at the start of the noviciate, which lasted a maximum of one year but often less. In 1563 the Council of Trent (1545–63) required a year's noviciate for a valid profession, but this was a reaction against previous practice: in England, for example, during the century before the dissolution, the period before profession at Christ Church, Canterbury and Westminster abbey seems to have been on average about five to eight months in duration and sometimes much less.71 There is no comparable evidence for monks or canons in Scotland, but Ferrerio's writing on the Cistercians of Kinloss seems to indicate that in fervent houses in the sixteenth century a full year was at least the ideal.72 During this period of probation a novice could in theory freely leave the community, but it seems that this was rare and its lawfulness was then a debated question.73 At Kinloss in the first [End Page 54] quarter of the sixteenth century the 'well-lettered young man' James Dickson, who seems to have been a novice in the sense of not being professed, left ('was voluntarily sent away') as he was not strong enough to live the monastic life.74 The noviciate period in this strict sense was closed by the profession of vows by which the novice became a professed monk, that is a member of the community and its chapter. The delay between clothing and profession and the debate about whether novices could depart before profession explain the famous words of Pope Clement III (1187–91) in the decretal Porrectum: 'it is not the habit that makes the monk but the profession of the Rule'.75

Ross says in his testimony that the six monks signing the charter were all priests and that there were then three novices.76 The two novices Ross mentions by name, Alexander Fraser and Robert Douglas, were not 'novices' of the type just discussed, however, because they had for some time signed charters with the rest of the Pluscarden community, a privilege of the professed who were members of the priory's chapter. At Pluscarden Douglas had signed a charter on 5 February 1555 and Fraser had done the same on 20 November 1556.77 Although these novices had already signed charters, Ross's words imply that only the six priests were 'subscrivaris of the charter' in March 1558, and this is not impossible because in July and August 1560 these same seniors alone signed charters while on the feast of SS Peter and Paul in June of the same year all ten signed, including those Ross called novices in 1558.78 Robert Artill, who from the subscription [End Page 55] lists was the most junior of the six priests, and two others also appear in the lists for the first time with Douglas in February 1555, and Fraser is joined by Andrew Wight, who may have been Ross's unnamed third 'novice', as a new name at the end of the list of Pluscarden signatories in November 1556.79

Thus in Scotland we find what appears to be the same practice as that found in English monasteries, where the term 'novice' was used of those who had been professed but were still in 'custody' or 'tutelage', that is still being taught and probably with their allowances being managed for them by senior monks.80 This is described in the Rites of Durham, a reminiscence of life in the English Benedictine cathedral priory of Durham in the years before the dissolution, two decades before our Pluscarden document: 'Ther was alwayes vj Novices, which went daly to schoule within the House, for the space of vij yere ... And yf the maister dyd see that any of theme weare apte to lernyng ... he was sent to Oxforde to schoole ... And the resydewe of the Novices was keapt at there bookes tyll they coulde understant there service and the scriptures. Then at the foresayde yeres' end, they dyd syng there first messe'.81 The period in custody before priestly ordination was often shorter than the seven years mentioned here, and Barbara Harvey has shown that sometimes custody continued for a period after ordination, but Ross's recollection of priesthood being associated with the non-novices suggests that, except for any who might enter as priests, 'custody' at Pluscarden probably ended with ordination.82 [End Page 56]

Confirmation from Moray of the significance of these two stages after profession may perhaps be found in the use of the term professus to describe a monk in vows. It is used in addition to 'priest' on the tombstone of Dene James Wyatt (who died on 26 December 1515) at Pluscarden, 'sacerdos et professus', and its use in common speech is implied by Ferrerio in his description of Thomas Chrystal's teacher at Culross abbey, Thomas Pierson, as 'eiusdem monasterii professus (ut vocant) monachus'.83 Ferrerio is much given to interjections such as ut vocant but here he seems to imply that contemporary monks used professus as a technical term for a monk in vows in addition to references to his ordination. The professed monk in tutelage would have attended the community chapter, as four Paisley abbey novices did in January 1543, but after ordination and emerging from tutelage the monk passed fully into the life of the house, had full control of his portion and became eligible for any of the various offices and employments of the community.84 The mention of a sixteenth-century 'novice' of the Cluniac abbey of Paisley, John Wallace, who was involved in a heresy case and given leave of absence for five years to visit Rome and Cluny because of certain matters on his conscience, but who was also called 'Dene' and warned not to 'brekand our a wow of [End Page 57] castitie', almost certainly referred to a professed monk in tutelage.85

Thus one can apply to Scottish Benedictines of the period what Barbara Harvey says of their English counterparts before the dissolution: 'they had, in a sense, two noviciates, one being the time of formal probation which ended with profession; the other, the ensuing period when custody continued'.86

The monastic community: some questions about the noviciate

There has been no significant study of the monastic noviciate in Scotland. As a comparison with English practice has elucidated the meaning of the term 'novice' in Scottish documents, it may also help us understand other issues such as the usual age of entry into the monastery and when and how they were admitted.

There is little evidence for the age of entry into Scottish monasteries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although for the Cistercians at Kinloss, over the hill from Pluscarden, Ferrerio twice mentions the age of eighteen: for David Spence's profession and Thomas Chrystal's clothing, both under Abbot William Galbraith (1481–90). It is not certain whether this means eighteen in our sense or being in one's eighteenth year, that is seventeen in modern terms. Unfortunately Ferrerio gives different information for Spence elsewhere in his Historia, suggesting that he entered aged about fifteen.87 This, together with contemporary vagueness about one's age, illustrates the problems here. Although in the fifteenth century clothing at fifteen was common, late medieval reforming tendencies in the religious life tended towards a higher age, for example the medieval English Benedictines demanded a minimum age of eighteen for clothing and nineteen for profession, the sixteenth-century Scottish canon regular Robert Richardson also gives eighteen as the best age, and it seems that in the later middle ages the vast majority were clothed between eighteen and twenty.88 [End Page 58]

One should not, however, presume that the noviciate was as clearly canonically defined in the middle ages as it was after Trent, which prescribed a minimum age of sixteen for profession.89 In the mid-twelfth century Gratian's Decretum gave no minimum ages, because child-oblation was still allowed, but it was soon established that profession before the age of fourteen was not binding.90 Our very limited Scottish evidence, however, suggests the later teens as a common age to enter monastic life, although older priests and graduates certainly did enter monasteries.91 Thomas Ross was, by his testimony, born c.1525 and first occurs in a Pluscarden list in 1545, which means that he entered before the age of twenty. His Bible, in which he signs himself as a monk, was given to him by William Young in 1541 and may have been given to him as a present on entry to the monastery, in which case he would have been aged between fifteen and seventeen.92 Robert Artill was born c.1529, is not among the subscribers of 1548 and first occurs in 1555 – he thus probably entered between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.

We have seen that to enter a monastery was to begin a process, almost certainly involving patronage of some sort, that ended not only in profession and ordination but also in the possession of a portion. Whatever an individual's sense of vocation, the number of entrants must correspond to the number of portions available. Given this, the presence of a group of three novices in a small community at Pluscarden, as with the group of four novices among the nineteen monks of Paisley abbey in 1543, suggests that Scottish monasteries may have preferred to admit new entrants in a group, perhaps for ease of teaching and formation, as English houses did.93 Barbara Harvey notes of Westminster that, 'it was anticipated in the monastery that when the community was at its ideal strength of forty-eight, it would include forty priests and eight who were novices in the sense that they [End Page 59] were not yet priests'.94 Scottish monasteries may have operated with similar optimum numbers of novices, but the example of Melrose, although it comes from a time of conflict and crisis, shows novices being received as vacancies arose. When sixteen portions were established as the full complement at Melrose in 1555, four novices were received to make up the full number, but when one of the twelve senior monks later died we find the monks complaining to the commendator that the admission of a candidate, George Weir, had not been, 'grantit be your Lordship for fulfilling of the number forsaid for uphald of God service'.95 Paucity of evidence prevents us drawing conclusions but we may well be in the territory between the ideal practice and the pressures of reality.

The sole mention of novices from pre-Reformation Pluscarden has thus led us to a broader examination of the noviciate in late medieval and renaissance Scotland. Although the evidence is so scanty that we cannot form the clear picture Harvey and Dobson provide for England, a comparison with English evidence and canonical legislation has enabled us to give a sketch of contemporary Scottish practice which could serve as a basis for future research.

One subject we have not touched upon is the formation given to young monks. Evidence from England and elsewhere suggests that, in addition to study of the Rule and basic moral and monastic instruction, there was a strong emphasis on monastic observance such as mastering the liturgy and customs of the house and also education in the 'primitive sciences' of grammar, logic and philosophy; senior monks taught the novices but there may have been some input from external teachers such as mendicants.96 We know from Ferrerio of the high standard of studies under him at Kinloss, whence some monks were sent to study in Aberdeen, and nearby Elgin had its cathedral school and the convents of Blackfriars and Franciscan Observants. One would not be surprised if Pluscarden shared in this Catholic culture. Prior Alexander Dunbar was present at the 1549 provincial council of the Scottish Church which called for each superior to maintain a theologian to teach in his monastery and for monks to be sent to university: [End Page 60] Pluscarden was to send one, but there is no evidence this was done.97 The only hints at monastic education that have survived from Pluscarden are the marginalia in Thomas Ross's Bible which suggest that he read his Bible, was conversant with contemporary biblical scholarship and, as a man who remained loyal to the old faith, had a lively interest in religious controversy. It is possible that the interest in Catholic liturgy and sacraments displayed in his notes on the Old Testament indicates that he was preparing to write a defence of the old liturgy. His note on those who usurped religious leadership in Korah's rebellion against Moses, described in Numbers 16, certainly suggests hostility to the new Protestant Kirk.98

A monastery in a landscape: Pluscarden priory and its world

Those who gave the testimonies had to think back twenty years, to a time before the change of religion when they were part of a flourishing monastic institution that was firmly embedded in the life of the locality and at the centre of a number of networks of influence and patronage. These constitute the 'landscape' within which one should view the history of any monastery. The testimonies have led us to look at various aspects of this institution and have raised various questions.

