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Premonitions of the ecclesiastical revolution—Relaxation of social and
ecclesiastical bonds—Gordon raid on Kinloss Abbey—Night attack on Aberdeen
by Garioch lairds — Breach between the citizens and the Forbeses—The trial
and execution of the master of Forbes—Robbery of the cathedral
treasure—First appearance of Lutheranism and the measures against it —
Repression of irreverence and enforcement of Church dues by the magistrates
of Aberdeen—Episcopate of William Gordon—Increasing aggrandisement of the
Gordons—Bonds of manrent—The fourth Earl of Huntly : Lieutenant of the North
and Provost of Aberdeen—The Battle of Pinkie—The burden of taxation—Huntly's
unsuccessful expedition to the Highlands : Deprived of office and honours:
Magnificence of his establishment—Earl Marischal and the Reformation—The
Forbeses—Burning of the Church of Echt—Morals of the clergy—Memorial of the
dean and chapter. In
public and national affairs the bright interlude of Bishop Elphinstone's
episcopate was followed by a long period of strife and tumult and of the
relaxation of old bonds. The central fact in the general history of the
country during this period is the ecclesiastical revolution. Its
premonitions begin to be apparent in Aberdeenshire soon after Flodden. The
breach between England and Rome was not without its influence in the north,
for if it tended to accentuate the old hostility between the two countries,
the dissolution of the English religious houses familiarised the Scottish
nobility with the idea of the secular advantages associated with the change
in religion. The Church no longer commanded the same reverence as of old,
and the disorganised state of society is reflected in the lawlessness and
turbulence of the country gentry, of which there are many illustrations. The
first incident that arrests attention is a nocturnal raid upon the Abbey of
Kinloss in 1515, headed by no less a person than Lord Gordon, son of the
Earl of Huntly and son-in-law of James IV. There had been differences
between Huntly and the abbot concerning the Strathisla possessions of the
monastery, and these may have influenced Gordon, but he is said to have been
"impelled by certain rascals." For plundering the church he was
excommunicated, but after retiring to France for a year or two he came back
in a penitential frame of mind and received absolution, first at St Andrews,
and then at the scene of his sacrilegious deed, where his death shortly
afterwards took place. An incident not less characteristic of the age,
though unconnected with ecclesiastical affairs, was a night attack upon the
city in 1525 by four Garioch lairds—Alexander Seton of Meldrum, John Leslie
of Wardes, William Leslie of Balquhain, and Alexander Leslie " of that ilk,"
with their followers to the number of about eighty spearmen. The citizens
rushed to arms, and after a protracted conflict defeated the invaders, but
not before about eighty of the inhabitants had been killed or wounded. To
guard against the recurrence of such an attack, the ports of the town were
ordered to be repaired, the "vennels," "backdykes," and the like, built up,
a night watch established, and sentinels posted by day in the steeples; two
or three gunners were to be engaged for the artillery, young and able-bodied
men to be supplied with culverins, cross-bows, and hand-bows, and to
practise shooting at weekly or fortnightly " wapenschaws " ; and finally, a
complaint against the late raiders was to be made to the king and council,
while a prohibition against receiving or harbouring strangers was imposed
upon the citizens. The efficacy of these elaborate preparations was never
put to the test, for no repetition of the inroad was attempted.
This strange affair,
according to the Council Register, was instigated by John Collison, elder,
who had been provost four years before. Collison, who is described by some
interpolator on the margin of the " Buk of Statutis," one of the documents
of the town's history, as "an ambitious proud man," was connected by descent
or marriage with several of the county families, including those concerned
in the raid. Contention had arisen over the old question of the right of
non-resident burgesses to take part in the municipal elections. A resolution
passed four months before this incident occurred is to the effect that the
citizens were resolved to uphold their right of free election as it had been
handed down to them from time immemorial, notwithstanding that it had been
divers and many times "invaded by both lords and gentlemen in the country,"
and to this end no person who did not " scot, lot, and ward" was to have any
vote or be permitted to enter the tolbooth during an election. When this
resolution came up for confirmation in September it was opposed by Collison
and his party, and the raid which took place immediately after the annual
election of provost, magistrates, and council may have been intended to
effect a municipal mip d'etat.
