Chapter XII: Royal Patronage,
1373-1405
In regard to the latter duty of the pastoral office, the guardianship of temporalities, Abbot John himself set no mean example to his brother of Crosragmol. He was exceedingly active in conserving the endowments which remained to his house, and in putting its finances on a good footing. Through his energy, the question of the pension of forty merks to the English house of Sempringham was finally adjusted. It had been a grievance for more than a century. It will be remembered how at Berwick Abbot Walter was forced to promise its regular payment, and to make acknowledgment of the debt. Succeeding Abbots had repudiated it, or at least had neglected to pay it, probably because they were not able. The canons of Sempringham then, for a consideration, transferred the pension to a Scotchman, who was better able to fight the battle [3] with the Paisley monks than they were. The fight over the forty merks then began in earnest. The representative of Sempringham was Reginald More, and subsequently his son, Sir William More, of Abercorne. The former began the battle with the Abbot and monks in 1328, by summoning them into the Bishop's court in Glasgow, and Andrew de Kelkow or Kelso, Prior of Paisley, appeared as their representative. He acknowledged that the Abbot owed the pension from the time when peace had been proclaimed between England and Scotland, but as Reginald was unable to produce a mandate from Sempringham authorising him to settle as to the arrears, the court did not proceed further at that time with the case, and Reginald and the Prior agreed upon certain arbiters—two appointed by each, with a fifth chosen as umpire by both parties—who were to meet on a certain day at Berwick-on-Tweed, and settle the whole dispute as to the arrears of the pension. [4] Nothing seems to have come from this carefully adjusted scheme. The Abbot refused to pay the pension unless Reginald should produce authority from Sempringham. This Reginald promised to do, and placed in the hands of Robert the Stewart the titles of all his lands in the Barony of Kyle, to be forfeited to the Abbot, unless he should by a certain time procure letters of perpetual security from the canons and nuns of Sempringham. He seems to have failed to do this, though he exacted payment, and accordingly in 1367, at the request of the Abbot, his lands were handed over to the Convent in lieu of the pension, which for some years they held had been unjustly extorted from them. [5] The Stewart did more than this ; he issued a document, [6] in which he gave the history of the foundation of the Abbey by his ancestors, and its endowment by them, with many lands and churches; but as he puts it—“A certain Abbot of the Monastery, induced by we know not what spirit, without liberty, consent, or authority from any superior, secular or lay, presumptuously made, what by law he had no power to do, an immense bequest or alienation of forty merks sterling of an annual pension, for no use, and under no compulsion of necessity, to the canons and nuns of Sempringham in England, which, there is no doubt, has led to the lessening of divine worship, the detriment and loss of the Monastery, the peril of needy souls, and our own prejudice and injury.” The Stewart then, as “special defender and patron of the Monastery,” proceeds to pronounce the bequest null and void, and to forbid the Convent to pay the pension any more, and enjoins them to apply it, with the lands of Sir William More, which he has conveyed to them, to their own uses.
[3] Reg. de Pas., p. 42.
[4] Reg. de Pas., p. 27. The arbiters were—For Reginald More, James, Bishop of St. Andrews, and Sir Robert de Lawdyr, Justiciar of Lothian ; for the Abbot, Lord James of Duglas and Alexander de Meynes. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was chosen in case the four could not agree.
[5] The lands were those of Sankar, Camceskane, Dowlargis, Cowdane, Staffour, and Hormisdalle.—Reg. de Pas., p. 30.
[6] Reg. de Pas., p. 32.