Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

CALENDAR OF FEARN
Shortly before his death, Ian became a member of the Royal
Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Among his Roman contacts
were the Irish scholars, including the historian of medieval philosophy,
Michael Haren, and others taking forward the work of editing materials
for these isles contained in the papal registers, from the point where the
English editors broke off. The outcome was his appointment in 1971 to
the Advisory Committee on Papal Records to the Irish Manuscripts
Commission. His last Roman visit was in 1987, with the newly
available Penitentiary records still beckoning to inquirers. Abroad, the
value of his work was recognised by invitations to lecture at the
summer schools in Old Dominion University at Norfolk, Virginia,
and in Canada as visiting professor at Guelph, Ontario, where he
recalled many happy hours spent with the faculty there. In March,
1990, he was conference speaker at San Antonio, Texas. A few months
later in June and July, 1990, he delivered the Thomas Burns Memorial
Lectures in the University of Otago, New Zealand, on ‘Aspects of the
Scottish Reformation’, when he was able to establish contacts in
Australia as well. These six lectures touched on the pre-Reformation
need for reform and closed with thoughts on how far the Reformers had
advanced in achieving their godly ‘Commonwealth’.
Ian’s final illness came to us as a thunberbolt out of a clear summer’s
sky. About his own family, Ian was always very discreet. They
appeared as dedicatees in his books and they patently returned his
devotion. In July of the year of his first graduation he had married Anna
Little Telford, who survives him. Many hearts were touched when,
shortly before his death, the Scottish History Society decided to make
him a presentation in recognition of a whole quarter of a century of
service, a presentation to which his younger daughter, Ingrid, as her
father’s proxy, responded with a finely crafted speech. His friends and
colleagues gathered at his memorial service in Glasgow University
chapel on 18 January, 1991, to hear the Historiographer Royal’s
graceful panegyric and to support his grieving family as all honoured
his memory. The hymns sung on that occasion reminded all present of
the integrity and courage of the ‘bonnie fechter’ for our native history
that Ian Cowan had always been.