Sixteenth-century Pluscarden priory and its world

Abstract

It is difficult to write the history of Scottish monasticism during the centuries before the Reformation, although the late Abbot Mark Dilworth and others have extracted much from the scanty sources. Compared to England, little written evidence has survived from the Scottish houses. This makes extant documents all the more precious and demands the use of a wide range of resources, including material from outside Scotland, in their interpretation. There is obviously much that monasteries in different regions of Latin Christendom had in common, but each house was also part of local and national communities; each house had its inner life of prayer and work, but, as a landowner and valuable benefice, it also had social and political significance. Pluscarden priory in Moray existed in these interconnecting worlds and one document which opens up vistas in all of them is a collection of testimonies, written in a difficult and scrawling secretary hand, which were given before the Lords of Council in 1579–80 during a case concerning the bailiary of Pluscarden. This article is based on an annotated transcription of this document, which is given in the first appendix, and it begins by setting the testimonies in context through a study of Pluscarden and its regality in the period. This leads into a deeper examination of three issues: contemporary charter production, the state of the Pluscarden monastic community in the sixteenth century, and the place of novices in late medieval and renaissance Scottish monasticism. Finally, a list of all known monks of Pluscarden priory in the sixteenth century is given as appendix 2. In the