Series 3 > Charters of the Abbey of Inchcolm

xxvi CHARTERS OF THE ABBEY OF INCHCOLM
teinds ; but a vicar-pensioner was paid a ‘ pensio ’ or
yearly grant from the parochial revenues.) Between 1251
and 1272, the church of Rosyth, with its annexed chapel of
Logie, was ‘ in proprios usus suos totaliter convertendam,’1
i.e. the monastery was to have the entire revenue of the
church; and the canons were permitted to have this
church, as well as the churches of Dalgety and Aberdour,
served by chaplains. At an earlier date (c. 1229-36), they
had a similar concession with regard to the cure of the
church of Auchtertool.2 Moreover, houses of the Order
of St. Augustine had the privilege of serving appropriated
churches by their own canons,3 a practice which was much
in the monastery’s interest. Thus, John Scot, canon of
Inchcolm, was vicar of Aberdour in 1474.4 During the
protracted controversy regarding the vicarage of Dalgety,
from 1420 onwards,5 it was stated that this vicarage was
wont to be governed, beyond the memory of man, by canons
of the monastery; and the appointment of a secular priest
by the Bishop, who refused to hear read a papal letter
discharging him from molesting the monastery in its
possession of the vicarage,6 was said to be ‘ to the no little
loss and harm of the abbot and convent.’7 The vicarage
is declared to have been worth Si.
Another fertile source of controversy was such a charge
on the revenues; of a parish as the grant of forty shillings
from the fruits of Cramond. This payment ‘ by the hands
of the vicar from the fruits of the church ’ 8 had fallen into
desuetude in the fourteenth century, and in 1357, Thomas,
the vicar, was ordered by the Bishop of Dunkeld, at the
1 Charters, No. xxn. 2 Ibid., No. xiv.
3 This is mentioned in the bull of 1178.
4 Reg. Hon. de Morton, ii., 231. It may be noted that Thomas Forret,
the Reforming vicar of Dollar, was a canon of Inchcolm, serving one of its
appropriated churches.
6 See notes to No. xlvi. 6 Charters, No. xlvi.
2 Supplies., p. 195. 8 Charters, No. xxxvi.