The increasing strength of
the Forbes connection and the extension of its possessions were developing
the rivalry and hostility that were so long to mark its relations with the
Gordons. Quarrels were no new thing between the Forbeses and the barons of
Garioch and Formartine, among whom they were rapidly establishing
themselves. Of these barons the Leslies and Setons were generally in
alliance with the Earls of Huntly, and during the minority of the fourth
earl, who succeeded in 1524 as a boy in his tenth year, Lord Forbes seems to
have taken the opportunity of pressing heavily upon the adherents of the
rival house. Balquhain, the principal castle of the Leslies, was attacked
and burned by the Forbeses in 1526. The interference of Angus and other
nobles stopped for a time the prosecution of the feud, but the violent
proceedings of Lord Forbes's heir, the Master of Forbes, soon led to fresh
tumults. Seton, who had headed the Aberdeen raid, was assassinated in 1526
by a party of the Forbeses, of whom the Master appears to have been one, at
the house of Gilbert Menzies, the provost of the city. The actual assassin,
Alexander Forbes, called " Spranger," while afterwards engaged in plundering
some of the bishop's tenants, was slain by young Leslie of Balquhain, who
with his associates succeeded in obtaining a remission under the great seal.
Collisions between the Forbeses and the Aberdeen authorities had already
occurred. Lord Forbes had been receiving from the magistrates a tun of wine
yearly as a sort of blackmail for "protecting" or sparing the river fishings
during the close season, but the citizens found that instead of protecting
the fishings the Forbeses were the principal depredators and resolved to
withhold the wine. A strong body of the Forbeses, headed by the lairds of
P'tsligo and Brux, and instigated by Lord Forbes, broke into the town on a
summer Sunday in 1530, and after some not very deadly warfare with the
citizens were driven for refuge to the "place" of the Grey Friars, where
after a siege of twenty-four hours they had to surrender. The citizens
having seized the horses of the raiders, the Forbeses appealed to a court of
law, but with the result that they were bound over under a heavy penalty
that the town should be "skaithless at their hands in time coming."
The Master of Forbes was soon
in more serious trouble. Along with his father and John Strachan, younger of
Lyn-turk, who had been implicated with him in the murder of Seton, the
Master was charged with carrying on a treasonable conspiracy with England
and plotting to shoot the king during one of his visits to Aberdeen. Another
accusation against him was that he had conspired for the destruction of the
Scottish army at Jedburgh — which only meant that he was one of many who
would not accompany Albany in his invasion of England. Lord Forbes was
acquitted, but Strachan had his lands forfeited, and was forbidden to cross
the Dee or approach the king; and the Master of Forbes, who had the
misfortune to be married to a daughter of the now exiled Earl of Angus, was
sentenced to be beheaded and quartered. Another of Angus's daughters, Lady
Glamis, was condemned about the same time on a charge of conspiring to
destroy the king by poison. There has always been a mystery about these
cases, both of which seem to have resulted in a miscarriage of justice. The
Earl of Huntly appeared as prosecutor of Forbes, and the prosecution arose
out of a denunciation by Strachan, who had quarrelled with him, and accused
him of having conspired with his Douglas connections against the life of the
king. On the scaffold Forbes protested his innocence of this charge, while
admitting that he had earned his doom by the part he had taken in the death
of Seton. The king seems to have had misgivings about the whole matter, and
in a short time he took one of Forbes's brothers into a high position at
Court. Strachan, who was one of the most unruly characters of a turbulent
age, obtained remission from the Privy Council not only for his
participation in the death of Seton but for being concerned in that of John
King, son of the laird of Bourtie, and in robbery and slaughter at the siege
of Kildrummy. For many years, however, he continued to pursue an irregular
course of life.
One of the intermittent
manifestations of the Forbes and Gordon feud is seen in a charge brought
against Lord Forbes, the Master of Forbes, William Forbes of Corsindae, and
others, in 1533, of being concerned in a foray and the destruction by fire
at night of the sheepfolds in the Earl of Huntly's forest of Corrennie on
his Cluny estate. Three years afterwards, however, we find Huntly
associating himself with Lord Forbes and the lairds of Corsindae and Brux as
cautioner for the good conduct of the Master, Strachan, and three others,
under the remission by the king of proceedings against them in connection
with the Seton fracas.2 But the relations between the houses had begun to
show that they would bear but little additional tension, and we shall see
how greatly these relations were involved in the struggles and •commotions
of the next hundred years.
