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Native Lords and the Church in Thirteenth-Century Strathearn, Scotland

CYNTHIA J. NEVILLE

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History / Volume null / Issue 03 / July 2002, pp 454 - 475DOI: 10.1017/S0022046901008715, Published online: 18 September 2002

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022046901008715

How to cite this article:CYNTHIA J. NEVILLE (2002). Native Lords and the Church in Thirteenth-Century Strathearn, Scotland . The Journal ofEcclesiastical History, null, pp 454-475 doi:10.1017/S0022046901008715

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Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. ��, No. �, July ����. # Cambridge University PressDOI: .}S Printed in the United Kingdom

Native Lords and the Church inThirteenth-Century Strathearn,

Scotland

by CYNTHIA J. NEVILLE

The thirteenth century in Scotland witnessed a determined effort on the part of the crown andits ecclesiastical officials to initiate a series of reforms comparable to those that had so deeplyaltered the social and religious life of England and continental Europe. An important aspect of thetransformation that occurred in Scotland was the consolidation of a network of parish churchesthroughout the kingdom. Scottish authorities, however, encountered several obstacles in theirattempts to create parishes, and especially to assign sufficient revenues to them. In the lordshipscontrolled by old Celtic families in particular the Church’s designs sometimes clashed with theinterests of great native land-holders and their kinsmen. In many of these lordships the process ofparish formation was ultimately the result of negotiation and litigation which saw the Churchforced to accommodate the claims of Celtic landowners. This article examines, in the context ofthe native lordship of Strathearn, the struggles that marked the creation and consolidation of someparishes in thirteenth-century Scotland.

Included among the hundreds of petitions for redress submitted toPope Innocent around the year was a request from two fardistant members of his flock, Guido, abbot of the tiny Scottish house

of Tironensian monks at Lindores, and Abraham, bishop of Dunblane. Atissue in the first instance were rival claims to the parish church of Muthill,Perthshire, but as Innocent’s lawmen quickly discovered, revenues fromthe nearby toun of Exmagirdle and the tiends of Clavage in the parish ofDunning were also at stake. The matter was both complex and delicate,for it involved not merely two respected churchmen in Scotland, butfriends and relations of an important Celtic noble family whose membershad sought to give expression to their piety by means of a gift to theChurch. The papal Curia hastily concluded that churchmen familiar withthe Scottish scene and the principals involved would best accomplish aresolution of the quarrel. In accordance with the practice recently

The author wishes to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada in the research undertaken for this article.

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established at the papal Curia, Pope Innocent appointed three localecclesiastical officials as judges delegate, all chosen not only for theirprobity, but also because none had a close connection with the parties indispute."

The wrangling initiated in respect of an obscure parish kirk inthirteenth-century Scotland would hardly be the stuff of sustained interestto medievalists were it not for the fact that it was by no means an isolatedincident. The bishops of Dunblane were kept resolutely busy for much ofthe century battling encroachments on their territories by laymen andreligious alike in an attempt to rescue their cathedral church from the‘miserable conditions ’ and the ‘ sea of wretchedness ’ into which theybelieved it had degenerated.# In , for example, two decades after thequarrel concerning Muthill, Bishop Abraham’s successor, Clement,appealed afresh to Rome for a reversal of the decision eventually awardedin respect of the church, which he felt had been prejudicial to his see. Justa year earlier he had been involved in another dispute, this one with theabbot of Inchaffray over control of the equally modest churches ofAberuthven and Tullieden with their revenues.$ He was also preparing toembark on a round of litigation against the heads of no fewer than eightother religious houses in defence of other episcopal interests.%

The determination of each of the parties to secure a satisfactory claimto Muthill and its appurtenances soon proved problematic. BishopAbraham of Dunblane, the plaintiff, had himself acted as judge delegatein in a similar dispute concerning teinds between the abbeys ofCambuskenneth and Dunfermline,& and he may well have thought littleof his chances of a ruling favourable to his see. Moreover, the judgesappointed in the Muthill case intimated fairly quickly that both plaintiffand defendant could reasonably demonstrate good title. In order to avoid

" Chartulary of the abbey of Lindores, ����–����, ed. John Dowden (Scottish History Societyst ser. xlii, ), no. . The case is also noted in Select Scottish cases of the thirteenth century,ed. T. Cooper, Edinburgh , –. The three judges delegate were Simon prior of StAndrews, John prior of May and Lawrence archdeacon of St Andrews.

# Vetera monumenta hibernorum et scotorum historiam illustrantia, ed. Augustin Theiner, Rome, no. .

$ Charters, bulls and other documents relating to the abbey of Inchaffray, ed. William A. Lindsay,John Dowden and J. Maitland Thomson (Scottish History Society st ser. lvi, ), nos–.

% The abbeys of Coupar Angus, Culross, Cambuskenneth, Inchcolm, the priory ofInchaffray, as well as the hospital of SS James and John and the house of Cistercian nunsat North Berwick. Charter evidence concerning these disputes is dispersed between thecartularies of several houses and the records of the papal Curia. For a convenient, ifoccasionally inaccurate, summary of the litigation see J. H. Cockburn, The medieval bishopsof Dunblane and their church, Edinburgh , –.

& Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters, ed.W. H. Bliss, London , i. .

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the expense of a protracted case and possible delays while appeals weremade to Rome, the litigants agreed to submit their claims to a singlearbiter. Bishop William Malveisin of St Andrews agreed to assume thatrole.'

The choice of Bishop William as arbiter was no accident. Formerbishop of Glasgow and chancellor of the realm, during his long careerMalveisin directed a great number of his efforts towards ensuring that theChurch in Scotland conformed in its structure, in the conduct of itsmembers and in the expression of its faith to the high standardschampioned by the reformed papacy of his day.( When Bishop Abrahamof Dunblane and Abbot Guido of Lindores agreed to set aside the judgesdelegate and to put their trust in the mediating skills of WilliamMalveisin, each looked for a settlement that would bring at least sometangible recognition of his claims, for the aim of arbitration was amicableconcord and the mutual satisfaction of both plaintiff and defendant.

The history of the lands of Muthill themselves was already long by theearly thirteenth century. Originally an episcopal residence, by the twelfthcentury they had come into the possession of Ferteth, earl of Strathearn(d. ).) On the latter’s death they passed to his son and heir, Gilbert,who granted them in or to his brother, Malise, as a knight’sfee.* In the late s Malise in turn made a gift of the church infree alms to the abbey of Lindores."! The history of Muthill was alsotypical of that of hundreds of parish kirks elsewhere in the kingdom,where by the early thirteenth century the endowment by aristocraticfamilies of religious houses with appropriated churches had beenoccurring virtually unchecked for generations. The vigorous efforts ofpopes and bishops alike to regulate the practice did not go completelyunheeded: canons of the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils werespecifically designed to limit the depredations of teinds that so often

' The canon law process in which arbiters were appointed in place of judges delegateis reviewed extensively in Jane E. Sayers, Papal judges delegate in the province of Canterbury����–����, Oxford , –, –, and more briefly in Select Scottish cases, pp. xlix–.The activities of papal representatives in Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesgenerally are discussed extensively in Paul C. Ferguson, Medieval papal representatives inScotland (Stair Society xlv, ), passim.

