Redcastle & the Lordship of Ardmannoch: the genealogy of a Highland estate - #2

Redcastle today. Photo credit David Galloway

Continuing from Part 1 of the story of Redcastle and its surrounding estate on the Black Isle, I had hoped the Exchequer Rolls might give some clues about its transformation from a medieval castle of enclosure of the type mentioned at the top of the last post to a 16th/17th century tower house as it appears today, more of a defensible residence than a fortification. Sadly they don’t but there’s a clue from another source: the 1526 feu to Henry Kemp of Thomaston.

What’s a feu? A feu is a lease except it lasts in perpetuity. Feus also have different terminology, some of which is borrowed from the feudal system. Thus:

lease (noun and verb) - feu

lease (contract document - ‘tenancy agreement’) - feu charter

landlord (owner of freehold) - superior

tenant - feuar

rent - feuduty

leased subjects (property let by a lease) - feu

Feuing became more and more common on estates belonging to the Crown and the Church as the 16th century progressed. Typically, the Crown would feu land to a feuar for a one-off lump sum payment called a ‘composition’ (or ‘grassum’) and an annual feuduty equal to the rent paid by the tenant(s) of the feu plus an increment called an ‘augmentation’. 

Thus in 1526 did the Crown feu to Henry Kemp of Thomaston, the King’s purse bearer (and his proximity to royal finances is probably not a coincidence in this context), the farms of Garguston, Newton of Redcastle and Hilton (which no longer exists but was on the shore between Redcastle and Coulmore) in the Lordship of Ardmannoch. Also included in this feu was not the castle itself but the office of heritable constable of the Redcastle in perpetuity. I couldn’t find any record of the composition which would have been paid but the annual feuduty was £17 plus 1 chalder and 8 bolls of barley, 2 marts (beef carcases) and 2 muttons (sheep carcases). That was calculated as the rent paid by the tenants of Garguston and Hilton with an augmentation of 27.5% of the cash element. No feuduty was charged for Newton because Kemp was to have that rent free as compensation for acting as constable of the castle.

Abbreviate of Henry Kemp's feu charter in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland

A further condition of the feu charter was what was known as a clause aedificando (‘building’) requiring the feuar to build on the feu a “sufficient mansion with a hall, chamber, kitchen, stable, barn, barnyard, gardens, and other necessary buildings and outbuildings”. So did Kemp comply with this obligation by adapting the existing castle into something like the Redcastle we see today?

There is a circumstantial adminicle (as we lawyers say) of evidence supporting that possibility. It’s Urquhart Castle again, the very recognisable tower at the north end of which (below) is considered by the castle experts MacGibbon & Ross (here) to have been built in the early 16th century pursuant to a feu charter of the Barony of Urquhart to John Grant of Freuchie in 1509 with a clause aedificando requiring “a tower with a rampart of stone and lime for a guard against the invasion of thieves and malefactors; and a hall, a chamber, a kitchen with other necessary houses, viz. a a brewery, a wine-cellar, a cheese-cellar, a cott, a grove, a dovecot and an orchard with trees”. Now admittedly that’s a rather more muscular and martial clause, specifically calling for a tower as opposed to the ‘mansion’ stipulated in the Redcastle clause. But having said that, there was no such thing as an unfortified ‘mansion’ in Scotland in the early 16th century.

Urquhart Castle. Photo credit: Bill Cumming

But there’s also a strong adminicle against the transformation of Redcastle into a tower house having been due to Kemp’s feu charter. That is that, although I said feus lasted in perpetuity, a feu granted during the King’s minority was revocable up to his 25th birthday. And a feu of annexed property of the Crown, even if granted during the King’s majority, was revocable at any time if not ratified by Parliament. Kemp’s feu was affected by both of these syndromes, having been granted when King James V was only 14 and with Ardmannoch having been annexed to the Crown when forfeited by the Black Douglases in 1455: while I found parliamentary ratifications of some feus from Ardmannoch (see here for example), I couldn’t find one for Henry Kemp’s feu. Is he likely to have invested in transforming Redcastle when his title to it was so vulnerable?

I don’t know exactly what became of Kemp’s feu of Garguston, Newton and Hilton with the constabulary of Redcastle. Robert Innes of Invermarkie appears as constable of the castle in 1533 suggesting the feu may have been transferred to him but there is no further reference in the Exchequer Rolls to Redcastle being kept on behalf of the Crown after 1535 - was that when it was abandoned as a royal fortress? James V issued a revocation of all feus and other charters granted during his minority in 1537. These revocations usually resulted in the affected deeds being regranted on payment of another composition and/or augmentation of the feuduty but I couldn’t find any sign of that in the case of the Kemp feu (if it even still existed in 1537) and what we do know for certain is that the Crown re-let Garguston, Newton and Hilton along with the rest of the farms of Ross and Ardmannoch in 1539 proving that the feu had disappeared by then at the latest.

