Bannatyne Club > Origines parochiales Scotiae > Volume 1

SKIRLING.] PAROCHIALES. 183
bishop, by a mandate dated at Mothil, on the Friday next before the feast of Saint Margaret the
Virgin (13. July), ordered the rural dean of Peebles and Lanark, to summon Lyndsay and Salsar
to appear before him in the parisii church of Stirling, on the Monday next after the feast of
Saint Luke the Evangelist (IS. October), there to answer to the matters preferred against them.
In obedience to the bishop's mandate, Yvan, the rural dean of Peebles and Lanark, repaired to
Eddleston, where Salsar was holding an archidiaconal chapter of the clergy, and there cited him
and Lindsay to appear at Stirling on the day appointed. This he did on the morrow of Saint Mary
Magdalene (23. .July) ; and on the vigil of Saint James (24. July), he made Lynd.say be cited a
second time ' at his own church at Scravelyn.'i It does not appear to be certain whether Scravelyn
was styled Lyndsay 's church in respect of his holding the benefice, or only because he chanced
to have his abode within the parish at the time. Nor is the issue of the proceedings recorded.
The benefice was a free parsonage in the gift uf the lord of the manor, which, until after the Wars
of the Succession, seems to have belonged to the Lyndesays. In the year 1335, King Edward III.,
in right of the lordship of the southern counties of Scotland, conceded to him by King Edward
Balliol, confirmed a charter by William of Coucy to his son William, of the manor of Scravelyn
in the shire of Peebles, with the advowson of the church, and many other lands, which the granter
had inherited from his mother, Christian of Lyndesay,- the heiress of a large portion of the
domains of the great house of Lyndesay.^
' Hugh, the chaplain of Scravillyn,' affixes his seal to a charter by John the lord of Dunsyer, the
son of Adam of Dunsyer, at Glasgow, on the Tuesday next before the feast of Saint Dunstan the
bishop, in the year 1299.* He may have been either the parson's curate, or the priest of a chantry
which was founded within the parish church, and was in the advowson of the lord of the manor.
In the year 1551-2, James Cokburne was served heir of his brother Sir William Cokburne
of Skirling knight, in the lands and barony of Skirling, with the patronage of the church of
Skirling, and of the chaplainry of the same.^
The church stood beside the castle, village, and mill, on the banks of the Skirling burn, which
springs from the Lady Well.*' There are ruins of a building, of unknown use, on the farm of
Kirklaw or Kirklandhill, in the south-west part of the parish.'
The rectory with the vicarage is rated in Baiamund, at £66, 1.3s. 4d;* in the Taxatio Ecclesiae
Scoticanae sec. xvi., at £5G, 13s. 4d;9 and in the Libellus Taxationum Eegni Scotiae, at
£16, 13s. 4d. They were reported at the Reformation, in the year 1561, to be let on lease for
the small sum of £l0.i"
The manor was of the old extent of £40.'' The Lyndesays, it has been seen, were its lords in
the thirteenth century. King Robert I. granted to William of Twedy certain tenements in
Scraveling which Gilbert Lindsay had forfeited.'^ These seem to have held of the lord of the
' Regist. Glasg., pp. ISO, I9l. ' New Stat. Acct. » Regist. Glasg., p. Ixiv.
- Rotuli Scotiae, vol. i., p. 352. » Regist. Glasg., p. l.xxiii.
^ Lord Lindsay ^s Lives of the Lindsays, ad mii. "* Book of Assumptions.
* Regist. Glasg., p. 215. " Extent of the shire of Peebles.
* Retour, no. 8. '* Robertson's Index, p. 27, no. 10, where ' Striveling ' is
"i Pennecuik's Descript. of Tweeddale, p. 262. erroneously printed for ' Scraveling.' Cf. p. 29, liji. nil.