It was probably during the
Forbes raid on Aberdeen that a priest of the name of Martin or Marcus Coutts
was killed, on account of whose death John and Alexander Forbes with their
accomplices, George Ogilvie and George Collie, were put under the greater
excommunication by Bishop Dunbar. Whether the bishop had refused to release
them does not .appear, but the two Forbeses obtained absolution from Pope
Clement VII. in 1531. In 1544 the Forbeses were implicated in a graver act
of sacrilege, and one which may be regarded as an indication of motives that
in a few years were to exert a powerful influence in enlisting the nobility
and gentry on the side of the Reformation. England had broken with Rome ten
years before, and the English monasteries having been suppressed and their
revenues confiscated, the idea of the secularisation of ecclesiastical
property was acting on the minds of men. Bishop Stewart, the successor of
Dunbar, being apprehensive of an English invasion, was removing the jewels
and ornaments of the Cathedral from Old Aberdeen to a place of greater
safety, when James Forbes of Corsindae, who had been lying in wait at the
head of a band of his "companions and satellites," fell upon the party and
carried off the treasure. The bishop and chapter were compelled to redeem
their plate from the robbers in an imperfect and mutilated condition, at a
cost of 600 merks. Either from difficulty in raising the money, or for some
other reason, this ransom was commuted into a grant to Forbes of four
plough-gates of Church land at Montgarrie in the Vale of Alford. In such
ways had it now become necessary for the Church to compromise with its
despoilers.
It was in 1525 that the
Scottish Parliament condemned the "damnable opinions of heresy spread in
divers countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples," and forbade the
circulation of their books ; and soon afterwards a royal letter was
addressed to the sheriffs in the diocese of Aberdeen, informing them on the
authority of Bishop Dunbar that sundry strangers and others within the
diocese had " books of that heretic Luther," and favoured his "errors and
false opinions," contrary to the Act of Parliament, and directing
inquisition to be made regarding these persons and their goods to be
confiscated. The close commercial connection of Aberdeen with Holland and
Flanders had doubtless led at an early date to the citizens being informed
of Luther's revolt against the Pope, and copies of the denounced books would
be surreptitiously brought into the port. The circulation of Tyndale's
English New Testament, printed abroad, began about this time, and it may
have been classed with the Lutheran books condemned on the initiative of the
Bishop of Aberdeen. For it was not till 1543, five years after the English
Bible had been legalised in England, that the Scottish people were allowed
by their Parliament to possess or to read the Bible in their own tongue.
Nothing came of the inquisition by the sheriffs, if it ever took place, and
we hear no more of heresy until the progress of the reformed doctrines in
the neighbouring counties had begun to alarm both the higher clergy and the
secular authorities.
So little had the Roman
Church in Aberdeenshire been able to realise the danger that was imminent,
that church building and decoration may almost be said to have been going on
concurrently with the demolition and spoliation of the religious edifices in
the south. The play of Sir David Lyndsay's piquant humour, and the shafts of
his satire directed against the ignorance, idleness, and licentious lives of
the clergy, cannot have been wholly unknown in the north-east; but no
definite trace of the influence of this potent stimulus of the anti-clerical
sentiment is to be found in the Aberdeenshire records, and the magistrates
in Aberdeen continued to repress indignities offered to the Church or clergy
and to enforce the payment of their dues. That repressive measures were
resorted to may indicate the prevalence of a spirit of revolt; but while the
local executive authority was clearly on the side of the Church, nothing
ever occurred in the northern city corresponding with the burning of Patrick
Hamilton at St Andrews in 1527 and George Wishart in 1546, or the execution
of five persons in Edinburgh for heresy in 1539.