Extract from James Dorret's map, 1750. Note Hilton between Redcastle and Coulmore. National Library of Scotland

Nowadays on an estate with farms, they are re-let individually as and when they become vacant. But in previous centuries, all the leases of the farms on an estate were timed to end and thus be re-let at the same time: such mass re-lettings were called ‘sets’. The 1539 set of Ross and Ardmannoch was carried out at Dingwall by commissioners on behalf of the King in terms of instructions from him which are worth quoting from:

Becaus we ar informitt that ane grete parte of oure saidis landis and lordschippis ar in gentilmennis handis, parte of auld and parte of new, ye consider and se gyfe [see if] thai gentillmen hes uthir grete heretage or nocht; and gyfe thai have nocht, bot that thai and thare foirbearis hes levit upoun the saidis takkis [lands which they rent] in oure faderis tyme and utheris oure predicessouris, ye sall mak to thame takkis [leases] thareof, with this restrictioun, that thai have na mare nor thai may lauboure with thare awne pleuch and laubouris, and nocht to be sett to subtennentis; and quhat landis thai have that excedis, to sett [let] the samyn to the tennentis occupiaris thareof, as ye sall think maist convenient for the wele of oure liegeis and oure proffitt.

[And] as to oure landis sett to grete gentillmen in oure les age that thai nor thare predicessouris had nevir of before, ye sall sett the samyn agane to the auld possessouris, and gyfe thai be sobir gentillmen and occupiis ane part of the saidis landis with thare awne gudis, and nane uthir man clames rycht thareto, ye sall sett that parte to thame and the remanent to the tennentis occupiaris of the grund, gife thai will tak the samyn;

These instructions allude to the fact that there were two types of farm tenant in 16th century Scotland: the first was “tennentis occupiaris” as referred to in the second paragraph there. They were the ordinary folk - peasants, in the original, non-pejorative sense of the word - who cultivated the land themselves to grow their food. Each farm was normally farmed by several families jointly and they shared the rent. The other class of tenant was the “gentillmen” referred to in the King’s instructions to the commissioners. They usually had a farm exclusively and might cultivate it themselves (the work done by hired labour, of course - they didn’t get their own hands dirty!) or sub-let it to “occupiaris” of the first class of tenant, or a mixture of both. An example of this latter class was the tenant of Drumderfit Farm who was James, the brother of Fraser of Lovat. 

Against this background, the King’s policy in his instructions becomes clearer: a preference that the farms be let directly to their “tennentis occupiaris” with “gentillmen” only allowed when they, or their ancestors, had had the land before the King’s reign began (in 1513) and had cultivated it themselves and would promise to do so in the future: any land they’d sub-let would be taken off them and let directly to the sub-tenants. As a land management prescription, it’s enlightened even by today’s standards. 

You can read the full results of the 1539 set of Ross and Ardmannoch here but looking just at the farms that were later to become parts of Redcastle Estate - Garguston, Newton, Hilton (which no longer exists but lay between Redcastle and Coulmore), Lettoch and Easter Kessock - we see that most were re-let to their existing “tennentis occupiaris”. Having said that, the new leases they were given were only for five years. I don’t know if that implies a new set every five years - none is mentioned in the Exchequer Rolls apart from in 1504 and 1539. Were these tenants at risk of being thrown out at the end of five years? Provided they paid a sum called a grassum equal to the cash element of a year’s rent for their leases to be renewed, I suspect in practice probably not but it’s a reminder that peasants’ tenure was not necessarily quite as secure prior to the 18th century Clearances as was claimed in some quarters. I’ve extracted the names of the tenants below along with their rents (click to enlarge). Included for comparison, shaded grey, are the names of the tenants of these farms in 1504. (1504 and 1539 are the only two years for which the ERs give tenants’ names.) There’s some evidence of continuity between the two years but not a huge amount, perhaps.

The exception to the farms being let to “tennentis occupiaris” is Newton with its brewer’s croft and smiddy croft. These last two are examples of the fact that, as well as farms occupied by multiple tenants, there were also smaller holdings occupied by individual artisans such as smiths and brewers: elsewhere on Ardmannoch, there was a forester’s croft, a mair’s croft, a sergeant’s croft and a messenger’s croft, the last three being local officials. Anyway, Newton Farm with its associated crofts was let to Robert Innes of Invermarkie. He would, no doubt, have sub-let it (or bits of it) to “tennentis occupiaris” and a brewer and a smith but this appears to be a departure from the King’s ‘no toffs except of long standing’ policy for Innes only appeared on the scene as recently as 1533 as already noted.

As far as the rent was concerned, there were increases in the cash element since 1504 of roughly 15% and I think this was due to inflation because the grain and livestock elements of the rents remained static. Incidentally, marts (beef carcases) were valued at £1 10s each and muttons (sheep carcases) at 3 shillings meaning, I think, that the tenants were expected to pay these cash equivalents in lieu of the actual carcases. And as regards the grain rents (barley), these were unchanged since 1504 except that, henceforth, they were to be paid according to the Leith measure of a chalder. That was larger than the local Ross measure in use hitherto but, if I'm reading the Exchequer Rolls correctly (not easy considering they're in an abbreviated sort of Latin that doesn't always spell things out explicitly), the tenants were given an abatement on their headline rents of 6.25% as a sort of transitional measure to compensate for this.

 

Finally, note the column headed bondagiis containing figures ranging between 5 and 40 shillings. Payable over and above the rents, these appear for the first time in 1539 and what I think they are is that, in past centuries, as well as paying their rents, tenant farmers typically had to perform for their landlords what were known as services. These were fixed by local custom and included things like so many days unpaid work on the landlord's home farm at harvest time or providing (free of charge) so many cart loads of fuel to his house etc. So I think the sums in the bondagiis column are the services of each farm commuted into a cash payment in lieu.

