Lost Place-names,Vanished Houses and Settlements

Occasionally in the past I have looked at the Lost Houses of Angus, usually those large castles and mansions where the gentry lived. Lost place-names have cropped up occasionally and this piece will examine another batch along with mention of villages and hamlets which no longer exist.

Arthur Dalgetty's The Church and Parish of Liff  (1940) has some relevant information from the parish to the west of the city of Dundee.  His informant was Miss Mary Balharry, resident of Denhead of Gray, who died  in 1939, at the age of 86.  Like remembered lines on vanished places elsewhere the follow local extinct places have a music in their repetition:

Denhead, Denmill, Balgarthno and Smiddy Hill,

Corscrook, Cosienook, Groggie Wells and Dubton.

   Dalgetty picks out some other choice ancient places which can be identified from older maps.  Some remain mysterious, such as the spot marked in a field opposite the entrance to Balruddery - Cleekemin.  Another former parish resident, Mr James Lawson, provided more intrigue when he stated that his mother's house was named Yearn Ane Blade.  Mr Dalgetty linked this to the only property in the parish which had house leek growing on the roof, often used to make cosmetics.

Wee Settlements, Long Gone

   There has been recent interest in two minor settlements in Angus which have vanished off the face of the earth (and off maps).  One is the Burnside of Dun, which features in a small book by Catherine Rice and published by the Abertay Historical Society, called All Their Good Friends and Neighbours: The Story of A Vanished Hamlet in Angus (2014).  This settlement of handloom weavers, a few miles west of Montrose, held around 60 souls in the mid Victorian era and due to the transitory nature of farming economics the work there went and then so did the people.  A few bare stones remain as a mark of human habitation.

  A more recently abandoned place is Smithton, at Lundie, north-west of Dundee.  This was a very small settlement sitting near a rise called Smith's Knowe, past Lunding village. The story to find this place is the subject of a very informative piece on Grant Hutchison's website The Oikofuge.  This place was abandoned as recently as the 1960s and its existence quietly slipped into nothingness without the outside world actually noticing.  The place was too small to actually quality as a bona fide village, but what else shall we call it: clachan? farm toun?  crofting community?  settlement?  None seem entirely accurate enough to encompass a community whose people have been scattered to God knows where.  Hutchison notes that David Doward mentions the place in his book The Sidlaws (2004) and also that it merits inclusion in Angus or Forfarshire by Alexander Warden.  The latter gave a folk derivation of the name, surmising that it was actually 'Mist-toun', so called because of the perpetual haar hanging over the place, but Dorward is undoubtedly right when he says it must represent 'Smith's toun'.

Lundie in the snow 

   Other settlements, of course, lost their identity and sometimes their names by being absorbed by their expansive larger neighbours. Small places around Dundee and all the larger towns in Angus have shared this peculiar fate. But there were also smaller examples, such as Hunter's Town, which stood between Barry and Carnoustie. Like Burnside of Dun, it vanished as a distinct entity in the 19th century. Those looking for its ghost can look in the area of Barry Road in Carnoustie.

'Ghost' Homes of the Claverhouse Grahams

   Some other places, particularly large houses and castles, may never have existed at all, despite the evidence of local people who assert that there certainly was such a building at such and such a place, once upon a time.  This seems to be the case with Claverhouse Castle, just north of Dundee. The minister who wrote the Old Statistical Account for the area at the end of the 18th century asserted that the remains of  stones from the castle had been unearthed.  C. Sandford Terry carefully scanned the written records and found scant evidence for the existence of any castle on the site.  The first of the famous family associated with the estate was John Graham, son of Robert Graham of Strathcarron and Fintry.  His first base in Angus was Ballargus in the regality of Kirriemuir, followed by his acquisition of the Claverhouse lands (between 1503 and 1511).  The family later bought Claypotts, but this was never the favoured residence for them .  Their primary home, purchased in the 1640s, was in Glen Ogilvy, a few miles north of Claverhouse.

   There may have been a large laird's house at Claverhouse, but never a castle, and any such building had vanished by the end of the 17th century.  Later map makers, however, added the spurious presence of 'castle' against the location.  In fact a mock  ruined 'castle' was added to the location in the mid-19th century.  The reason why the family home, which must in any case have been extensive, has vanished is unknown.  The Graham residence in Glen Ogilvy has likewise (mysteriously?) vanished out of existence.

