Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

26
CALENDAR OF FEARN
St Duthac and his relics.48 The liturgical resources at the saint’s church
were important to him, though he showed no great generosity in
providing for them. He maintained the £10 pension, and in addition,
from 1503-04 at latest, assigned the revenues of ‘Newynmekill’
(Nonakiln, Roskeen par.) to a chaplain ‘celebrating in the parish kirk of
Tain’.49 The distinction between the chaplain in the parish kirk and the
holder of the £10 pension, who celebrated in St Duthac, appears
deliberate, though in physical terms it may have been only between the
choir and nave of the same building. Both pensions are continued in the
Exchequer Rolls until 1538-9, but without recipients’ names being
given.50 In a late transcript of a royal mandate to pay the pension to
Fearn, dated 5 September 1540, it is said to have been founded byjames
IV and paid for the last thirty-eight years.51 No holder’s name is known
for the Nonakiln pension, which had no formal connection with a
prebend.
Reid’s career is of some interest. He was the king’s singing priest,52
and an accumulator of prebends, holding at various times Cambuscur-
rie, Newmore, and the sacristanry of St Duthac.53 Like Provost Spynie,
he was a notary, drawing up or witnessing documents between 17
November 1494 and 21 October 1517.54 He was alive on 21 October
1517, when he witnessed the findings of an inquest at Tain, but dead by
17 February 1518, when Mr Andrew Sinclair was presented to
Newmore.55
The endowed chaplainries of St Duthac may well have been more
desirable than the provostry itself. Apart from the Newmore pension,
which does not appear to have stayed attached to the office, and the
escheats of court of the burgh of Tain, which inevitably led to tension
with the inhabitants and the hereditary bailies of the immunity, the
provost received, by the gift of Mr Thomas Ross, subdean of Ross, the
revenues of the vicarage-perpetual of Tain, with the teinds ofTarlogie,
48 See TA, i-iv, passim.
49 ER, xii, 240; xiii, 597, rental of Countess Elizabeth’s lands, 1507, ‘Neumekill with prest of Tayne’.
50 ER, xvii, 232.
51 NLS Adv.29.4.2 (xi) (Hutton Collection), 237.
52 ER, xii, 238, 304, 450; xiii, 44, 144, 345, 450, 510; xiv, 85, 142, 303, 381.
53 RSS, i, 1316, 2600, 2599, 2961, 1576. He may also have been vicar of Kiltearn (GD297/201/5) and
rector of Uig (RSS, i, 2400).
54 GD125/Box 2, Nairn, 17 Nov. 1494, witness; GD96/8, Tain, 13 June 1495, witness; Munro Writs,
no. 26, ?Tain, 22 Nov. 1496, notary; Fraser, Cromartie, ii, no. 545, shore of Kyle of Oykel, 27 Feb.
1500, notary; GD305/1/123/521, Meikle Tarrel, 25 Oct. 1505, notary; Munro Writs, no. 39, Kiltearn,
18 Dec. 1508, notary; GD305/1/79/13, Chanonry, 25July 1512, notary; GD305/1/74/86, Tain, 9 Oct.
1515, witness; GD297/201/5, Tain, 22 Oct. 1517, witness. He is to be distinguished from another sir
Donald Reid, notary, whose notarial sign is clearly different (GD305/1/10/2, 14 July 1520).
55 GD297/201/5; RSS, i, 2961.