 

In the 16th century, land was farmed in clusters of narrow strips called rigs. the remains of which can be seen here in the north of Lewis overlaid by regular modern croft field boundaries. In 1539, the Black Isle would have looked like this

Turning from the revenue, let's have a look at the expenses the chamberlain of the Lordship of Ardmannoch disbursed locally before remitting the balance of the rent received to Edinburgh. 1538-39 was a typical year (here). A total of £24: 17s was paid to local ecclesiastical institutions and clergymen endowed by the King or previous owners of the Lordship. These included Beauly Priory (£9: 3s: 8d including 7 shillings in lieu of a pound of pepper: this account attempts to link this payment to the 2 merks (£1: 6s: 8d) payable annually at Redcastle originally granted by the de Boscos in 1278 updated for inflation); the chaplain officiating at a side altar in Tain parish church endowed by King James II from the rent of Dunskeath (10 merks or £6: 13s: 4d); and £1 to the Friars Preachers of Inverness. That last was an endowment by Alexander, 3rd Lord of the Isles in 1437 while he was Earl of Ross out of the rents of the farm and ferry of Easter Kessock. As such this is properly a charge on the Earldom of Ross but it’s an example of the ‘cross contamination’ which occured between the accounts and rent rolls of the earldom and Ardmannoch due, no doubt, to their neighbouring each other and being managed by the same chamberlain. 

Another example was the salmon fishery on the River Conon. This was part of the Earldom of Ross but for some reason accounted for in the Ardmannoch accounts. Anyway, the fishery wasn’t let to a tenant but operated by the Crown in hand. This was commercial netting of salmon, of course, not fishing by sportsmen with rod and line: nowadays we think of salmon as a luxury food and catching it an elite pastime but it wasn't in the 16th century when it was seen as a cheap source of protein for the poor to be harvested by the most efficient method possible. The stretch of the river involved is not disclosed but each year the chamberlain accounted for a catch of 11 ‘lasts of Hamburg measure’. A ‘last’ comprised 12 barrels of salted fish each of about 100kg, so we’re talking about something in the region of 2,000-3,000 fish (compare with the annual rod catch in recent years from the whole river of around 1,000). A last of salmon was worth about £30 and in 1538-39, the chamberlain paid £34: 16s 8d for the construction of a new coble (flat bottomed boat for working the nets), repair of nets and purchase of salt; £2 and 4 bolls each of barley and oatmeal to the canar (water bailiff); and £2 to the cooper for making the barrels. It would appear that not all the barrels were made locally, though, for the 1540-41 accounts have £4: 4s paid to one Alexander Watson, master of a ship called the Michael, for bringing 7 lasts of barrels from Leith.

 

I couldn't find a picture of salmon netting on the Conon but this one is at the mouth of the River Ness opposite Kessock

After paying his own fee of £10 and those of the mairs and messenger and one or two other minor local expenses (including 14 shillings to a carpenter to repair the hall at Dingwall Castle which is another one that looks as if it should more properly have been charged to Ross) and making what look like accounting adjustments which I confess I didn’t fully understand (being written in Latin!), the chamberlain paid the balance of the cash rent to the Comptroller, one of the Crown’s principal financial officers. As regards the balance of the victual (agricultural produce) rent - 26 chalders, 13 bolls, 4 firlots and 2 pecks (about 25 tonnes) of grain plus 19 and a quarter each of marts and muttons, 53 dozen hens and 16 capons and the 11 lasts of salmon - the chamberlain sold some of it locally for about £75 and left the rest to be disposed of by the Comptroller in due course: what arrangements were made for its storage until then are not stated but in another year it was noted that the remaining unsold victual was in the granary at Dingwall Castle. 

The Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch accounts were amalgamated in 1560 and two items of expenditure that recurred thereafter I can’t resist mentioning even if they are more related to Ross than Ardmannoch are 7 bolls and 2 firlots of grain to men for cutting peat and a further 4 bolls, 2 firlots to more men for stacking it in Dingwall Castle. That’s a pleasing image, isn’t it? Note to Historic Scotland - if you want to create a more realistic immersive experience for visitors to your castles, put a stack of peat in the courtyard!

 

On the subject of visitors to castles, when you google Redcastle, you quite often see the claim that Mary Queen of Scots visited it in 1562 (see here for example). I always like to see a primary, or at least academic, source to confirm claims like that but there’s nothing to suggest such a visit in the Exchequer Rolls. And unfortunately the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer (which confirm her grandfather King James IV visited Redcastle because they tell us he paid  5 French Crowns for a goshawk there in 1505) for the Queen’s time in Scotland are not available to consult online. But it’s not improbable because we do know she was in Inverness twice, once 1562 and again in 1564. This scholarly 1987 article by Edward Furgol says she was at Redcastle (and Dingwall), and presumably he was able to verify that from primary sources, but he doesn’t say when or in what circumstances. George Chalmers, in his 1818 biography of the Queen, tells us, basing himself on the dispatches of the English ambassador, Thomas Randolph, who accompanied her, to Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state, William Cecil, that Mary spent three days in Inverness in September 1562. But as some of that time was occupied by a fracas with the Earl of Huntly denying her access to the castle there, I wonder how much time she would have had to visit the Black Isle? I think the Redcastle visit is more likely, therefore, to have been during her 1564 visit to the north: Furgol places the Dingwall visit then and Chalmers (on whose authority I don’t know) tells us (here) the Queen went to Fortrose (then called the Chanonry of Ross) in 1564 and speculated that she 

probably went to Ross-shire to enquire, without the knowledge of the statesmen, at Edinburgh, what was the value of the earldom of Ross, which she meant to settle on [her husband to be, Lord] Darnley, before their marriage, wishing, in case of any accident to her, to leave him an Earl, with a large estate, and a great following, which was so sought for, in those times, when men were of more value than money. 