The spurious 'Claverhouse Castle' built in the 19th century 

Sources

http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/sources.html

Arthur Dalgetty, The Church and Parish of Liff (Dundee, 1940).

C. Sandford Terry, 'The Homes of the Claverhouse Grahams,'  The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Oct., 1904), pp. 72-76

Previous Posts on Lost Houses

Lindertis House

Red Castle

Aldbar Castle

The Secret Tunnel of Lintrose: A Pictish Mystery? Secret Tunnel? Writer's Folly?

Lintrose House, also known as Todderance, stands a few miles away from Coupar Angus.  Although it has been incorporated into Perthshire from the late 19th century it was historically part of the county of Angus (in the parish of Kettins).  The property belonged to the Halyburton family.

Lintrose House

   In the 1870s a remarkable underground architectural feature was discovered here.  This is the description given by the author Elliott O' Donnell in his book Rooms of Mystery (London, 1931), where he describes the feature as a cave, though it may in fact have been a tunnel:

It was fifty feet long, and its sides were bricked and its floor neatly paved.  there were two antique fireplaces in it, and there is no doubt but that it was once used by some person or persons as a hiding-place.  Some thought Rob Roy had hidden there; some, Sawney Beane; others believed that it was intended for the use of Covenanters; and others, again, for the unfortunate Jacobites.
   The place was searched for hidden treasure, but without success, nothing of any value being found there.  Of course, the story that it was haunted got into circulation, but, as far as I can ascertain, there was nothing to warrant it. [Rooms of Mystery, pp. 23-24.]

     All that I can say, knowing nothing else, is that the associations with Rob Roy and Sawney Beane are very wide of the mark geographically; neither had historical associations with Strathmore (and Sawney was not even a real person).  Could the cave/tunnel in fact have been a reconditioned Pictish souterrain (or weem)?  Has folklore interfered with actual historical memory?  Warden in Angus or Forfarshire (Dundee, 1880, vol. I, p. 55) says:

Some years ago a weem was discovered on the highest part of a field east of Lintrose House.  It was about fifty feet long, about seven to eight feet wide, and about five feet high.  At the entrance it was only about three feet in width.  The floor was paved, and the walls formed in large courses...There had been two fireplaces, in which pieces of charcoal were found, and human bones were lying on the bottom.  This cave was built with lime, an art acquired from the Romans when in the country, so it cannot be of the great age of the weems of the primeval races.

O'Donnell

   Was O'Donnell here the person who - possibly purposely - became confused?  Difficult to say.  There have been a number of souterrains discovered in this vicinity around Pitcur and Kettins.  Interestingly, nearby Coupar Angus Abbey has a tradition of a secret tunnel (O'Donnell includes a section about it in his book.) One could perhaps have been discovered and re-used as a secret chamber.  Then again, the writer Elliott was himself occasionally accused of re-imagining things to make them seem more interesting or mysterious.   

The Banks of Sweet Dundee - A Ballad of Wronged Romance (plus A Lochee Love Song)

As a kind of footnote to my previous post about the songs associated with Dundee (Dundee Songs...Baffling Meanings?), here's two examples of the local muse expressed in the 19th century.  The Banks of Sweet Dundee is pure soap opera in ballad form.  First noted in the 1820s, this simple tale of good versus evil spread all over Britain and North America.  But does it refer to our Scottish Dundee? The ballad seems to be British and there are no other British Dundees, but then again the description of the topography and its rural setting would seem to argue for a different place entirely, though we can't know for sure.  In one source it is coupled with the intriguing ballad Smell! Smell! His breath! which, unfortunately, has no local connection.

It's of a farmer's daughter,

So beautiful I'm told,

Her parents died and left her

Five hundred pounds of gold.

She lived with her uncle,

The cause of all her woe,

And you soon shall hear this maiden fair

Did prove his overthrow.

Her uncle had a plough boy,

Young Mary loved full well,

And in her uncle's garden,

Their tales of love would tell.

And there was a wealthy squire,

Who often came her to see, 

But still she loved the plough boy,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

It was one summer's morning,

Her uncle went straight away.