( Malveisin’s career and achievements are reviewed in G. W. S. Barrow, The kingdom ofthe Scots: government, Church and society from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, London ,–, esp. pp. –, .

) For the obscure early history of Muthill see Alan Macquarrie, ‘Early Christianreligious houses in Scotland: foundation and function’, in John Blair and Richard Sharpe(eds), Pastoral care before the parish, Leicester , –.

* Regesta regum scottorum, II : The acts of William I king of Scots ����–���� (cited hereinafteras RRS ii), ed. G. W. S. Barrow and W. W. Scott, Edinburgh , no. .

"! Lindores chart. no. .

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Gilbert(d. )= () Matilda daughter of Sir William D’Aubigny ‘Brito’ () Ysenda of Kinbuck

Malise(d. before

)

daughter

Gilchrist(d. )

William(d. c. )

Ferteth(d. c. )

Robert(d. )

Fergus(d. )

Malise(d. c. )

Gilbert ofGlencarny

(d. before )

daughters

Malise (d. )

Ferteth(d. )

Figure . The earls and the family of Strathearn, c. ����–����

accompanied such gifts."" The process by which the Scottish bishopsattempted to achieve their goals in the years after has been linked toparallel, albeit earlier, developments in England and on the continent,and in some respects conditions in all three regions were remarkablysimilar."# In Scotland, however, unique circumstances attended theprocess of appropriation and parish formation. Some of these, at least,arose from the interaction there of Celtic and Anglo-Norman custom. Thegifts and grants made to the Church by the kindred of the native earls ofStrathearn provide a useful starting point for an exploration of thisinteraction not merely at the level of the baronage, but more importantlyamong the ranks of the middling Scottish nobility. More particularly, thecircumstances under which such grants came to be the focus of litigationhelp to shed light on the tenacity of traditional Celtic notions governingthe ownership, transmission and bequest of lands in the so-called ‘Anglo-Norman era’ of Scottish history."$

Although the earliest recorded gifts to the Church in Strathearn were

"" A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the making of the kingdom, Edinburgh , –. Seealso I. B. Cowan, ‘The religious and the cure of souls in medieval Scotland’, Records of theScottish Church History Society xiv (), –, and ‘The appropriation of parishchurches ’, in I. B. Cowan (ed. J. Kirk), The medieval Church in Scotland, Edinburgh ,–.

"# I. B. Cowan, ‘The development of the parochial system in medieval Scotland’,Scottish Historical Review xli (), –. For further comparisons between Scotland andEngland see pp. – below.

"$ The term is Professor Barrow’s : The Anglo-Norman era in Scottish history, Oxford ,passim.

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made by Earl Ferteth and his countess towards the end of the twelfthcentury,"% the family’s reputation as generous patrons came to reside moreparticularly in their son, Earl Gilbert (d. ), founder of a house ofAustin canons on the Isle of Masses (Inchaffray) and benefactor of theabbey of Lindores. Gilbert’s grants were significant: the chronicler WalterBower later claimed that he assigned no less than one-third of his entirelanded possessions to Inchaffray."& Gilbert, like so many other noblemenof comital rank, was the darling of chroniclers such as John of Fordun andBower, who were anxious to show that in terms of its endowments andprestige the Church of Scotland ranked as an equal among those of otherEuropean kingdoms."' Historians have none the less begun recently totake more seriously the fulsome praise of those chroniclers, and toacknowledge the fundamental role that noblemen other than those of theAnglo-Norman royal house played in the establishment of the reformedmonastic orders in Scotland, especially in areas that were remote fromroyal authority."(

Still underestimated, however, is the extent to which the interests of thegreatest magnates of the realm in the fortunes of the Church were in turndisseminated among, and given expression by, their noble kindred.Appeals for generosity to holy mother Church, the stuff of episcopal andvicarial sermons that inspired the great barons of Scotland to bestow giftsof land, privilege and revenue, were also heeded by their younger brothersand sons, and prompted them to similarly generous, if rather less lavish,acts of piety. Malise, son of Ferteth, may not have earned himself as higha place in the afterlife as his brother Earl Gilbert, founder of the priory ofInchaffray, but his role as a benefactor of the church of Lindores was byno means insignificant. Fergus, son of Gilbert, heir in turn to his uncleMalise’s landed estates, was heir also to the latter’s spiritual concerns, anda patron not only of Lindores but also of the priory of Inchaffray and the

"% Inchaffray chart., no. ."& Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, IV: Books VII and VIII, ed. David. J. Corner, A. B. Scott,

William W. Scott and D. E. R. Watt, Aberdeen , ."' D. McRoberts, ‘The Scottish Church and nationalism in the fifteenth century’, Innes

Review xix (), , ."( Keith J. Stringer, ‘Reform monasticism and Celtic Scotland: Galloway c. –c.

’, in Edward J. Cowan and R. Andrew McDonald (eds), Alba: Celtic Scotland in theMiddle Ages, East Linton , – ; R. Andrew McDonald, ‘Scoto-Norse kings andthe reformed religious orders : patterns of monastic patronage in twelfth-century Gallowayand Argyll ’, Albion xxvii (), – ; Benjamin T. Hudson, ‘Gaelic princes andGregorian reform’, in Benjamin T. Hudson and V. Ziegler (eds), Crossed paths:methodological approaches to the Celtic aspects of the European Middle Ages, Lanham , –.These authors argue that too much emphasis has been placed on the Scottish royal family.See also Alan Young, ‘The earls and the earldom of Buchan in the thirteenth century’,in Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (eds), Medieval Scotland: crown, lordship andcommunity, Edinburgh , –.

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abbeys of Arbroath and Coupar Angus.") Gilbert’s younger sons, Maliseand Gilbert, too, demonstrated their piety in their patronage of thesehouses and other religious establishments. The support that they provided,material as well as political, proved as valuable to the Church in Scotlandas the more celebrated generosity of their father, uncle and brother."*

The social and political connections that Malise, son of Ferteth, forgedin the lay world of medieval Scotland were numerous and varied, andthey proved of enduring importance to the Church. He was a tenant of hisbrother Earl Gilbert for the lands of Muthill as well as other estates inStrathearn (which he held for the service of one knight), and a tenant ofKing William in Strathtay, where he was lord of Meikleour andLethendy.#! In the later s Malise contracted a marriage with Ada, anatural daughter of Earl David of Huntingdon, brother of the king andthe greatest Anglo-Norman magnate in the realm.#" His status as both atenant-in-chief and a relation by marriage of the royal house gave Maliseaccess to the rarefied atmosphere of the royal entourage, and he was afrequent witness to the charters and deeds of King William.## From earlyin his marriage Malise modelled his spiritual interests on those of hisfather-in-law: the bequest of the lands of Muthill to Lindores Abbey,noted above, was made between and , and was soon followedby grants of the lands of Redgorton (Strathtay) and of a teind of rents andcain (an annual tribute, often in kind) from his territories in Strathearnand Strathtay.#$ Arbroath Abbey, another of Earl David’s beneficiaries,similarly enjoyed Malise’s patronage in the form of an annual rent fromMeikleour.#%

With his landed estates in Strathearn and Strathtay and far-rangingsocial contacts through the persons of his wife and father-in-law, Malisestood at the very heart of the complex world of the early thirteenth-century nobility. Moreover, he was very much a point of intersectionwithin that world. On the one hand were the Anglo-Norman lordsof Scotland, landholders from Ross to Lothian who were busy in thisperiod carrying forward what Professor Barrow has described as the

") Inchaffray chart., no. ; Lindores chart., nos , , ; Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc, ed.Cosmo Innes (Bannatyne Club, ), i, no. ; Charters of the abbey of Coupar Angus, ed.D. E. Easson (Scottish History Society rd ser. xl, ), i, no. .