 

Henry Stuart, Earl of Ross

What we do know for sure is that, in 1565, Mary granted the Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch, including Redcastle, to Darnley (above), in a charter (here) which merged and incorporated them into a single Earldom, Lordship and Barony of Ross with Dingwall Castle as its seat. At the same time Darnley was also created Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch. I couldn't find an Act of Parliament approving that grant of annexed estate but it was kind of academic because, as we all know, Darnley didn’t live for long to enjoy these honours. After his murder in February 1567 they all descended to his infant son, James Duke of Rothesay, who, of course, in very short order (July 1567) became King James VI.

 

And as this post has also become far longer than I imagined, I'll break here and try and conclude the story of Redcastle in the next post.

Redcastle & the Lordship of Ardmannoch: the genealogy of a Highland estate

Pictured above in a recent addition to my postcard collection is Redcastle. Not to be confused with another castle of that name (this one) by Lunan Bay between Arbroath and Montrose, this Redcastle is on the south shore of the Black Isle about 5 miles west of the Kessock Bridge.

The card shows Redcastle in its heyday in the 1930s. At that time, it was the home of Lady Burton. A baroness in her own right, she was the heiress to the Bass brewing fortune and also the widow of local landowner, Colonel James Baillie. When he died in 1931, Lady Burton got the liferent (rent free use for the rest of her life) of his estates which as well as Redcastle included Dochfour at the top of Loch Ness, Tarradale which adjoined Redcastle on the west and the Cluanie and Glen Shiel deer forests in Wester Ross. When Lady Burton died in 1962, the whole lot went to her and Colonel Baillie's heir to her title and his estates, their grandson, Michael Baillie, Lord Burton. Since the latter's death in 2013, the estates, including Redcastle, have continued to be owned by various members of the Baillie family.  

Redcastle shared the fate suffered by many a Highland mansion house of being requisitioned during the War and never being returned to its former glory afterwards. Lady Burton went to live at Dochfour instead and took the slates off Redcastle to avoid paying rates on it: today, it's a roofless ruin, the topiary and aviaries all gone.

Redcastle today. Picture credit Allan Maciver

So much for Redcastle's 20th century story, what of its remoter past? 

In The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland (1889), MacGibbon & Ross described it (here) as 

A modern mansion in which several portions of an older edifice have been incorporated ... not of great age, probably not earlier than the sixteenth century. 

The authors go on to add, however, that Redcastle stands on the site of a much earlier fortification called Edradour built in the 12th century. That’s very old as Scottish castles go but beyond naming two of its owners in the 13th century and mentioning that the Black Isle was annexed to the Crown in 1455, MacGibbon & Ross tell us no more of this long history. That inspired me to look it up for myself. 

And not just the history of the castle itself but also of its surrounding estate. Stretching along the south coast of the Black Isle, this comprised the farms and crofts of Garguston, Newton, Coulmore, Lettoch and Artafallie, not to mention the Mains of Redcastle and its mill recorded in the adjoining village name of Milton. Detached and lying to the east, the estate also included the village of North Kessock (previously known as Easter Kessock) plus the Kessock Ferry across the Beauly Firth to Inverness and a salmon netting station on the firth called the Stell of Kessock. There's a beautiful map of Redcastle Estate (minus Easter (North) Kessock) drawn in 1824 here. I've drawn the boundaries on to the OS 1 inch map below (including Kessock although its boundaries are pretty conjectural):-

Ordnance Survey 1 inch map, 1926-27. You can browse the area in more detail on the OS 6 inch map from 1872 here 

The history of Redcastle and its estate takes us all the way back to the 11th century. The authority of the king of Scotland didn’t reach the south shore of the Moray Firth until the first half of that century and it didn’t cross into what’s now Ross-shire and the Black Isle until the second half, during the reign of King Malcolm III ‘Canmore’ (1057-93). But for another 150 years Scottish kings continued to be plagued by rebellion in these northern provinces and amongst the tactics for subduing them were building castles. Thus did Malcolm’s great-grandson, William I ‘the Lion’ (1165-1214), build two castles in Easter Ross after a campaign there in 1179: Dunskeath, at Nigg opposite Cromarty and Edradour where Redcastle now stands.

As there’s nothing left of Edradour to see today, what would it have looked like? The remains of Dunskeath are too vestigial to assist (see here) but there was a third medieval castle on the Black Isle, Ormond Castle on the coast just south of Avoch, which might give a clue. We don’t know when it was built (MacGibbon & Ross say it was the other one built by William the Lion in 1179 but they’re wrong about that because the original contemporary source, the Chronicle of Melrose (here), is explicit that the other castle was Dunskeath) but we do know Ormond Castle existed in 1297 when the Scottish patriot Sir Andrew Moray was reported to be there by the English constable of Urquhart Castle to King Edward I. Anyway, although its remains are also pretty fragmentary, there's enough to draw a plan of them:-

Picture credit North of Scotland Archaeological Survey

As soon as I saw it, that plan instantly reminded me of this one ... 

From 1960s guide book at Archive.org

... of Urquhart Castle. It’s about the same size so was there almost a template for medieval royal castles around the Moray Firth? Did Ormond Castle, and by analogy Edradour, look a bit like this:-

Reconstruction of Urquhart Castle by David Walker at Archive.org. Note that the very recognisable tower at the west (left) end of the castle is much later - 16th century. 

