Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

38
CALENDAR OF FEARN
kinsman doing business with him. After 1580 there is no firm evidence
for Master Thomas’s presence in Ross for almost seven years. In March
1581 he was in Edinburgh, complaining to the Privy Council that
Alexander Ross was preventing the tenants of Fearn from occupying
‘thair owne rowmes, far less to pay. . .my maill or dewtie’.145 The
Cronicle, in a passage of strikingly autobiographical tone, elaborated on
what had happened.146 Record evidence supports its story. Fearn
charters given at this time were written at Elgin, and were in favour of
young George Ross, Alexander’s son. In October 1582, after George had
redeemed Balnagown from Scrymgeour, the commendator gave him
new charters of the feu-lands held from the abbey and the office of
hereditary bailie.147 From a safe distance, he tried to preserve his family’s
position in Ross. George Murison, his servant, formally interrupted the
building of a ‘larach’ on his lands in Tain.148 An old acquaintance,
Alexander Fearn of Pitcalzean (218), came to Forres in June 1587,
bringing with him Alexander, son of Adam Hay in Plaids, who bound
himself to become Master Thomas’s teind-collector in Tain, for which
he received a sub-tack of one oxgang of teinds in the burgh.149
Teind-collection had its problems, but was a way of making money, and
Alexander Hay (326) was eventually to become provost of Tain. Master
Thomas was certainly careful to retain titles. When his son Walter’s
seven-year grant of the chaplainry of Morangie neared expiry, he secured
another for his second son William.150 Walter, still not much over twelve
years old, had already been promoted. In 1584 his father had resigned to
him the commend ofFearn and the provostry ofTain, carefully reserving
his own liferent and a right of regress on Walter’s death; a royal
confirmation struck out these reservations, on the grounds that Thomas
was not a minister serving a church.151 As it turned out, however, Walter
Ross was to outlive his father by almost sixty years.
145 RPC, iii, 361-2.
146 ‘The said Mr Thomas Ross for the most part of ten years, being boasted be Alexander Ross of
Balnagown, was out of Ross, and dwelt in Murray, in the town of Forres, where he conquest lands to
build on both the sides of the road, and some field land, and made great expenses in Murray in
householding, which he rather to have made in Ross among his own friends if they had suffered him to
remain among them, and payed him his own liveing; albeit none held his liveing from him, but the
surname of Ross. . . .and such reward as the said Mr Thomas Ross got from the said laird, it is known,
viz., evil goods for guid, he held and holds ane part of his liveing from him, and put him out of his
father’s Roume called Culnaha and Annat, he rests to him of his liveing ofFearn a great sum of money,
viz., four thousand pounds Scots’ (Cronicle, 21-3).
147 GD297/227/11-13; see 266.
148 NP1/40, 15r, 19 July 1582.
149 MRO A52/1/1, 43, 24 June 1587.
150 PS1/53, 162v, 15 April 1586.
151 RSS, viii, 1878, 26 Feb. 1584.