"* Inchaffray chart., no. ; Registrum episcopatus moraviensis, ed. Cosmo Innes (BannatyneClub, ), no. ; Cynthia J. Neville, ‘The earls of Strathearn from the twelfth to themid-fourteenth century, with an edition of their written acts ’, unpubl. PhD diss.Aberdeen , i. –. #! RRS ii, nos , .

#" Lindores chart., nos , ; K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon: a study in Anglo-Scottish history, Edinburgh , .

## RRS ii, nos , , , , , , , , , , , . He alsowitnessed acta of Earl David: Stringer, Earl David, , , .

#$ Lindores chart., nos , . #% Arbroath liber, i, no. .

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‘ feudalisation’ of Scotland.#& Patronage of Lindores Abbey must haveintroduced Malise to the dozens of Anglo-Norman lords who served in theaffinity of Earl David of Huntingdon.#' Similarly, towards the end of hislife in the mid-s, in his business dealings with Arbroath he wouldhave made the acquaintance of the abbey’s greatest noble benefactor,William Comyn, earl of Buchan,#( and of the latter’s entourage. Radiatingoutward from individual points of contact such as these were myriad othersocial circles populated with dozens of Anglo-Norman lords of lesser rank.The paucity of extant record sources relating to Malise, son of Ferteth,does not permit a detailed reconstruction of the men who countedthemselves his familiares. But the witness lists of a few surviving chartersleave no doubt that among his lay friends and followers were members ofthe families that Barrow has dubbed the ‘empire-builders ’ of Anglo-Norman Scotland: Olifard, Lindsay, Valognes, Comyn, Hay, Hastingand Montford.#)

On Malise’s other hand was the more insular world of Strathearnwhere, in common with other native magnates, the earl of Strathearnexercised a distinctly Celtic form of lordship. In the first decades of thethirteenth century the earldom retained to a remarkable degree featuresof lordly governance that would have been recognisable to the ancestorswho had called themselves mormaers.#* The earl had played a significantrole in the entourage of King William in the closing years of the twelfthcentury, when he held the office of justiciar of Scotia and frequently stoodas a witness to royal acta. In the period between and his death in, however, Gilbert withdrew from the national scene and devoted hisefforts almost exclusively to matters relating to the territories under hiscontrol.$! The written acts that survive from these years reveal a part ofScotland only lightly touched by the ‘ feudalising’ influence of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Thus, the tenurial position of the earl in respectof the crown was left unwritten and to a significant extent ambiguous.The dignitaries who administered comital lands held offices which weredesignated in the Latin charters as dapifer, judex, dispensarius, rennarius andpincerna, but their duties recalled those of older Celtic officials. Revenues

#& Barrow, Anglo-Norman era, .#' The earl’s many retainers are exhaustively discussed in Stringer, Earl David, –,

–, –. #( Young, ‘Earls and earldom of Buchan’, .#) Barrow, Anglo-Norman era, ; Lindores chart., no. ; Arbroath liber, i, no. .#* The term is normally translated as ‘great stewards ’, and implies a breadth of power

and authority that had been enjoyed only by the greatest noblemen in the kingdom in thetenth and eleventh centuries.

$! Cynthia J. Neville, ‘A Celtic enclave in Norman Scotland: earl Gilbert and theearldom of Strathearn, – ’, in Terry Brotherstone and David Ditchburn (eds),Freedom and authority: historical and historiographical essays presented to Grant G. Simpson, EastLinton , –.

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derived from comital lands were rendered largely in kind, and probablyconsumed in situ on a rotational basis, for Gilbert built himself no stonecastles of the type that were prominent features of the Scottish landscapewhere Anglo-Norman lords had been enfeft.$" The earl’s entourage wasmade up of significant numbers of servientes and familiares of Celtic origin.His charters – and, significantly, those of his brother Malise – includedwitnesses whose names attest the endurance in Strathearn of people ofnative origin and Gaelic speech: Gillenef (Gille Naomh), Constan-tine (Causatı!n), Ferteth (Fearchad), Duncan (Donnchad), Donald(Domnall), Gilbert (Gille Brigte), Gilchrist (Gille Crı!st) and Malise(Mael Iosa), a name so closely identified with the family that it wasbestowed on comital heirs until the mid-fourteenth century.

Prominent among the members of Earl Gilbert’s inner circle of friendsand advisors was his brother Malise, son of Ferteth. Poised as he was atthe nexus of the Anglo-Norman and the Celtic nobility, Malise providesa unique opportunity to observe interaction between the distinct societiesrepresented by the two groups, and it is perhaps in this light that thetroubles which bedevilled his grant of Muthill may best be understood.

The church of Muthill – like the priory of Inchaffray – was a religiousfoundation the origins of which lay in the post-Columban age in Scotland,and in the time of Malise, son of Ferteth, it still housed a community ofCe! li De! (‘ servants of God’), Culdees or secular priests who in the yearsbefore the eleventh century were the most popular religious movement inScotland. In the course of the twelfth century, when the steady influenceof the reform movement brought the Scottish Church more firmly in linewith continental developments, there occurred the steady growth ofparish kirks and the stabilisation of episcopal sees throughout the realm.$#

Two important trends accompanied this ecclesiastical reorganisation.One was the granting to a variety of beneficiaries of churches and theirlands both by lay lords and by the bishops of Scotland, a sometimesundignified scramble for possession of kirk buildings, lands andappurtenances that produced no small tension among landholders, layand religious. The second was the process by which some communities ofsecular priests and Ce! li De! appear to have been suppressed altogether orrefounded as houses of Augustinian or Premonstratensian canons.$$ The

$" Neville, ‘Earls of Strathearn’, i. –. More generally see Fiona Watson, ‘Theexpression of power in a medieval kingdom: thirteenth-century Scottish castles ’, in SallyFoster, Allan Macinnes and Ranald MacInnes (eds), Scottish power centres from the earlyMiddle Ages to the twentieth century, Glasgow , –.

$# Duncan, Making of the kingdom, – ; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, – ; Cowan,‘Development of the parochial system’, – ; G. Donaldson, ‘Scottish bishops ’ seesbefore the reign of David ’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland lxxxvii(–), –.

$$ Cowan, ‘Development of the parochial system’, –, and ‘The post-ColumbanChurch’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society xviii (), –.

