Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

INTRODUCTION
39
Master Thomas spent most of the 1580s in Forres. He is first named
in the burgh records on 1 April 1585, but was then no stranger to the
Moray town, into which he was fully accepted.152 By his own account,
he was an active and acquisitive landholder, a dispute over ‘field land’
featuring prominently in the evidence for his time in Forres.153 In
another case he showed some legal knowledge.154 As his exile
lengthened he began to put down family roots in Moray. On 4 April
1587 he resigned three roods of burgh land in favour of his elder son
Walter, who was admitted a burgess in the same year.155 Although
there is evidence that he began to visit Ross again towards the end of the
decade, he did not abandon Forres immediately.156
On 20 November 1590, now over sixty years old, and acknow¬
ledging ‘weaknes debilitie and infirmitie’, Master Thomas resigned his
parsonage of Alness to Mr Robert Ross, minister of the parish.157 It
may have been a blow when the Privy Council ordered him to
surrender the bells of Fearn for the use of the presbytery,158 but the
family succession was his chief concern. Walter, for whom he arranged
a respectable marriage, and to whom he made over the place of Fearn
and his lands in Tain, was his intended successor. To protect him, his
father called on old loyalties. George Ross, now firmly in control of
Balnagown, had a debt of3,000 merks written off in return for a grant
152 MRO B/2/1, 9, witness to a deed in favour of Robert Tulloch of Tannachy (247). His
mother-in-law was Robert Tulloch’s aunt, and his own brother-in-law Walter Kinnaird of Culbin
(288) was a substantial local landholder. He was ‘sut rollit’ on 24 Jan. 1586 on a sasine of 2 Aug. 1584
(MRO B/2/1, 12-13), and was a member of the burgh council between 1585 and 1589 (MRO B/2/1,
11, 48, 128, 199, 255).
153 See Cronicle, 21. On 14 Sept. 1586 the provost and bailies arrested corn grown on two riggs of new
land that he had ‘revin out’ of the ‘muirsched’. Despite claiming a seven-year tack, he was ordered to
remove on 8Jan. 1588, but persuaded the council to leave him in occupation for the remainder of his
tack (MRO B/2/1, 44, 68, 69, 84, 97, 134, 143-4, 145, 153, 154).
154 He acted as procurator for his kinsman Alexander Ross Williamson of Invercharron (276) in an
action for a debt of two merks, which brought a counterclaim including the slaughter of a goose by
Thomas’s children or servants. There was a solemn reference to arbiters, Thomas protesting for
‘remeid of law conforme to ... ye act contenit in the bowik calit Leges magistatem’ if the case was
taken to another court (MRO B/2/1, 266-8, 6 April 1590).
155 MRO A52/1/1, 30; MRO B2/2/1, 93, 24 April. Walter acted as his father’s procurator in court, 26
July 1591 (MRO B/2/1, 339).
156 GD129/1/1,10 Dec. 1587, Tain; GD305/1/136/8, 20 Nov. 1590, Tain; but a grant to his son Walter
of the monastery buildings, 28 April 1587 (RMS, v, 2262), was given at Forres, not Fearn (cf.
GD129/1/17/56, surrender of same lands by Donald Ross of Meikle Rhynie; CS15/Box 81, 1601,
claim by Walter Ross’s procurator that original, given at Forres, had been destroyed by mice or rats).
Master Thomas appeared personally in the burgh court on 6 and 7 April 1590 (MRO B/2/1, 286, 288),
and the vivid language of200 and 201 suggests that he returned from his November 1590 visit to Tain
within a few days. Unexpectedly, he apparently subscribed a charter to Alexander Clunes, reader at
Nigg, at Edinburgh on 4 Feb. 1592 (GD129/1/17/55).
157 GD129/1/136/8, 20 Nov. 1590.
158 RPC, iv, 628, 28 May 1591.