Ivanhoe

titulars of the temporalities of the benefice, though having no claim to the spiritual character of their predecessors in office.

Of these laymen who were thus invested with ecclesiastical revenues, some were men of high birth and rank, like the famous Lord James Stuart, the prior of St. Andrews, who did not fail to keep for their own use the rents, lands, and revenues of the church. But if, on the other hand, the titulars were men of inferior importance, who had been inducted into the office by the interest of some powerful persons, it was generally understood that the new abbot should grant for his patron’s benefit such leases and conveyances of the church lands and tithes as might afford their protector the lion’s share of the booty. This was the origin of those who were wittily termed Tulchan Bishops,^gx being a sort of imaginary prelate, whose image was set up to enable his patron and principal to plunder the benefice under his name.

There were other cases, however, in which men who had got grants of these secularised benefices were desirous of retaining them for their own use, without having the influence sufficient to establish their purpose; and these became frequently unable to protect themselves, however unwilling to submit to the exactions of the feudal tyrant of the district.

Bannatyne, secretary to John Knox, recounts a singular course of oppression practised on one of those titular abbots by the Earl of Cassilis, in Ayrshire, whose extent of feudal influence was so wide that he was usually termed the King of Carrick. We give the fact as it occurs in Bannatyne’s Journal [pp. 55 —67], only premising that the Journalist held his master’s opinions, both with respect to the Earl of Cassilis as an opposer of the king’s party, and as being a detester of the practice of granting church revenues to titulars, instead of their being devoted to pious uses, such as the support of the clergy, expense of schools, and the relief of the national poor. He mingles in the narrative, therefore, a well-deserved feeling of execration against the tyrant who employed the torture, with a tone of ridicule towards the patient, as if, after all, it had not been ill-bestowed on such an equivocal and amphibious character as a titular abbot. He entitles his narrative

THE EARL OF CASSILIS’ TYRANNY AGAINST A QUICK

(i.e. LIVING) MAN

“Master Allan Stewart, friend to Captain James Stewart of Cardonall, by means of the Queen’s corrupted court, obtained the abbacy of Crossraguel. The said Earl, thinking himself greater than any king in those quarters, determined to have that whole benefice (as he hath divers others) to pay at his pleasure; and because he could not find sic security as his insatiable appetite required, this shift was devised. The said Mr. Allan, being in company with the Laird of Bargany, was, by the said Earl and his friends, enticed to leave the safeguard which he had with the said Laird, and come to make good cheer with the said Earl. The simplicity of the imprudent man was suddenly abused; and so he passed his time with them certain days, which he did in Maybole with Thomas Kennedie, uncle to the said Earl; after which the said Mr. Allan passed, with quiet company, to visit the place and bounds of Crossraguel, of which the said Earl being surely advertised, determined to put in practice the tyranny which long before he had conceived. And so, as king of the country, apprehended the said Mr. Allan, and carried him to the house of Dunure, where for a season he was honourably treated (gif a prisoner can think any entertainment pleasing); but after that certain days were spent, and that the Earl could not obtain the feus of Crossraguel according to his awin appetite, he determined to prove gif a collation could work that which neither dinner nor supper could do for a long time. And so the said Mr. Allan was carried to a secret chamber; with him passed the honourable Earl, his worshipful brother, and such as were appointed to be servants at that banquet. In the chamber there was a grit iron chimlay, under it a fire; other grit provision was not seen. The first course was—‘My Lord Abbot,’ said the Earl, ‘it will please you confess here, that with your own consent you remain in my company, because ye durst not commit yourself to the hands of others.’ The Abbot answered, ‘Would you, my lord, that I should make a manifest lie for your pleasure? The truth is, my lord, it is against my will that I am here; neither yet have I any pleasure in your company.’ ‘But ye shall remain with me at this time,’ said the Earl. ‘I am not able to resist your will and pleasure,’ said the Abbot, ‘in this place.’ ‘Ye must then obey me,’ said the Earl; and with that were presented unto him certain letters to subscribe, amongst which there was a five year tack, and a nineteen year tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands of Crossraguel, with all the clauses necessary for the Earl to haste him to hell. For gif adultery, sacrilege, oppression, barbarous cruelty, and theft heaped upon theft, deserve hell, the great King of Carrick can no more escape hell for ever than the imprudent Abbot escaped the fire for a season as follows.

