Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

ADDITIONS
77
f of Fearn is also uncertain. Cronicle, 17, states that he succeeded Abbot
Finlay Paid (38), who died on 17 March 1486. However, a papal
1 commission of 29 March 1485 (CPL, xiv, 322) summoned Mac-
| Culloch, with Bishop Thomas Hay and the cathedral chapter of Ross,
i to answer a petition by William Elphinstone, newly translated from the
I bishopric of Ross to Aberdeen. MacCulloch was a witness to the
i foundation charter of the college of St Duthac, 12 September 1487
(RMS, ii, 1694), and to John Ross V of Balnagown’s resignation, 22
j November 1488 (GD297/164), and also appeared in connection with
| the kirk of Tarradale, 1 March 1498 (ADC, ii, 126). Cronicle, 18, calls
Bishop Andrew Stewart (7) ‘the first Commendator of Fearn granted
, be the See of Rome’, but there is no contemporary evidence to
! corroborate the details it gives of MacCulloch’s ‘exile’. In a concord of 8
i May 1509 between Stewart and Sir David Ross of Balnagown (see 7),
r MacCulloch signed under Stewart and separately from the seven
j canons of the house. The annotator of the Calendar clearly considered
| him to remain a legitimate abbot. Blackie, 62, attributes to him a
! daughter, Marion, who married a son of Walter Ross of Shandwick
[ (50).
1517
; 7 Hand D Obitus bone memorie reverendi in Christo patris et
! domini Andree Steward episcopi Cathanensis commendarii monas-
? teriorum de Calco et Feme perpetui ac camerarii Supremi Domini
I Nostri Regis comitatus Rossie et dominii de Ardmanach qui obiit in
) palacio suo de Skebo die decimo septimo mensis Junii anno Dominice
ji Incarnacionis millesimo quingentesimo decimo septimo sueque conse-
l' crationis quarto decimo et tumilatu in choro sue ecclesie cathedralis
, Cathanensis de Dornoch. Orate ex caritate pro anima eius.
* Andrew Stewart, bishop of Caithness from 1501, and king’s treasurer
| from 1510, was consanguineus of James IV and had letters of
i legitimation, 26 February 1512 (RSS, i, 2377). He is considered a
natural son of a member of the house of Innermeath (TA, iv, pp. xi-xiii;
Dowden, Bishops, 247-8). Vatican sources (MRHS, 101-02) support the
Cronicle's claim that he secured a title to Fearn in commendam, possibly in
1508, displacing Abbot MacCulloch (6). On 8 May 1509 he made a
contract with Sir David Ross VII of Balnagown (47) concerning the
meadows of Fearn (GD297/231), and in 1511 set the mains of Fearn for
three years to James Dunbar (CS5/23, 127r-v, 14 August 1511). In