Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/19

. iv. JULY 1,1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 11 the Temple lands of Leslie, in the parish of Leslie, Aberdeenshire. For over a century the Knights Templars were in personal pos- session of Maryculter, near Aberdeen, where they built for themselves a preceptory, and a parish church for their tenants, which last was used as the parish church of Maryculter till about a century ago. In the same neigh- bourhood they possessed Blairs—endowed by the last proprietor for the establishment and maintenance of the present Roman Catholic College of Blairs—and the adjoining property of Kingcausie. They also held lands in Turriff and Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, and minor properties throughout the county, informa- tion relative to which is, I believe, obtainable in a paper drawn up by Maidment, and now in the possession of Mr. Munro, City Chamber- lain of Aberdeen. Within the city of Aber- deen the most interesting possession of the Knights Templars was their chapel, which stood near the Castlehill, at the east of the Castlegate. Gordon of Rothiemay, the earliest historian of Aberdeen (1661), says:— " Upon the north ayde of the Castellgate ther is to be seen amongst the gardings a certane obscure and scarcelie now discernible mine or fundatione of a small building, overgrown with briars and thorns, which sumtyme belongit to the Freirs, or Reed Freira Templars. No farther accompt can be given theroff; for at this tyme the very ruiaes are almost ruinated." Another property of the Knights Templars in Aberdeen is particularly interesting in respect that it was in it that Samuel Ruther- ford, the noted Covenanter divine, lodged during his banishment to Aberdeen from 1636 to 1C38. While exiled—not really im- prisoned or "confined "—in Aberdeen Rither- ford wrote about 220 of his famous letters. The house stood in the Upper Kirkgate (i.e., the Upper Gate, or Road, to St. Nicholas Church), and one Aberdeen writer states that " the title-deeds, extending to the earlier years of the fifteenth century, showed that the house had belonged to the Knights Templars. It had been a large massive building of one floor above the ground floor (as almost all those houses were), and at one time had been connected with a room under- neath, which opened on the Port of the Upper Kirkgate (this Port being one of the six gates of the city). It was in this room that Rutherford was confined, and from which he dates Borne of his letters."—'{Selected Writings of John Ramsay,' 1871, pp. 303-4. The Knights Templars had other pro- perties within the city, but there will be much difficulty in getting at the actual charters, which the MARQUIS D'ALBON is evidently specially desirous of consulting. Doubtless the charter chests of many Aber- deenshire proprietors would yield valuable documentary evidence if one had time to go over them. As has been pointed out, however, one must be very careful, in this matter, not to put too much on the mere phrase " temple lands " in charters :— "In a number of charters where reference is -1 made to temple lands, the proper translation is simply ecclesiastical or ' Kirk lands,'from tanplum, as signifying a church, and it is assuming too much to suppose that with all these Kirk-lands the Templars had a connexion."—The Scottish Anti- quary, 1901, p. 93. Meantime, it may be of assistance to know that the chief printed references to the Knights Templars in the North are : ' The Knights Templars in and around Aberdeen,' Alexander Walker (in Transactions of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, vol. ii., 1892), separately reprinted, 1897 ; 'Selected Writings,1 John Ramsay, 1871 ; 'A Descrip- tion of both Towns of Aberdeen,' James Gordon, printed for the (orig.) Spalding Club, 1842; 'Chartulary of St. Nicholas,'2 vols., New Spalding Club, 1892; articles in the 'Statistical Accounts.' The MAKQUIS D'ALBON will doubtless have information from other districts ; but, in any case, he must not omit to notice the extremely interesting little work ' The Knights Hospitallers in Scotland and their Priory at Torphichen,' by Dr. Beatson, Glasgow, published by Hedderwick, Glasgow, 1903 ; as also an article on ' The Templars in Scotland," by Mr. J. M. Mac- Kinlay, in The Glasgow Herald, 3 August, 1901, and an article on the suppression of the Knights Templars in Britain, in The Scottish Antiquary, 1902, which contains a very interesting inventory of the Templars' pro- perty at Swanton Manor, Bedfordshire. G. M. FRASER. Public Library, Aberdeen. There are at the Public Record Office the following: Inquisitionsconcerning possessions of the Order in England taken by Geoffrey Fitz Stephen, Master, 1185; three large Rolls of Accounts of Templars' Lands, temp. Edward II.; writs relating to the dissolution, 17 Ed ward II.; extracts from Pipe Rolls of allowances made to the Brethren of the Order, 26 Edward III. The Rolls of Accounts temp. Edward II. are returns of the king's officers of all the possessions of the various preceptories in England then in the hands of the Crown. These supply most interesting and minute details of each estate as to crops, stock, house- hold effects, church furniture, and books. I may add that the return for Bisham was printed in some papers on that manor which