Firstly these concern the little-studied jurisdiction of the monastic regality and the web of power and patronage into which the monastery, an institution with its purpose beyond the world, was firmly entwined. Both local kin groups, such as the Dunbars, Inneses and Douglases, and national influences, in the shape of the Setons and the Douglases, fought to control the rich benefice of Pluscarden priory. We have noted how many of the allies of the Dunbars were actually related to them through marriage and further research would bring these networks into clearer focus and reveal the political and religious attitudes that were associated with them. The dispute over the bailiary was certainly caused by the conflict between factions with differing attitudes to religion, with the Setons on one side and the Douglases on the other; it would be interesting to see how these positions were reflected in the attitudes of their local supporters. Of those present at the signing of the charter in 1558, Sir James Gibson was later denounced as a papist while acting as procurator in the burgh court of Inverness in 1571, and Robert Dunbar of Durris was involved in a case before the same court in 1562 which concerned the removal for safekeeping of the chalices of [End Page 61] the Blackfriars of Inverness.99 As Pluscarden was unusual in that none of its monks were known to have served the new Kirk,100 and Thomas Ross and Alexander Seton certainly remained loyal to the old Kirk, it may be that this dispute was drawn up on clearer religious lines than the documents reveal.

This also raises the question of whether Pluscarden was part of the 'modest monastic revival' in Scotland in the years before the Reformation, a phenomenon that certainly occurred over the hill at Kinloss abbey.101 The increase in numbers, extant late medieval wall paintings of fine quality, the building of a sacristy and treasury under Prior Alexander Dunbar and the evidence from Thomas Ross's Bible all suggest a certain material and even spiritual and intellectual flourishing. On the other hand there is the apparent slight decrease in numbers after 1530 and also the evidence of our testimonies and the feuing of monastery lands to the prior's kin which suggests that Pluscarden had become part of the patrimony of the Dunbars, something confirmed by the crown's ordering them to depart in 1561. The shift in monastic governance, noted above in relation to power and space, may, however, indicate that the institution was able to function on two levels simultaneously: a moderately flourishing community, headed by the subprior, which was preserved from interference by the monks' right to their portions, and a rich benefice capable of being exploited by the Dunbars, who were themselves not devoid of attachment to the old faith.

The testimonies themselves have also led to questions about charter production, the governance, size and composition of the Pluscarden monastic community, and the place of novices in this and other contemporary communities. Each issue shows how one piece of historical evidence can lead one into a broader picture of the contemporary monastic world, and one can see how, if used with appropriate caution, the better documented history of English monasticism can shed light north of the border. Comparison with the situation at other Scottish monasteries is also useful and the study of recruitment has hinted at a largely hidden network of monastic patronage. The many references above to the writings of Mark Dilworth show how important they are for anyone studying late medieval and renaissance Scottish monasticism. They, and the work of others, have laid an essential foundation, and one hopes that this article, as well as [End Page 62] elucidating some aspects of Scottish monastic history, has also indicated further work that could be done on Scottish monasteries in this period.102

Augustine Holmes

Dom Augustine Holmes is a Monk of Pluscarden Abbey, where he is novice master and librarian.

Appendix 1

The Prior of Pluscarden contra Dunbar.

Testimonies before the Court of Session of Thomas Ross and Robert Artill, monks of Pluscarden, George Dunbar, John Ramsay and John Gibson.103

[Testimony A: Thomas Ross, monk of Pluscarden]104

Sexto Iulij 1579

In presentia dominorum

dene thomas Ros ane of ye brethir & conve n t of pluscarden of ye aige of Liiij Ʒeiris or yairby solutus sworn & examinat deponis purge In vpon ye first Interrogatour and anent ye second Interrogatour ansuerit yat ye vse wes quhen ye priour yair mester hed subscriuit ony Euident ye eldest of ye breyir first subscriuit ye samin & yairefter ye Ʒoungest and deponis yat ye charter being shewin to him declaris yat his subscriptioun Is his awin subscriptioun quhilk is presentlie yair at quhilk he subscriuit at ye priouris command In pluscarden apon xxj or xxij Ʒeiris [superscript: syn] & yat or ye priour deit viƷ priour alexander dunbar And yat tyme quhyer he had on monkis weid or secular weid truly on his conscience he can nocht ramember and sayis all ye subscriveris of ye letter of ballerie ar deid exept ye deponer & Robert arthill And sayis ye tym he subscriuit ye said letter yair was yan ye sex monkis subscrivaris of ye charter war all prestis & vsit to say mess & sayis yair was thre novaces by yam Alexander fressur & Robert douglas & ramembris nocht on ye rest and fayer kennis nocht In ye mater

[signed] Thomas Ross [End Page 63]

Fig.1. Testimony of Thomas Ross from NAS, Court of Session records, CS15/26. Reproduced by permission of the Keeper, The National Archives of Scotland.
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Fig.1.

Testimony of Thomas Ross from NAS, Court of Session records, CS15/26. Reproduced by permission of the Keeper, The National Archives of Scotland.

[Testimony B: George Dunbar, parson of Kilmuir Wester]105

xxvto Januarij Anno domini etc lxxixo [1579/80]

In presentia dominorum consilii etc

George dunbar parsoun of kilmoir of ye aige of Lx Ʒeiris or yairby mareit sworn & examinat deponis ye letter of ballerie being first shawin & red be ye deponar declarit on hes conscience yat he saw ye charter writtin be sir Iohne gibson at ye samin tyme of ye dait yairof In ye tour chalmer of pluscarden & saw ye priour subscriue ye samin at yat samin tyme and Inlikvis the deponer [End Page 64] him self past to ye convent subscriveris yairof & gat ye samin subscriuit be yam at ye samin tyme [margin: in ye cheptour] And efter ye subscriuing airof ye deponer him self affixt ye seill yair to of command of ye said vmquhile priour on ye samin day it was subscriuit as said is And tuik ye compendium[?] yairfor fra Robert dunbar106 he being chalmerlane to ye said vmquhile priour for ye tyme And sayis ye copy of ye said charter is writtin In ane [deleted: buik of ye register] In ane skroll quhilk ye lord seytoun tuik fra ye deponar And sua ye deponer approvis ye said letter of Ballerie In all poyntis & sayis Iames gibsoun107 is ded quho was ane of ye witnes to ye said charter [signed] George Dunbar parson of kylmoir

[Testimony C: John Ramsay]108

Jhone ramsay ane of ye witnes contenit In ye charter of ye aige of of [sic] fiftie Ʒeiris or yair by sworn & examinat deponis yat he wes present quhen he saw ye priour & convent subscriue ye charter producit In ye cheptour of pluscarden And ye first priour subscriuit & yairefter ye convent and siclik saw george dunbar parson of kilmoir seill ye samin In ye ovir chalmer and sayis yis was done thre Ʒeir befor ye priouris deceis quha decessit In ye lx Ʒeir of god x dayis befor michaelmes And sayis he never saw no vyer charter subscriuit be ye said Robert dunbar In na vyer place bot In ye said cheptour etc And takis on his conscience he belevis suerle ye said letter of ballerie Is Iust & trew In ye self

[signed] Prouand109 [End Page 65]

[Testimony D: Sir John Gibson, parson of Unthank]110

xxviijo Januarij 1579

In presentia dominorum

Sir Johne gibsoun [deleted: ane of ye co] parsoun of vnthank of ye aige of lxiij Ʒeris or yairby sworn & examinat deponis declaris on his conscience yat he wrait ye letter of ballerie at command of ye last priour of pluscarden viƷ alexander dunbar In ye tour chalmer of pluscarden and sayis he ressavit fra ye said wmquhile priour & Robert dunbar for ye writting yairof v li And sayis he wrait ye samin yat samin day yat is daitit etc and sayis he kennis well ye subscription of ye said letter of ballerie var ye subscriptioun of ye said auld priour & of ye monkis for ye tyme and sayis yai ar all deid exept ane dene thomas Ros & dene Robert arthill And takkis on his saull yat he wraitt ye said [End Page 66] letter of ballerie on yis samin parchemen t ye day of ye dait yairof on clene parcheament wantand ye seill & subscription of ye priour & monkis etc & nevir saw ye samin sen ye writting yairof quhill now etc and takis on his saull yat ye said letter of ballerie Is trew In ye sicht as it beris etc [signed] Prouand

[Testimony E: Robert Artill, monk of Pluscarden]111

xijo februarij 1579

In presentia dominorum

Robert artill ane of ye breyer of pluscarden of ye aige of L Ʒeiris or y air by sworn & examinat deponis yat ye charter being schawin to him he grantis & confessis yat ye subscriptioun of ye charter is his awn writt anent his subscription and sayis he saw ye alexander priour of pluscarden & ye rest of ye breyir subscriue ye samin at yat samin tyme and he beilevis ye ballerie Is Iust & trew In ye self & on navis fals nor fenƷeit etc

[signed] Prouand

[on the verso]

prior pluscardie contra dumbar

[signed] Et ego Robertus artyll ad idem

19 martij 1579

assolƷeis fra ye Improbatioun In respect ye witneses being examinat ye maist part of yem with Tua of ye breyer he hes falƷeit in Improbatioun etc And modefeis fourtie pvndis of expensis ye ane half to yair part & ye vyer to ye kinge

R. 19 martij 1579

Witnesses producit be prior of pluscardine contra dumbar Improbation of ye ballerie

xiio februarij 1579

Modefis xx merk of expensis to R artill etc to be payit be ye priour pluscarden [End Page 67]

Appendix 2: Sixteenth-century monks of Pluscarden

Compiled by Mark Dilworth O.S.B and Augustine Holmes O.S.B.

