most of the Christian courts in the West and East. Next to the recovery of the Holy Land, the reformation of the Church in faith and discipline formed a subject of consultation, and great complaints were made respecting monastic corruption. It was urged that new orders of religious men were too common, and the Council enacted that their foundation should be discouraged, but this enactment could not apply to the orders already sanctioned by Pope Innocent, such as those of St Dominic and the Valliscaulians.

Malvoisin saw the fitness of these two orders for Scotland. The Dominicans, intrepid preachers, to be placed in the towns and cities of the kingdom; and the Valliscaulians, men of austere lives, whose little communities might attract attention and secure respect, in the wildest and most remote districts. Both orders were in startling contrast to the decayed and effete Culdees of Mucross who still remained at St Andrews, at the very gates of the Primus' own cathedral; a small priestly caste who had lost all voice in the election of a bishop; and though clinging to their hereditary possessions, had given up their cure of souls and their charge of the hospital for the sick and the poor, the pilgrim and the stranger.

*

In 1225 the Scottish clergy were, by an unusual exercise of the grace and prerogative of the papal see, empowered to meet in council without the summons or presence of a papal legate. Malvoisin secured the precedence of his see in the council: beginning with the Bishop of St Andrewsthe Bishop of the Scots, as Malvoisin proudly styled himselfeach bishop was in turn to preach at the opening of the council. The Chancellor was upon such friendly terms with the king, whom he had baptised and invested with the ensigns

* Yet these clerics, whose name had already become a bye-word, had rights which Malvoisin defended against the dignified Augustinian canons of St Andrews. The hereditary property of the Culdees was possibly attacked, or their right to mutter divine service after their manner in a corner of the cathedral; at all events, in February 1221, the papal legate at Perth heard a litigation commenced by the prior and canons of St Andrews against their bishop and certain clerics of St Andrews, commonly called Culdees—“ et quosdam clericos de S. Andrea, qui Keledei vulgariter appellantur " (Theiner, Mon. Vet. Hib. et Scot., p. 16).

of royalty, that he must have readily attested the writ which sent two doctors of civil law to attend the council as Commissioners on behalf of the Crown.

And now the monarch and Primus were to testify their sense of the Pope's benefits by establishing the new orders in Scotland. At the end of the year 1229 peace was established throughout Scotland; for some years before, the towns and the southern part of the kingdom had been freed from war, and had increased in wealth by trade and commerce. The marriage of the young King of Scotland, in 1221, to the sister of the King of England, and of two princesses of Scotland, sisters of Alexander, to Hugh de Burgh and Roger Bigod, two of the most powerful English nobles, put a stop to all hostilities between the two nations, and introduced a friendly intercourse between their ruling families.

The insurrection of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, in 1221, which led to the expulsion of his family from Argyle by Alexander in 1222, freed the vassals of Somerled from their fealty to him, and they were made vassals of the Crown. North Argyle or Wester Ross was given to the Earl of Ross. Lorn was granted to be held of the king in capite by the sons of Dougal. In 1228 the last effort was made by the Gaelic population to place upon the throne the heir of Malcolm Canmore, according to the Celtic laws of descent. Gillespie M'Farlane broke out in open rebellion against the king, killed Thomas of Thirlstane, to whom Malcolm IV. had given the district of Abertarff, and set fire to the town of Inverness. The king went himself against Gillespie, who was overcome and slain; the insurrection was completely extinguished; and the kingdom enjoyed peace.

In the year 1230 four monasteries of the Dominicans and three of the Valliscaulians were founded. The Dominicans, the Preaching Friars, were placed, two by the king himself in Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed, one at Ayr by the king and William Malvoisin, and one by Allan Durward (ostiarius) in Montrose. The Valliscaulians, almost hermits, were placed, one by the king at Pluscardine in Moray, another by Duncan

Macdougal of Lorn at Ardchattan on Loch Etive, in Argyle; and the third by John Byset at Beauly, at the head of the Beauly Firth, in Ross.

This House of Beauly is the foundation whose few charters are printed in the sequel. It was planted in a situation admirably fitted for the object of its institution. Amidst a tract of rich alluvial soil brought down by the river and stretched between the hills and sea-shore, on the great highroad from Inverness to the North, the baron of English descent, who had recently acquired the large possessions of the Aird, built the new monastery. Just where the noble river, after wasting the speed acquired by its rush over the rocks of Kilmorack, in the windings below the founder's new castle of Beaufort, spreads out into the Beauly Firth, and opposite the wooded hills of Balblair, open to the sunny south, surrounded by level land productive of the finest wheat and the most luxuriant grasses, John Byset reared his priory and its church, whose walls six centuries and a half have not been able to pull down. He or his protegés, the monks, gave the spot a new name, Bellus Locus, the Beautiful Place,-a name which the queen's father had given some twenty-six years before to the noble monastery he had erected on the shores of the Solent; and looking at the surrounding scenery, we cannot wonder it should be said that when Queen Mary slept at the Priory of Beauly she, on hearing its name adopted from the language of her beloved France, exclaimed, "C'est un beau lieu."*