He knocked at her bedroom door,

And thus to her did say,

'Come rise up pretty maiden,

A lady you may be.

The squire is waiting for you, 

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

'A fig for all your squires,

Your lords and dukes likewise,

My William's hand appears to me,

A diamond in my eyes.'

'Begone, unruly female,

You ne'er shall happy be,

For I mean to banish William

From the banks of sweet Dundee.'

Her uncle and the squire 

Rode out one summer's day.

Young William he's in favour,

Her uncle he did say.

'Indeed, 'tis my intention

To tie him to a tree,

Or else to bribe the pressgang

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

The pressgang came to William

When he was all alone.

He fought boldly for his liberty,

But they were three to one.

The blood did flow in torrents.

'Come kill me now,' said he.

'I would rather die  for Mary,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.'

This maid was one day walking,

Lamenting for her love.

She met the wealthy squire

Down in her uncle's grove

'Stand off, base man,' said she.

'You sent the only lad I love

From the banks of sweet Dundee.

He clasped his arms around her

And tried to throw her down, 

Two pistols and a sword she spied

Beneath his morning gown.

Young Mary took his weapons,

His swords he used so free,

But she did fire and shot the squire

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

Her uncle overheard the noise,

He hastened to the ground.

'Since you have killed the squire

I'll give you your death wound.'

'Stand off then,' said young Mary,

'Undaunted I will be.'

The trigger she drew and her uncle slew,

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

The doctor soon was sent for,

A man of noted skill.

Likewise came the lawyer

For him to make his will.

He willed his gold to Mary,

Who fought so manfully,

And now she lives quite happily

On the banks of sweet Dundee.

   An alternative version of this ballad is known as 'Undaunted Mary'. It was collected by William Barrett from a seaman in 1877.  (The words and audio file can be accessed here.) Other versions are known from the Appalachians and Nova Scotia.

   The second ballad, The Bonnie Wee Lochee Lass, was in oral circulation well into the 20th century and tells of a more straightforward romantic encounter, a cross-cultural tryst between the eponymous last and a lad across the border in Dundee.

It fell upon a Lammas nicht now ai went oot for a stroll,

I hadna walked sae very far when I wandered doon by the toll,

I’d only gaed one mile or two when a bonnie fair I did pass,

’Twas there I fell in love wi a bonnie wee Lochee Lass.

“Now whaur are ye gaun? Gie me yer han’, hoo dae ye dae?” says I,

“Haud up yer head ma bonnie wee lass, now dinna be sae shy,

Now whaur dae ye bide? Whaur dae ye stay? Come tell tae me yer name,

Will yer father no be angry now if ai was tae tak ye hame?”

We sat, we cracked a guid lang while aboot a thing or twa,

We cracked an cracked until we saw the stars had gaen awa,

She drew her shawl aroon her head and quietly she did explain,

Says she, “Young man ye’ll keep yer word, for ye promised tae tak me hame.”

An now we two are married an happy as we can be,

She’s got twa children by her side, another one on her knee,

We laugh an crack at oor fireside an think o the times that have passed,

I’ll never forget the nicht I fell in love wi ma Lochee Lass

Superstitions: Grist in the Mill of the Mind

   Superstitions are, by their nature, snapshots of the chaos of the human condition perhaps.  Most have no reason beyond perpetuating fragments of behaviour that have long ago been separated from the reasons why they were begun.  The more you look at them, the more they are found to be elusive, frustrating, sometimes frightening fragments of something else, a bigger thing which will never be fully revealed. (I mused on much the same issued in my previous post on the subject The Slippery World of Superstitions.)

Modern Workplace Initiations

   Are modern superstitions any more explicable than historic ones.  Do they explain the frightening forces behind the everyday world in a satisfactory fashion.  Sometimes the actions of the superstition themselves are far from harmless. Take the following incident from Kirriemuir which ended up in a case in the Court of Session of Edinburgh.  (It was reported in The Scotsman, 28th November 1960 and reported in a subsequent issue of Folklore by A. M. Honeyman).  A 15 year old employee in Kirriemuir was subject to an initiation joke which backfired badly.  He was told to stand against a door, for the purpose of getting measured.  While doing so, someone behind the door hit it very hard with a hammer, and the reverberation resulted in the apprentice sustaining a linear fracture of the skull.  While I don't know who this unfortunate lad was, what happened in the court case, or indeed who his employers were, this type of initiation for new employees is common throughout the U.K. and possibly the world.  Many poor novice employees in Dundee must have have a marked aversion for the state in Albert Square, for there impassively sat the poet Mr Robert Burns and it was common form at one time for these hapless lads (and lasses?) to be sent with messages and requests to Mr R. Burns in that location. (Sometimes innocents were sent out for a 'long stand'.)

