Rights of Andrews. possessed Cramond dedicated to St. Columba, and on the north beyond the Mounth, when we find in a charter granted by the Mormaer, or earl of Buchan, in the earlier years of the reign of King David, of the lands of Pet-mec-Cobrig' for the consecration of a church of Christ and Peter the apostle (at Deer) and to Columcille and to Drostan,' that is, for the reconsecration of the church of Deer to St. Peter, which had previously been dedicated to St. Columba and St. Drostan, and the lands are granted 'free from all exactions with their tie to Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld.' 12 This monastery of Deer is one of the few Columban foundations which preserved its clerical character intact down to this period, and here we find no trace of the name of Culdee in connection with it. On the other hand, and in contrast to these rights of pass to St. Dunkeld, Turgot was no sooner elected bishop of St. Andrews than the fate and fortunes of the Culdee establishments were committed into his hands; for we are told that 'in his days the whole rights of the Keledei over the whole kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews.' 13 The appointment of Turgot, the prior of Durham, to the bishopric of St. Andrews, in conformity with the policy adopted towards the native church by the sons of Queen Margaret, had one result which probably King Alexander did not anticipate when he made it. It brought upon him the claim of the archbishop of York to supremacy over the Scottish Church, whose bishops he regarded as his suffragans. It is not necessary for our purpose to enter at length on this intricate subject. His claim was, no doubt, founded upon the original commission by Pope Gregory to Augustine in the 12 Book of Deer, p. 93. Mr. Whitley Stokes translates conanascad 'with the gift of them,' but nascad is the modern nasgadh, an obligation, from nasgain, to bind or tie, and in his Irish glosses he so renders it (817). 13 In diebus illis totum jus Keledeorum per totum regnum Scotia transivit in episcopatum Sancti Andreæ. Quoted by Dr. Reeves, British Culdees, p. 36; and Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, p. 178. end of the sixth century, by which he placed all the churches north of the Humber under the bishop of York, and to the convention between the archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1072, by which it was attempted to revive this arrangement, and to place all the churches of the northern province, as far as the extreme limits of Scotland, under the latter; 14 but such a right had never been either recognised or exercised, and the only substantial ground upon which it could be based was one very similar to that on which the supremacy claimed by the king of England over Scotland could be founded. It is certain that the province of York extended ecclesiastically, as the kingdom of Northumbria did civilly, to the Firth of Forth; and so far as concerned the churches of Lothian and Teviotdale, the former of which were now under the rule of the bishop of St. Andrews, while the latter were claimed by Glasgow, there may have been some ground for the assertion of such a right, similar to that which the annexation of Lothian to the kingdom of Scotland gave for the civil claim ; but beyond the Firths of Forth and Clyde the claims of both were shadowy in the extreme, and Alexander, in his jealousy for the independence of his kingdom, saw the necessity of resisting the threatened encroachment of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of York. In the end Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st August 1109, with reservation of the rights of either see. He died on 31st August 1115, and during his tenure of office, owing mainly to these disputes, he appears to have done nothing to affect the rights of the Culdees. In order to avoid a recurrence of this question, Alexander applied to the archbishop of Canterbury to recommend him an English cleric as bishop, stating that the bishops of St. Andrews had hitherto been consecrated either by the Pope or by the archbishop of Canterbury. The former assertion was probably true in so far as regards the later bishops; but the 14 Usque ad extremos Scotiæ fines.- Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, vol. ii. p. 159. Canons regular land. incautious admission of the latter, which was totally inconsistent with fact, led the king into a new and unprofitable dispute, which had an equally awkward bearing upon the more important question of the independence of the kingdom. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, was sent, but was not elected till 1120; and in the following year he returned to Canterbury,15 and the bishopric remained unfilled up for three years. During this time, however, while St. Andrews was, introduced practically speaking, without a bishop, Alexander commenced into Scot to carry out another part of this policy, by introducing the canons-regular of St. Augustine, or the black canons, as they were called, into Scotland; and for this purpose he selected the most central and important position in his kingdom, that of Scone, which was peculiarly associated with the very heart of the monarchy, and had been the scene of previous legislation regarding the church. Here he brought a colony of canons regular from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in Yorkshire, and founded a priory in the year 1115, which was confirmed by the seven earls of his kingdom, and by Gregory and Cormac, the bishops of the two additional bishoprics he had created, who here term themselves bishops by the authority of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of Saint Andrew the apostle. The church, which was previously dedicated to the Trinity, was placed under the patronage of the Virgin, St. Michael, St. John, St. Lawrence and St. Augustine.16 Some years later Alexander introduced the regular canons into the diocese of Dunkeld. In the year 1122 he founded a priory of canons on an island near the east end of Loch Tay, which became a cell of Scone, and here his queen, Sibylla, died and was buried; and in 1123 he founded a monastery for the same canons in the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth.17 In the following year Alexander heard 15 See Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, vol. ii. pp. 189-208, for the account of these disputes. 16 Lib. Ec. de Scon., p. 1. 17 Ib. p. 3; Fordun, Chron. B. v. c. 28. of the death of Eadmer, and filled up the bishopric of St. Andrews by appointing Robert, the English prior of Scone; but, four months after this appointment, and before Robert was consecrated, he died in the April of that year. Probably the last act of his life was the right which he conferred upon the church of the Holy Trinity of Scone, to hold a court, in a charter which is addressed to the bishops and earls of Scotland, and is witnessed by Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, Cormac the bishop, and Gregory, bishop of Moray.18 Glasgow During the whole period of Alexander's reign, his younger Diocese of brother David was carrying out the same policy in the south- restored by ern districts of Scotland, over which he ruled as earl. In Earl David. the year 1113 he founded a monastery at Selkirk, in which he placed Benedictine monks of the order of Tyron; but his great work there was the reconstitution of the bishopric of Glasgow. This diocese he restored about the year 1115, and caused an inquisition to be made by the elders and wise men of Cumbria into the lands and churches which formerly belonged to the see of Glasgow. In this document, which has been preserved, and which may be placed in the year 1120 or 1121, its framers relate the foundation of the church of Glasgow by St. Kentigern, and that he was succeeded by several bishops in the see; but that the confusion and revolutions of the country at length destroyed all traces of the church, and almost of Christianity, till the restoration of the bishopric by Earl David, and the election and consecration of John, who had been his tutor, and is commonly called the first bishop of Glasgow. The bishopric, as reconstituted after the information derived from this inquisition, extended from the Clyde on the north to the Solway Firth and the march with England on the south, and from the western boundary of Lothian on the east to the river Urr on the west; and it included Teviotdale, which had remained a part of the diocese of Durham while the Lothian churches north of the Tweed 18 Lib. Ec. de Scon., p. 4. and monas were transferred to St. Andrews, and which was now reclaimed as properly belonging to Glasgow. Here we find no traces of the Keledei, who had formerly formed the chapter of Glasgow; but in the reign of Malcolm the Fourth the pope confirmed a constitution of the dean and chapter, which had been introduced after the model of Sarum by Herbert, elected bishop in 1147.19 Here, too, the foundation of the new bishopric of Glasgow brought upon him the claims of the archbishop of York, which were equally resisted, and the non-dependence of the diocese on any metropolitan bishop established. The rights of York were, however, recognised in the case of the bishopric of Candida Casa, likewise restored some years later, when Gilda Aldan was appointed its first bishop, as this see had been first established by the Anglic king of Northumbria in the eighth century. Galloway, though civilly united to Scotland, was considered ecclesiastically to belong to England, and its bishop owed obedience as one of his suffragans to the archbishop of York, by whom Gilda Aldan was consecrated soon after David's accession to the throne of Scotland.20 Bishoprics Ailred of Rivaux, who was King David's contemporary, teries tells us of him that he seemed not undeservedly loved both founded by by God and men. He was plainly beloved by God, for at the King David. very outset of his reign he diligently practised the things which belong to God in erecting churches and founding monasteries, which he endowed with possessions and covered with honours. For whereas he had found in the whole kingdom of Scotland three or four bishops only, the other churches, without a shepherd or bishop, going to wrack and ruin in respect both of morals and substance; what with ancient ones which he restored and new ones which he founded, he left nine at his death. He left also monasteries of the Cluniac, Cistercian, Tyronian orders (who were Benedictines), and the 19 Regist. Ep. Glasg., Nos. 1 and 28. 20 Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, vol. ii. pp. 24, 25. |