The first and last recorded dates of each monk are noted. They are arranged in chronological order according to the first date. The three Dunfermline monks who resided for a time at Pluscarden signed with the other monks and so are included. Names are standardised as given in George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland, Their Origin, Meaning and History (New York, 1946).

  1. 1. 11 September 1476 Andrew Brown (NRAS, 3094/70) [subprior 1500]

    13 October 1508 (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 237)

  2. 2. 18 January 1500 John Scott (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 236)

  3. 3. 18 January 1500 Andrew Allanson112 (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 236)

    8 May 1503 (NRAS, 47/1)

  4. 4. 18 January 1500 John Hay (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 236)

    8 May 1503 (NRAS, 47/1)

  5. 5. 18 January 1500 James Wyatt (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 236)

    26 December 1515 (Tombstone in the North Transept at Pluscarden)113

  6. 6. 18 January 1500 James Justice (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 236)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241)

  7. 7. 3 February 1501 Adam Forman (Macphail, Pluscardyn, 117)

    [subprior 11 February 1501]114

    8 May 1503 (NRAS, 47/1) [monk of Dunfermline, 1491–1522, and prior 1507–22]115

  8. 8. 1–10 August 1501 John Henderson (PRO 31/9/31, fo.45)116 [End Page 68]

  9. 9. 8 May 1503 Alexander Adamson (NRAS, 47/1) [subprior 1524]

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  10. 10. 8 May 1503 Henry Harrower (Harwar)117 (NRAS, 47/1)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  11. 11. 8 May 1503 John Blacater (Blackett)118 (NRAS 47/1) [subprior 1558– 60)

    6 September 1560 (NRAS, 47/13)

  12. 12. 7 July 1508 John Spendlove (NRAS, 47/3) [monk of Dunfermline, 1492–1543]119

    13 October 1508 (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 237)

  13. 13. 7 July 1508 Hector Freeman (Forman)120 (NRAS, 47/3)

    2 September 1529 (Moray Registrum, no.441; RMS, iii, no.835)

  14. 14. 7 July 1508 Alexander Lawson (Louson)121 (NRAS, 47/3)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241)

  15. 15. 16 December 1524 John Duly (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  16. 16. 16 December 1524 John Wishart (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  17. 17. 16 December 1524 James Wright (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 237)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  18. 18. 16 December 1524 Robert Lyell122 (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241) [End Page 69]

  19. 19. 16 December 1524 Alexander Birnie123 (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239)

    6 September 1560 (NRAS, 47/13)

  20. 20. 16 December 1524 John Salter (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239)

    6 September 1560 (NRAS, 47/13)

  21. 21. 24 March 1529 John Brown (NAS, GD68/1/26)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  22. 22. 24 March 1529 James Williamson (NAS, GD68/1/26)

    25 March 1529 (NRAS, 47/5)

  23. 23. 12 April 1545 John Ferguson (NAS, GD94/1)

    30 January 1546 (NRAS, 3094/164)

  24. 24. 12 April 1545 Andrew Allan (NAS, GD94/1)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241)

  25. 25. 12 April 1545 Thomas Anderson (NAS, GD94/1)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241)

  26. 26. 12 April 1545 John Fothringham124 (NAS, GD94/1)

    24 June 1548 (Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241)

  27. 27. 12 April 1545 Robert Ferguson (NAS, GD94/1) [subprior 1548]

    20 November 1556 (NRAS, 47/9) [monk of Dunfermline, 1520–39]125

  28. 28. 12 April 1545 James Blair (NAS, GD94/1)

    29 June 1560 (NAS, GD96/76)

  29. 29. 12 April 1545 Thomas Ross (NAS, GD94/1)

    1 March 1587 (AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 247); died in the 1590s.126

  30. 30. 5 February 1555 George Tarras127 (AUL, MS 3175 MH/90) [End Page 70]

  31. 31. 5 February 1555 Robert Douglas (AUL, MS 3175 MH/90)

    29 June 1560 (NAS, GD96/76)

  32. 32. 5 February 1555 Gregory Watchman (AUL, MS 3175 MH/90)

    6 September 1560 (NRAS, 47/13)

  33. 33. 5 February 1555 Robert Artill128 (AUL, MS 3175 MH/90)

    30 October 1582 (NAS, GD94/19)

  34. 34. 20 November 1556 Alexander Fraser (NRAS, 47/9)

    29 June 1560 (NAS, GD96/76)

  35. 35. 20 November 1556 Andrew Wight (NRAS, 47/9)

    29 June 1560 (NAS, GD96/76) [End Page 71]

Footnotes

1. Abbot Mark encouraged my study of Scottish monastic history and palaeography, and, as will be clear from the notes, has had a decisive influence on this article. In addition to Abbot Mark, I would also like to record my gratitude to Dr Helen Brown, Professor Peter Davidson, Abbot Hugh Gilbert, Dr Barbara Harvey, and the staff of the National Archives of Scotland and Aberdeen University Library. The two anonymous readers made some very helpful suggestions especially regarding the transcriptions. Any errors remain my own.

2. Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland [hereafter NAS], CS15/26. See Fig.1 which shows the first testimony. The document was drawn to my attention by a reference in some papers on the priory which Abbot Mark had asked me to read: 'Pluscarden as a Benedictine house' and 'Pluscarden after 1560'. These are currently held at Pluscarden abbey and are chapters from an unpublished book, provisionally entitled 'Monasteries and the Reformation' and dealing with Deer abbey, the Scottish Cluniacs and Valliscaulians, and post-Valliscaulian Pluscarden. The buildings of Pluscarden priory were re-occupied by Benedictine monks from Prinknash abbey, Gloucestershire in 1948 and it became an abbey in 1974.

3. Ferrerii Historia Abbatum de Kynlos: una cum Vita Thomae Chrystalli Abbatis, ed. William D. Wilson, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1839). Part of the History is printed in Records of the Monastery of Kinloss, ed. J. Stuart (Edinburgh, 1872).

4. There is no major modern study of the Valliscaulians, but the literature includes: Jacques de Vitry, Historia Occidentalis, ed. J. F. Hinnebusch (Fribourg, 1972), chapter 17; Ordinale Conventus Vallis Caulium, ed. W. De Gray Birch (London, 1900); J. A. P. Mignard, Histoire des principales fondations religieuses du bailliage de la Montagne en Bourbogne (Paris and Dijon, 1864), 200-63; H. Gautier, 'Les documents d'archives du Grand Prieuré du Val-des-Choux au dépôt départemental de Moulins, avec un aperçu des origines légendaires et historiques de ce monastère chef d'ordre', Bulletin de la Société d'emulation du Bourbonnais, Lettres, Science et Arts 28 (1925), 20-38, 87-103; P. Vermeer, 'Citeaux – Val-des-Choux', Collectanea ordinis Cisterciensium reformatorum 16 (1954), 35-44; R. Folz, 'Le monastère du Val des Choux au premier siècle de son histoire', Bulletin Philologique et Historique du Comité des travaux Historiques et Scientifiques (1959), 91-115; A. Dimier, 'Val des Choux', in Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione 9 (Rome, 1997), 1671-2; Philip C. Adamo, 'The Manuscript Tradition and Origins of the Caulite Customary: An Historiographic Examination', Revue Mabillon 11 (2000), 197-220; Philip C. Adamo, 'Secundum Morem Cisterciensium: The Caulite Critique of Cistercian Practice', Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 55:3-4 (2004), 201-29.

For the Scottish houses: Michael Barrett O.S.B., 'The Kail Glen Monks of Scotland', American Catholic Quarterly Review 37 (1912), 214-27; H. F. Chettle, 'Lesser Benedictine Groups in the British Isles', Downside Review 66 (1948), 302-10; Ian B. Cowan and David E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland, 2nd edn (London, 1976), 83-5; Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D. E. R. Watt et al., 9 vols (Aberdeen and Edinburgh, 1987–98), v, 145, 258; S. R. Macphail, The Religious House of Pluscardyn (Edinburgh, 1881); Peter F. Anson, A Monastery in Moray (London, 1959); Augustine Holmes, Pluscarden Abbey (Derby, 2004); The Charters of the Priory of Beauly, ed. Edmund Chisholm Batten, Grampian Club (London, 1877); three chapters of Mark Dilworth's unpublished 'Monasteries and the Reformation' discuss the Scottish Valliscaulian priories.

5. The bull Ad apicem is printed in both Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum, ed. A. Theiner (Rome, 1864), 391-3 and Macphail, Pluscardyn, appendix BB. An English calendar is in Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, ed. W. H. Bliss et al. (London, 1893–) [hereafter CPL], x, 253-4.

6. The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. D. E. R. Watt and N. F. Shead, Scottish Record Society [SRS] (Edinburgh, 2001), 181. Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Medii Aevi ad annum 1638, ed. D. E. R. Watt and A. L. Murray, rev. edn, SRS (Edinburgh, 2003), 5. Learmonth was the first non-monk to become prior, but he and Dunbar were required to take the habit and become monks.