The Dominicans were bound to be instant in preaching the Gospel. Their founder was distinguished by a fervid and persuasive eloquence, and feeling the power of this faculty, he

* This is the probable version of the story of the parish minister of Kilmorack. He says: "In the house of the priests who officiated in this priory, Queen Mary, it is said, was entertained for a night; and upon seeing in the morning the beautiful view from its windows, she exclaimed: 'C'est un beau lieu,' and hence the name Beauly was given to the village and river” (Stat. Acct. Inverness-shire, 1842, p. 366). As this minister supposes the name of his parish, Kilmorack, the church of Mary, to be derived from a lady, a descendant of one of the lairds of Chisholm, we must not give him implicit credence. See the amusing criticism on this, Quart. Rev., vol. lxxxii., p. 360.

established a fraternity devoted to its exercise-a society of itinerant preachers. Accordingly their houses were centres in which the brethren were trained to their profession, and from which they went forth into the streets of towns and the lanes of villages to preach to the poor tidings of salvation.

Far different was the rule of the Valliscaulians; their own salvation, and not the rescue of others, was the object of their retreat from the world. They lived in very small cells, that at the times of prayer, of study, and of meditation, they might be withdrawn from other objects, and alone with God. They kept no oxen, sheep, or any lands cultivated by their own labour, surrendering all possessions which might divert their attention from spiritual exercises by the care which such property required to make it valuable. They had marked bounds outside the inclosure of their priories, beyond which none were permitted to wander, save the prior and those he took with him to visit dependent houses. Personally they worked only in their gardens, and never went even to these but at hours allowed for bodily labour. They were content with such incomes as they could receive without giving themselves much anxiety-such incomes as provided them with the necessaries of life, and relieved them from the obligation of quitting the precinct to obtain the means of living. They received into the house no more brethren than its revenues could maintain. They wore the dress of the Cistercians.

Such is the account given by Helyot,* on the authority of Cardinal Jacques de Vitri, whom he styles a contemporary writer. We find a more elaborate and authentic statement of the rules of the founder in the Bull of Pope Innocent III., to which we have referred. It is recorded in the Register of Moray probably as the Rule of the House of Pluscardine, in that diocese:

"Innocent the Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved sons, the Prior and the Brothers of the Valley of Herbs, sends health and the apostolic blessing. The apostolic see is wont to assent to

* Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, vol. vi., p. 178.

pious wishes, and to extend to the honourable prayers of those seeking it a willing favour. We received from the letters of our very venerable brother G. elect of Rheims, that on his passage through the diocese of Langres, he found that you had in the Valley of Herbs taken upon yourselves the new institution of an order: inquiring diligently as to its merits, he found nothing in it but what was religious and honourable. He found, indeed, as his same letters express, that among you one monk, whom you, my sons the monks, elect, is by right prior, to whom all the monks, of course, and also the lay brothers, the company of whom may not exceed the number twenty, as to their spiritual father, are to take care to show reverence and obedience.

"None of you are to possess any separate property.

"In assembling every day, the mass and the canonical hours* shall be sung. Private masses, whoever wish, may also celebrate.

"You shall hold a chapter every day, making twelve readings at the appointed times.

"You shall work together, and you shall eat together in the refectory, not using flesh or fat (sagimine). The prior shall eat with you in the same refectory+—contented with the like food and clothing as the rest. From the feast of the Lord's Resurrection down to the exaltation of the Holy Cross (14th September), you shall eat twice in the day, passing the rest of the time under the abstinence of fasts, being content on Fridays with bread and water and one relish‡ to it. On the day of the Lord's Nativity you shall not fast, nor on Friday in summer when a feast shall happen to fall of twelve readings. "You shall live on your revenues (redditibus).

"You shall observe silence. Women shall not enter the inner bounds, nor shall you pass the outer bounds, except the prior on the

* The canonical hours of prayers were seven, after Ps. cxix. 164: (I.) at 2 A. M.the monks went to bed at 8 P.M.; (2.) Matins, at 6 A. M.; (3.) 9 A.M.; (4.) at high noon; (5.) 3 P.M.; (6.) Vespers, 6 P.M.; (7.) at 7 P. M. See Concordiæ Regularum by St Benedict, in Fuller's Church History, book vi., § 3.

+ In abbeys, the abbot only on great solemnities graced the monks with his presence in the dining-hall or refectory.

Pulmentum. The ancient Romans lived on the simplest fare, chiefly on pottage (puls), or bread and pot-herbs, hence everything eaten with bread, or besides bread, was afterwards named Pulmentum or Pulmentarium (¿fwvov, opsonium, called in Scotland, Kitchen).-Hor. Sat. ii., 2, 20; Ep. i., 18, 48. Adam's Roman Antiquities, p. 401.