Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/27

 smaller features, such as sedilias, piscinas, and heraldic work, are well designed and carved with much spirit. Perhaps some of this good carving may be due to the French masons who, we know, were numerous in Scotland during the reigns of James and especially of James

During the period now under consideration, the structures chiefly erected were, as already mentioned, either parish or collegiate churches. A considerable number of the latter were built and endowed by private founders during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A list of the collegiate churches existing in Scotland at the Reformation is given by Dr. David Laing in his preface to The Collegiate Churches of Mid-Lothian. They amounted, according to that list, to thirty-eight in number, and were spread over nearly every county in Scotland. Only two of these had been founded in the fourteenth century, the remaining thirty-six being all founded during the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century.

The structures connected with a considerable number of these college churches are more or less perfectly preserved, and these, as well as several others not mentioned by Dr. Laing, are described in the following pages.

Many of these establishments had previously existed as parish churches or chapels before they were enlarged and made collegiate, and endowed by the munificence of the founders.

PAISLEY ABBEY,.

Paisley Abbey is fortunate in having found in the Very Rev. J Cameron Lees, D.D., formerly one of the ministers of the parish, so able a historian. We are largely indebted to his work, ''The Abbey of Paisley, 1163-1878'', for the following historical notices.

The Abbey was founded by Walter, son of Alan, the High Steward of Scotland, who had accompanied David from Shropshire, and received lands from him in Renfrewshire. Having resolved to follow the example of his patron, and found a monastery on his estate, Alan entered into an agreement with Humbold, prior of Wenlock Abbey, in the native county of his family, to establish at "Passelay" a house of the Cluniac Order of Benedictines, being the same order as the house at Wenlock. Humbold therefore, in 1169, brought thirteen monks from the parent house, and, having settled them in Renfrewshire on an island of the Clyde called the King's Inch, returned to Wenlock. There would at that time appear to have been a very ancient church in existence at Paisley, dedicated to St. Mirinus, an Irish saint of the sixth century, who had been a disciple of the great school of St. Comgal at Bangor. A new monastery was now to supersede the establishment of St. Mirin,