centre of civilising influence in the region in which it was placed.

6

Following close on the erection of the early bishoprics was the establishment of the parochial system, hitherto unknown, with its grouping of parishes for disciplinary purposes into archdeaconries and deaneries of Christianity.' Before the close of the twelfth century the organisation of the Scottish Church and its secular clergy was indistinguishable, save for the lack of a metropolitan, from that of the Church of England.

Not less remarkable was the rapid spread of new monastic establishments throughout the country. The ancient Celtic Church in Scotland had indeed in its origin been essentially monastic in character; but in the course of centuries its energy had failed; its missionary zeal was extinct; it was suffering from internal decay. Its weakness had yielded to the greed of the great landowners; its possessions were to a large extent alienated; and such little as remained was handed down by hereditary descent in petty communities of married ecclesiastics, who were the representatives in law of the early monasteries of the Church of St. Columba. Such a state of things did nothing to satisfy the religious conceptions of the English settlers and Norman knights who crowded into Scotland in the reigns of Alexander and David, and whose influence with these monarchs was dominant. The sons of St. Margaret had inherited her love for the ecclesiastical arrangements of the southern kingdom. Their intimate relations with the English court made them keenly sensible of the painful contrast presented by the state of the Church in their own country. The vigour and beneficent labours of the great monastic houses of England and Normandy could not have failed to impress them; and they resolved that Scotland should participate in what was then universally regarded as the most exalted form of religious devotion.

We need not here delay to investigate the causes, but the

fact is unquestionable that piety and religious zeal among the wealthy and powerful of that day took shape in the erection and endowment of monasteries. Excluding from consideration the houses of the mendicant orders of friars, the great monasteries of Scotland, and, with a few unimportant exceptions, even those of secondary rank, can trace their foundation to the twelfth, and earlier years of the thirteenth, century. As founders, the kings and other members of the royal family led the way; and they were speedily followed by the great nobles, whose power and influence were at that period scarcely inferior to those of the Crown. Alexander I. erected the houses of Canons Regular at Scone, Loch Tay, and Inchcolm. To his successor, David, are to be attributed the monasteries -some of them of the first importance of St. Andrews (Priory), Dunfermline (new foundation), Selkirk (soon to be transferred to Kelso), Jedburgh, Holyrood, Newbottle, Cambuskenneth, Urquhart, the May, and Kinloss. The great lords of Galloway founded Dundrennan, Soulseat, Lincluden, Glenluce, St. Mary's Isle, Tongland, and Whithern (new foundation). Walter Fitz-Alan, the Steward, established the great abbey of Paisley, and the house of Mauchline, afterwards attached to Melrose. Dryburgh and Kilwynning were due to Hugh de Morville, the Constable; Coldstream and Eccles to the Earl of Dunbar. Other foundations will be referred to hereafter.

The wave of religious zeal, which in this form was distinctly of Anglo-Norman origin, does not seem at first to have largely affected the Scottish Earls north of the water of Forth. There are many indications of their instinctive jealousy of English ideas and English ways. It could not be with unmingled satisfaction that they witnessed the settlement of English monks from Canterbury at Dunfermline, from Pontefract at Scone, from Rievaulx at Melrose and Dundrennan, from Wenlock at Paisley, and from Alnwick at Dryburgh. In the council of the king they had formidable and generally suc

cessful rivals in the Anglo-Norman knights who were filling so many of the great offices of state. And it would seem that the Church in like manner was now being handed over to the control of Anglo-Norman ecclesiastics. The castles of the Anglo-Norman laymen seemed to have their counterparts in the monasteries garrisoned with monks from south of Scotland. At any rate, for some time the great nobles of the north did not lend themselves to this new form of piety.1 After a generation or two the feeling of distrust wore off.

Earl David, the founder of the Abbey of Lindores, came of a family especially addicted to this form of pious munificence. We have seen something of the profuse liberality in this direction of his grandfather, David 1. His father, Prince Henry, though cut off in the years of early manhood, had time, some two years before his death, to erect the monastery of Holmcultram. His brothers, Malcolm, 'the Maiden,' and William, the Lion,' can each be credited with the erection of a famous house: the former founded the Cistercian Abbey of Cupar in Angus; the latter, the splendid and richly endowed Benedictine Abbey of Arbroath; while his mother, the Countess Ada, had founded the Cistercian nunnery at Haddington.2

At the latest, early in the year 1195, the first abbot had been chosen for the new foundation at Lindores.3 This fact is known to us through an original charter preserved in the collection known as the 'Campbell Charters' (xxx. 16), in

1 Earl Duncan's nunnery at North Berwick can scarcely be reckoned an exception. But an exception is found in the small Benedictine House at Fyvie (afterwards a cell of Arbroath), erected by Fergus, Earl of Buchan, in 1179.