After the short episcopate of
Dunbar's successor, Bishop William Stewart, the influence of the Earl of
Huntly was again put forth in the election of bishop, and it secured the see
for his uncle, William Gordon, parson of Clatt, and a prebendary of the
cathedral. With the commencement of Gordon's episcopate begins the ruin of
the Roman Church. A man in every respect unworthy of his distinguished
predecessors, he offended by his conduct the moral sense of an age that was
not remarkable for its purity, and weakened the position of the Church at a
time when it was on its trial. Like Cardinal Beaton, of whom he was the
friend and follower, he was more of a lay baron than a spiritual lord, and
he seems to have had no regard for the responsibilities of his episcopal
position or respect for the dignity of his office. His policy was to
increase the number of the Church vassals by granting feu-charters and
subdividing the episcopal domains among feuars and holders of long leases,
who were bound to maintain the Catholic religion and the see of Aberdeen. In
many of his charters and grants we find provision made for their being void
in case of the holders falling into heresy. As the Reforming party gained
ground in the south, the bishop's grants and leases increased to such an
extent as to amount to spoliation of the see, and to show that he was
desirous to anticipate the secularisation of the Church lands.
The chapter sought to meet
the rising tide of the Reformation by more becoming measures, and made some
small provision to counteract the new doctrines by popular preaching. The
bishop was a frequent absentee. He was in France from 1550 to 1553, and
during the next few years he seems to have chiefly resided in Edinburgh.
Huntly had been appointed hereditary bailie of the see soon after Bishop
Gordon's succession, and the bishop probably depended more -upon his
nephew's support than upon the measures which the dean and chapter were
devising to prop up the tottering Church.
The power -of the house of
Gordon, which had been steadily increasing all through the fifteenth
century, reached its highest point in the era immediately preceding the
Reformation. To the extensive patrimonial possessions of the first two
earls, already enumerated,1 the third earl, who died in 1524, added
Strathaven, or Strathdoun, in Banffsh.'ie, and the Brae of Lochaber in
Inverness. His grandson, the fourth earl, had a charter from James V. of the
lordship of Braemar, Strathdee, and Cromar, except Migvie. From central
Aberdeenshire to the western sea-lochs he was lord of the land, and to his
hereditary earldom of Huntly he added for a time the other historic earldoms
of Mar and Moray. He was Lieutenant of the North, or Viceroy of
trans-Grampian Scotland; he was Chancellor of the realm, and the most
influential as well as the wealthiest Scottish nobleman of his day. Inhere
was no force that could cope with him, apart from the royal authority,
unless it were the growing power of Argyll in the West Highlands. By the
marriage of Sir Adam Gordon of Aboyne, son of the second earl,- to the
heiress of Sutherland, that ancient earldom and its possessions fell to the
Gordons in 1515, and materially added to the influence of the head of the
house. The Gordon Earls of Sutherland retained their lordship of Aboyne and
other Aberdeenshire possessions, and throughout the century dutifully
supported their chief in all his undertakings.
The Gordon influence, and
even the history of Aberdeenshire, in the sixteenth and part of the
seventeenth century, turn to no small extent upon the order of things
represented by the bonds of manrent, friendship, and alliance that were
common all over Scotland, but nowhere so widely efficacious as in the
north-east. These engagements were lisliBbd by the central Government as
weakening its hands, and the law that was passed against the transference of
fealty of the king's tenants in burghs to neighbouring lords had much
support in the burghs themselves, as we have seen in the case of Aberdeen,
on the grounds that such transference violated the right of local
self-government, and that it threatened external interference and withdrew
citizens from local service and defence; but, as we have seen, these
objections were waived at times by Aberdeen in favour of the Earls of Huntly.
Among the landholders of Aberdeenshire bonds of manrent and maintenance may
be said to have been universal. There is still preserved in the muniment
room of Gordon Castle an immense collection of these and kindred documents
ranging from 1444 to 1670, about which latter date they were finally
prohibited by law. They are an evidence, and in some degree an explanation,
of the all but sovereign sway so long exercised by the heads of the family
of Gordon, and of the practical independence which successive Earls of
Huntly were able to assert for themselves. The less important house of
Erroll had similar covenants with its collateral branches, as also with the
Earls of Huntly and Rothes, and with Keiths, Irvines, Forbeses, Frasers,
Cheynes, Bannerman of Waterton, Buchan of Auchmacoy, Meldrum of Fyvie, Udny
of Udny, Mowat of Balquholly, and various of the gentry of the Carse of
Gowrie and other distant places. The Forbeses, Leslies, and other leading
families were similarly fortified. The result altogether was a network of
offensive and defensive alliances which had their natural and "frequent
outcome in feuds, forays, and civil war. At the Reformation the Earl of
Huntly was under a bond of manrent to the Bishop of Aberdeen, and the
opposition of Huntly to the Reformation carried with it a powerful body of
allies, vassals, and dependents.