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latter, much obscured by a paucity of written record, remains a subject ofvigorous debate and discussion. Traditionally, historians have emphasisedthe link between the displacement of the old religious order and thedomineering influence of the Anglo-Norman royal court, and justifi-ably so: the Benedictines, Premonstratensians, Tironensians, Cluniacs,Augustinians and Cistercians were all firmly established in Scotlandbetween the late eleventh and the late twelfth centuries, and theirintroduction coincided with a decline in the activities of the religious menwho represented the older Church.$% In the face of foreign culturalpressures the Ce! li De! of Loch Leven, for example, were forciblysuppressed as a distinct group by the early thirteenth century.$& Those ofAbernethy, Monymusk and St Andrews survived a little longer, but by had been transformed into members of Augustinian priories and asecular college.$' In like fashion the house of secular priests at Deer wasrefounded as a Cistercian abbey in by the earl of Buchan, WilliamComyn.$(

At first glance a similar process would appear to have occurred atInchaffray. Here, around the time of Earl Gilbert’s foundation charter in, secular priests leading an eremitical existence were formallyreplaced with canons who followed the Augustinian rule. But there isevidence that the earl deliberately intended to make the transition fromone form of religious observance to another as gradual and smooth aspossible, and that he had no intention of expelling the brethren from thehouse by forcible or other means. The charter of foundation providedspecifically that governance of the house be left in the hands of ‘Malisepriest and hermit, in whose discretion and belief we trust ’, and directedonly that newcomers to the priory be instructed in the rule of StAugustine.$) Although the earl’s charters begin to refer to the brethren as‘canons ’ almost immediately after ,$* there remained in the littlehouse men whose names are clearly of Gaelic origin,%! and when in

$% I. B. Cowan and D. E. Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, nd edn, London, pp. xi–xii, , ; Cowan, ‘Development of the parochial system’, – ; Barrow,Kingdom of the Scots, – ; Duncan, Making of the kingdom, –.

$& Cowan and Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, ; Early Scottish charters prior to����, ed. A. C. Lawrie, Glasgow , no. .

$' Cowan and Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , , , ; Barrow, Kingdomof the Scots, – ; Duncan, Making of the kingdom, .

$( Cowan and Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , . The conversion of severalCe! li De! houses to the Augustinian rule is discussed at pp. – below.

$) Inchaffray chart., no. . Earlier grants to the religious house, including those of EarlGilbert, the bishop of Dunblane and the king, had been made to the ‘brethren’ ofInchaffray; one of these was witnessed by Sythakh kelede. See ibid. nos –. A bull of PopeInnocent also referred to ‘J. the hermit ’, ibid. no. .

$* Gilbert’s earliest deeds to the new foundation are very nearly contemporaneous withthe foundation charter : ibid. nos , , , .

%! Ibid. nos –, , , , , , , .

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¬ King William granted them a charter of confirmation heimplicitly acknowledged the presence there of Ce! li De! brethren.%" Thereligious foundation at Inchaffray may not, in fact, have abandonedaltogether its older trappings until as late as or , when the priorywas raised to the status of an abbey under the direction of a canonimported from the royal abbey of Scone.%#

The transition from the old ways to the new did not occur as smoothlyin the case of the Ce! li De! of Muthill, a consequence, perhaps, of its transferinto the hands of the native lord Malise, son of Ferteth.%$ For most of thetwelfth century the church and its resident clerics, known as scolocs, wereclosely associated with the fortunes of the comital house of Strathearn andwith the see of Dunblane. The religious of Muthill may even have servedonce as members of the bishop’s familia, as indeed did other Ce! li De! in thehouseholds of other Scottish bishops south of Forth.%% Professor Cowanwas of the opinion that in this period ‘churches were looked upon aspertinents of the land and went with any grant of land unless specificallyexempted’.%& That was certainly the case with Muthill. When EarlGilbert granted the estate in its entirety to Malise, son of Ferteth, the Ce! liDe! serving there, together with the tenants of the lands assigned to thechurch, passed under the latter’s lordship. Here, for the first time, theycame directly into contact with the cosmopolitan Anglo-Norman world ofwhich Malise was such a prominent member. Here, too, they began toexperience at first hand Anglo-Norman customs governing titles to landand revenues from which, within the confines of conservative Strathearn,they had to date been sheltered.

Malise’s grant of the church of Muthill to Lindores Abbey was effectedsoon after his marriage to Ada, daughter of Earl David of Huntingdon,and was probably intended to link the generosity of his native lineage withthat of the royal family. The terms of the grant were made in the form ofthe classical writ-charter that had become standard in Scotland as farback as the reign of King David :%' they bestowed the kirk ‘ in free andperpetual alms together with the land pertaining to it, including its teinds,incomes and all things pertaining to it as freely and fully as an abbey inScotland holds any Church’.%( Standard in form the grant may well have

%" RRS ii, no. . %# Inchaffray chart., no. ; Scotichronicon, iv. .%$ The size and the precise nature of the Ce! li De! community of Muthill remain

untraceable. References to the Ce! li De! are recorded in the late twelfth or early thirteenthcenturies, but little else is known about the history of the house : Cowan and Easson,Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , .

%% Cowan, ‘Post-Columban Church’, , –, –.%& Idem, ‘Development of the parochial system’, , and ‘Appropriation of parish

churches ’, .%' The charters of David I: the written acts of David I king of Scots, ����–��, and of his son Henry,

earl of Northumberland, ����–��, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Woodbridge , .%( Lindores chart., no. .

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been, but it failed to take due notice of the complex jurisdictional claimsthat were part and parcel of title to the little kirk. Chief among the personsaggrieved by Malise’s grant was the bishop of Dunblane who maintainedthat Muthill was a mensal church, that is, that its revenues (after paymentto the resident vicar) had traditionally been rendered to episcopal coffers.The text of Bishop Abraham’s complaint, unfortunately, has not survived,but his argument can be reconstructed in part from the settlement to thedispute that was reached at the behest of the pope. The grant of Muthillwas further complicated by the presence there, noted above, of Ce! li De!brethren, one or more of whom may have been a member of the episcopalfamilia, and who probably provided religious services to the surroundingarea.%) The question at issue was considered sufficiently complex towarrant an appeal to Rome, and it was in an effort to disentangle theseveral claims of bishop, abbot and native lord that Bishop Malveisindrew up a compromise. His on-going experience with the community ofCe! li De! of St Andrews provided him with a model on which to formulatea resolution of the Muthill case, and was surely one reason for hissuitability as an arbiter.%* But in his attempt to settle the dispute inamicable fashion he created more problems than he resolved.

Bishop Malveisin returned a decision in favour of the bishop ofDunblane’s claim to the revenues of Muthill as a mensal church, but thelatter must have regarded the judgement as something of a hollow victory.In return for title to the kirk, Bishop Abraham was ordered to pay toLindores Abbey a compensatory render of ten marks annually : six fromthe toun of Exmagirdle, two more from the teinds of the church of thesame place, and two marks from the tiends of Clavage.&! The onus ofperforming military service for Exmagirdle was assumed by Earl Gilbertof Strathearn and his heirs,&" a generous undertaking that may have beenprompted by the death of Malise, son of Ferteth (which had occurred by), but that may also have reflected the earl’s readiness to acknowledgesome responsibility for the unforeseen consequences of his brother’sgenerosity. Bishop Abraham subsequently won a reduction of hisobligation to eight marks per annum, but only after he had agreed tosurrender wholly the church of Exmagirdle to Lindores Abbey.&#

Moreover, in order to do so he had to seek the assent of the scolocs of hissee resident both at Dunblane and in the church of Methven, and tocompensate them for the loss of the revenues that they had traditionally

%) The role of episcopal familiares in the pastoral work of the Scottish Church in theeleventh and twelfth centuries is reviewed in Cowan, ‘The religious and the cure of souls ’,–, and Norman F. Shead, ‘The household and chancery of the bishops of Dunkeld,– ’, in Barbara Crawford (ed.), Church, chronicle and learning in medieval and earlyRenaissance Scotland, Edinburgh , –.

%* Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, –. &! Lindores chart., no. .&" Ibid. nos , . &# Ibid. no. .

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derived from the conveth of the toun.&$ A portion of the teinds of Clavage,too, had formerly been assigned to other sources, for Abraham requiredconfirmation of this portion of the judges ’ award from Elphin prior ofInchaffray.&% The brethren on the Isle of Masses must in turn haverelinquished the revenues arising from Clavage only reluctantly. Gilbertof Strathearn’s grants to the priory of new lands at Bellyclone and Fowlisand of a site for the erection of their own mill, all datable to the latter partof the earl’s life, may well have been intended, individually or collectively,to offset that loss.&&

That a single act of piety on the part of Malise, son of Ferteth, shouldhave drawn within its orbit such a wide community of interests is evidenceof the complex ties that bound the Scottish nobility, lay and ecclesiastical,to the land in the early thirteenth century. It is also eloquent testimonyto the adjustments that the Church in Scotland had to make toaccommodate the introduction of the reformed orders – and theirpatrons – into its midst. The mysterious scolocs and Ce! li De! of Methven,Dunblane and Muthill appear to have had little voice in affecting thetransactions that were made in consequence of the original grant otherthan to assent to them after the fact. It is noteworthy that the latter’sinterests should have been safeguarded as much by the native earl ofStrathearn as they were by their bishop. The complications that followedthe gift of Muthill speak not only to the problems that attended theintrusion of Anglo-Norman ideas concerning ecclesiastical proprietorshipinto a conservative region of the ScottishChurch, but also to the continuinglink between the Celtic ruling family and the native Church in Strathearn.

Some of the other grants made by Malise, son of Ferteth, also revealthe interaction of Anglo-Norman custom and native tradition in thetransmission of lands and privileges to the Scottish Church. In an undatedcharter Malise gave to Lindores Abbey ‘meal and malt, cheese and swine’from the lands of Redgorton that he held in Strathearn and Strathtay.&'

A confirmation of this grant by Malise’s nephew and heir, Fergus,specified that these renders constituted part of the cain and rent fromtenants on those lands.&( Together, the documents suggest that theserevenues, although described in terms typical of an Anglo-Normancharter, were nevertheless rendered in kind rather than coin. Around a modest annual rent from a fishery located either in the River Tay

&$ Ibid. nos , . Communities of secular priests had been located at Methven froman early date, but little extant evidence survives about the history of this group: Cowanand Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , . &% Lindores chart., no. .

&& Inchaffray chart., nos , , .&' The grant is known only from a papal bull of Innocent confirming the possessions

of Lindores, and from a deed of Malise’s nephew and heir, Fergus : Lindores chart., nos ,.

&( Ibid. no. . In this deed Fergus, son of Gilbert, exchanged the cain and rent for thelands of Fedale.

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or the River Isla in Meikleour was assigned in free alms to ArbroathAbbey.&) The charter described the grant as a gift worth one-half a silvermark, but the monks collected their dues in kind, as was still the customamong the ecclesiastical tenants of Malise’s brother, Earl Gilbert, in theearly thirteenth century.&* Malise’s gift of the estate of Redgorton was setout in the jargon typical of the charters of the period as including suchpertinents as ‘woodland and plain, meadow and pasture, moorland,marshland and waters ’, but excepted the mill there and the water of thestank belonging to it.'! Mills were considered valuable assets to landlords,and the reservation of fees arising from the multures and thirlage chargedto tenants using the facilities was a feature of many feudal grants of theAnglo-Norman era. Yet Redgorton, too, came to Lindores with stringsattached: Malise’s gift was later confirmed by the chapter of DunkeldCathedral, but its members were first required to ‘ surrender andquitclaim forever … the conveth and rent which we were accustomed toreceive for the use of the macleins and scolocs in a half davach of the landof Redgorton’, and Malise himself to undertake payment to the chapterof an annual sum of four shillings.'" Moreover, the grant sent the prior ofScone scurrying to his patron, Earl Malcolm of Fife, for confirmationof that monastery’s claim to the parish kirk of Redgorton,'# a gift thatthe native family of Fife had evidently made some time earlier incircumstances that recall the unforeseen consequences of the grant ofMuthill.

Malise’s efforts to convey grants of lands and privileges formerlygoverned by Celtic custom on the same terms as did his Anglo-Normancontemporaries occurred at a crucial period in the history of Scottishlanded society. The ranks of the lesser native aristocracy are poorlyrecorded in the thirteenth century, but Malise’s example suggests that thekinsmen of the great Celtic earls may have adopted more quickly andmore readily than did their older brothers the cultural innovations thatfiltered into Scotland in the wake of the newcomers. The opportunitiesafforded the native lords to forge new social and tenurial ties werereflected in their determination both to receive and to grant lands onterms that were substantially – and substantively – different from thosethat had obtained in an earlier age. Malise, son of Ferteth, was both aCeltic nobleman by virtue of his close familial ties to the earl of

&) Arbroath liber, i, no. , a grant confirmed almost immediately by King William: RRSii, no. . &* Neville, ‘Earls of Strathearn’, i. , .

'! ‘… per rectas divisas suas in bosco et plano in pratis et pascuis in moris et maresiis in aquis etcum omnibus suis pertinenciis suis excepto molendino et aqua stagni ipsius molendini ’ : Lindores chart.,no. . '" Ibid. no. .

'# Calendar of the Laing charters, ed. John Anderson, Edinburgh , no. . EarlMalcolm’s charter was in turn confirmed by King Alexander in : Liber ecclesie deScon, ed. William Smythe (Bannatyne Club, ), no. .

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Strathearn, and a denizen of the more recently established feudalaristocracy. His endowment of Lindores Abbey and other religious houseswith gifts of parish kirks demonstrated a wish to emulate the latter, but thejurisdictional squabbles that arose in consequence of the grants weresymptomatic, too, of the still potent influence of the older Celtic Churchin this part of the kingdom.

Just how long this period of transition and acculturation for the nativenobility may have endured is uncertain. But here again the evidence fromStrathearn, although limited, is instructive. In the third decade of thethirteenth century Celtic custom and practice remained remarkablyresilient within the earldom, coexisting with and sometimes over-shadowing the increasingly discernible influence of Anglo-Norman ideasabout land and its transmission. For example, while the impartibledescent of estates to a single male heir had long been accepted as aprinciple of inheritance even in conservative Strathearn, it did notdisplace altogether the Celtic tradition of a designated heir. Thus, whileEarl Gilbert made a show of encouraging his eldest surviving son, Robert,to attest comital charters and to confirm the acta of his kinsmen as the heirto Strathearn,'$ he also saw to it that the next son, Fergus, should succeedto his uncle Malise’s estates very soon after the latter’s death around .He did so without the need to bestow these formally as a feudal grant orto record the acts in charters of enfeftment. While it is always possible thatdocuments describing such grants were indeed drafted and subsequentlylost, the practice of conveying land without benefit of an accompanyingwrit charter was still widespread in early thirteenth-century Strathearn.'%