Mr Burns, shortly after his installation on a plinth in Albert Square, Dundee.

 George M. Martin, Dundee Worthies (1934) records a number of pointless tasks which newly employed workers  would have to endure at the behest of experienced employees in their various trades in the burgh.  He begins with his own experience as an engineering apprentice at Messrs. Gourlay and Brothers when he was asked by a leading hand to go to the moulding shop for  the 'cubilie', actually a furnace which contained ten tons of molten metal.  If he had gone on the mission, the lead worker there would have sent him to another department for an equally irrelevant object or to complete an impossible task. Among mythical tools newly employed people were sent to fetch included the 'half round square', the 'soft pointed chisel', the 'brass faced file', and so on.

   Among the rites/tests recorded among local employers and industries were the following:

• Dundee Harbour Engineers.  New starters were sent for the graving dokkey, which was actually a huge manual key for the sluice gates; transporting of which would cause major difficulty.
• Bakers.  The apprentice was sent from bakery to bakery for a 'crystal chafer' or 'crystal chafer for the funeral shortbread' and was given a huge, heavy bad full of oddments, bricks, etc., which he had to handle with care as the contents were exceptionally brittle.
• Hatters.  Same pranks as the bakers, but the object fetched was a 'glass iron for the hats'.
• Painters.  Sent for the red stripe from a barber's pole.
• Jewellers.  Apprentices had to polish a piece of metal with 'Water of Ayr' stone until it smelled of onions.
• Certified Accountant new lads were sent to jute spinners to ask for a card breakers and were shown a monstrous, huge, multi ton machine.
• Plumbers' apprentices were sometimes marked with a smudge and told to take a length of brass to a chemists to get it vaccinated.

Superstitions About Birth on the Brink of the Modern Age

   Stray pieces of folklore attached to fundamental aspects of human life are likely to be universal.  Sometimes local lore is unexpectedly recorded and has the appearance of being, if not unique, then a tantalising variant on a more generalised superstition.  In her autobiography Look Back in Wonder (1966), Dr Elizabeth Bryson describes attending at her first birth at the turn of the century in Dundee.  All went well with the procedure and she handed the newborn child over to the group of women who had also been present at the birth.  Mother and child were in fine health and it was nearing midnight.  Dr Bryson asked if one of the women would mind washing the infant.  But she was met by an exclamation of horror and one of those present swore she had never done so and would not now perform this task as it was the duty of a doctor or a nurse.  Why should this superstition exist?  Is it something to do with not wanting to be the person responsible for crossing the sacred boundary between the ante and post natal worlds?

  Birth, as the border zone between life and non-existence, was always regarded with superstitious awe.  Those who specialised in assisting delivery had almost magical abilities.  In Scotland formerly midwives were known as howdies or howdy wives.

Older Lore

   Many historic superstitions revolved around commonplace objects which were found in rural homes. Looking for lost objects on Angus farms in past centuries was often time accomplished by 'spaeing by the girdle', the girdle being the kitchen implement used, for toasting cakes. For the purposes of divination it was heated until red hot then placed in a dark place with something on top of it.  The whole gathered company then trooped past and each in their turn took a piece of the object placed on top, each under the belief that Satan himself would carry off whichever guilty party among them was responsible for the theft of the missing object.  Guilt usually led to the thief breaking down and owning up before the dread encounter took place.

  Frederick Cruickshank tells us about  a 'cure' for cattle which were thought to be wasting away.  This was effected by placing a freshly cut green sod in the stall before the beast.  Connection with religious observance was also common place.  Certain times of the year were marked by special ceremonies, sometimes aligned by older festivals. Rood-Day, May 3rd, may have inherited some traits belonging to the Celtic May Day celebration, Beltane.  In Angus, on the evening preceding Rood Day, a piece of a branch, cut and peeled and bound round with red thread, was placed over the byre-door, to avert the evil eye.