When the succession fell to
the fourth earl the Gordon influence ceased during his minority to be felt
in the old way, but on taking up the management of his affairs he was backed
by all the strength and influence of the Gordon connection, and soon
developed no small degree of sagacity and practical statesmanship. After the
battle of Haddonrig, which he had won, he exhibited considerable diplomatic
skill as well as spirit in fencing with the demands of the Earl of Rutland,
the English commander on the marches. Desiring to maintain peace, he opposed
the fatal expedition which ended in the disaster of Solway Moss, where a
hundred Aberdeen men fought under the royal banner. In the troubled
interregnum that followed the death of James V. he was among the most active
of the Scottish statesmen who supported the queen - mother and Cardinal
Beaton in their struggle for power, which speedily became a conflict of
creeds. But Huntly's assiduous attention to State affairs did not interfere
with his efforts to strengthen his hereditary position. He was appointed
Lieutenant of the North at the end of March 1543, and in the course of the
next ten years he had not only succeeded in attaching to his interest most
of the barons in his province as well as the chiefs of clans, but had formed
alliances for mutual support with some of the most powerful southern nobles,
and among them the Earls of Crawford and Argyll. His policy aimed at keeping
all power in the north entirely in his own hands, and while giving support
to the queen and Beaton, he was not to press too heavily upon the Reforming
lords. Though the leader of the Catholic party, his attachment to the old
religion was tempered by caution, especially after the murder of the
cardinal.
Within two years after his
appointment to the northern lieutenancy Huntly was elected, in January
1544-45, to the provostship of Aberdeen, on the resignation of Thomas
Menzies of Pitfodels, who had held the office continuously for seven years,
and who after Huntly's occupancy of it was re-elected to the civic chair,
and held it again without interruption for the unparalleled term of
twenty-eight years (15471575). Huntly's election seems to have been
connected with the state of affairs created by the landing of an English
army at Leith. Menzies opposed the French alliance for the young queen
promoted by Huntly, and was suspected of favouring the designs of Henry
VIII. for a marriage between Mary and Prince Edward ; and there had been
some opposition to his re-election at the preceding Michaelmas. A probable
reason for Huntly's acceptance of the office, as well as for the action of
the citizens in electing him, may be found in the advantage for purposes of
defence against invasion that would arise from the consolidation of the
forces of town and country under his leadership. There was a party in the
town council, headed by "Master John Gordon," strongly attached to his
interest, and the increasing apprehension of danger seems to have given this
party complete ascendancy. Under these circumstances the earl acceded to the
call addressed to him in the name of the citizens, and in January 1545 he
was appointed their provost. His provostship, so far as can be gleaned from
the records, was not specially distinguished by notable events or incidents.
He was for the most part an absentee, with Menzies as his substitute at
first, but afterwards his relative Baillie John Gordon. The Scottish event
of his municipal reign was the battle of Pinkie. This was one of the
occasions on which the Earl of Huntly sent out the fiery cross to his
tenants and vassals, and probably also throughout the north. A force of 8000
men marched with him to Edinburgh, and shared in the disastrous defeat. The
Aberdeen contingent in this force took with it " the laird of Drum's
falcon," a piece of ordnance for the safe return of which to its owner the
town became responsible. The earl himself, who had challenged Somerset to
single combat, was taken prisoner as he fought in gilt and enamelled armour
at the head of his men. The Gordons suffered heavily in the last attack upon
the English, by which Huntly with the rearguard sought to retrieve the
fortunes of the battle, and among the slain, with several of the Gordon
lairds and their sons, were Johnston, younger of Caskieben ; a Leslie of the
Wardes family ; John Erskine, Master of Buchan ; and, besides others of less
note, Finlay Mohr, the stalwart chief of the newly established family of
Farquharson, who is traditionally said to have borne the royal standard.
