Chapter IX: The Interregnum—John Baliol, 1286-1292
Other troubles besides these pressed upon Abbot Walter and his brethren. Their title to the valuable lands in Kylpatrick, which had been disputed in the time of Abbot William, was again called in question. That energetic ruler had apparently brought all the matters in dispute to a satis-factory termination, but when his guiding hand was removed, the old difficulties began afresh. So early as 1272, three persons,—John de Wardroba, Bernard de Erth, and Norinus de Monnorgund, who had married grand-nieces and heiresses of Dugald, the contumacious rector whom Abbot William had so summarily silenced, renewed, in right of their wives, the claim that he had abandoned, and were apparently inclined to prosecute it with vigour. The Abbot did not, however, go to law with them. Possibly there may have been dealings with Dugald that it would not have been convenient to bring to light. The claim was hushed up, and the claimants were bought off by the payment on the part of the Abbot of an hundred and fifty merks, “pro bono pacis,” after which he received from each of them a separate resignation of all their claims, and in 1273 the Earl of Lennox, “before he received knighthood,” wishing to be at peace with the Church before undergoing that ceremony, confirmed to the Monastery all the lands which they held in his barony. [24] But in the time of Abbot Walter the old disputes broke out again. Taking advantage of the troubled state of Scotland, vigorous attempts were made in 1294 to strip the Abbey of its Dumbartonshire possessions. These might probably have succeeded had not Walter found a firm friend and ally in his diocesan, Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow. This patriotic Scotchman—the friend both of Wallace and of Bruce, and the determined foe of England—entered into the contest between the Abbey and its assailants with the vigour which history shows characterised all his actions, and he hurled against the latter the thunders of the Church. A certain Robert Reddehow, and Johanna his wife, claimants like those already noticed, brought the Abbot into the Court of the Earl of Lennox ; and the Earl and his bailiff, under Royal authority, proceeded to try the case, as his predecessor had done with the claimants of his time. [25] The Abbot, instead of giving these claimants a sum of money, “pro bono pacis,” refused to meet them in a secular Court or to acknowledge the right of the Earl and “those holding court with him” to interfere with the property of the Church, even under Royal authority. The Bishop, with whom the “Royal authority” of John Baliol did not probably count for much, at once took the same view, and stood on the high ground of “spiritual independence.” He issued a mandate requiring the Earl wholly to cease from the cognition of such causes as by Royal authority he had caused to be dragged into his Court, and he ordered Reddehow and his wife to desist from their prosecution of the Abbot under pain of the greater excommunication. The Earl and his bailiff disregarded these fulminations, and proceeded in his Court, “against God and justice, and to the great prejudice of ecclesiastical liberty,” to cognosce upon the lands in dispute. Robert Reddehow and his wife Johanna also persisted in litigation, fearless of the greater excommunication, “maintaining a protracted obduracy of mind, and irreverently contemning as sons of perdition the Keys of the Church.” This was more than the Bishop could endure, and he laid injunctions on five of his clergy—the Vicars of Cathcart, Pollok, Carmunnoc, Kilbarchan, and Kilmalcolm—to go, on the day on which the Abbot was summoned to the Earl's Court, to the place of trial, and, taking with them “six or seven of their order, personally to advance to the said Earl,” his bailies, and those holding court with them, and again warn them altogether to desist from the cognition of all such causes. He further enjoined them again to warn Reddehow and his wife by name, and any others who might prosecute the said religious men in regard to their lands before the said court, wholly to cease from their prosecution. Should all this fail, the guilty parties were to be held as excommunicated, and their lands and chapels interdicted. The vicars, clothed in white sacerdotal vestments, in full court, were further, if they thought expedient, publicly and by name to denounce, and cause to be denounced, the persons thus excommunicated in all the churches of the deanery of Lennox and archdeaconry of Glasgow, especially on each Lord's Day and festal day, with candles burning and bells ringing, after offering of masses They were to warn all the faithful in Christ to avoid them, and to place the lands and chapels of such as refused to obey under special interdict. The inhibition expressly warns Sir Patrick de Graham, Duncan the son of Ameledy, Maurice of Ardcapell, and twenty-four others, not to presume to intercommune with the excommunicated persons, or any one of them, in court or out of court, by assistance, favour, or counsel, by supplying them with food, drink, or fire, by grinding corn, or buying and selling. This terrible document is dated from Casteltaris, 22d August, 1294. Whether it had altogether the desired effect is doubtful, for we find the Bishop two years afterwards returning to the contest, and commanding the Dean of the Christian Jurisdiction of the Lennox to take with him four or five of his Order, and admonish the Earl and his bailiffs not to presume to drag the Abbot and Convent of Paisley before his court in regard to the oft-disputed lands. [26] The whole controversy furnishes a striking illustration of the struggle between the spiritual, or rather ecclesiastical, and secular powers, which in some form or other is constantly emerging even in modern times.
[24] Innes's Parochiales, Vol. I., p. 31. Reg. de. Pas., pp. 158, 159, 204.
[25] Reg. de Pas., p. 261, et seq.
[26] Reg. de Pas., p. 204. The abstract of this transaction is chiefly taken from the admirably edited Lennox Papers, by Mr. Fraser.