But another possibility the Ormond plan suggests - and a more likely one, I suspect - is a simple rectangular enclosure with perhaps later accretions at either end. So Ormond and Edradour might originally have looked more like Castle Roy near Nethy Bridge, also believed to have been built in the late 12th or early 13th century:-

Castle Roy: photo credit Jimmy G

Or Castle Sween in Argyll, the central rectangular enclosure of which is known to be 12th century:-

Castle Sween. Note that the tower on the left (with the wooden stair) is a later addition to the original 12th century square enclosure at the centre and right (with the arched doorway in the middle). 

Moving on from this castle speculation, the other tactic employed by the Canmore kings to pacify outlying areas such as Moray and Ross was planting them with feudal fiefdoms. These were granted to trusted agents, often foreigners originally from Normandy or Flanders and usually via a generation or two in England or the south of Scotland before moving north. One such was John Bisset who received the territory known as the Aird, that is the triangle immediately west of Inverness enclosed by the Beauly Firth, Loch Ness and Glen Urquhart. We don’t know exactly when that was but it’s likely to have been in the aftermath of the suppression of a rebellion in 1211-12 by Godfrey MacWilliam, a rival dynast descended from Malcolm Canmore’s first marriage opposed to the kings descended from his second marriage to Queen (Saint) Margaret. The Bissets were an English family of Norman origin one of whom is said to have been amongst those who accompanied William the Lion back to Scotland from his captivity in England in 1175: the earliest Bisset recorded in Scotland was a Henry in 1198 although what his relationship to John of the Aird was is not known. Anyway, he (John) appears also to have received Edradour Castle and surrounding land on the Black Isle along with the Aird. 

 

John Bisset did not go on a found a dynasty like some of his incoming contemporaries did (for example Frasers, Grants, Gordons, Murrays). His son, another John, died about 1260 without male heirs and in accordance with feudal practice his estates were divided among his three daughters. Edradour and another outlying Bisset property, Kilravock (pronounced ‘Kilrock’) between Inverness and Nairn, went to   

the second daughter, Elizabeth who was married to Andrew de Bosco. (As an aside, the youngest daughter, Muriel, inherited a portion of the Aird called Lovat: her second husband was a Fraser whence the Frasers of Lovat.) In 1278, the De Boscos granted a charter donating 2 merks a year to Beauly Priory (founded about 1230 by John Bisset) payable “apud Castrum Nostrum de Eddyrdor” (at our castle of Edradour). You can read the full charter - which is only the second contemporary reference to the castle - here.

 

Beauly Priory. Photo credit Andrew Marks

Around 1292, Elizabeth de Bosco (née Bisset), by now widowed, conveyed Kilravock to her daughter Mary and her husband Hugh Rose of Geddes: from them descend the Roses of Kilravock. Elizabeth appears also to have conveyed Edradour to her daughter and son-in-law around the same time for in 1294 they leased to David de Graham (husband of the youngest of John Bisset’s daughters and co-heiresses, Cecilia) for eight years “a davach of land in the tenement of Edirdowyr, namely all that davach of land called Culcolly”. You can read the full charter here. ‘Culcolly’ is spelt Kilcoy now. It lies about a mile north of Redcastle and this lease of it in 1294 is the earliest indication we have of the extent of the estate pertaining to Edradour, now Redcastle.

 

The seal of Elizabeth de Bosco, daughter and co-heiress of John Bisset II of the Aird, Edradour & Kilravock: Archive.org

If these snippets - the grant of 2 merks a year to Beauly Priory and the lease of Kilcoy - appear somewhat unexciting, I’m mentioning them because they’re literally all we know about Edradour (Redcastle) for the first 120 years of its existence. And they’re a positive treasure trove of information compared with the next 120 which are a complete blank. The next appearance in the record is not until 1426 when King James I confirmed a charter by Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas, to his brother, James Douglas of Balvenie, of, amongst other lands, the baronies of “Eddirdure and Avach”. The likely sequence of events leading up to this is that, at a time and in circumstances unknown, the Roses of Kilravock disposed of Edradour to the Morays of Bothwell who already owned the nearby Barony of Avoch (pronounced ‘Auch’) with its headquarters at Ormond Castle. (The Morays descend from one Freskin, usually assumed to have been a Fleming, granted land in Moray by King David I in the 1130s following the suppression of a native rebellion there. The sixth generation married the heiress of Bothwell in Lanarkshire in the mid-13th century.)  

The Morays of Bothwell ended in the male line with the death of Sir Thomas Moray in 1361. In a transaction which puzzles historians because it offends against every rule of feudal inheritance in the book, all his estates, including Edradour and Avoch on the Black Isle, passed to his widow and her second husband, Sir Archibald Douglas: in 1388, he became the 3rd Earl of Douglas and is usually remembered by his soubriquet Archibald the Grim. (Sir Thomas Moray had no children but one would normally expect his estates to pass to the closest collateral branch of the Morays: it would appear none of them felt confident enough to challenge the Douglases' usurpation of their heritage.)