About th.rty Aberdeen burghers, many of whose names suggest their connecti m
with the chief families of the town, likewise fell in the battle. Banff,
too, had sent a contingent, as it afterwards provided for the maintenance,
education, and dowry of the orphan daughter of John Ord, who fell in the
battle, by assigning her a share in the Deveron salmon-fishings.
Energetic preparations were
again made against an apprehended visit of the English fleet. The
magistrates applied to the queen and the governor (Arran) for letters
calling on the whole country to assist the town; but it does not appear that
any assistance was obtained, and Huntly, whose aid might have been counted
on, was still a prisoner in England.
When peace was concluded in
1550 the town gave its formal approval to the treaty and sent Gilbert
Menzies, the provost's son, to Edinburgh to affix the common seal to the
document. At a somewhat later date Menzies was sent again to Edinburgh, to
complain to the queen and the Lords of Secret Council of " the great
exorbitant taxations imposed on this poor town," and to obtain remission of
part of the burden. As indicated by the allocation of taxes for national
purposes, Dundee and Aberdeen were of about equal status as the second and
third in wealth of the Scottish burghs. The place of Glasgow was below
Montrose, though higher than Inverness, Elgin, and Banff.
Meanwhile the politic
character of Huntly had been finding sufficient occupation in negotiating
for his release and in fencing with the inducements held out to him to join
the English party. His presence was greatly needed both at Court and in his
own territory, where his affairs seem to have been chiefly managed by his
two relatives the Bishop of Aberdeen and the Earl of Sutherland. Huntly was
at length induced to sign an agreement pledging himself to promote the
interests of England, but, finding himself intercepted at Morpeth on his way
to Scotland, and distrusting Somerset's pledges, he contrived to make his
escape, and at the end of 1548 he was once more in Scotland. He was warmly
welcomed by the queen-regent, who conferred upon him the earldom of Moray,
then in the hands of the Crown, and whom he accompanied on her political
mission to France. After his return he headed an unsuccessful expedition to
the West Highlands for the repression of the Camerons and John of Moidart,
the head of the Clanranald. Huntly's force consisted of his immediate
vassals and a body of the Clanchattan —the latter ill-affected towards him
by reason of the recent execution of William Mackintosh, their chief, after
conviction by a jury at Aberdeen, on a charge of conspiring against his
life. In these circumstances Huntly found himself unable to pursue the
rebels into their fastnesses; but for his failure to do so he was imprisoned
in Edinburgh and denuded of the chancellorship, as also of his tenure of the
earldoms of Mar and Moray. From this time onward he resided chiefly on his
estates in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire until 1557, when he regained favour
at Court and was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom and invested
with almost unlimited powers.
The splendour of Huntly's
establishment was not only the marvel of his northern retainers, visitors,
and rivals, but was hardly less surprising to strangers familiar with the
Courts of England and France. " His house was fair and best furnished of any
house I have seen in this country," wrote Thomas Randolph, the English
ambassador, to Cecil, after a visit paid to Strathbogie; "his cheer is
marvellous great." Some years before Randolph's visit the earl had received
the queen-regent as his guest. The castle had lately been enlarged and
adorned in a magnificent style. After a few days of lavish entertainment the
queen-regent proposed to leave lest a prolongation of her stay should cause
inconvenience, but on Huntly's earnest solicitation she agreed to remain,
and at her request he showed her over the castle, including its cellars and
larders, which contained an mmense quantity of wildfowl and venison. Inquiry
as to the source of such supplies elicited the information that the earl's
hunters and fowlers were constantly at work in his forests and moors, and
that even from the most distant of these the produce of the chase was daily
forwarded to Strathbogie. The retinue of the earl's guest included D'Oysel,
a Frenchman, to whose evil counsels not a little of her unpopularity was
supposed to be due, and who on this occasion suggested that such a powerful
noble should not be tolerated in so small and poor a kingdom as Scotland,
and that the wings of the " Cock of the North," as he was called, should be
clipped before he became too arrogant.
The course of the Reformation
in the two counties was affected by local feuds and the jealousy of the
nobles towards the great ecclesiastics, who by their wealth and learning had
commended themselves to successive kings as the fittest men for the great
offices of State and for embassies to foreign Courts. Above all, the Church
lands and revenues were a temptation swaying the great territorial families
to the side of the Reformation. Scions of the Gordon family had been pressed
from time to time into the great positions in the Church, and on the eve of
the Reformation feus and leases of the Church lands were granted in large
numbers and on easy terms to the family connections of the Gordon interest.