Bell Tower, Navar Kirk

Some Sources Consulted

Rev. Frederick Cruickshank, Navar and Lethnot, The History of a Glen Parish in the North-East of Forfarshire (Arbroath, 1899).

Alexander Hislop, The Book of Scottish Anecdote (8th edn., Glasgow & London,n.d.).

A. M. Honeyman, 'Fools' Errands for Dundee Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol 70, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), pp. 334-336.

A. M. Honeyman, ' "Measuring" Kirriemuir's Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec. 1960), p. 251.

A. M. Honeyman, 'Midwifery in Dundee,' Folklore, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Summer 1966), p. 132.

James Murray Mackinlay, Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1910).

Commercial Break: The Afterlife of King James IV

While I take a short (and possibly well-deserved) break from my blogging schedule, can I bring your attention to my recently published book, The Afterlife of King James IV, published by Chronos Books.

   This work is very much an alternative history of one of the best beloved Scottish monarchs, King James IV, who died at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.  Or did he?  There were persistent rumours that the monarch survived the battle, being either captured by the English, rogue nobles in the Scottish army, or taking himself away on a spiritual, one way journey from the Holy Land. So, a raft of conspiracies theories which were born out of the bloody mire and confusion of battle?  That's true, but there was certainly more, uncommon intrigue afoot.  The tantalising image and reputation of the king - plus the possibility of his murder or survival - were tangible elements in the tempestuous politics of the post-Flodden period. The king's own wife, Margaret Tudor (sister of King Henry VIII) fully indulged in the intrigue, for her own purposes, claiming that James IV survived for several years after the fateful battle.

   More than this, the king was also linked to the Otherworld, with several strands of tradition aligning him with the theme of the Undying King, whose interest in the recondite traditions of his realm prompted his removed from the physical world, a captive in Fairy Land.  The persistent legends of his links with this realm are evident in witch trials and resurface in subsequent centuries, a fascinating ingredient in the postmortem reputation of this most alluring Stewart monarch.

https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/chronos-books/our-books/afterlife-king-james-iv

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Afterlife-King-James-IV-Otherworld/dp/1789041171/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q4ZG2B1/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

Thomas Hood the Poet in Dundee

Thomas Hood is not a well remembered figure now, which is a shame because he is one of the more bearable minor English poets of the 19th century.  Hood wrote, in relation to the city of his birth, London: 'Next to being a citizen of the world,it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city.'  Despite this, he was from Perthshire stock, in the Carse of Gowrie, and spent part of his short life (1799-1845) in Dundee.  Most of the material in this piece is gleaned from Alexander Elliot's Hood in Scotland (Dundee, 1885).

   Thomas's uncle Robert Hood became a tutor to the children of Admiral Duncan, later the victor at the Battle of Camperdown and the poet stayed at the house of one of his aunts, Jean Keay, on his first visit to Scotland.  The poet's father, another Thomas, was apprentice to a bookseller in Dundee before departing to live in London, where he became a publisher.  The poet's father died when he was young and he himself was in his early teens when he was sent back in Scotland for the sake of his health, sailing north on a ship of the Dundee, Perth & London line.

   Thomas Hood later took lodgings with a Mrs Butterworth in the Overgate.  One of his favourite haunts was the harbour at the River Tay and he got to know the boatmen as he frequently crossed to Newport where his aunt also had a home.  During his time in Dundee there was a tragedy with the ferry sinking, as reported by the Dundee Advertiser, 2nd June 1815:

