Bannatyne Club > Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, e pluribus codicibus consarcinatum approximately A.D. MCCCC [i.e. 1400]

THE PREFACE.
The more ancient Register of the Bishoprick of Moray a is a parchment volume of
169 leaves, written at very different times ; the earliest portions being in a hand of
the thirteenth century, while the latter part engrosses deeds down to 1569. Several
of the early parts have originally formed separate records, and were undoubtedly
eollected, nearly in their present order and form, about the end of the fourteenth
century, a few years after the Cathedral, ancl in it most of the original writs and
muniments of the diocese, had been hurned in an inroad of Alexander Steward,
Earl of Buchan and Lord of Badenoch, now better known by the title of the
Wolf of Badenoch. This collection appears to have been made in pursuance of
a Papal commission b issued in 1394, wliich, after narrating, on the information
of the Bishop, the destruction of the Cathedral, and of the books, charters, and other
muniments " necessary for proving the rights of the Church itself, of the mensal
" churches of the Bishop, of the Dean and Chapter, of the Priories of Urquhart
" and Pluscardin, of the Maison Dieu of Elgin, and of the Hospital of the Bridge
" of Spey," enjoins Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen, to examine such witnesses, books,
rolls, quires (quatemos), writs, and other adminicles, as the Bishop and Dean and
Chapter of Moray shall produce, and to record the evidences so collected. Pro-
bably under that authority, certainly about that periocl, the first part of this volume
a Advoc. Lib. A. 1. 40^ b N. 461.
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