7. For Gavin Dunbar's 1479 attempt: CPL, xiii, 75; The Apostolic Camera and Scottish Benefices 1418–88, ed. A. I. Cameron (Oxford, 1934), 197; Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, ed. E. R. Lindsay et al. (1934–), vi, no.714, cited in Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 180.

8. Mark Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries in the Late Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1995), 47; cf. Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation (London, 1982), 31-2, on Kilwinning abbey.

9. All dates are given in new style unless noted. The National Register of Archives for Scotland [hereafter NRAS], 3094/102, Decreet arbitral; Manchester, John Rylands University Library [hereafter JRUL], Pluscarden Charters 8, Letter of Bailiary (transcription in Macphail, Pluscardyn, 235-6, and facsimile by p.116). The appointment is as bailie for priory lands 'within the sheriffdoms of Elgin, Forres and Nairn', although the community also had interests in the sheriffdom of Inverness. These included the parish of Dores/Durris on Loch Ness, given to Pluscarden priory by Andrew, bishop of Moray at the request of King Alexander in 1233 (JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 1, transcription in Macphail, Pluscardyn, 201-3) and also lands in Ross: Registrum de Dunfermelyn, ed. Cosmo Innes, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1842) [hereafter Dunfermline Registrum], 385; NAS, GD96/71-6. The grant in 1500 is among the Blairs Charters in the Scottish Catholic Archives [SCA], BC 8/3; it is noted in Anson, Monastery in Moray, 186. In 1474 Thomas Urquhart of Burdsyards and James Douglas of Pittendreich are mentioned as bailies of Pluscarden: NRAS, 3094/56 and 59.

10. The Calendar of Fearn: text and additions, 1471–1667, ed. R. J. Adam, Scottish History Society [hereafter SHS] (Edinburgh, 1991), 107-8; Registrum Magni SigilliRegum Scotorum, ed. J. M. Thomson et al., 11 vols (Edinburgh, 1882–1914) [hereafter RMS], ii, 2409.

11. NRAS, 47/3. David died on 23 February 1522: Adam, Calendar of Fearn, 111. Alexander died on 9 June 1527 (Adam, The Calendar of Fearn, 112) and his tomb stone in the Pluscarden Lady Chapel seems to state that he was bailie of the priory: 'alexander dunbar de durris et blau de pluscarte'. The stone is noted in Macphail, Pluscardyn, 172-3, who suggests that blau with its abbreviations represents ballivus, and in W. Rae MacDonald, 'Notes on the Heraldry of Elgin and its Neighbourhood', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland [hereafter PSAS] 34 (1900), 344-429, at 415. As mentioned in n.9, the kirk of Durris was appropriated to the priory.

12. Dunfermline Registrum, 385; Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 72-3.

13. Ranald Nicholson, Scotland in the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 24. The lands of Scotland were thus divided into 'royalty' and 'regality', although the precise nature of jurisdiction in a regality could vary according to the terms of its charter of erection. In England the nearest parallel to the regality was the palatinate, for example the palatinate of Durham. See also The Court Book of the Barony of Carnwath 1523–1542, ed. William Croft Dickinson, SHS (Edinburgh, 1937), xxxix-xliv.

14. Dilworth, 'Pluscarden as a Benedictine house'.

15. Urquhart is usually given first, as in the appointment of Robert Dunbar in 1558: NAS, RH6/2914. A later example is NAS, GD1/244/13, 'Court Book of Sir Robert Dunbar of Grangehill, heritable Baillie of the Regality of Urquhart and Pluscarden, and heritable Baillie of the Barony of Farneen, 15 June 1654–31 October 1662'.

16. Alexander resigned Durris to Robert on 14 November 1526, reserving liferent: RMS, iii, 390. Robert's death and David's succession are recorded in a precept of clare constat by Prior Alexander Seton and the convent of 16 August 1582: NAS, RH6/2639.

17. Alexander Innes was the son and heir of Alexander Innes, 18th of that Ilk, and his wife Christian, the daughter of Sir James Dunbar of Cumnock: Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Ane Account of the Familie of Innes, ed. Cosmo Innes, Spalding Club (Aberdeen, 1864) [hereafter Familie of Innes], 21; their marriage contract is summarised on p.126. William Hay of Mayne, an estate near Pluscarden, was married to Janet Dunbar, who died on 23 April 1549: Adam, Calendar of Fearn, 127. He was closely connected with Prior Alexander Dunbar, they shared the wardship of David Dunbar, son of John of Bennethfield the prior's brother, in 1547 (The Records of Elgin, 1234–1800, ed. William Cramond, New Spalding Club, 2 vols [Aberdeen, 1903–08], i, 90) and the prior was given the wardship of James Hay of Mayne on 21 June 1554: Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scotorum, M. Livingstone et al., 8 vols (Edinburgh, 1908–82) [hereafter RSS], iv, no.2755. Walter Innes of Touchs, later of Achintoull, was bailie of the earldom of Ross (Adam, Calendar of Fearn, 131) and cousin of the elder Alexander Innes.

18. Pluscarden Abbey Archives; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 240-1.

19. I have not located an original copy of the 1558 charter, but it is transcribed in the precept of clare constat appointing Robert's son David as bailie in 1582 (NAS, RH6/2639) and also in a letter under the privy seal of James VI confirming the 1558 grant: NAS, RH6/2914.

20. That a large proportion of priory lands were feued to close relatives of the prior in the 1550s would seem to be relatively unusual (Margaret H. B. Sanderson, 'The feuars of Kirklands', Scottish Historical Review 154 [1973], 117-36, at 118) although something similar happened in the same period at Kilwinning abbey under Commendator Gavin Hamilton. Pluscarden feu-charters granted in the period 1555–60 to those said to have been children of Prior Alexander include: 5 February 1555 (Aberdeen University Library [AUL], MS 3175 MH/90); 20 November 1556 (NRAS, 47/9); 26 June 1557 (Elgin Museum, ELGNM: 2002.5.1); 8 August 1558 (RMS, v, 1006); 10 March 1560 (Familie of Innes, 203); 18 June 1560 (RMS, iv, 2674); 9 July 1560 (Familie of Innes, 118; NRAS, 3094/182; AUL, MS 3175 MI/19); 8 September 1560 (RMS, v, 1010); two charters of 12 September 1560 (RMS, v, 708; Macphail, Pluscardyn, 126). In a charter of 1 August 1560 the prior's signature is very shaky, suggesting illness (AUL, MS 3175 MH/81), and a charter in favour of the Dunbars of Cumnock of 9 July 1560 mentions attacks on monasteries. It is granted 'pro preservatione dicti nostri monasterii de pluscardin … ab extrema destructione … in destructione spoliatione et devastatione cenobiorum et monasteriorum huius regni': NRAS, 3094/182.

21. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, ed. J. H. Burton et al., 36 vols (Edinburgh, 1877–1970), xiv, 377.

22. RSS, v, no.819 (17 April 1561); no.1008 (18 March 1562). For the date of death of Prior Alexander see Testimony C. For Cranston see: Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 181; Watt and Murray, Fasti, 417, 421, 487, 490, 501; and Mark Dilworth, 'William Cranston (c.1510–1562): a Catholic protagonist', IR 55 (2004), 44-51, which gives details from the Vatican archives of the provision of Cranston to Pluscarden.

23. For the right of presentation to Seton collegiate church, see Watt and Murray, Fasti, 487. George, 5th Lord Seton, succeeded his father, George, in July 1549; Cranston first occurs as provost of Seton in November 1549 and his predecessor, John Williamson, last occurs as provost in January 1549, so it is likely that the 5th Lord Seton was responsible for Cranston's provision, which would help explain his appointment to Pluscarden.

24. For Cranston's death in August or September 1562, see Dilworth, 'William Cranston', 51. The grant of Pluscarden to Alexander Seton: RSS, v, nos 2315 and 2317. For Alexander Seton's birth in the first half of 1556, not the traditional 1555, see Maurice Lee Jr, 'King James's Popish Chancellor', 170 n.1, in The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland, ed. I. B. Cowan and D. Shaw (Edinburgh, 1983), 170-82.

25. Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 181; RMS, iv, 2640 and RSS, vii, 885 (6 February 1577); RSS, vii, 891 (8 February 1577); legitimation of James and his brothers RMS, iv, 2506 (31 January 1576). Mark Dilworth notes of Alexander Seton, 'The fairest judgement on him would seem to be that he remained a Catholic at heart and, given the scarcity of priests, practised his religion when possible but did not hesitate to take part in the Protestant observance required for the continuance of his public career': 'Pluscarden after 1560', 7; cf. Lee, 'King James's Popish Chancellor'.

26. RMS, iv, 2180, 23 November 1563, and 2429, 24 June 1575; RMS, iii, 1541, 2 February 1536; David Douglas of Pittendreich was provost of Elgin in 1521–5 and his father, James Douglas of Pittendreich, in 1488: Records of Elgin, ii, 475. James, who was bailie of Pluscarden in 1474, was the son of Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray, and received Pittendreich from King James III in a feu charter of 1469: RMS, ii, 984. James Douglas had been in dispute in 1494–5 with the priory of Pluscarden over the erection of a mill at Pittendreich: Macphail, Pluscardyn, 116, 231-5; JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 7.

27. Dilworth, 'Pluscarden after 1560', 5.

28. RMS, iv, 2774, 2854, 2861. One notes that, according to the lists in the sixteenth-century rentals, the properties in the barony of Pluscarden feued to Archibald Douglas are all those not feued by Prior Alexander Dunbar to his family in 1555–60 (see above, n.20). The feuing of the barony of Pluscarden was thus completed in two movements, 1555–60 and 1577, and in both cases the beneficiaries were close kin of the prior of Pluscarden.

