Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

226
CALENDAR OF FEARN
possession by ‘entereing in the pulpit place’, where William the treasurer ‘deleuerjed] to
him the buik of god callit the bybel’, and then witnessed an instrument drawn up by
William the notary. The preceding letters of admission, 8 August 1584 (NLS, D.313/356
[Titles/XIII/1/9]), show the treasurer’s signature to be clearly different from that of the
notary. William Gray ‘elder’, exhorter at Rogart and Lairg (Thirds, 209), cannot be
certainly identified as either treasurer or notary.
William Gray was presented to the chaplainry of Rottenrow in St Salvator’s College in
St Andrews on 30 October 1552 (University of St Andrews Muniments, SS 110. AE2).
The chaplainry was in the gift of the earls of Cassillis (R.G. Cant, The College of St Salvator
[Edinburgh, 1950], 21-3). Kennedy patronage may have reached William through Hugh
Kennedy of Girvan-Mains, father’s first cousin to Earl Gilbert, who was the second
husband of Janet Stewart, widow of Alexander, master of Sutherland (Fraser, Sutherland,
i, 96-7). Kennedy is said to have leagued with the earl of Caithness in 1545 to prevent his
stepson, Earl John, from being served heir to the earldom (Gordon, 113). The
chronology is confused, but Janet Stewart had remarried by 5June 1545 (RMS, iii, 3118).
Hugh Kennedy was involved in fighting at Ferry Unes (Littleferry on Loch Fleet) in
October 1544, for which Murdoch Murray in Proncy and Walter Murray in Auchterflow
(Dornoch par.) cleared themselves on the relics of St Gilbert, 23 April 1545, on which
Kennedy remitted all rancour against them (Prot. Book Seaton, 24v-25r). Lands in
Dornoch were still known as ‘Sir Hugh Kennedy’s crofts’ in 1568 (Gray, 51r-v, 22
November).
William Gray wrote forty protocols in St Andrews between 8 April 1553 and 30 April
1559, many of them in St Salvator’s College or Chapel, and none further afield than
Kinaldy. Other St Andrews documents show him as a chaplain in 1558 and 1559
(University of St Andrews Muniments, SS 150/2, 131v, 21 August 1558; SS 150/2, 132r,
29 December 1558; SS 110. E4.5, 23 April 1559). His last St Andrews protocol was
written on 30 April 1559 (Gray, 15v). He then returned to Sutherland, the next entry in his
book coming at Dornoch on 17 October. Thereafter, with the exception of his formal
admission on 28 February 1564 (Gray, 26r), and a single out-of-place protocol at St
Andrews on 4 January 1565 (ibid.) there is no evidence that he ever worked outside the
North. He was in Caithness on several occasions, going as far as Freswick, Keiss and the
salmon fishings on the Thurso river, but his business came predominantly from Dornoch
and the coastal parishes of east Sutherland, though with a significant amount in Tain. He
was at the kirk of Latheron ‘in time of preyar’ on 10 April 1586 to give an instrument to
the Earl of Sutherland’s procurator (GD199/219), and was still working on 27 April 1587
(NLS D.313/147 [Titles V/19/55]).
The Protocol Book does not contain all Gray’s known work (see RMS, iv, 2437; v, 561,
1054, 1283). Eleven additional Ross acts by him survive from between 19 February 1580
and 22 January 1583 (GD96/186, 19 February 1580; GD96/198, 22 January 1582;
GD129/1/1 /30June 1582; GD146/1/1/7 August 1582; GD199/10/1 March 1580, 12June
1581, 30 June 1582; GD199/108/26 April 1582; GD297/227/11, 27-28 October 1582;
GD297/227/12, 27 October 1582; RD1/202, 53v-54v, 10 May 1582). It may also be noted
that Gray, 117r, is clearly Macgill, no. 925 (misdated to 1571), and that Gray, 29r, is
identical with GD96/109, though lacking a date.
The great majority of William Gray’s Ross protocols relate to sasines of burgh
properties in Tain. These, which in the original vary greatly in detail and legibility, are
here calendared in a simplified form. Formal details, and descriptions of property
boundaries, often extensive, have been omitted. Documents in Scots have been given
more fully, though some notarial exuberance has been pruned. Documents of interest for