ToC

ON THE ROYAL PILGRIMAGES TO THE SHRINE OF ST. DUTHACK,
AT TAIN, IN ROSS-SHIRE.

In a note to page 16, I expressed some doubt as to the accuracy of the statement that King James the Fifth was sent in pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Duthack, immediately previous to the trial and condemnation of Patrick Hamilton. Had the Treasurer's Accounts for 1528, or the Household Book between July 1526 and August 1528, been preserved, they might have enabled us to trace the King's movements. But the statement is highly improbable in itself. Mr. Tytler has shown that James only escaped from the thraldom of the Douglasses at the end of May 1528, or nearly three months after Hamilton's sentence; and it was most unlikely from the vigilant restraint under which the King was kept that he would have been allowed to traverse a great part of the country upon such an errand. It may also be kept in view, that if an application had been made to James, before he assumed the reins of government, it is scarcely probable his interference would have had any effect in preventing the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Courts from being carried into execution.

Want of space prevents me from inserting here, as I intended, a series of extracts from the Treasurer's Accounts during the reign of James the Fourth, in connexion with his visits to that celebrated shrine. I shall therefore merely notice, that the public registers furnish some evidence to shew that he made an annual pilgrimage to St. Duthack's chapel, in Ross-shire. On more than one occasion the King rode unattended from Stirling across the mountain pass of the Grampians, leading from Fettercairn to the north side of the Dee, and from thence to Elgin, Inverness, and Tain. These repeated visits to a distant shrine may have been performed as an act of penance, the chapel having been founded by his father, James the Third. Such a journey, with a few attendants, he appears to have made in August 1513, or only one month previously to his setting out on his calamitous expedition, when he was slain at Floddon.