Chapter XX: Remains
Along with the seal, Lord Sempill is said, in the record of the suit in the Court of Session, to have “got into his hands the buke callit the Black Buik of Paslay.” This the lords ordered him to return with the seal of the Abbey, though he denied ever having had it any more than the other missing article. The “Black Book of Paisley” has been often referred to as one of the most important of Scottish chronicles. It was written in the last days of the Monastery, and was the property of the Abbey. Fortunately, it has been preserved, and may be seen in the manuscript department of the British Museum. We append to this book a more detailed description of this interesting volume, [29] and we give a facsimile of one of its pages. It is a beautiful manuscript, with coloured initial letters, and is written in double columns, on thick vellum, in a large folio. It is one of the most interesting relics of our Abbey, and when we turn over its pages, on some of which the words, “Iste liber est sancte Jacobi et sancte Mirini de Pasleto” are written, a weird feeling comes over us, and we are carried away in thought to the silent figures, working in the scriptorium of the Convent. The manuscript is almost entirely a transcript of John of Fordun's Scotichronicon, with the continuation of Walter Bower.
Three other books connected with the Abbey have come down to us from the olden time. The one is the Rental Book, commenced in the time of Abbot Henry Crichton; and the other two Chartularies of the Abbey. The former is a folio manuscript of common paper, the entries in which are carefully made, and we append a copy of it in full at the end of this volume. The latter are also manuscripts of folio size, written in a uniform character, apparently of the earlier part of the fifteenth century. The contents of one are given in the “Registrum Monasterii De Passelet,” from which we have so largely quoted in this work, and without which we could have known but little of the history of the Abbey of Paisley. Both the Rental Book and the first volume of the Chartulary are in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and the second Chartulary volume is among the archives of the Burgh of Paisley.
[29] See Appendix.