 

Royal confirmation in 1426 of the grant of inter alios Edradour and Avoch by the Earl of Douglas to his brother James Douglas of Balvenie in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland    

As we saw previously, the 4th Earl of Douglas transferred Edradour & Avoch to his brother, James Douglas of Balvenie, in the 1420s. Nicknamed James the Gross, he succeeded as 7th Earl of Douglas following the execution of his grand-nephew, the 6th Earl, at the ‘Black Dinner’ in 1440. Between 1443 and 1445, the 8th Earl, James the Gross's son William, transferred Edradour & Avoch to his younger brother, Hugh, who in the latter year was raised to the peerage as Earl of Ormond. King James II’s feud with the Douglases - which famously included stabbing the 8th Earl to death at Stirling Castle in 1452 - culminated in a military campaign in 1455. After sundry manoeuvres, the 9th Earl fled to England while his brothers, the Earls of Moray and Ormond, fought on until defeated at the Battle of Arkinholm where Moray was killed and Ormond captured. He was tried and executed and the estates of all three Douglas brothers - known as the Black Douglases - were forfeited to the Crown. 

As well being forfeited, some of the Douglas estates were also annexed to the Crown. What that meant was that the King couldn’t give them away again without the consent of Parliament. The idea was to maintain an adequate endowment so he didn’t have to resort to taxation to meet his expenses. Amongst the estates annexed in 1455 (read the Act of Parliament here) were “Anache [i.e. Avoch], Eddirdaill [Edradour] callyt Ardmanache … [and] the Redcastell with the lordschippis in Ross pertenyng tharto”. This is the first time Edradour Castle is referred to as Redcastle.

Under the ownership of the Crown post 1455, the baronies of Edderdale (as the name ‘Edradour’ had morphed into) and Avoch were amalgamated into a new unit called the Lordship of Ardmannoch and we begin to get much more information from now on thanks to the Exchequer Rolls. These are basically the accounts of the various collectors of Crown revenue balancing the rents due by the tenants of the estates they were responsible for (or other Crown revenue such as fines imposed in royal courts) with payments made locally on behalf of the Crown and any balance remitted to one of the Crown’s principal financial officers in Edinburgh (Comptroller or Treasurer depending on the nature of the income: the former in the case of the rents of Crown lands). 

 

The Exchequer Rolls let us see the farms included in the Lordship of Ardmannoch (the amalgamated baronies of Edderdale and Avoch - that's the last time they get mentioned) and I've marked these on the map below:-

 

We shouldn't imagine the Lordship of Ardmannoch as a single block of land having as its boundary the line which encloses all the white dots on the map (or even two or three such blocks), though. Some of the farms might be contiguous with each other (particularly those to the south west around Redcastle) but large feudal lordships were more typically clusters of detached properties intersected by land belonging to third parties such as, in the case of Ardmannoch, the Bishop or Earl of Ross. In fact, Tarradale which marched with Garguston to the west and Wester & Easter Kessock which marched with Lettoch to the east both belonged to the Earl of Ross and it's very likely Ardmannoch land touched Earldom land at other points as well.

 

The total annual rent payable by the tenants of the Lordship of Ardmannoch in the 1460s was about £175 in cash plus 20 chalders each of barley and oatmeal (a chalder was a measure which varied slightly from place to place but for the sake of illustration was very roughly a tonne of grain) and 12 marts (beef carcasses) and 12 muttons (sheep carcasses). I say the rent was ‘about’ these figures because the totals vary a bit from year to year for reasons which are hard to divine because I don’t always follow all the methodologies of the accounts due to them being written in Latin. I also suspect them to be riddled with errors which is perhaps not to be wondered at when they involve totalling pounds, shillings and pence and pre-metric measures all expressed in roman numerals! 

 

Anyway, a chalder of grain seems to have been worth about £3-4 in the mid 15th century, a mart 5 shillings and a mutton one so the total value of Ardmannoch to the Crown was about £320 a year: the Bank of England’s inflation calculator tells me that’s about £320,000 today (though I’m a bit dubious how valid such comparisons are over such a distance in time). The accounts also reveal that in 1459 some of the grain was carried over to Inverness (at a freight of 16d a chalder) and stored in a granary there hired for the purpose for £1. Twenty five marts were carried over to Inverness in 1460 at a total freight of 6 shillings and in the same year 64 chalders of wheat and malt (barley) from Ardmannoch and other Crown estates in the north were carried from Inverness and Findhorn to Leith in three ships at a total freight of £25 16s. There was also £1 9s for carrying the grain from the granaries to the port and the costs of loading the ships and straw to pack it in on board.

 

£172: 15s: 8d as the cash rent from the Baronies of Avoch & Edderdale called Ardmannoch in the 1458 Exchequer Rolls 

As well as making arrangements for collecting and disposing of the rent, the King (James II) appointed a keeper of Redcastle at an annual fee of £26: 13s: 4d (40 merks) out of the rents of Ardmannoch. This was Celestine of the Isles, brother of John of Islay, 4th Lord of the Isles and chief of Clan Donald. More importantly for present purposes, John was also the Earl of Ross. (For convenience, I’m going to call these people MacDonalds but note that Clan Donald chieftains didn't use that surname in the 15th century: they didn’t start doing that until the 16th.) 

 

If appointing Celestine keeper of Redcastle had seemed like a good idea at the time, it was soon revealed to have been a mistake. The Exchequer Rolls are replete with “pendencies” (irregularities for which the chamberlain disclaims responsibility) as to which consulendus est rex (“the king has been advised”) revealing that Celestine was wont to help himself to far more of the rents than his fee entitled him to. And his brother the Earl of Ross had his hand in the Ardmannoch till as well to the extent that he was summoned to appear before Parliament to explain himself: the 1460 accounts have £2: 10s paid to Marchmont Herald and his macer Hector Meldrum to serve the summons as well as a notary to record the fact. The Earl attended the Parliament but there’s no record of any sanction imposed. And he didn’t mend his ways for in the 1465 accounts the chamberlain reported a £3: 14s: 4d decrease in the rents from Suddie, Culbokie, Drumderfit, Drynie and the Brewhouse of Pitfour for the rather sinister sounding reason that “certain of the Earl of Ross's men temporarily inhabited the said lands and later left them empty.”

