Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 6

ST ANDREWS
The Hungus or Angus, son of Fergus, referred to, seems
to be the Angus who ruled over the Piets from 731 to
761, and the adoption of St Andrew as the national
saint must lie somewhere between those dates. It must
have been subsequent to 731, for when Bede finished
his Ecclesiastical History, in that year the national saint
was St Peter, to whom Nectan had dedicated the land
of the Picts in 710, and it must have been prior to 747,
for in that year Ticjhernac records the death of Tuath-
alan, abbot of Kilrymont. Under the date of 736 the
same annalist records that Angus devastated Dalriada,
so that the latter year is probably that of the foundation
of the see and of the mediaeval prosperity and importance
of the town. The dedication to St Andrew and the
great veneration in which he was thereafter held seems
to have been borrowed from the Saxons of Northumbria,
where Wilfred, Bishop of York, who was the leader
of the Roman party in the Northumbrian Church, had
erected a church dedicated to this saint, at Hexham, in
674 ; and there is a vague tradition that Acca, Bishop
of Hexham, who was driven from his Northumbrian
bishopric in 732, founded a see among the Picts.
Whether St Regulus or St Rule is to be connected with
the earlier or later portion of the legend is doubtful, and
in all probability there is a confusion of two different
persons, viz., St Regulus the first Bishop of Senlis in
Gaul, and St Riaguil of Muicinsi in Ireland ; for while
the ordinary day assigned in Scotland for the com-
memoration of St Rule is the 17th October, the day of
the Irish saint is the 16th, and the Aberdeen Breviary
has a St Rule commemorated on the 30th March. It
is also highly probable that the mystification may be
intentional so as to take in an older church dedicated
to the Irish St Rule who was a contemporary of St
Columba, and erected in the end of the 6th century
during the mission to St Cainich — one of the com-
panions of St Columba — who is said to have had a
church at Eilrymont, although it is possible that the
word in the particular passage where this is mentioned
may refer rather to the district generally than to the
position of the modern town.
In those early days of St Andrews the primacy was
at Abernethy, but it must have been removed to St
Andrews during the next century and a half, whether
by Kenneth II. or Grig cannot now be settled, for in
908 Bishop Cellach of St Andrews appears as the lead-
ing churchman in the great council held by King Con-
stantine at the Mote Hill of Scone. Cellach was the
first bishop, and he was succeeded by ten Culdee bishops,
the last being the second Fothad or Modath, who per-
formed the ecclesiastical rites at the marriage of Malcolm
Ceannmor and Margaret. The next three bishops all
died before consecration, and for about 16 years after
the death of Malcolm the bishopric appears to have been
vacant. The thirteenth bishop was Turgot, Queen Mar-
garet's confessor, who ruled fisom 1109 to 1115 — the first
bishop not of native birth — during whose episcopate the
Culdee influence began to decline. At some period prior
to 1107 the Culdee community had split up into two
sections, each of which carried with it a portion of the
spiritualities and temporalities which we may reason-
ably conceive had been originally combined. On the
one side were a prior and twelve brethren representing the
old foundation, and as clerical vicars performing divine
service, and holding part of the estates as well as receiv-
ing the minor dues ; the other party consisted of the
bishop and the representatives of the abbot and other
greater officers, secularised, yet enjoying another por-
tion of the estates and the greater ecclesiastical dues.
The appropriation of church revenues by secular officials
began early in the 12th century to be regarded as a
scandal, and a further blow was dealt at the practice in
the time of the seventeenth bishop, Robert (1121-59),
by the establishment in 1144 of a body of canons
regular, to whom was granted the hospital as well as
a large amount of other ecclesiastical property, and thus
' there were now two rival ecclesiastical bodies in exist-
ence at St Andrews — one, the old corporation of secular
priests, who were completely thrown into the shade,
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ST ANDREWS
and shorn of many of their privileges and possessions ;
and the other, that of the regular canons, who virtually
represented the secularised portion of the old institu-
tion, and entered on the enjoyment of their estates.
But this rivalry or co-existence was very distasteful to
the chief authorities, both lay and ecclesiastical, as soon
became manifest. ' Immediately upon the foundation of
St Andrews, King David, as he did also in the case
of Lochleven, made an ordinance that the prior and
canons should receive into incorporation with them
the Keledei of Kilriniont, who were to become canons
provided they would conform to canonical rule. If
they refused they were to be merely liferented in their
possessions, and as they died out regular canons were
to be appointed in their room. The influence of
the Culdees was, however, strong, for, notwithstanding
this edict, Malcolm IV. confirmed them in their posses-
sions in 1160, and though every pope from 1147 to 1248
issued an injunction that from the time of his edict
vacant places should be filled by regular canons, it
seems never to have been possible to enforce the order.
In 1199 they had a quarrel with the regular prior, and
compromised matters by giving up their rights as to
dues, while they were allowed to hold the tithes of then-
own lands. They clung to their prescriptive right to
take part in the election of a bishop, down to 1273, when
they were excluded under protest, and in 1332 they
were absolutely excluded, and seem to have abandoned
their claim. They, however, retained possession of
their lands in the Cursus Apri, and although the name
of Culdee does not appear after the early part of the
14th century, the institution remained under the names
of ' Praepositura ecclesise beata; Marise civitatis Sancti
Andreaa,' the 'ecclesia beata? Marise de Rupe,' and 'the
Provostry of Kirkheugh ' till the Reformation, when
the provostry became vested in the Crown, and in 1616
it was annexed to the see of St Andrews (see Dr Reeves'
Culdees). What was the size of the bishopric as origin-
ally established is not known, but in the time of Mal-
colm IV. it embraced the counties of Fife, Kinross, and
Clackmannan, the three Lothians, Berwickshire, Rox-
burghshire, and parts of Perthshire, Forfarshire, and
Kincardineshire, and though it was afterwards lessened
by the erection of new sees, the extent and importance
of St Andrews always remained very great, and at the
Reformation the archbishop held the patronage of 131
beneficies, and administered the affairs of 245 parishes,
the diocese being divided into 2 archdeaconries and 9
rural deaneries. The benefactions of some of the
bishops are subsequently noticed. The last bishop was
James Kennedy (1440-66) — the thirty-sixth from Cel-
lach — his successor, Patrick Graham (1466-78), having
obtained from Pope Sixtus IV. a bull erecting the see
into an archbishopric. The document is lost, and the
exact date is not known, but it seems to have been
issued in 1471 or 1472. The bishop of York had origin-
ally the supervision of the portion of the kingdom of
Northumbria, along the S side of the Firth of Forth,
and, after the introduction of the line of bishops of
English birth beginning with Turgot, he repeatedly
claimed the bishop of St Andrews as his suffragan,
and though the claim was always indignantly set
aside by the Scottish authorities, it was revived from
time to time down to this period, when St Andrews be-
came the metropolitan see of Scotland, the suffragans
being the bishops of Dunkeld, Dunblane, Brechin, Aber-
deen, Moray, Ross, Caithness, and Orkney. Poor
Graham did not, however, long enjoy his new dignity,
for the jealousies and quarrels in which his elevation
involved him seem to have driven him mad, and after a
formal trial in 1477 he was early in 1478 deposed by a
bull of Pope Sixtus IV. and imprisoned first at Inch-
colm and afterwards in the priory at Lochleven. In-
cluding Graham there were eight Roman Catholic
archbishops — the most famous being James Beaton ( 1 522-
39) and his nephew Cardinal Beaton (1539-46), and the
last John Hamilton who was executed on a charge
of treason in 1571. The bishops and archbishops were
lords of regality and ultimate heirs of all confiscated