Strathendrick, and its inhabitants from early times

CHAPTER II.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF BALFRON.
Balfron at a very early date, and before the introduction of Christianity, was
a place where religious rites were celebrated, for Ibert, not far from the church,
means in Gaelic sacrifice. In after times the Templars had lands which, on the
suppression of the Order, came into the hands of the Knights Hospitallers. These
are the lands now called Spittal, or more properly, the Hospital Lands of Camo-
quhill. Mollenaclerich, The Clergy Mill, a place near Ibert, also tells of an eccles-
iastical establishment, but whether this mill belonged to the Templars or
Hospitallers, or to the rector, during the time Balfron had one, or to the monks
of the Abbey of Inchaffray when the parish teinds belonged to them, there are
now no means of determining.
The Parish of Balfron was apparently a free rectory till 1305, when we are
told that Thomas Drummond, third son of Sir Malcolm Drummond of Drum-
mond, gave its patronage and tithes or teinds to the Abbey of Inchaffray, a
gift which was ratified by Pope Clement the Fifth. 1 Be this as it may, for
there is no record of the date or giver of the gift in the Register of the Abbey,
there is no doubt that it was one of the churches belonging to the Abbey of
the Island of Masses ; 2 and after it became such the abbot probably provided
a vicar for its spiritual oversight, who had no doubt a trifling stipend as the
custom was, and a glebe. An old name in the parish, " The Vicar's Bogend,"
does not convey the idea that the poor churchman had a fruitful soil to cultivate.
The names or doings of the rectors and vicars of Balfron, so far as we can trace,
have been nowhere recorded. The Abbey of Inchaffray, or, in Latin, Insula
Missarum, The Island of Masses, belonged to the Order of Augustinian Canons
1 The Genealogy of the House of Drummond, p. 38.
2 " The Kirk of Balfrone quhilk is ane of the proper kirkis 01 the said abbacie." — Liber
Insule Missarum, p. 136.