 

The seal of Alexander, 3rd Lord of the Isles and Earl of Ross (1423-49): Archive.org

Celestine’s last appearance in the Exchequer Rolls as keeper of Redcastle was in 1469. Then there’s a gap in the records until 1472 when George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly and the Earl of Ross’s rival for power and influence around the upper Moray Firth, appears as keeper at an annual fee of 80 merks (£53: 6s 8d - double the amount Celestine received. And there’s an example of an error in the Exchequer Rolls: they narrate the fee for 1473 as 80 merks but the figure entered for totalling up is 80 pounds.)

The Earl of Ross's sins finally caught up with him in 1475. That year it came to light that, 13 years earlier in 1462, he'd conspired with the exiled Earl of Douglas and King Edward IV of England in the so called Treaty of Westminster-Ardtornish (read it here) whereby, if the English king invaded, Ross and Douglas would be allowed to carve up Scotland between them and rule it as Edward's vassals. Although the contemplated invasion never took place, that was an affront even as reactive a monarch as James III (1460-88) couldn't overlook. Ross was summoned to Parliament again in 1475 and, not appearing this time, promptly forfeited: Huntly was commissioned by the King to sieze the Earldom of Ross's headquarters, Dingwall Castle. 

 

In fact, Ross was able to come to terms with the King the following year, 1476: he was allowed to keep the Lordship of the Isles but was permanently shorn of the Earldom of Ross which was annexed to the Crown. The lands of the earldom were scattered along the north shore of the Cromarty Firth, through Dingwall and up Straths Peffer and Conon and round into the west of the Black Isle: in fact Ardmannoch was bounded by Earldom land on the west (Tarradale) and east (Wester Kessock) and no doubt at other points as well. And as well as this demesne in Easter Ross, the Earldom also included the feudal superiority of various vassals in Skye and Wester Ross. It's total rental in 1479 was £275: 2s: 8d, 98 chalders of grain (barley, oatmeal and oats), 52 marts and 46 muttons: about £650 in total so roughly double Ardmannoch's £320.

 

The demesne of the Earldom of Ross in the 1470s

When King James III’s second son was born (between 1476 and 1479), he was given the title Marquis of Ormond after the castle on the Black Isle. (The usual title of the king’s second son - Duke of Albany - wasn’t available because it was held by the still living second son of James II.) In 1481, Ormond received from his father two charters, one of the Earldom of Ross (the annexation of the earldom contained a carve out allowing it to be granted to the king’s second son without the need for parliamentary approval) and the other of the Lordship of Ardmannoch (approved in Parliament in April 1481): the reddendo (annual payment to the King as feudal superior) for Ardmannoch was the peppercorn rent of a silver penny. In 1488, Ormond was promoted to Duke of Ross and Marquis of Ormond and with the further new subsidiary titles of Earl of Edderdale otherwise called Ardmannoch (the only time I’ve ever seen a sort of alternative peerage title like that) and Lord of Brechin and Nevar. And these titles reminds us: what became of Ormond Castle? 

The Exchequer Rolls disclose an annual payment of £5 by the chamberlain from the rents of Ardmannoch to a chaplain of Ormond Castle but nothing to a keeper. That suggested to me that perhaps it had ceased to exist as a castle but with the chaplaincy continuing as a sort of sinecure. Maybe Ormond had been decommissioned as a castle when taken over by the Crown from the Black Douglases in the 1450s as had happened with their Lochindorb Castle? Is the no longer existence of Ormond Castle in the second half of the 15th century suggested by the fact that the 1481 charters of Ardmannoch and Ross to the Marquis of Ormond referred explicitly to the castra of Redcastle and Dingwall but only to the monte of Ormond implying no more than the site where a castle had once stood? But in the end I don’t know the fate of Ormond Castle except that, according to this article, it was ruinous in the 17th century but with enough of it left - and apparently even people living there - for it to be attacked by Cromwell’s forces in 1650 and the stone removed to build the fort at Inverness.

 

The site of Ormond Castle today looking east down the Moray Firth. Village of Avoch on the left. Photo credit Arjayempee 

Back in the 15th century, in 1491, Alexander MacDonald of Lochalsh, son of the sometime keeper of Redcastle, Celestine (who died in 1476) and nephew of John, Lord of the Isles and forfeited Earl of Ross, invaded Easter Ross in an attempt to recover the earldom. He was opposed by Kenneth MacKenzie of Kintail who defeated the rebels at Blar na Pairce (Battle of the Park) between Contin and Strathpeffer. The victorious MacKenzies then seized Redcastle and “spuilzied” (plundered) Ardmannoch for no better reason than that the son of the under-keeper of Redcastle, Hugh Rose of Kilravock (descendant of its owner at the turn of the 14th century), had sided with the vanquished Alexander of Lochalsh. The Earl of Huntly (the head-keeper) had to be called in by the King to restore order and in typical Highland fashion he did that, according to the Roses’ genealogist writing in the 17th century (here), by giving 

commission to M'Intosche, Grant, Kilravock, and others, to the number of three thousand, to go against Cainoch M'Cainoch and his kin, for spulzieing Ardmeanoch, and killing Harold Chesholme in Strathglash, and that they did harrie, spulzie, and slay the Clankynich by his comand, as the Kings rebells and oppressors of the liedges.