29. Elgin, Moray Council Local Heritage Service, ZBEl B2/3, Elgin Burgh Court Book 1570–85, 455-6. This is not transcribed in Records of Elgin, but Macphail, Pluscardyn, 133, gives a transcription of the text on p.455; p.456 describes the administration of the oath and appends the text of the commission. Macphail wrongly identifies John Douglas, parson of 'Russell', with the John Russall in Familie of Innes, 136. Our John Douglas, prebendary of Ruffill (Dunkeld), appears in 1577 as a witness to RMS, iv, 3014, and the index to RMS, iv identifies him with John Douglas, servant of Bishop George Douglas of Moray in 1574: RMS, iv, 2681.

30. RSS, vi, no.2638; vii, 2309; RMS, iv, 2861 of March 1579 describes him as chamberlain (camerarius) of Pluscarden.

31. Familie of Innes, 127-9; Records of Elgin, i, 216-8, quoting from the Privy Council register. George Dunbar, son of Robert Dunbar of Durris, the former Pluscarden bailie, had married Marjorie, the daughter of Dean Alexander Dunbar in 1576: Rev. James G. Murray, The Dunbars of Grangehill (Elgin, c.1925), 6; cf. RMS, v, 667; RSS, vii, 1503.

32. The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1814–75), iii, 195, 276, 397-8.

33. NAS, RH6/2639; NAS, GD1/244/11.

34. In the March 1558 charter the lands of the regality are described as 'the whole lands and baronies of Urquhart, Glen of Pluscarden, Fernen, Kintessack, Tulledullie, Fochabers, Meikle Penick and all and sundry lands, mills, waters etc of the said Abbey (sic) of Pluscarden and Urquhart': NAS, RH6/2639. Half a century later the lordship of Urquhart was declared to be a free regality consisting of all the lands of the priory, 'the lands and baronies of Urquhart, Pluscarden, Fochabers, Farnern and Grangehill': NAS, GD94/116. The regality of Urquhart, with reference to the barony of Urquhart itself and not all the lands of Pluscarden priory, is seen in action in the collection 'Papers relating to the Lordship of Urquhart': NAS, GD94. NAS, GD1/244 is a collection entitled 'Bailiary of Pluscarden and Regality of Farneen'. This may be explained by an instrument of 19 March 1612 by which Mark Dunbar of Grangehill (now Dalvey on Findhorn Bay) resigned the heritable office of bailie and general justiciar of Pluscarden and Urquhart to Alexander Seton, earl of Dunfermline, while retaining the heritable office of bailie and justiciar of his own lands of Grangehill etc.: NAS, GD94/86. Documents of a later date in the collection GD1/244 show that the Dunbars of Grangehill actually remained hereditary bailies of Pluscarden and Urquhart, but Farneen (Stonny Fornoene) was the regality corresponding to their own lands within the lordship of Urquhart. The barony of Tarnenan/ Fernanan/ Fernua, consisting of lands around Forres was given to Pluscarden priory by King Alexander II on 7 April 1236: JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 2. When Alexander Seton, Lord Urquhart, sold Pluscarden to Kenneth McKenzie of Kintail in 1595, he reserved for holding his own courts, 'the liberty of the hill called the Court Hill of Pluscarden lying beside the Mills of Elgin': NAS, GD94/41. A 1630 extract from the Court Book of the Regality of Pluscarden has a court being held 'at the Stane of Farnen' on the Grangehill property: NAS, GD1/244/12. The web of jurisdictions was clearly very complex.

35. NAS, GD1/244/7.

36. C. H. Haws, Scottish Parish Clergy at the Reformation 1540–1574, SRS (Edinburgh, 1972), 132 (Kilmuir Wester); I. B. Cowan, The Parishes of Medieval Scotland, SRS (Edinburgh, 1967), 204 (Unthank).

37. Dilworth, 'Pluscarden after 1560', 9-10.

38. See below, n.110.

39. See Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, [ed. Cosmo Innes], Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1837) [hereafter Moray Registrum] and Dunfermline Registrum. Scottish cartularies are listed in G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain: A Short Catalogue (London, 1958), 129-37. A scroll can be called a register, as in the case of the earliest registers of English bishops: C. R. Cheney, English Bishops' Chanceries, 1100–1250 (Manchester, 1950), chapter four. Of all the Scottish cartularies and similar documents mentioned by G. R. C. Davis, only two notarial transcripts of charters from Inchcolm abbey, made in the 1420s, are in roll form.

40. The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices, ed. James Kirk (Oxford, 1995), 471. Slightly before this he writes of extracting information from 'the register' in the singular. The archive of Pluscarden priory was handed down by the lay owners of the property after the Reformation and part is found among the Duff House papers in Aberdeen University Library (MS 3175). Certain charters from this collection are owned by the present monastic community at Pluscarden and are on deposit in the John Rylands University Library, Manchester. Much has been lost including the registers and the officials' accounts, but two pre-Reformation rentals were obtained by Charles Rose of Montcoffer House, Banff, and acquired by the Advocates' Library in 1819: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland [NLS], Adv. MS 49.7.2. Records of the lordship of Urquhart (GD94) and the bailiary of Pluscarden (GD1/244) are found in the NAS and copies of documents concerning the priory are found among collections of family papers and elsewhere.

41. Dilworth, 'Coldingham Priory and the Reformation' IR 23 (1972), 133-4, notes the common practice of documents prepared with the date left blank, and also monastic charters signed by the commendator in one place and then sent to the monks at the monastery to be signed on another day. In one case it seems that a Coldingham document was signed by the monks two years before the date was inserted.

42. A carving of the arms of Prior George Learmonth (1509–29), now fixed in the west wall of the transepts of Pluscarden abbey, was said to have been found in this area. In contemporary Scots, 'tour' etc. was often used of tower houses: The Concise Scots Dictionary, ed. Mairi Robinson (Aberdeen, 1987), 729.

43. Regula Benedicti [RB], LXIII de ordine congregationis which says, 'they are to keep their rank in the monastery which the time of their entry and the merit of their lives determines or as the Abbot constitutes'. Generally there is a link between age and seniority in the habit.

44. Compare the order of names of Kinloss monks in the charters of 1518, 1537 and 1559 (Records of Kinloss, 142, 149, 151-2; the last is JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 13) together with the list of monks professed under Abbot Thomas Chrystal (Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 37–8) to the list on the precept of 1565 where six of the nine names are in a random order: Records of Kinloss, 154; JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 14. The Beauly evidence is less clear, but compare the different orders in the charters of 1568 and 1571 (Beauly Charters, 256 and Records of Kinloss, 95) to the pre-Reformation list of those taught by Ferrerio given in his history: Historia Abbatum, 49.

45. I am indebted to Dr Barbara Harvey for this point.

46. Selections from the Records of the Regality of Melrose, ed. Charles S. Romanes, SHS, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1914–17) [hereafter Melrose Records], vol. iii, x, 155-7, 218. This is from the monastic protocol book of Dene Ralph Hudson which is among the earl of Haddington's papers: Mark Dilworth, 'Monks and Ministers after 1560', Records of the Scottish Church History Society [hereafter RSCHS] 18 (1974), 201-21.

47. Glyn Coppack, 'The Planning of Cistercian Monasteries in the Later Middle Ages: the Evidence from Fountains, Rievaulx, Sawley and Rushen', in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. James G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), 202.

48. Mark Dilworth, 'Scottish Cistercian monasteries and the Reformation', IR 48 (1997), 144-64, at 164, notes that all ten Cistercian abbeys were receiving novices in the 1550s, even though some communities were in decline; cf. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 50.

49. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 48-53; Kimm Curran, 'Looking for Nuns: A Prosopographical study of Scottish Nuns in the later Middle Ages', RSCHS 35 (2005), 28-67. This important article notes the dearth of sources from Scotland, compared to English monasticism, but shows how much can be done with this limited evidence.

50. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 48-50; Dilworth, 'Monks and Ministers after 1560', 201-2.

51. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, 391; NRAS, 3094/70; JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 8; SCA, BC 8/3; A Genealogical Deduction of the Family of Rose of Kilravock, ed. Cosmo Innes, Spalding Club (Edinburgh, 1848), 171-2. The previously unnoted 11 September 1476 list (NRAS, 3094/70), from the Dunbar of Westfield papers, is signed by: Willel mus prior / Andreas / Willelmus / Andreas Ʒonger / Andreas Brown / dominus Grame / Thomas Fernehill. Prior William is William Boyce, prior 1457–76, who resigned with pension in July 1476 when Thomas Foster, monk of Dunfermline was provided as prior. Foster was not admitted by the crown to the temporalities until March 1478 which would explain why Boyce was still signing after his resignation: Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 180.

52. 1501, six sign the charters recorded in the previous note and John Henderson, a monk of Pluscarden who does not appear in any lists, was swiftly advanced through major and minor orders in the first ten days of August 1501: London, The National Archives, PRO 31/9/31, fo.45 (text transcribed in n.116). As Henderson was ordained in 1501, he must have entered some time before 1500; 1503, NRAS, 47/1; 1508, NRAS, 47/3, AUL, MS 3175 B2/87 and Macphail, Pluscardyn, 237; 1524, AUL, MS 3175 B2/87 and Macphail, Pluscardyn, 239; 1529, NRAS, 47/5, NAS, GD68/1/26, in addition to these documents of March and July, Hector Forman (Freeman) was witness to a charter of September 1529, Moray Registrum, 418 and RMS, iii, 835; 1545, NAS, GD94/1; 1546, NRAS, 3094/164; 1548, Macphail, Pluscardyn, 241 (the original is now at Pluscarden abbey); 1555 AUL, MS 3175 MH/90; 1556 NRAS, 47/7, 9, ELGNM: 2002.5.1; 1558 NAS, GD96/71, AUL, MS 3175 B2/87; 1560, NAS, GD96/76, NRAS, 47/13, 3094/182, AUL, MS 3175 MH/81, MI/19, ELGNM: 2002.5.2.