In the early s Fergus was conducting himself in a manner that, atfirst glance, reflects almost overwhelmingly the contacts with Anglo-Norman culture and society that he had made as a landed man: amonghis earliest recorded acts are written confirmations, drafted in the Normanstyle, of his uncle’s grants of lands to the abbeys of Lindores andArbroath.'& Around the same time he assumed the order of knighthood,attesting a grant of his brother Robert as dominus Fergusius and stylinghimself ‘Sir Fergus ’ in a deed dated –. Moreover, he began to buildhimself a modest entourage, which included among its members at leasttwo young knights of Anglo-Norman stock, Roger de Luvetot andJoachim de Kinbuck.'' His wife’s Christian name, Muriel, suggests that

'$ Inchaffray chart., nos , ; Lindores chart., no. . On the general subject of inheritancein the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries see Duncan, Making of the kingdom,– ; W. D. H. Sellar, ‘The common law of Scotland and the common law of England’,in R. R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, ����–����: comparisons, contrasts, and connections,Edinburgh , , and ‘Celtic law andScots law: survival and integration’, Scottish Studiesxxix (), –. '% Neville, ‘Earls of Strathearn’, i. –, –.

'& Lindores chart., no. ; Arbroath liber, i, no. .'' Arbroath liber, i, no. ; Lindores chart., nos , .

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he married a woman of Anglo-Norman rather than native background.The suit of court that Sir Fergus demanded of his Meikleour tenantsresembled in every respect the obligations required in baronial courtsthroughout the feudalised regions of Britain south of Forth, as did hiscareful provision reserving the execution of high justice to his ownagents.'(

Enthusiastic as he might have been at the prospect of exercising thekind of lordship characteristic of his Anglo-Norman fellows, Sir Ferguswas unable or unwilling to discard altogether his Celtic antecedents. Hischarters, although Norman in style, were witnessed by men whose Gaelicnames reveal a following consisting of men not merely of Anglo-Norman,but also of native origin, and probably speech.') Moreover, Sir Fergus’sattempts to exploit the resources of his limited landed estates in Strathearnbrought him into contact with the same customs that had confounded hisuncle’s grant to Lindores of the church of Muthill, and with much thesame result. In the s Sir Fergus was in the process of relinquishingdirect control over estates located in south-western Strathearn, in thelands lying between the Knaik and Allan Waters. Two knights from hisown following, Roger de Luvetot and Joachim de Kinbuck, were alreadyenfeoffed there.'* In or he granted to the monks of Lindores thelands of Bennie and Concraig and, in a second charter, undated butprobably written around the same time, the lands of Fedale, in exchangefor the second teinds of rent and cain that the abbey had been receivingsince the time of Malise, son of Ferteth.(! Sir Fergus made these grantswith the intention of offering the monks compensation for the lordly rightshe intended to exert over the common lands of the Muir of Orchill. Thegifts, however, ignited the ire of Bishop Clement of Dunblane, a Scottish-born cleric who ascended to his see not only determined to effect avigorous reform of his episcopal revenues, but to re-establish at Dunblanea strong and effective seat of episcopal authority.(" The dispute thatClement initiated with the abbot of Lindores recalled in many respects theargument concerning title to kirk revenues that his predecessor hadpursued in respect of the church of Muthill. As had occurred in the courseof the earlier disagreement, too, the family of Strathearn was inextricablycaught up in the resolution of the conflicting claims. Clement, likeAbraham before him, took his grievance to Rome and ultimately toarbitration, although this time with rather more success for his see thanhad occurred twenty years and more earlier. In judges delegate

'( Coupar Angus chart., i, no. . See also H. L. MacQueen, Common law and feudal society inmedieval Scotland, Edinburgh , –.

') Inchaffray chart., no. ; Lindores chart., nos , , ; Coupar Angus chart., i, no. .'* Neville, ‘Earls of Strathearn’, i. –. (! Lindores chart., nos , .(" Neville, ‘Earls of Strathearn’, i. – ; Cockburn, Medieval bishops of Dunblane,

– ; Duncan, Making of the kingdom, .

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awarded the bishop a generous annual rent in lieu of the teinds of Bennie,Concraig and Fedale ; the monks of Lindores were permitted to keep onlya portion of the teinds that they had formerly enjoyed, and had torenounce formally the claims to the church of Muthill which they hadearlier won.(#

Sir Fergus, having divested himself of the lands in question, had littleactive role to play in the litigation, but one of the effects of the awardmade in consequence of his grants was a significant reduction in theannual revenues upon which Lindores Abbey was able to draw. A decadelater he paid the price for his attempts to run roughshod over the claimsof both the monks of Lindores and of the Ce! li De! who still had a strongvoice in the diocese of Dunblane.($ His attempts to exert his lordship overthe common lands of the Muir of Orchill met with the blunt oppositionof the monks, and he was compelled to issue a deed in which he promisedto respect the status of the moorlands as ‘ free and common pasture, asthey had been in the time of all my ancestors ’.(% Furthermore, when hesought to exercise feudal authority over the neighbouring estate of WesterFedale it was the collective memory of local native men that frustratedthose plans, too: the marches of the estate were perambulated by a groupof Strathearn tenants that included Patrick Kerr, Simon of Fedale andhis son Gillemure, Simon Derech, Gillebride and his son Gillefalin, Gil-christ Mac Hatheny, Gilchrist Mac Morcherthach, Gille Ethueny andGillecostentyn.(& In the end, Sir Fergus’s attempts to ignore the claims ofthe old Church in his grants to Lindores Abbey of the estates of Bennie,Concraig and Fedale earned him little more than the begrudging prayersof the monks.

Studies of the Scottish baronage of the thirteenth century haveemphasised the cosmopolitan character of the careers and entourages ofimportant Scottish magnates and the fluidity of the Anglo-Scottish borderin respect of social relationships within the landowning ranks. Earl Davidof Huntingdon, for example, maintained close ties both with the nativetenants of his Scottish estates and with a substantial number of Anglo-Norman vassals.(' In similar fashion, Earl Roger de Quincy forgedtenurial contacts with a considerable number of Scottish land-holders,even if the fruits of his lordship were more generously distributed amongmen of Anglo-Norman background.(( Still again, the political landscape

(# Lindores chart., nos –.($ The settlement of Clement’s dispute with Lindores included the assent of Padin,

presbyter of Muthill, and Maurice, prior of the Ce! li De! of Abernethy.(% Lindores chart., no. . Significantly, this concession was formally confirmed (ibid. no.

) by Sir Fergus’s brother, Earl Robert of Strathearn. (& Ibid. no. .(' Stringer, Earl David, passim.(( G. G. Simpson, ‘The familia of Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester and constable

of Scotland’, in K. J. Stringer (ed.), Essays on the nobility of medieval Scotland, Edinburgh, –.

