Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

28
CALENDAR OF FEARN
and neighbours’ of Tain, headed by sir Andrew Fergusson, provost.65
MacCulloch presumably was able to identify where real authority lay,
and it is therefore significant that sir Andrew Fergusson (21) was
vicar-pensioner of Tain. However, chaplainries and their kirklands
were the real prizes. Andrew Fergusson was presented in expectation to
the chaplainry of Morangie, but his predecessor sir Simon Blyth was
still alive to feu the Morangie kirklands to Nicholas Ross in 1560, and
no Fergusson dynasty emerged.66
James IV’s frequent visits to Tain, and the special nature of his
devotion to St Duthac, kept the little group of local clergy in contact
with current liturgical developments, as shown by the mass-set and
prayers added to the Calendar. Things were, however, never the same
again after 1513. Only one visit by James V is unquestionable,67 and
royal generosity did not go beyond a new portable relic of the saint, set
in silver.68 The resident chaplains were left much to their own devices,
able to concentrate on their endowments and their families, but
increasingly on the defensive against both the bailie of the immunity
and the community of the burgh.
THE MONASTERY OF FEARN
The early history of the Premonstratensian house of Fearn is known
mainly from the Cronicle,69 which recounts: establishment at Mid Fearn
in Edderton parish by canons from Whithorn, under the protection of
an earl of Ross; a subsequent removal, after the death of the first abbot,
to ‘New Fearn’ in Tarbat parish; and a major rebuilding c.1338, with
the support of William, fifth earl, and Bishop Roger (1325-50).
Although an early Premonstratensian record grouped it with Scandi¬
navian houses, there is no evidence of any Nordic connection.70 The
Cronicle's chronology, however, is confused, attributing the founda¬
tion to Ferquhar, first earl (d. 1251), but placing it after the coronation
65 SC29/1/1, 10v-15v (GD96/28, extract of decreet).
66 RSS, iii, 2469, 30 Sept. 1547. See 143.
67 TA, vi, 211, 28 March 1534, payment to Ross Herald to take letters to Scots ambassadors in London
and to bring their answers to the king at St Duthac.
68 TA, vi, 248, Aug. 1535.
69 Cronicle, 1-10, 17-23. See also MRHS, 101-02.
70 See N. Backmund, Monaslicon Premomtratense (Windberg, 1949-56), iii, 391, 414, 447; T. Nyberg,
‘Die skandinavische Kirkarie der Pramonstratenserchorrherren’, in Secundum regulam vivere. Festschrift
fiir P. Norhert Backmund (Windberg, 1978), 267-79. I am indebted to Professor Tore Nyberg for
drawing my attention to this evidence, and for discussion of the origins of Fearn.