53. Between 1500 and 1508 eight new names appear; this is the highest rate of new entries for the period 1500–60 and may reflect a deliberate increase in the size of the community, but two are monks of Dunfermline, Henderson certainly entered before 1500 and others may have done so; 1509–24, six new names; 1525–9, two new names; 1530–45, seven new names, one of whom was a former prior of Dunfermline; 1546–55, four new names, with a further two in 1556.

54. Dobson, 'The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages', 120; Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 51; idem, 'The Social Origins of Scottish Medieval Monks', RSCHS 20 (1980), 197-209, at 209.

55. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 51-2, and the more extensive study in his 'The Social Origins of Scottish Medieval Monks'.

56. See below, nn.123 and 127.

57. NLS, Adv. MS 49.7.2 (Pluscarden priory rentals). The other names are Scott, Allanson, Hay and Williamson. The first of two rentals can be dated between 1527, date of the assessment of the kirk of Durris on fo.14r, and 1540, the death of Robert Innes of Rothmakenzie who held Mills in Urquhart; it may have been compiled when Alexander Dunbar became prior in 1529. The second rental is dated 1545 in its title (fo.17r). The episcopal rental has the names Brown, Scott, Allan, Hay, Wyatt, Henderson, Adam, Anderson, Ross and Fraser: Moray Registrum, 431-51.

58. The Burgh Records of Dunfermline 1488–1584, ed. E. Beveridge (Edinburgh, 1917) [hereafter Dunf. Recs.] and The Gild Court Book of Dunfermline, ed. Elizabeth P. D. Torrie, SRS (Edinburgh, 1986) have twenty-four of the thirty-two names, and The Records of Elgin has twenty-six.

59. Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 29, 32, 33, 39; John Durkan, 'Paisley Abbey in the Sixteenth Century', IR 27 (1976), 110-26, at 119. Curran, 'Looking for Nuns', reveals similar local and kin-based networks influencing female recruitment, but on a smaller and more local scale which could reflect the lesser mobility of women in contemporary society.

60. Thomas, The Burgh of Elgin in Early Modern Times, 42. The examples given of Elgin men who became burgesses of Dundee and two Dundonians with Elgin connections are all some decades after Freeman entered Pluscarden, but the special connection may well have gone back to his time.

61. St. Andrews Formulare 1514–1546, vol. 1, ed. G. Donaldson and C. Macrae, Stair Society (Edinburgh, 1942), 261.

62. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 48; Kirk, The Books of Assumption, 210, 216, 332, 591.

63. Kirk, The Books of Assumption, 472. In the same book the monetary element of a canon or monk's portion at certain other monasteries was: Dunfermline, pound;15 3s; Kilwinning, pound;16; Balmerino, pound;15 6s 8d; Coupar Angus, pound;16 8s 5d; Culross, pound;20; Kinloss, pound;10; Melrose, pound;13 6s 8d (or later perhaps pound;25 17s 8d); Cambuskenneth, pound;17 4s 10d; Inchmahome, pound;13 6s 8d; Jedburgh, pound;20; Scone, pound;18 10s 8d; Tongland, pound;11 13s 4d. There was much more variety in allowances in kind.

64. Margaret H. B. Sanderson, 'Service and Survival: The clergy in late sixteenth-century Scotland', RSCHS 36 (2006), 73-96, at 76 and 73. It is noted that the latter figure was, 'only a little more than a ploughman was usually paid'.

65. Melrose Records, iii, 218. R. B. Dobson notes of Durham cathedral priory in the fifteenth century that, 'the really important patron, and the agent through whom most boys were induced to enter religion, was undoubtedly the Durham monk himself; it was he who normally recommended candidates for the habit to his Prior': Durham Priory 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), 59.

66. Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 70. The increase in portions may have contributed to the relatively low value of a Kinloss portion in the list from The Books of Assumption given in n.63.

67. Melrose Records, iii, 187-91 (17 March 1556). One notes that this is for the subprior and convent. The then prior, the notary Dene Ralph Hudson, was presumably provided for separately from the other monks, but Dilworth notes that some Scottish abbeys such as Crossraguel and Jedburgh seem to have had only a subprior, not a prior: Scottish Monasteries, 53; 'The Cluniac Communities before 1560' (a chapter of Mark Dilworth's unpublished 'Monasteries and the Reformation'), 10.

68. AUL, MS 3175 MH/81, 1 August 1560.

69. Kirk, The Books of Assumption, 472.

70. The one-year noviciate, RB 58:9-14, spent in a designated area or 'noviciate' (cella noviciorum), was preceded by a period in the Guest House and followed by the profession rite which included being dressed in the monastic habit (induatur rebus monasterii, RB 58:26). Adalbert de Vogüé argues that the two months before the first of the three readings of the Rule during this year (RB 58:9-11) were spent in the Guest House and the candidate was only then taken into the cella noviciorum for the last ten months: La Règle de saint Benoît (Paris, 1971–2) t. VI: 1314-17; but even here the total defined period is a year. The Regula Benedicti is the basic legislative text for Benedictine and Cistercian monks, but its prescriptions for religious formation have influenced the Canon Law of the Latin Church for religious in general.

71. Barbara Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey in the Century before the Dissolution', in Clark, Religious Orders, 51-73, at 59; Barrie Dobson, 'The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages, 1220–1540', in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks (Oxford, 1995), 69-153, at 122. Dobson records one monk in 1410 receiving the habit and making profession on the same day. Medieval debates on the noviciate were canonically cleared up for all religious by the Council of Trent which declared that profession would be invalid if it were not preceded by a one-year noviciate and if it were made before the completion of one's sixteenth year; Session 25 (3–4 December 1563), Decretum de regularibus et monialibus, chapter 15, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. N. Tanner (London, 1990), 781. Richard Yeo notes that this Tridentine decree, 'goes beyond the common law of the decretals, which urged the noviciate, but never imposed it under pain of invalidity of the profession': The Structure and Content of Monastic Profession (Rome, 1982), 45.

72. Ferrerio, Historia, 35; Thomas Crystall was made a novice (candidatus) on the Epiphany 1488 and 'revoluto anno, eadem etiam die, est professus', 63-4, 83.

73. Barbara Harvey suggests the infrequency was partly because of the widespread opinion that the taking of the habit could involve a 'tacit profession', at this time there was no concept of a 'temporary profession, and partly because they were well looked after during the period of probation: 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 61-2; cf. F. D. Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c.1240–1540 (Cambridge, 1996), 10-25 and Yeo, The Structure and Content of Monastic Profession, 44-5. In Scotland the prospect of a legal right to a portion for life would also have acted as an incentive not to depart.

74. Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 37: 'Recepit et adulescentulum alterum bene litteratum Jacobum Dekison ... Sed cum puer non posset monachatus labores perferre, volens in novitiatu demissus est, qui eo anno apud patrem suum vitam morte commutavit'.

75. 'Monachum non faciat habitus, sed professio regularis', Decretal. Gregor. IX, Lib. III Tit. XXXI Cap. XIII, Corpus Iuris Canonici, editio Lipsiensis secunda, pars secunda, decretalium collectiones (Graz, 1955), 573. The Regula Benedicti says that the novice is free to depart (RB 58:10 and 15), but by the mid-ninth-century commentary on RB by Hildemar this was no longer clear and in many medieval monasteries an explicit profession was not made. These, the question of the binding nature of child oblation and the legal fiction of 'tacit profession' provide the context of this decretal, see Yeo, The Structure and Content of Monastic Profession, 44-5, 175-8.

76. The later transcript of the March 1558 charter does not give the names of the monks who subscribed, but we know from other 1558 charters that in addition to the prior there were at least ten monks in the community at the time including the 'novices': NAS, GD96/71 (30 April 1558); AUL, MS 3175 B2/87 (5 May 1558). We have already noted the problems of using charter subscriptions to determine the size of a community at a given date.

77. AUL, MS 3175 MH/90; NRAS, 47/9. Even if novices who had not been professed signed charters, the two were certainly professed by March 1558 as it is well over a year after these dates.

78. AUL, MS 3175 MI/19 (9 July 1560: Prior, Blacater, Birnie, Salter, Ross and Artill) and MH/81 (1 August 1560: Prior, Blacater, Birnie, Salter, Ross, Watchman and Artill). NAS, GD96/76 (Prior, Blacater, Blair, Birnie, Salter, Ross, Watchman, Artill, Douglas, Fraser, Wright). This June charter is the last mention of the 'novices': perhaps their portions were not secure and they left when news of parliament's change of religion came to Moray. Professed novices did not have full chapter rights, Dobson notes that they were present in chapter at the election of a prior but did not have a vote: Durham Priory 1400–1450, 52.

79. NAS, GD94/1 of 12 April 1545, in which Thomas Ross appears for the first time, is the next earliest known list of Pluscarden subscriptions. It is thus probable that Douglas, with George Tarras and Gregory Watchman, were professed between 1545 and 1555, and Fraser and Andrew Wight were professed between February 1555 and November 1556. All apart from Tarras, who only occurs in AUL, MS 3175 MH/90, appear in this order among the subscribers to charters in 1558. Tarras may have died or departed before the later lists or he may have been absent or ill.

80. Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 51-7.

81. A Description or Breife Declaration of all the Ancient Monuments, Rites and Customes belonginge or beinge within the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression Written in 1593, [ed. James Raine], Surtees Society (London, 1842), 81.

82. Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 52, 55-7. At Christ Church, Canterbury and even Durham itself in the fifteenth century, the evidence suggests less than seven years before ordination: Dobson, 'The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages', 123; R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory 1400–1450, 63. 1351 constitutions for St Albans state that a monk remains a 'junior' for as many as ten years after profession, but an examination of monastic biographies reveal periods of between four and eight years before ordination: James G. Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle (Oxford, 2004), 45-6. The only evidence of the ordination of a Pluscarden monk of which I am aware, that of John Henderson (Henrici) noted above, records him receiving the four minor orders and three major orders in the short period of ten days, 1–10 August 1501: The National Archives, PRO 31/9/31, fo.45. Among all the monks of Kinloss recorded by Ferrerio, one, James Porter who entered under Abbot Crystal (1500–28), is noted as having been a priest before entering: Historia Abbatum, 38.

83. Wyatt's tombstone is against the north wall of the Transepts at Pluscarden abbey. There is a line drawing of it in MacDonald, 'Notes on the Heraldry of Elgin', 413; Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 61: on p.35 of the same work Ferrerio describes the stages of Thomas Chrystal's formation as: 'revoluto anno ... est professus. Sacerdos factus est postea'; cf. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1984): 'professus, a monk who has taken vows'.

84. David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II The End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1957), 233; Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 56-7 – on p.70 she suggests that senior novices in custody may have been given light administrative jobs in the community. The four Paisley novices were only recorded because they were present at chapter (NAS, NP1/198 p.34), quoted in Durkan, 'Paisley Abbey in the Sixteenth Century', 122. None of the four occur before this, so it is not absolutely certain that they were already professed in 1543, but they do sign before three other monks in a 14 November 1545 charter (Paisley Cartulary fo.108r) which, together with their being at chapter, suggests that they were indeed professed in 1543: J. Malden, 'Alphabetical List of Abbots, Monks and Priors of Paisley', in The Monastery and Abbey of Paisley, ed. John Malden (Paisley, 2000), 231-48 (Mark Dilworth's annotated copy; he notes another novice, John Lochhead, in 1555, who probably did not persevere: NAS, NP1/199, p.83).

85. Protocol book of John McQuhin, senior: NAS, NP1/198, pp.4-6; Durkan, 'Paisley Abbey in the Sixteenth Century', 121-2. Five years later Wallace reappears at Paisley signing a document: NAS, NP1/198, p.57; Dilworth, 'the Cluniac communities before 1560', 14-16.

86. Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 53.

87. Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 46, 83. Spence was said to have died aged seventy-four after fifty-nine years as a monk (in monachatu): Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 38.

88. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, ii, 230-1; Dobson, 'The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages', 121; Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100–1540, 118-21, where she suggests that at Westminster, for those for whom a first Mass is recorded, the mean age at profession in the period 1390–1469 was probably twenty-one, and from 1470 to 1529 it had dropped to eighteen, with some being professed at fifteen; Documents illustrating the activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks 1215–1540, ed. W. A. Pantin, Camden Series, 3 vols (London, 1931–7), i, 10, 99; Robertus Richardinus, Commentary on the Rule of St Augustine, ed. G. G. Coulton, SHS (Edinburgh, 1935), 88, 'hoc etiam de mea sententia utilissimum foret, si neminem ante 18 annum inreligionem reciperent, nisi qua complexione et constantia esset certum haberent'.

89. See above, n.71.

90. Yeo, The Structure and Content of Monastic Profession, 41-3. Taking an oath was forbidden by canon law to anyone under the age of fourteen years complete: Early Records of the University of St Andrews 1413–1579, ed James M. Anderson, SHS (Edinburgh, 1926), xxiv.

91. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 51.

92. NLS, BCL.A648.

93. For English houses, cf.: Dobson, 'The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages', 117-18 (Christ Church, Canterbury: groups of six, eight or more); Dobson, Durham Priory 1400–1450, 62 (groups of six or eight); Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 54 (groups 'sometimes as large as six, seven or even eight'); Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans, 44-5 (groups of around four).

94. Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey', 54.

95. Melrose Records, iii, 218.

96. The development in the high middle ages of the practice of ordaining all choir monks led to an elaboration of intellectual formation which was encouraged by ecclesiastical legislation such as the papal canons Summi magistri (1336). For the education of novices in the period, see Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans, 51-62; Harvey, 'A Novice's Life at Westminster Abbey'; and Medieval Monastic Education, ed. George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig (London, 2000).

97. Statutes of the Scottish Church 1225–1559, ed. David Patrick, SHS (Edinburgh, 1907), 86, 106-7. Full records for the relevant period from Aberdeen University, are, however, lacking.

98. NLS, BCL.A648, fo.58r. These annotations are to be explored in a forthcoming article: 'Dene Thomas Ross: A Monk, his Bible and the Reformation'.

99. Records of Inverness, i, 209 and 71-2. In 1571 Peter Vaus objected to Gibson, who was procurator for Mareon Vaus, as he 'is ane papist, quha aucht nocht to haif place to procuyr in na cause as the Actis of Parliament proportis': Janet P. Foggie, Renaissance Religion in Urban Scotland. The Dominican Order, 1450–1560 (Leiden, 2003), 229.

100. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 79.

101. Michael Lynch, Scotland, A New History (London, 1992), 193.

102. One issue is that of terminology. Whereas in other areas of historical writing it is usual for the term 'early modern' to be used of the period beginning at some time between 1450 and 1500, in the study of British pre-Reformation monasticism it is common, as books and articles cited above show, to continue to use 'medieval' right up to the political triumph of Protestantism. This looks strange for England in the 1520s and 1530s but it is quite unfitting for Scotland in the decades before 1560, when what we know of monastic culture had a distinct renaissance flavour, cf. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries in the Late Middle Ages, 36, 64-7. Perhaps this usage is partly due to a hidden feeling that monasticism was an anachronistic survival of the 'dark ages', ripe for destruction? It has thus seemed better to speak of 'late medieval and renaissance Scottish monasticism' in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

103. NAS, Court of Session Records, Box 26, 1579 (CS15/26). Square brackets [ ] used for additions to the original text and for editorial comments.

104. Dene Thomas Ross, monk of Pluscarden: born, according to his testimony, c.1525. He was given a Bible in 1541 (NLS, BCL.A648) and first signs a priory document in 1545 (NAS, GD94/1) and in 1587 is described as the sole remaining monk of the monastery: AUL, MS 3175 B2/87. The Elgin kirk session minutes in the 1590s record 'the monk of Pluscarden' conducting illicit, presumably Catholic, baptisms; the last of these I have traced is mentioned on 2 May 1599: NAS, CH2/145/2/9.

105. George Dunbar of Avoch, rector of Kilmuir Wester: born, according to his testimony, c.1519. He was the brother of John Dunbar of Bennetsfield (RMS, v, 1006) who was a brother of Prior Alexander: RMS, iii, 2642; these brothers were said to be sons of Patrick Dunbar, chancellor of Aberdeen and Caithness: Adam, Calendar of Fearn, 118. For Patrick's children the Calendar of Fearn quotes (with references corrected) L. Shaw, The History of the Province of Moray (Glasgow, 1879), ii, 101-4 and Robert Young, Annals of the Parish and Burgh of Elgin (Elgin, 1879), 672; neither gives any hard evidence and Macphail, Pluscardyn, 127, quotes a note among Dr Stuart's papers that says that Patrick was 'said to be the ancestor of the Dunbars of Bennethfield' (my italics). George Dunbar was presented to the vicarage of Rosemarkie, 12 May 1549 and was rector of Kilmuir Wester by 1 November 1552; he had a feu-ferme charter of three quarters of Avoch, on the Black Isle, 23 July 1563. Adam calls him 'a frequent litigant and arbiter'. He was involved in many transactions of his brother, Prior Alexander, at Pluscarden priory and in 1558 was described as 'procurator for the said Prior and convent': NAS, GD96/74 and 75. He died between February 1607 and March 1608: Adam, Calendar of Fearn, 146.

106. Robert Dunbar the chamberlain: the chamberlain was the chief financial officer of a monastery who collected the rents and handled the income. In our period he was usually a layman: Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 54. The Pluscarden chamberlain is mentioned in the rental in Kirk, The Books of Assumption, 471-3, but this document is the only indication I have found of his name. The three mentions of Robert Dunbar, twice with him signing the charter, might suggest that its beneficiary, Robert Dunbar of Durris, was also chamberlain, but that is an unlikely job for a laird. Two more likely candidates for Robert the chamberlain are the son of the prior (legitimation: RSS, iii, 2633) who, as the son and grandson of churchmen is likely to have been adequately educated, and Robert the younger son of Robert Dunbar of Durris (ELGNM: 2002.5.6, 16 August 1582), though he may be too young.

107. James Gibson: deceased witness. He was described as burgess of Elgin when witness to a charter at Pluscarden with the same John Gibson and John Ramsay who signed this disputed letter of bailery: 10 March 1560, RMS, iv, 1734; cf. also 27 September 1565, RMS, iv, 1681. Sir John Gibson, parson of Unthank, was probably his brother: RMS, iv, 2681. He was closely connected to the priory: on 18 June 1560 Prior Alexander Dunbar gave James Gibson a feu charter of Foresterseat and Corsleys in the barony of Pluscarden 'pro bono servitio, necnon pro magnis pecuniarum summis persolutis': RMS, iv, 2674. He was alive in July 1571: Moray Registrum, 397-8.

