PART I

THE ABBEY OF INCHAFFRAY AND ITS

CHURCHES

SOME six miles east of the town of Crieff, and not many hundred yards to the north of Madderty Station on the railway line between Perth and Crieff, on a wooded mound stand the scanty remains of the once important Abbey of Inchaffray. The gable end of a range of conventual buildings running north and south, with a round-arched vault adjoining, and some of the side walls of the structure are all that has survived destruction.1

The records presented to the reader in this volume leave no doubt that prior to the establishment of the house of Austin Canons by Earl Gilbert in the year 1200, Inchaffray had been regarded as a place of more than ordinary sanctity, and was the seat of a religious community of some kind or other.

The name, ‘Inchaffray,' the Isle of Masses' (Insula Missarum), points to a spot where the most sacred rites of religion were celebrated with more than common frequency. All the endowments which appear in the first eight charters as arranged in the present volume, including the church of Abruthven and the church of Madderty, the tithe of the earl's cains, and the

1 For a description in detail, see MacGibbon and Ross, Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, vol. iii. pp. 502-6. The curious may also consult the not very intelligible account of the state of the ruins in 1789 communicated to General (then Lieutenant) Hutton. This will be found in a paper by Mr. A. G. Reid, of Auchterarder, to the Proceedings of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, vol. xxxii. pp. 166-70.

land of the Abthen of Madderty, appear to have been granted before the founding of the priory of Austin Canons. Some two years before Earl Gilbert's Great Charter establishing the priory the body of Gilchrist, the first-born son of the earl, had there been laid to rest.

The early grants it will be observed are made, not to 'canons,' but to brethren.' And the bull of Pope Innocent III. (No. VIII.) addressed to 'J. hermit and the brethren of St. John of Stradhern' at once suggests the picture of a community like that of the 'Keledei hermits' of Lochleven, brought before us in some of the early writs preserved in the Register of the Priory of St. Andrews.2

The grant to Isaac and his successors of the church of St. John the Evangelist of Inchaffray by Symon, Bishop of Strathern (No. 1.), including as it does the right of sepulture to any who might desire it, dato jure propriae ecclesiae, is evidence that this church was not a parish church. The grant is exactly of the kind not infrequently given to the church of a monastic institution.3

The process of the gradual extinction of the religious communities, which had their origin in the ancient Celtic Church of the country, had been going on during the twelfth century. It was ordinarily effected in no violent way, but by a system of absorption into the religious communities which were being introduced from England and France on the swell of the high tide of Anglo-Norman opinion and sentiment, which at this period so profoundly affected the civil as well as the ecclesiastical life of Scotland.

1 There are instances to be found when Keledei affected the name of canons'Keledei quidam qui se canonicos gerunt' (Regist. Priorat. S. Andree, 370); but this was for a purpose, and is quite exceptional.

2 See Reg. Pr. S. And., p. 113; and on communities of hermits see Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. chap. vi.

There can be, in my opinion, no reasonable doubt that Bishop Symon's charter, as we have it, is a copy (unfortunately somewhat bungled by the copyist) of a genuine charter. See the Notes, p. 263.

The stronger Celtic communities, as, for example, the Keledei of St. Andrews, continued, though with ever diminishing powers, to survive for many years side by side with the newly established communities destined eventually to absorb them. Inchaffray shows no sign of having been other than a small and uninfluential brotherhood; and the will of the powerful Earl of Strathern was able to convert it at one stroke into a priory of Canons Regular. It seems to me that the first of the bulls of Innocent III. (No. VIII.) suggests that the intentions of the earl had been known to the members of the old community, and that they sought to obtain protection against the change from the Apostolic See. The brethren of Inchaffray do not say that they feared the action of Earl Gilbert, but only petitioned to be taken under the protection of the Pope and confirmed by him in the possession of their property, and more especially of the benefactions of the earl. Their petition to the Pope was (as I venture to conjecture) an effort, feeble though it might be, to secure papal protection for the old Celtic house. The bull, dated December 4, 1200, was probably granted after Earl Gilbert's Foundation Charter of the Priory had been executed,1 but before the earl's doings were known at Rome. Explanations, however, must have been made to the Pope, and the recalcitrant brethren of the old foundation either reconciled or silenced. That the negotiations took some time we may perhaps infer from the fact that the papal confirmation of Earl Gilbert's new foundation was not issued till nearly three years later (No. XXI.).

The head of the new foundation appointed by Earl Gilbert was Malise, who is described as 'presbyter and hermit.' We may suppose him to have been one of the brethren of the previously existing community. Whether all or any of his fellow religious were eventually admitted into the house of Austin Canons we cannot say. Abbot Bower tells us that

1 See the notes on No. IX.

Earl Gilbert brought canons from the Augustinian house at Scone to Inchaffray. And it is obvious that the Augustinian rule of the Canons Regular would have to be learned from some who were acquainted with it. But Malise was given power to choose those whom he would adopt into his house, and it is conceivable that when it was found that resistance was unavailing some of his old companions may have joined him.

Bower correctly assigns the foundation of the house of Austin Canons at Inchaffray to the year 1200.2 But we may well hesitate to accept, in its literal sense, his statement that Earl Gilbert divided his earldom (comitatum suum) into three equal parts, giving one part to the church and bishop of Dunblane,' another part to St. John the Evangelist and the canons of Insula Missarum,' and reserving the third part 'for himself and his heirs.' What, I suspect, may have been the origin of this story was perhaps some rough tripartite divisions of the churches in his patronage, of which he retained only a third, dividing the rest between the bishopric and the priory.

3

The existence in the immediate neighbourhood of Inchaffray of an 'Abthen,' the Abthen of Madderty, might raise the suspicion that the brethren of St. John were a survival of an ancient Celtic abbey at Madderty, but I am not aware that there is any evidence for the existence of an ancient abbey at this place. I take it as more probable that the Abthen of Madderty consisted of lands once possessed by the ancient Abbey of Dunkeld. The Bishop of Dunkeld speaks of the Abthen as being our land'; and, when, on the petition of Earl Gilbert and his brother Malise, the bishop granted the Abthen to Inchaffray, it was subject to a reddendo to the bishop of a mark yearly. Again, the clerks of the church of Dunkeld were entitled to cain and coneveth (afterwards quitclaimed 4) from the lands of the Abthen.

6

1 Scotichronicon, viii. 73.

3 Ibid., viii. 73.

2 Ibid., viii. 61.

4 See Nos. L., LXVI.