On Sunday forenoon one of the pinnaces plying between Dundee and Newport, in Fife, suddenly sank about half a mile from the latter port, and out of twenty-three or twenty-four persons supposed to have been on board only seven were saved. From some of the people who escaped and others, we have with great pains collected the following details of this very sad disaster :— About a quarter past ten o'clock the pinnace sailed from the Craig Pier, but as the tide was ebbing, and the sand-bank, which now forms an opposing barrier to the passage, was uncovered, it was necessary to make the circuit of its eastern extremity, and for that purpose, the wind blowing strong from the south-east, the boatmen set her along shore till she was opposite the east harbour. Here those cumbrous and unmanageable sails, called lugsails, were hoisted. The main lugsail was first reefed, but after some altercation among the seafaring people on board, the reefs were let out and the whole canvas unfurled. A yawl belonging to Ferry-Port-on-Craig, with one man on board, was fastened by a tow-rope to the stern of the pinnace to be towed across the river. In this manner, and under a heavy press of sail, the pinnace weathered the bank, when, having shipped some water, a fresh altercation ensued about taking in the mainsail. In a few minutes afterwards the person at the helm rose either to clear the yawl's tow-rope from the outrigger of the pinnace's mizzen, or to assist in taking down the mainsail it is uncertain which—and having accidentally put the pinnace too broad from the wind, she instantly filled with water and went down by the stern. At this moment the man in the yawl, with admirable presence of mind, cut the tow-rope which attached her to the pinnace, and not only preserved his own life, but afforded the means of saving the seven persons from the pinnace.

   The captain of the vessel was John Spalding, known as Ballad Jock or Cossack Jock.  Thomas Hood made the incident the subject of one of his early prose pieces.  During the summer of 1815, Hood spent some time living with his father's other relatives in Errol in the Carse of Gowrie.  Back in Dundee in December he scribbled a long doggerel poem satirising the city to his relatives in London, beginning:

The town is ill-built, and is dirty beside,
For with water it's scantily, badly supplied
By wells, where the servants, in filling their pails.
Stand for hours, spreading scandal, and falsehood, and
tales.
And abounds so in smells that a stranger supposes
The people are very deficient in noses.
Their buildings, as though they 'd been scanty of ground,
Are crammed into corners that cannot be found.
Or as though so ill-built and contrived they had been,
That the town was ashamed they should ever be seen.

   The full-scale comical tour of the city which Hood anticipated writing - the Dundee Guide - was never accomplished and he left Scotland soon afterwards. 

Hood's first residence in Dundee, the Overgate.

   The poet did not come north again until 1843, accompanied by his son and daughter, again for the sake of his health.  he stayed for a while with his aunt Jean and her retired seafaring husband at Tayport, just across the Tay.  At his death, two years later, Thomas's sister wrote to her Scottish relatives:

My dear Aunt,—My poor brother is at last released from his sufferings. He departed this life about half past five o'clock on Saturday night. For the last three days he had been insensible. It was only by his groaning occasionally and heavy breathing that we could perceive life in him. I did not expect that he would have lived through Thursday night. When I saw him then he was unconscious, and had not spoken since Wednesday noon, except the words, 'Die, die!' Indeed, I may say, he has been for some time desiring his departure. It has been a lingering death, and his sufferings have been very great; but everything that could be suggested was done to endeavour to alleviate them. Poor Mrs Hood, I am afraid, will feel very much when all the excitement of the funeral is over, for she has been a devoted and attentive wife to him day and night, and had very little rest for some months past and as she said she had no time to write to me, I have been obliged to ride up every week to St. John's Wood, sometimes twice or three times, if I wished to know how he was, when he was in danger. He expressed himself as composed in mind, and prepared for death...With love to you and uncle, I am your affectionate niece,
       Eth. Hood.

Blood in the Kirk? Violence in the Early Reformation (and Before and Beyond)

  This article is a companion piece to the earlier piece Blood in the Fields and Burghs: Seventeenth Century Violence and examines whether the Reformation was a violent event in our area. There is a contention among some historians that the transfer of belief from Catholicism to Protestantism in Scotland was generally more peaceful than elsewhere is believed among modern academics.  There was no large-scale slaughter on either side of the ideological divide, it was true, but some familiar figures in Angus became associated with martyrdom, violence, either dispensing or receive undue punishment for the hue of their spiritual convictions.  Cardinal Beaton has put in several appearances in previous pieces and others like George Wishart and Walter Myln will be considered fully in the future.