“After that the Earl spied repugnance, and saw that he could not come to his purpose by fair means, he commanded his cooks to prepare the banquet: and so first they flayed the sheep, that is, they took off the Abbot’s cloathes even to his skin, and next they bound him to the chimney—his legs to the one end and his arms to the other; and so they began to beet the fire sometimes to his buttocks, sometimes to his legs, sometimes to his shoulders and arms; and that the roast should not burn, but that it might rest in soppe, they spared not flambing with oil (Lord, look thou to sic cruelty!) And that the crying of the miserable man should not be heard, they closed his mouth that the voice might be stopped. It may be suspected that some practisiane [partisan] of the King’s [Darnley‘s] murder was there. In that torment they held the poor man, till that oftimes he cried for God’s sake to dispatch him; for he had as meikle gold in his awin purse as would buy powder enough to shorten his pain. The famous King of Carrick and his cooks perceiving the roast to be aneuch, commanded it to be tane fra the fire, and the Earl himself began the grace in this manner: ‘Benedicte Jesus Maria, you are the most obstinate man that ever I saw; gif I had known that ye had been so stubborn, I would not for a thousand crowns have handled you so; I never did so to man before you.’ And yet he returned to the same practice within two days, and ceased not till that he obtained his formest purpose, that is, that he had got all his pieces subscryvit alsweill as ane half-roasted hand could do it. The Earl thinking himself sure enough so long as he had the half- roasted Abbot in his awin keeping, and yet being ashamed of his presence by reason of his former cruelty, left the place of Dunure in the hands of certain of his servants, and the half-roasted Abbot to be kept there as prisoner. The Laird of Bargany, out of whose company the said Abbot was enticed, understanding (not the extremity), but the retaining of the man, sent to the court, and raised letters of deliverance of the person of the man according to the order, which being disobeyed, the said Earl for his contempt was denounced rebel, and put to the horne. But yet hope was there none, neither to the afflicted to be delivered, neither yet to the purchaser [i.e. procurer] of the letters to obtain any comfort thereby; for in that time God was despised, and the lawful authority was contemned in Scotland, in hope of the sudden return and regiment of that cruel murderer of her awin husband, of whose lords the said Earl was called one; and yet, oftener than once, he was solemnly sworn to the King and to his Regent.”

The Journalist then recites the complaint of the misused Allan Stewart, Commendator of Crossraguel, to the Regent and Privy Council, averring his having been carried, partly by flattery, partly by force, to the black vault of Dunure, a strong fortalice, built on a rock overhanging the Irish Channel, where its ruins are still visible. Here he stated he had been required to execute leases and conveyances of the whole churches and parsonages belonging to the Abbey of Crossraguel, which he utterly refused as an unreasonable demand, and the more so that he had already conveyed them to John Stewart of Cardonall, by whose interest he had been made Commendator. The complainant proceeds to state that he was, after many menaces, stript, bound, and his limbs exposed to fire in the manner already described, till, compelled by excess of agony, he subscribed the charter and leases presented to him, of the contents of which he was totally ignorant. A few days afterwards, being again required to execute a ratification of these deeds before a notary and witnesses, and refusing to do so, he was once more subjected to the same torture, until his agony was so excessive that he exclaimed, “Fy on you, why do you not strike your whingers into me, or blow me up with a barrel of powder, rather than torture me thus unmercifully?” upon which the Earl commanded Alexander Richard, one of his attendants, to stop the patient’s mouth with a napkin, which was done accordingly. Thus he was once more compelled to submit to their tyranny. The petition concluded with stating that the Earl, under pretence of the deeds thus iniquitously obtained, had taken possession of the whole place and living of Crossraguel, and enjoyed the profits thereof for three years.

The doom of the Regent and Council shows singularly the total interruption of justice at this calamitous period, even in the most clamant cases of oppression. The Council declined interference with the course of the ordinary justice of the county (which was completely under the said Earl of Cassilis’s control), and only enacted that he should forbear molestation of the unfortunate Commendator, under the surety of two thousand pounds