After Huntly, by far the most influential peer in the north-east was the
Earl Marischal, whose castle of Dunnottar, with the greater part of his
Kincardineshire estates, lay in the territory dominated by the Lords of the
Congregation, but who by his marriage with the coheiress of his distant
relative, William Keith of Inverugie, had added greatly to his possessions
and power in Buchan, and had acquired an interest also in the old lands of
the Cheynes in Banffshire, Moray, and Caithness. Among his first recorded
acts after he came into power in Buchan was to get his brother, Robert
Keith, appointed commendator, or lay abbot, of Deer (1543); and on the death
of this abbot nine years afterwards, the earl's son, of the same name, a boy
of fifteen years of age, was made his successor in the commendatorship, and
from time to time granted feu-charters of the abbey lands and tacks of its
teind-sheaves, at easy rents, that would soon cease to be paid, to swell the
revenues of the earldom. The policy of Marischal came to full fruition when
the second Abbot Robert Keith resigned the whole lands, tithes, and other
property into the king's hands to be erected into a temporal lordship, to be
called the lordship of Altrie, in favour of himself for his lifetime and
after his death to George, Earl Marischal, the deed on the subject alleging
that most of the property was already let in feu-farm to the earl.
The younger coheiress of
Keith of Inverugie was the wife of William, Lord Forbes, and contributed to
the further enrichment of the head of a powerful connection which, in
addition to the older Forbes properties, now held most of the Vale of
Alford, and had offshoots dotted all over the county, as at Pitsligo,
Tolquhon, Echt, Cromar, Towie, and Monymusk. The precedent of Deer was
followed at the Priory of Monymusk, where a Forbes prior completed the
surrender to his family connection of all the landed possessions and
revenues under his control. So likewise a member of the Leslie family became
commendator of I indores, and the Lindores revenues in Aberdeenshire passed
. nto the hands of the Leslies. These great territorial families, all
implicated in the diversion of Church property and revenues, were
differently affected at different times towards the change of religion. In
general terms it may be said that they worked for the overthrow of the
Church, and when the change in religion took place their policy had for one
of its great objects to withhold the old ecclesiastical endowments from the
Protestant establishment. The fourth Earl Marischal's conduct was ambiguous
in every sense except that he clung tenaciously to as many of these
endowments as he could bring into his grasp. As a politician he had wavered
and temporised, but when the Estates met in August 1560 to adopt the
Protestant Confession as the established creed of Scotland he took the lead
in moving its adoption, declaring that he had long had some favour for " the
truth" and suspicion of " the papistical religion/' but now was fully
resolved to approve the one and condemn the other. Eighteen months
afterwards the leader of the Protestant party, Lord James Stewart, became
his son-in-law. Marischal now identified himself with the Court party as
against the more extreme Lords of the Congregation and ministers of the
Kirk, and when, after Mary's abdication, there was a fresh division of
parties, with the adherents of the king on one side and those of the queen
on the other, he withdrew from active life, and was seldom seen outside the
Castle of Dunnottar.
As Huntly was the head of the
Catholic party, his rivals, the Forbeses, naturally drew to the other side,
and some of the chiefs of the Forbes clan were already avowed Protestants,
while the Keiths and the Irvines were likewise showing an inclination
towards the Reforming party. One of the first signs of religious revolution
in Aberdeenshire was the burning of the church of Echt about 1558, and the
monitions against the perpetrators that were sent to Auchindoir and Kearn,
among other places, suggest that the Forbeses were believed to be concerned
in the outrage.