2 His sister-in-law, Queen Ermengard, widow of William, at a later period, joined her son, Alexander II., in founding the Abbey of Balmerino, on the southern shores of the Tay, some eight miles east of Lindores.

3 Reasons are given in Appendix IV. (p. 302) for believing that Guido, the first abbot, was appointed as early as 1191, though he may not have received 'benediction' for sometime. In the Campbell Charter we find Guido only 'electum in abbatem'; while the bull of Celestine III. (8th March 1195), is addressed abbati et fratribus,' etc.

the library of the British Museum. It is somewhat earlier than the earliest writ directly connected with Lindores in our Chartulary; and the reader owes its appearance here to the courtesy of Mr. J. Maitland Thomson, who not only called the attention of the editor to its existence, but was also so good as to transcribe it from the original. It may be added that a fragment of the seal remains attached. It is now reproduced (Appendix I.) for the first time, it is believed, in type.

THE FOUNDER OF THE ABBEY OF LINDORES AND HIS FAMILY

Earl David, the founder of the Abbey of Lindores, was the third and youngest son of Earl Henry, younger son of King David 1. Earl Henry's elder brother Malcolm had met a violent death when a child, and Henry thus became the heir to the Scottish throne. He married in 1139 Ada, daughter of William, Earl of Warenne, second Earl of Surrey, and by her had six children, three sons and three daughters. Of the sons, Malcolm and William were successively kings of Scotland, and the third, the subject of this notice, became Earl of Huntingdon, by which title he is commonly known in history.1

Earl Henry's untimely death, in the flower of his youth, and possessed, as he was, of qualities well fitted to win and hold the affections of the people, plunged the whole nation into grief. He died, 'amid the lamentations of both the English and the Scots,' on 12th June 1152. He was buried in the Abbey of Kelso. Fordun describes him as particularly handsome, of a kind and affectionate disposition, devout and pious, and most tender-hearted towards the poor; and summing up

I The blunder which Fordun made in representing David as being William's elder brother (Chronica, lib. v. cap. 33, Skene's edit. p. 232) reappears in his Gesta Annalia (§§ i. and xii.) as written in 1363; but it was corrected in the revised form of 1385. (See Annalia, §§ iv. and lxxv.; and Skene's note, Fordun, vol. ii. p. 426.) Fordun was himself evidently puzzled to account for David's not succeeding Malcolm on the throne, and attempts to explain the fact by asserting that David was at the time of Malcolm's death 'adhuc in partibus transmarinis.'

b

his virtue, he declares him to have been in all respects like his father, only more attractive.1

The place of the burial of his father may have contributed to determine the choice of Earl David that the monks of his new foundation at Lindores should be 'de ordine Kelkoensi.' (Nos. II. III.)

As to the date of Earl David's birth, Sir Archibald H. Dunbar, who in the careful and laborious investigation of the chronology of the royal families of Scotland stands facile princeps, places it as 'about 1144.2 This figure, which I believe is correct, is probably based upon a reasonable correction of an allegation in Fordun's Chronica, that of the three sons of Earl Henry, Malcolm was born in the eighteenth year of the reign of David 1., Earl David in the nineteenth year, and William in the twentieth. The error that David was William's elder brother was, as we have seen, subsequently corrected. Making this correction, we are probably justified in substituting the name of David for that of William in the original passage where Fordun records the dates of the births of the three brothers. Now the twentieth year of the reign of David 1. began on April 23, 1143; and accordingly Sir A. H. Dunbar has come sufficiently near when he places Earl David's birth as about 1144,' that is, to be precise, in the year ending April 23, 1144. But it would be foolish to look for exact precision.

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Authentic history has not much to tell of the life of Earl David, and little can now be done beyond piecing together in chronological order the brief notices which may be found scattered in the pages of the public records, of Fordun, the Chronicles of Melrose, Roger de Hoveden, and Walter de Coventry.

If we may trust Fordun David was in England at the time

1 Ut breviter omnes ejus virtutes commemorem, excepto quod paulo suavior fuit, per omnia patri similis.— Chronica, lib. v. cap. 33; Skene's edit. i. 233. 2 Scottish Kings, p. 65. 3 Lib. v. cap. 33. Vol. i. p. 233, ed. Skene.