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of Buchan changed dramatically in the early years of the thirteenthcentury, when William Comyn married the heiress of Fergus of Buchanand, through her, succeeded to the title of earl.()

The internationalism that was so marked a feature of Anglo-Scottishbaronial lordship is not so conspicuous in the native earldom ofStrathearn. In the first half of the thirteenth century, under the influenceof Earl Gilbert, there remained much here that was more recognisablyCeltic than Norman. Among the most conservative of the earl’s men werehis ecclesiastical tenants. The regional history of the Scottish Church inthis period is still very much in the process of being written. Althoughcharters attesting the distribution of lands and revenues survive in themany hundreds, the ways in which the ecclesiastical reforms associatedwith Pope Gregory were introduced piecemeal into the northernkingdom is a field of study still awaiting extensive investigation. In someregions, most notably in and around royal monastic foundations, nativeclerics willingly submitted to the governance of foreign abbots, priors andbishops. More willingly still, some adopted wholesale the Anglo-Normanlegal apparatus which they believed secured them irrevocable title toestates and annual revenues, and in doing so made important contri-butions to a common law of real property in Scotland.(*

But in other parts of the realm, those less heavily infiltrated by Anglo-Norman lords, the vitality of the older Church remained strong.References to the bishop of Dunblane as ‘bishop of Strathearn’ well intothe thirteenth century reflected much more than quaint practice, and sucha form of address in papal letters both to the earl of Strathearn and theclergy and chapter of Dunblane Cathedral was not merely an example ofeccentricity on the part of Roman scribes. Rather, both underscored thehistoric and highly unusual relationship that bound bishop and earl.)!

In a world that laid increasing emphasis on the authority of writtendocuments such as charters, the Ce! li De! of the diocese may have lamentedtheir lack of a seal, which in Anglo-Norman circles legally denotedcorporate organisation. But surviving documents make it clear that as lateas they still had a voice in the affairs of Dunblane.)" In Strathearn,

() Young, ‘Earls and the earldom of Buchan’, –. Still another study also arguesfor a similar mix of Celtic and Norman custom in contemporary Galloway: Richard D.Oram, ‘A family business? Colonization and settlement in twelfth- and thirteenth-centuryGalloway’, Scottish Historical Review lxxii (), –.

(* See, for example, Sellar, ‘Common law of Scotland’, ; MacQueen, Common law andfeudal society, –.

)! D. E. R. Watt, Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae medii aevi ad annum ���� (Scottish RecordSociety n.s. ), ; Inchaffray chart., nos , , , , , , , ; Lindores chart., no. ; Calendar of entries in the papal registers, i. – ; Vetera monumenta, nos , . Otherreferences are noted in W. Reeves, The Culdees of the British islands, Dublin , .

)" Lindores chart., no. .

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as well as in other regions located in the ‘ land of earls ’ north of Forth,)#

continuity with the past rather than wholesale adaptation to a new orderwas the norm.

The enduring influence of the Celtic Church and its ability to withstandthe strong winds of reform are themes that historians emphasise too littlein their discussions of Scotland in the so-called ‘Anglo-Norman era’. Sopervasive is the model of a newly feudalised kingdom in the twelfthcentury (especially south of Forth), accompanied by the introduction ofthe reformed religious orders and of newly established parishes, that thehistory of the older Church is often marginalised. Yet, just as the Anglo-Norman newcomers who first settled in Scotland from England andvarious regions of France were compelled to accommodate native land-holders within their newly created estates, so too did the founders ofnew monastic houses need to make provision in the course of theirestablishment for clerics who represented the native Church. The troublesthat native lay beneficiaries in Strathearn experienced in coping with thetransition between older and more recent ecclesiastical traditions were inmany respects characteristic of an era of adjustment that deeply influencedthe whole of Scotland.

The ways in which the Celtic Church in Scotland was transformed inthe course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is an historical debatethat few Scottish historians have attempted to address directly. A lack ofabundant documentation about individual Scottish churches and theclerics who served them in the period roughly between and hasprevented scholars from drawing firm conclusions about such fun-damental aspects of ecclesiastical history as the organisation of theScottish Church before the time of King David (d. ), the role ofbishops and the drawing of boundaries for their sees and the cure of soulsin the pre-Gregorian era. Arguments remain tentative. In an essaypublished some forty years ago, for example, Ian Cowan lamented thepitfalls that lie in wait for the historian seeking to determine the degree towhich early ecclesiastical conditions in the kingdom influenced thedevelopment of a parochial system in the twelfth century.)$ Less than adecade ago another scholar, Alan Macquarrie, could still echo thatsentiment.)%

Historians nevertheless suggest that in matters ecclesiastical in thisperiod there are close parallels between Scotland and England,)& andrecent research on the Anglo-Saxon and early post-Conquest Church hasoffered useful theories for treating conditions north of the border. The

)# Duncan, Making of the kingdom, .)$ Cowan, ‘Development of the parochial system’, .)% Macquarrie, ‘Early Christian religious houses ’, .)& Cowan, ‘Development of the parochial system’, ; Macquarrie, ‘Early Christian

religious houses ’, .

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so-called ‘minster hypothesis ’)' developed by several English scholarsinterested in the specific topic of pastoral care represents an attractivemodel by which to study the changes that occurred in the ScottishChurch, too, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The arguments ofthese historians may conveniently be summarised as follows:

In the pre-Viking period virtually all churches, except subordinate churches suchas oratories and chapels, were served by communities of clergy, and these latterwere each responsible, in effect as ‘ team ministries ’, for the pastoral supervisionof the laity in substantial areas attached to their churches … . In the post-Vikingperiod the territories attached to the churches (‘minsters ’) became fragmented,particularly as private estate churches were founded within them as bishopsthemselves created new churches, and as large agrarian estates themselvesfragmented.)(

Long before this theory had been articulated in respect of the EnglishChurch Cowan posited for Scotland in the eleventh century a similarseries of ‘ large districts served by clergy resident at central churches ’,while Macquarrie argues compellingly that the tenth-century church atDeer – and probably several others as well – ‘ looks like a church of‘‘minster ’’ type with a college of secular clergy’.)) Evidence in supportof their claims that the later twelfth and the thirteenth centuries wit-nessed the accelerated fragmentation of a minster-based ecclesiasticalorganisation is convincing: from the border lands of the south to thenorthern territories of Ross and Moray this was the era par excellence ofparish church foundation on the part of kings, bishops and layland-holders, one in which the lords of Strathearn participated fully. Ofsome seventy-two later medieval parishes reconstructed for the areacovering the lands of Gowrie, Atholl, central and eastern Perthshire andthe earldom of Strathearn proper, for example, no fewer than fifty-fourwere founded or refounded specifically as parochial centres between¬ and .)* Examples of new parish foundations beyondStrathearn number in the hundreds.*!

If a Scottish version of the ‘minster hypothesis ’ is an accurate model forexplaining the ways in which the delivery of pastoral care was transformedin the transition period between and , it also proves instructive

)' The term was first employed in a review article : Eric Cambridge and DavidRollason, ‘Debate : the pastoral organization of the Anglo-Saxon Church: a review of the‘‘minster hypothesis ’’ ’, Early Medieval Europe iv (), –.

)( Ibid. . The ‘minster hypothesis ’, however, has not been accepted by all historiansof the English Church. For a discussion see D. M. Palliser, ‘The ‘‘minster hypothesis ’’ : acase study’, Early Medieval Europe v (), –, and the sources cited there.

)) Cowan, ‘Development of the parochial system’, ; Macquarrie, ‘Early Christianreligious houses ’, .

)* John Malcolm Rogers, ‘The formation of the parish unit and community inPerthshire ’, unpublished PhD diss. Edinburgh , –.