The clergy began at last to
be thoroughly alarmed. They were well aware how much the evil lives of their
own order had to do with the peril that portended the overthrow of the
Church. A document has been preserved which brings before us with remarkable
vividness the state of religion in the diocese of Aberdeen, and especially
at its headquarters. In view of the crisis that had arisen, as evidenced by
the influential adhesion to the Bond of 1557, or First Covenant, by which
the Lords of the Congregation, as they henceforth called themselves,
renounced the authority of the Church of Rome, and the ominous agitation
that had followed the burning of "Walter Mill at St Andrews for heresy,
Bishop Gordon asked the dean and chapter for their advice in regard to the
Reformation and the suppression of heresy. The response to this request was
given in a memorial in which the bishop was recommended to cause the clergy
of his diocese to reform themselves as regards their scandalous manner of
living and put away their " open concubines," under the penalties imposed by
the provincial synods, the members of the chapter being themselves exhorted
to do likewise "in all sharpest manner." The second recommendation was that
the non - resident abbots and priors, who absorbed so much of the
ecclesiastical revenues, should be requested to provide for at least one
sermon to be preached in every parish church between the date of the
memorial and Fastern's Even and another before Easter, and so on according
to the regulations of the Church, and in the event of non - compliance that
the bishop should himself provide preachers and set the law in motion
against the defaulters; and that all who were absent from their own parish
churches, especially from the sacrifice of the mass, should be cited before
the ecclesiastical judges. Other recommendations were that the Earl of
Huntly, as bailie of the diocese, or a "principal landed man of his km," as
also the feuars of the Church lands, should attend before the bishop on
appointed days to give assistance in defending and maintaining the Catholic
faith, and that special admonition should be given in the churches of New
Aberdeen, Banchory-Ternan, Echt, Kinnernie, Midmar, Auchindoir, and Kearn,
to all who were concerned in or knew about the burning of the church of Echt,
or the casting down of images in any church within the diocese, calling upon
them to reveal what they knew to the bishop or his commissaries. Lastly, in
order that the advice given might have the better effect, the bishop himself
was entreated to show a good example, especially by removing from his
company the gentlewoman through whom he caused great scandal, and by
shunning the company of those suspected of heresy and choosing associates
befitting his position.1The memorial is signed by
the dean (Erskine), treasurer, sub-chanter, several canons, and two
well-known men—John Leslie, or Lesley, afterwards Bishop of Ross, and
Alexander Anderson, Sub-Principal of King's College.
Such was the advice offered
in this remarkable memorial, which closed with the expression of a belief
that were the advice acted upon all would yet come well. Bad as was the
conduct of Bishop Gordon, however, it would probably be unjust to the
diocese of Aberdeen to suppose that its condition was worse than that of the
other dioceses of Scotland. In the ' Ecclesiae Scoticanae Statuta,' the
publication of which, with its exhaustive and luminous Preface, was Dr
Joseph Robertson's last and most important service to Scottish history, it
is seen that all through the three centuries of Scottish ecclesiastical
legislation the vices of the clergy stand confessed, deplored, and condemned
in the provincial and synodal canons. So it was also, however, throughout
Western Christendom. The Councils sought in vain to recall the clergy to a
sense of their duty; in vain were the satires written of Lyndsay and
Buchanan as of Chaucer, Rabelais, and Erasmus. James V., with no liking for
the Lutheran doctrines, had with great plainness of speech exhorted the
bishops and clergy of Scotland to reform their lives under a threat that if
his warning were neglected he would deal with them after the fashion of his
uncle in England, and had in his last Parliament declared that the
misconduct of the clergy was the reason why the Church and churchmen were
derided and despised. Therefore although the diocese of Aberdeen was
deplorably unfortunate in its last pre-Reformation bishop, the authentic
records of the time involve too many of his brethren, from Cardinal Beaton
downward, in the same condemnation. Only a few years before, indeed, there
had been in Aberdeen the flagrant scandal of the outrageously immoral life
of John Elphinstone, rector of Invernochty, culminating in murder and in a
violent assault on a clergyman engaged in the performance of service in the
cathedral. The Church had found itself impotent to deal with evils that made
it a reproach among men. Its clergy were corrupt and ignorant, and its
overgrown endowments, amounting in Scotland to probably half the wealth of
the country, had led to the appointment of unfit men to the greater
benefices. The foisting by the Earl of Huntly of a member of the Gordon
family into the episcopal office on the death of Elphinstone, and the
unhappy appointment, in the next generation, of the uncle of the earl then
in possession, are examples of a prevailing practice which was to have its
full fruit, on in the spoliation of the Church through lay incumbents
connected with noble and landed families. |