   Modern post Christian scholars can look down from a lofty secular perspective and judge that religion and violence have always gone hand in hand, and this is partly true.  Examples can be readily plucked from the records, even though the lack of surviving detail robs us of the necessary context.  One of the earliest recorded events was also the most bloody, the massacre in the bishop's residence at Coupar Angus Abbey in 1186. But this was a fundamentally secular event which just happened to occur in a religious setting. (Details can be found in my post Monastic Settlement in Strathmore - Coupar and Kettins.)  One notable later event occurred in 1435 when John de Crannach, Bishop of Brechin, was violently assaulted by his own archdeacon, Gilbert Forrester.  The attack happened in the cathedral and Forrester was excommunicated by the cathedral chapter in February 1435.  The dispute may have been complicated by ecclesiastical jealousy or a false sense of entitlement for Forrester's uncle Walter had been the previous bishop.

A Godly place?  Crest of the burgh of Brechin, 19th century.

   Did the change from a Roman Catholic religious society to a Protestant one arrive with a tide of violence.  Any upheaval which resulted seems overwhelmingly concentrated on the destruction of property rather than violence against individuals.

   According to Mackenzie E.C. Walcott in Scoti-Monasticon, The Ancient Church in Scotland (1874), 'A nun of Dundee was killed during the violence which attended the demolition of the convent.'  What incident this refers to is not particularly clear.  The Convent of Franciscan Gray Sisters in the burgh stood upon ground between Bank Street and the  Methodist Close in the old Overgate.  Part of the convent survived a considerable time, being altered in the 17th century and only entirely demolished in 1870.  So the identity of the nun and the reasons behind her sad, unfortunate demise can only be guessed at.  I have not been able to discover the identity of this lady.

   In the same burgh there was deliberate violence against the property and contents of religious houses, sometimes politically as well as religiously motivated.  One of the aims was doubtless the sacrilegious humiliation and intimidation of those occupying such premises.  The town records of Dundee record this event:

For art and part in the oppression committed on the Friars, Preachers and Minorites of Dundee, by coming to their Places within the said burgh with convocation of the Queen's lieges in great number, armed in warlike manner: and there breaking up the doors and gates of the Places and breaking and destroying the ornaments, vestments, images and candlesticks carrying off the silvering of the altars, and stealing the bed clothes, cowls, etc., victuals, meal, malt, flesh, fish, coals, napery, pewter plates, tin stoups, etc., which were in keeping in the said Places: in company with Mr. Henry Durham and his accomplices—rebels of Our Lady the Queen, and at the horn—on the last day of August, 1543.

   Ironically, perhaps, the greatest material damage to Dundee's religious houses was not done by reformers but by the occupying English army of 1548, though they perhaps had accomplices in the town's Protestant zealots.  Before the English troops evacuated the town they set fire to the steeple and burned all the idols, also carrying off all the copper and brass inside.  The church plate was hidden away, but the finery of the building and its many small chapels was never fully restored.  Lindores Abbey funded a part restoration in 1552.

   The violent riots of Dundee in September 1543 spread at the same time to Arbroath.  The 16th century Diurnal of Occurrents notes that the abbey was saved by the defence of a local nobleman:

In this tyme thair was ane greit heresie in Dundie; thair thai distroyit the kirkis and wald have destroyit Abirbrothok kirk, war not the Lord Ogilbie.

But the physical decline and depredations at Arbroath Abbey was begun some decades before the Reformation when, in 1514, Ochterlonie of nearby Kelly castle set the monastery on fire following a presumably heated argument with the prior. Catholic writer Alexander Baillie, writing in A True Information (1628), certainly blamed Protestant mobs for ruining the abbey, though how much of this was hearsay or personal religiously tinted prejudice is unknown.  Although he was an exile of the continent, he seems to have known about the abbey in an earlier period (possibly the beginning of the second decade of the seventeenth century), when he  reminisced:

And first as to that of Abbirbroth, surely when before a certaine (number of) years I had first seene it and had stayed a while before the great dore thereof, gazing sadly upon the deplorable state of the defaced and staggering steeples, the battered wals, broken doune pillars and the floore al overgrowne with grass and defiled with filth and excrements of unreasonable beasts; and judging of such faire steads and mines that it hath oncebene a most royal braue and gorgious church, I could not but sigh and bewaile it. . .

   Brechin Cathedral was purged around 1559-60 and its choir was reduced to ruin. The Blackfriars' convent in Montrose was also sacked.