*! See, for example, Duncan, Making of the kingdom, –.

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in an examination of the means by which older communities of clericsdisappeared. Historians have argued that the introduction of theAugustinian order into England early in the twelfth century wasinstrumental in giving meaningful expression there to the reforms urgedby Pope Gregory . In many places the transition was accomplishedwith ease : Colchester Priory, for example, first ‘ founded’ in the lateeleventh century was in fact a reorganisation of a minster-like churchstaffed by a group of priests who adopted the rule of St Augustine.*" Moreappropriate still as examples of a similar process at work both in Englandand Scotland are the several Augustinian houses of northern England.Archbishop Thomas of York (d. ) introduced regular canons intothe ancient minster church of Hexham, and the several resident clergy ofBridlington, Nostell and Warter in the early twelfth century were almostcertainly new converts to the Augustinian rule.*# Moreover, contactsbetween northern England and Scotland were strong in this period:Henry ’s queen, Matilda, herself the foundress of an Augustinian housein London, was sister to the Scottish kings Edgar (d. ), Alexander (d. ) and David (d. ), and it may have been under her influencethat King Alexander sought out canons from Nostell Priory to reform anolder establishment at Scone. The Yorkshire foundations of such cross-border magnates as the Bruce family in turn ensured that the spread of thenew order occurred under aristocratic as well as royal patronage.*$

In the course of the twelfth century Scottish laymen and clerics alsocame to regard the establishment of the Augustinian rule as the mostappropriate means of effecting the reform of older communities of Ce! liDe! .*% Some groups managed to maintain a corporate existence well intothe thirteenth century: the Ce! li De! of Abernethy, for example, surviveduntil or when, as the chronicler Bower reported, their members‘became an establishment of canons regular ’.*& Similarly, the Celticpriests of Brechin were still considered a distinct group in the s,*'

although the Ce! li De! of both Monifieth in Angus and Monymusk inAberdeenshire were being referred to as canons earlier in the century.*(

*" J. C. Dickinson, The origins of the Austin canons and their introduction into England, London, .

*# Janet Burton, The monastic order in Yorkshire, ����–����, Cambridge , , –, .*$ Ibid. –.*% Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, . This chapter is a revised version of an earlier article

published as ‘The cathedral chapter of St Andrews and the Culdees in the twelfth andthirteenth centuries ’, this J iii (), –.

*& Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, V: Books IX and X, ed. Simon Taylor, D. E. R. Watt andBrian Scott, Aberdeen , . *' Lindores chart., no. .

*( The Ce! li De! of Monifieth are discussed in Cowan, ‘The post-Columban Church’,–. For the clerics of Monymusk see W. Douglas Simpson, ‘The Augustinian prioryand parish church of Monymusk’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland lix(), –, and Cowan and Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , –.

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The transition from community of Ce! li De! to Augustinian priory wasnot always effected smoothly. At Loch Leven it was accomplished onlyafter considerable opposition and when, around or , KingDavid granted the island and its holy men to the canons of St Andrews(whose Ce! li De! were themselves about to embark on a prolonged strugglefor survival), he felt it necessary to stipulate that clerics who failed toconform to the rule would be expelled.*) At first glance the clericalbrethren of Inchaffray appear to have accepted their transformation intoa house of Austin canons with some ease. The process here was intendedto be gradual rather than abrupt, for in his foundation charter EarlGilbert of Strathearn entrusted the direction of the new house to the priestand hermit Malise, who was to have ‘ freedom to associate with himwhomsoever he wills, and to instruct them, as he thinks fit, in the serviceof God according to the rule of St. Augustine’.** But the canons ofInchaffray, too, soon found themselves involved in expensive andprotracted litigation with episcopal officials in defence of possessions thathad once belonged to their Ce! li De! predecessors.

The Augustinian rule was not the only model available to reform-minded laymen and clerics anxious to bring the Celtic Church of thetwelfth century into conformity with current practice on the continentand in England. Another was to organise Ce! li De! priests into colleges ofsecular priests, such as occurred at St Andrews, or to place former Ce! li De!into newly organised episcopal households, as were the brethren ofBrechin and Dunkeld."!! Irrespective of the changes to which they weresubjected, an important effect of the reform of Ce! li De! houses was todeprive their members of the opportunity to interact closely and freelywith lay people. Before the twelfth century a few of the clerics had chosento live solitary lives as hermits, but many others had been charged withministering to the spiritual needs of the surrounding countryside. Evenhermits had fled the world in vain: they were deeply respected figures andwere often consulted by the mighty and the humble."!" The reform of theCe! li De! and their confinement to a more closely regulated life as canonscertainly did not remove them entirely from the communities they served.But closer regulation and an accelerating trend toward the establishmentof parish churches by bishops and laymen alike (a trend everywherevisible in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland) brought momentousresults and in many places conflict. The process of founding small

*) Charters of King David I, no. . The history of the Ce! li De! of Kilrimont}St Andrewsis reviewed in detail in Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, –, and Cowan and Easson,Medieval religious houses, Scotland, –. ** Inchaffray chart., no. .

"!! Cowan and Easson, Medieval religious houses, Scotland, , ."!" A frequently cited example is that of St Margaret who, according to her biographer,

Turgot, frequently sought out and gave oblations to the hermits scattered across thekingdom: Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, –.

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churches within areas once served by larger ecclesiastical foundations notonly created a new network of parishes within Scotland; simultaneously,it set the stage for a whole series of disputes centred on control of the landsupon which those new parish churches were erected. In this sense, thelegal disputes in which members of the family of Strathearn, the canonsof Inchaffray and the bishops of Dunblane became involved in thethirteenth century were neither unique nor unpredictable.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed profound changes in thestructure of the Scottish Church. At the beginning of this period theChurch was based on a minster model, one that was not yet rigorouslyregulated by episcopal authority. Towards its end the Scottish Churchhad been compelled to come to terms with a host of new factors. Largenumbers of lay persons, anxious to avail themselves of the benefits ofreligious services in this life and to secure spiritual rewards in the hereafterwere now regularly claiming not merely the right to establish parishchurches, but also to create landed endowments for these foundations.Scottish bishops, too, were involved in the process, some seeking tosupport their newly created households with regular revenues byestablishing new parishes, others intent on fighting lay control of churchproperties because appropriations challenged ecclesiastical claims tosocial and political primacy in the kingdom.

The troubled relations between members of the Strathearn family andtheir clerical fathers at Dunblane show clearly that patronage disputes inpost-reform Scotland arose from a variety of circumstances, many uniqueto the lordship. They also reveal that adjustment to the competinginterests of the older Celtic communities and the newly reorganisedChurch was a difficult and sometimes unhappy process. Finally, theStrathearn example serves as a useful example of the means by whichadjustments between the old order and the new were eventually effected.Perhaps most notable here is the evidence that surviving documentsreveal about the medium through which those adjustments were made.When innovation did come to the once self-contained territory ofthirteenth-century Strathearn, the principal agents of change were notthe earls themselves, the descendants of the ancient mormaers and inmany respects the champions of native custom. They were, rather, theearls’ kinsmen. In the heady atmosphere of reform and renewal thatpermeated both the ecclesiastical and the secular worlds of thirteenth-century Scotland these young lords were in many respects better able andapparently more willing than their older brothers to discard the weight ofCeltic custom.