LITMIR.BIZ

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presentee could be installed without episcopal collation.5 With this development, an important landmark had been reached in clergy–laity relations. However much a proprietor might dominate the residents on his estates, the priest was no longer “his” in the way he had been previously. Whoever might initiate the steps to a settlement, in vetting candidates and giving them legal title to their livings, as far as the Church was concerned, its position as ultimate authority was considered to be settled. Theoretically, this reflected the outcome of the Investiture Controversy of the Western Church. In time however, property rights, civil law, and “state building” were to have their effect.

      Moreover, as will be seen below in a Scottish context, for the Church to declare an issue settled, was not necessarily to render it non–negotiable for everyone concerned.

      Scotland

For the medieval Scottish Church, the marriage of King Malcolm III to the Anglo–Saxon princess, Margaret, in 1069, was a momentous landmark. From then on, the influence and institutions of the Roman Church began increasingly to permeate and dominate the Scottish ecclesiastical landscape. One result was that, early in the twelfth century, a Roman civil parish structure began to emerge, and laymen who had provided churches within their areas of territorial authority, equated themselves with the role of patron of that church and its evolving parish. The foundation of the church at Ednam, in the borders, is an example of how, around 1100, such a relationship developed. The charter describes how a Saxon named Thor Longus, was granted some moor-land near Kelso, by King Edgar (1097–1107). After cultivating the land and erecting a church, dedicated to St Cuthbert, he established the material needs of the foundation by giving the priest a ploughgate of land [c.104 acres] and, afterwards, the tithes of his manor [i.e., the tenth part of its fruits and profits].6

By such means,7 Scots landowners came to have the same proprietorial attitude towards the places wherein they worshipped as their Continental counterparts. Both considered the churches on their land to be “owned”, that is, everything about them—the patronage, the building, the income from the glebe, tithes and offerings—was to be as much at their disposal as any other asset. However, as shown above, change was in the air and, in Scotland, the bishops were well aware of the patronage reforms taking place on the continent, having been represented at Pope Alexander’s ground-breaking Lateran Council of 1179.8 They too began to establish the principle of the Church’s joint role in vacancy-filling, and reinforced it by making a valid transfer of the spiritualities conditional upon their consent.9

At this point, an important development unfolded which was particularly to affect the history of lay patronage in Scotland. This was that, from the twelfth century, a remarkable proportion of the nation’s parish churches came to be appropriated by religious houses as a result of gifts by the Crown and other laymen. The process itself was not new, but rather something which, as Ian Cowan remarks, “had already developed elsewhere and was now to be speeded up in England and Scotland by the advent of the Normans.”10 The commonest motives for such conferments were piety (for the health of one’s soul), convenience (divesting liability for upkeep) or generosity (to assist the finances of the monastery). Whatever the reason, however, by the mid-thirteenth century, larger abbeys like Kelso had 37 annexed churches, Holyrood 27, Paisley 29 and Arbroath 33.11 As time went by, parochial benefices were also annexed to cathedrals and collegiate churches to found or finance prebends [pensions granted to canons or chapter members].12 All in all, the tide of change was such that, by the eve of the Reformation in 1560, only 14 percent of all parochial benefices remained outwith ecclesiastical control. The magnitude of the trend becomes apparent when compared with England: by this date, 86 percent of Scotland’s 1028 parishes had seen their revenues appropriated in some way. In England, the corresponding figure was 37 percent.13

      Although the Church continued to hold the greater amount of parochial patronage up until the Reformation, this fact does not appear to have been the cause of particular concern among royal or noble circles. Matters were about to change, however, and the catalyst was the contentious issue of papal provisions.

Papal provisions were instances where the pontiff reserved the right to intervene in a vacancy and appoint an incumbent directly from Rome. Initially, these special reservations simply targeted individual benefices which he had earmarked for attention. Beginning with Clement IV in 1265, however, successive popes used general reservations to award themselves the right to nominate to an entire category of benefices which had become vacant in particular circumstances. Thus, for example, Rome could intervene in vacancies where the occupant had died at, or near, the Holy See, or where the cleric had resigned to take up a higher appointment, or even where he had died in any month other than March, July, September or December14. One way or another, the Holy See increasingly sought to bring appointments within its direct control, desiring both to increase papal income and particularly to make the Church’s authority more centralized. The result, according to Innes,15 was that every year, thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of benefices across Europe were affected.

      In Scotland, the business of papal provisions was to sow the seeds of opposition but not, surprisingly, because the pope’s nominees threatened to supplant local preferences: the distance between Scotland and Rome was enough to ensure that papal fiat without indigenous consent was simply not enough for the pontiff to make his appointments prevail. Rather, it was for two other reasons that provisions engendered annoyance.

The first reason was that they led to a constant stream of litigation by rival claimants for benefices coming before the court at Rome, as well as a procession of hopefuls seeking to purchase pensions and preferments.16 This inevitably occasioned a steady drain of currency out of the country. To counteract it, James I passed a series of acts in 1424, 1427 and 1428, the last of which specifically condemned “thaim that dois barratry” —barratry being unauthorized dealing at Rome17—but the problem would not go away, and James III felt compelled to renew the legislation in 1482 and 1484.18

      Secondly, and more importantly, as Rome became increasingly inclined to reserve to itself appointments to the “greater benefices”, or bishoprics, successive kings grew deeply uncomfortable. Since their predecessors had been generous founders of monastic houses, they had felt justified in looking upon these with the same proprietorial eye as that with which parochial lay patrons regarded the churches on their estates. Papal interference was unwelcome, and since senior clerics sat in Parliament or council, the king could ill-afford to see these preferments going to men who were unacceptable to him. The result was a battle of wills, from which the Crown eventually emerged the winner. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII issued an Indult, conceding the right of James III to nominate, within eight months, to such benefices belonging to monasteries and cathedrals, which were worth more than 200 florins, gold of the camera.

This was not the only success to come the Crown’s way. Earlier, it had decided that, by long-standing tradition, the monarch had the right, while an episcopal see was vacant, to present to any of the benefices for which the bishop had collation.19 It was a claim that was to provoke friction between Crown and Pope throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and into the sixteenth. However, while the papacy challenged the king’s “pretended custom”,

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