   In the early years of the Reformation there were sporadic incidents of local violence which involved the new regime, and it's interesting to speculate how much of this - if any - was rotted in the struggle of Protestant ministers to demonstrate authority as they took over, plus whether the lay population had any residual resentment against them.  In the year 1579 the Privy Council recorded trouble involving the minister of Fearn parish, Mr William Gray.  A man named Robert Lennox of Schanfurd is reported to have arrived:

in ane greit furie and reage, came to the said Maister Williame with ane drawin quhinzear in his hand, struik him thairwith, and had not faillit to have slayne him, gif God and the remaneut of the parichiners then present had not stayit the said Robert.

   The precise nature of the dispute is not recorded in full.  

   Another incident of violence was recorded in substantially more detail in February 1580 by James Balfour, minister of Rescobie:

Upoun the tent day of Januar last bipast, bealld the Sabbot day, he wes passand to the said kirk of Roscoby, to have usit his office and charge in ministratioun of the Word of God to the parochineris and utheris convenit at dew tyme of sermon, believand , in respect thairof, and for the reverence that aucht to have been borne to Goddis Word, to have ressavit na stop nor impediment, meikle les injuria or invasioun be way of deid of any persoun. Notwithstanding, far by his expectatioun and without ony offence or injurie offerit be him to ony personis, Patrik Buttir in Gormok and Thomas Eroch servand to Johnne Buttir of Gormok, bodin with jakis, steilbonatis, and pistollettis, prohibit to be worn be Actis of Parliament and Secreit Counsale, upoun sett purpois unbellet the said Mr James way, and with ane of the said is pilltolettis fellit him to the ground, and, heand liand thairon,  dischargit ane nther pistolet at. him; howbeit at Godis plesour he eschaipit the dangear thairof. Quhilk being persavit be thame, and that he was sumquhat recoverit of his formar hurt ressavit be the strek of the first pistolett, at last they pursewit him with drawn swirdis, hurt and wound it him in divers partis of his body, and specialie in his richt arme, to the effusione of his bluid in gret quantitie, and had not fallit to have slane him, war not the help of nychbours that stayit thame.

   The Rev Durie of Forfar was involved as the victim of violence not many years after being transferred from the parish of Logie.   In 1602 Thomas Bruce, a servant of John Scrymgeour of Kirkton, was hauled before the magistrates of Forfar and received the following punishment after being found guilty of assaulting the minister:

upoun Sunday Thomas should be presentit to the mercat croce of Forfar, with ane quhyte sark upoun him, and ane paper on his foirhead quhairon salbe writt,en the caus whairfoir he is thair presentit, and that. the said Thomas publictlie at the mercat croce upoun his kneis ask the said minister and the haill congregation forgivenes.

   After this public ritual he was to be bound in the stocks until a caution of £500 was delivered, then he was to be banished for an indefinite period.

The Pends, Arbroath Abbey

   The conspicuous Catholic foundations of Arbroath, Coupar and Rescobie may not have suffered the whole scale violence waged against them by Protestant mobs, as was seen elsewhere. (Resobie, despite the incident of violence involving the minister recounted above, certainly survived almost intact and was used for a short period as Forfar's parish kirk.) Part of the ruinous condition of religious buildings can be accounted for by later secular plunder of masonry for building purposes.  But the last word has probably not been written on this subject

   Surely the last word relating to the perception of violence associated with the Reformation must go to the tale associated with the Mearns reformer George Wishart who played such a large part in the religious conversion of Angus.  The 16th-17th century churchman and historian Spottiswoode relates the incident which happened in plague stricken, religiously divided Dundee in 1544:

It happened, whilst he stayed there, that a priest, called Sir John Weighton, having a purpose to kill him as he descended from the place where he used to preach, was apprehended with a weapon in his hand. A tumult was there upon raised, the sick without the gate rushed in, crying to have the murtherer delivered to them; but he taking the priest in his arms, besought them to be quiet, saying, 'he hath done no harm, only he hath shewed us what we have to fear in time coming,' and so saved the wicked man by his intercession. [The History of the Church of Scotland, volume I, John Spottiswoode, Edinburgh, 1847, p. 152.]

   Wishart's Christian example, of course, was not shared by everyone; not least the Catholic authorities who eventually brought him to his own death.

The Wishart Arch, Dundee

Further posts on aspects and main characters in the Reformation are forthcoming.