Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

INTRODUCTION
41
with Bishop Sinclair. It is likely, given the range of his information,
that he had the Gaelic. Walter Macfarlane would certainly have found
him a rewarding source of information. He was in some degree aware
of the origins and history of his monastery, and had some feeling for its
buildings and furnishings. Some moral attitudes, and concepts of‘name
and arms’, can be detected underneath the formidable accumulation of
genealogical details in the Blackie MS. No real clue emerges, however,
as to the nature or the strength of his religious convictions. The
Reformation may have posed him major questions of belief, but if so his
writings do not reflect it. His hand detached the Calendar from its short
connection with the house of Fearn and turned it into a record of the
deaths of family and friends. Family and land were, it seems, his real
concerns.
Master Thomas Ross’s settlement
When Thomas Ross died his elder son Walter already held the place of
Fearn and the kirklands of the chaplainry of Morangie. His Tain lands
went in liferent to his widow. Delay in the settlement of his estate led to
his younger children having themselves named executors on 31 January
1598.165 One reason for the delay was the failure of Walter’s
father-in-law Hugh Ross of Tollie to pay his daughter’s tocher.166 Her
death and the sale of Walter’s Fearn lands altered the situation, and the
family sought arbitration - interestingly, in Forres rather than Tain.167
Asked to rule on claims by William Ross against his mother and elder
brother for his ‘bairns pairt’ of the dead man’s goods and gear, five
Moray arbiters discharged his mother from the claim, but required her
to resign a tenement in Tain to him. No mention is made of any
payment by Walter Ross to his younger brother. Barbara Ross’s
husband, Andrew Morison, who demanded his wife’s tocher of £1,000
and a further £974 allegedly owed to him by Master Thomas (though
not shown in the latter’s inventory), was awarded £300 from his
brother-in-law and 300 merks from his mother-in-law.168
165 See 42. Three days later Barbara Ross’s husband Andrew Morison had a feu-charter of the ruined
manse of the chaplainry of Morangie in Tain (RMS, vi, 651); he was called ‘indweller in Tain’, lOJan.
1605 (RD1/107, 59r-59v).
166 see 42 The marriage contract was registered on 29 Dec. 1601 (RD1/84, 154v-156v), and on the
following 27 Jan. Hugh of Tollie and his son Hugh borrowed 1,140 merks from Thomas Ross,
merchant burgess of Edinburgh (RD1/86, 267r-v).
167 MRO B2/2, 474-477, 9 May 1603, decreet by five judges-arbitral, including Walter Kinnaird of
Culbin (288) and Thomas, son of Robert Tulloch of Tannachy (247).
168RD1/102, 342r-v, 11 July 1603, receipt by Morison to Walter Ross (William Ross burgess of Forres
and Nicol Clephane burgess of Burntisland [son of 214], witnesses).