108. John Ramsay: born c.1529 according to his testimony. Witness of a number of Pluscarden charters in 1560: 10 March 1560 and 9 July 1560, RMS, iv, 1734; 3 June 1560, RMS, iv, 1812; 18 June 1560, RMS, iv, 2674.

109. I am grateful to Ms Leanne Swallow of the NAS for identifying this as the signature of William Baillie of Provand, lord president of the court of session from May 1566 until December 1567 (when he was replaced by Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich). Baillie also served as lord president 1571–9 (de facto) and 1579–93 (de jure): John Finlay, 'Baillie, William, of Provand (d.1593)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford, 2004), https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1070 (accessed 6 June 2007).

110. Sir John Gibson, parson of Unthank: notary public, born c.1516 according to his testimony. He appears in Elgin as a chaplain, 5 May 1541 (Moray Registrum, 404), and thereafter as a notary from 1544 (Moray Registrum, 404, 6 February 1544) and clerk of the consistorial court of the diocese of Moray: NAS, GD1/137/1. After this date he regularly signs Moray charters.

In 1540 a Master John Gibson appears in Bishop William Stewart of Aberdeen's 1540 register of the renewal of authorisation of notaries and is also described as clerk to the bishop, dean and chapter: Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, ed. Cosmo Innes, Maitland and Spalding Clubs, 2 vols (Edinburgh and Aberdeen, 1845), ii, 323-4; Cartulary of St Nicholas, Aberdeen, ed. James Cooper, New Spalding Club, 2 vols (Aberdeen, 1888–92), ii, 381. The RMS has him signing Aberdeen diocesan charters between 26 April 1539 and 8 September 1543: RMS, iii, 1980 and 2973. This would seem to be the same John Gibson NP, who thus moved from Aberdeen to Elgin (although a notary of the same name appears earlier in Glasgow records, e.g. in 1529: RMS, iii, 1619).

John Gibson was chaplain of St Duthac in Elgin parish church, (Elgin Burgh Court Book, 3 July 1581, where he is described as the 'last chaplain'): Records of Elgin, i, 159. Between 1556 and 1560 he obtained the prebend of Unthank, a non-parochial prebend of Moray cathedral in the gift of the lords of Duffus: Moray Registrum, 422, 429-30; I. B. Cowan, The Parishes of Medieval Scotland, SRS (Edinburgh, 1967), 204. At about this time he signed various Pluscarden charters, e.g. 10 March 1560 and 9 July 1560: RMS, iv, 1734. In 1563 he was commissary of Moray (Watt and Murray, Fasti, 320) and in 1569–70 he was burgh clerk of Inverness: Records of Inverness, ed. William Mackay, Herbert Cameron Boyd and George Smith Laing, New Spalding Club, 2 vols (Aberdeen, 1911–24), i, 182. A November 1574 feu charter of Gavin Dunbar, archdeacon of Moray gave land to John Gibson, rector of Unthank and noted: firstly that he had a brother James, probably the same as James the burgess who also witnessed the letter of bailiary of 10 March 1558, and secondly that John Gibson was related to (consanguineo) Archdeacon Gavin Dunbar: RMS, iv, 2681. I have not been able to establish how Gavin Dunbar, archdeacon of Moray 1568–1613 (Watt and Murray, Fasti, 315), was related to Prior Alexander Dunbar, but a close connection is highly probable. After our court case John Gibson was elected clerk of the Elgin burgh court on 1 October 1582 (Records of Elgin, i, 166), and was noted as chamberlain to George Douglas, bishop of Moray, on 10 December 1582: Records of Elgin, i, 168. He died at some time after this. By Marjorie Cumming he had at least four children, William, Alexander, John and Janet: Jane E. Thomas, The Burgh of Elgin in Early Modern Times (M.Litt., University of Aberdeen, 1990); RSS, v, 1052; RMS, iv, 2681.

111. Dene Robert Artill, monk of Pluscarden: born, according to his testimony, c.1529, he first appears signing a Pluscarden charter in February 1555: AUL, MS 3175 MH/90. He last appears on 30 October 1582 (NAS, GD94/19; cf. AUL, MS 3175 B2/87 and MG/98) and was presumably dead by 1 March 1587 when Thomas Ross was called the last remaining monk: Macphail, Pluscardyn, 245-7; AUL, MS 3175 B2/87.

112. His surname, written in Latin as Alani, could be Allan. He could be one of the two Andrews signing without surname in 1476 (NRAS, 3094/70) if 'Andreas Ʒonger ' is 'Andrew the younger of the two'. It is highly unlikely that he is the same as the Andrew Allan (no.24) who occurs in the 1540s.

113. For the inscription on the tombstone, see MacDonald, 'Notes on the Heraldry of Elgin', 413.

114. Chisholm Batten, The Charters of Beauly Priory, 119.

115. A monk of Dunfermline in 1491 and 'tutor of Our Lady's aisle': Dunf. Recs., 24; he was prior of Dunfermline in 1507, 1512 (Dunf. Recs., 358 and 354) and is no doubt the Prior claustralis Adam in 1522: Dunf. Recs., 152. In 1520 (NAS, GD93/44) he seems to sign as subprior (sub p rior); I thank Virginia Russell of the NAS for drawing this to my attention.

116. 'Johannem Henrici monacum monasterii de Pluscarde Moraviensis diocesis ordinis sancti benedicti die dominica prima Augusti ad quartos minores et Subdiaconatus et die viii eiusdem in Dominica ad Diaconatus postremo vero x eiusdem ad presbiteratus ordines promovit'.

117. There was a Dene William Harrower at Dunfermline in 1500: Dunf. Recs., 104. Robert Harrower, a monk of Dunfermline, was prior of Pluscarden 1487–1509: Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 180.

118. He was a native of Dunfermline, where in June 1526 he inherited land in Dunfermline from his father Robert Blacot (Dunf. Recs., 281), but from the evidence of his signatures he was clearly a permanent member of the Pluscarden community.

119. A monk of Dunfermline in 1492 (Dunf. Recs., 313, nomine Sancte Marie de Dunfermlyne; tutor of Our Lady's aisle) and 1544 (Dunf. Recs., 264), and although he does not appear among the monks who sign abbey charters, a number of his own charters are found in Dunf. Recs. (264, 266, 267). There was also a Dene William Spendlove at Dunfermline, 1495–1528: Dunf. Recs., 57 and 278.

120. Hector Freeman, monk of Pluscarden, was the son of George Freeman who held land in the Sea-gate of Dundee: NAS, GD68/1/27.

121. At Dunfermline were Dene James Lawson, 1508–20 (Dunf. Recs., 170 and 289), Dene Adam Lawson and Dene Matthew Lawson, both 1520–39: NAS, GD93/44 and RH6/1197A).

122. The armorial grave slab of a Robert Lyell (c.1500?) is in the Lady Chapel at Pluscarden abbey. A William Lyell, described by Ferrerio as a jolly man (iucundus homo), was a monk of Kinloss abbey who entered under Abbot Crystall (1504–35) and signed a precept in 1559: Records of Kinloss, 48, 152. James Lyell, Robert Hay and James Dean held Byres in the barony of Urquhart from the priory in the first of two Pluscarden rentals (NLS, Adv. Ms 49.7.2) which was written between 1527 and 1540.

123. A local surname from the parish of Birnie to the east of Pluscarden: Black, Surnames of Scotland, 76. A number of members of the family appear among the clergy of the diocese of Moray. William de Breneth (Birnie) was a monk of Pluscarden who attempted to become prior in the period 1436–49 (Watt and Shead, Heads of Religious Houses, 179) and the grave slab of William de Byrnet, a priest who died in 1480, is in the North Transept at Pluscarden.

124. A Patrick Fothringham, who died on 20 August 1532, was a monk at Kinloss abbey, the first to enter under Abbot Crystall (1500–28): Ferrerio, Historia Abbatum, 37. David Fothringham was a cleric of the diocese of Moray and a notary public in the 1520s: Moray Registrum, 372, 396, 399, 400, 407.

125. A monk of Dunfermline in 1520 (NAS, GD93/44) and 1539 (NAS, RH6/1197A), he was prior of Dunfermline in 1530 and 1531: Dunf. Recs., 266, 267.

126. The Elgin kirk session minutes for 2 August 1592 record 'the monk of Pluscarden', who could only have been Ross, as having baptised a 2½-year-old girl (NAS, CH2/145/1/40), and on 27 April and 2 May 1599 they note that he had baptised two bairns conceived out of wedlock, the former born eight years before: NAS, CH2/145/2/8 and 9.

127. A local surname from Tarras in the parish of Rafford to the west of Pluscarden: Black, The Surnames of Scotland, 763. Sir James Tarres, chaplain, was a notary public who lived in the Chanonry at Elgin: RMS, v, 1743; cf. Moray Registrum, 395, 397, 418. On 13 July 1556 he received letters of legitimation as the natural son of Andrew Terres in Elgin: RMS, iv, 1090. Sir James had at least two natural sons, James (RMS, iv, 2435) and William: Records of Elgin, i, 155. A Robert Terras held land in the barony of Kinloss around the year 1560: RMS, iv, 1658; Records of Kinloss, 152-4 (the original is JRUL, Pluscarden Charters 14).

128. This is clearly his name, written with variants Artyll, Arthill etc. A Vincent Artill is recorded in the north-east in 1576: RSS, vii, no.458.

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