Until now, the MacKenzies had been somewhat obscure vassals of the Earls of Ross in Wester Ross (Kintail, where their headquarters was Eilean Donan Castle) and upper (west) Strathconon: there is no contemporary written record of a MacKenzie before 1467. But despite Huntly et al’s efforts, from the turn of the 16th century they became major players in lower Strathconon, Easter Ross and the Black Isle: they filled the power vacuum left by the Earls of Ross to the point where a recent historian, John Bannerman, could describe the MacKenzies (here) as having become by the 1620s “Earls of Ross in all but name.”

 

Commission by the Earl of Huntly to Hugh Rose of Kilravock as under-keeper of Redcastle, 1482. Huntly had the keepership of the castle from the Queen (James III's wife, Margaret of Denmark) and I think her role must have been as guardian for her infant son, the Marquis of Ormond, who owned Redcastle in 1482. The signature is Huntly's: A genealogical deduction of the family of Rose of Kilravock

 

In 1501, the Duke of Ross appointed David Learmonth as chamberlain of Ross & Ardmannoch and keeper of Dingwall Castle and Redcastle. As his fee for these duties, Learmonth was to have the rents of the farms of Kinnairdie (now covered by the northern suburbs of Dingwall), Newton of Redcastle and Bauchny (I don't know where that is - it doesn't appear in any 15th or 16th century rent roll of Ross or Ardmannoch), the herezelds and merchets (customary payments due by the tenants over and above their rents on deaths of tenants and marriage of their daughters - an interesting survival into the 16th century of something mostly obsolete by then), fines imposed on offenders in the manorial courts and the muttons (sheep carcases) and fowls paid by the tenants as part of their rent as well as £10 a year in cash. The agreement between Ross and Learmonth is printed in the Exchequer Rolls (here: note the Duke also styles himself Archbishop of St. Andrews because his brother, King James IV, was in the course of attempting to procure that office for him). It contains an inventory of the contents of the two castles which Ross was expecting back at the end of Learmonth's term as keeper. Although sadly it doesn't distinguish which of the two castles the various items were located in, the list is as follows (an item in italics means I don't know what it is):-

 

4 pairs of sheets of broad cloth of Flanders 

10 feather beds, new and old

8 bolsters

12 coddis

12 brass chandeliers

2 hanging brass chandeliers

3 dozen pewter vessels, big and small

3 serving plates the nomir threttynine

80 punds

280 tynnyn stoppis

1 towel

1 dornwik tablecloth

2 beds

6 cushions

1 bancorn of werdour

9 pots, new and old

1 little pan

1 little cauldron

5 spettis

2 rakis

1 ladle

1 evill cruk

17 standard beds

9 standard tables with forms and trestles

1 cauldron in the brewhouse

2 maskyn fattis  

1 mair 

1 les

4 gyll fattis

1 trouch of tree

14 barrels and hogsheads in the cellars

14 fattis in the fish house

1 girlde

1 bake stool

11 spettis

2 hand bollis

4 guns

2 culverins (a type of small handheld cannon)

 

The guns and culverins weren't needed back if there had been "heirschip or reif" (robbery or theft) during Learmonth's custody of the castles. In fact, we know that they were handed over to the next keeper, Sir David Sinclair, in 1505 (when the Duke of Ross was dead, without heirs or, it’s believed, ever having been consecrated Archbishop and the castles were back in the hands of the king) but it’s a reminder that the authorities were aware of the continuing potential for insecurity in the north despite the Lord of the Isles having had his remaining estates forfeited in 1493 as a result of his nephew Alexander of Lochalsh’s invasion in 1491 and the MacKenzies’ over zealousness for the Crown having been curbed by Huntly. And they were right to worry because there were various insurrections in support of Donald Dubh, the grandson and heir of John, the last Lord of the Isles (who died in 1503) aimed at restoring the Lordship. An irruption from the west being threatened in 1504, the general re-letting of the farms of the Lordship of Ardmannoch and Earldom of Ross required the new tenants of some of the farms - including Garguston, Coulmore, Wester Kessock and Easter Kessock - to have armed themselves with swords before Pentecost 1505 or face a £5 fine. Another uprising took advantage of the confusion following the Battle of Flodden and explains why, in the 1516 account for Ross and Ardmannoch, the chamberlain reported that the “remainder” (credit balance) accumulated from previous years had been spent

 

guarding the castles of Dingwall and Redcastle against the men of the Isles, and other ill-disposed men who wished to attack them, by building ditches, pits, and walls around the said castles, and by purchasing a certain piece of land to lead a pit ditch through to the castle of Dingwall, and by purchasing serpentine machines, hagbuts, culverins, gunpowder, bows, arrows, halberds, Leith axes and Jedworth tin, and other necessary things for the guarding of the said castles, and also for the expenses of the food and drink of sixty persons with an engineer guarding the said castle of Dingwall for the period of one year and 16 weeks, and for the expenses of twenty-four persons with an engineer guarding and residing in Redcastle for the period of two years, and for the fees of all the said persons for the same period, and for the waste lands in the said earldom and lordship in that troubled time extending to a greater sum than the aforesaid remainder. 

 

In 1521, the chamberlain of Ross was awarded an extra £50 over and above his normal fee for keeping Dingwall Castle and Redcastle "on account of the wars in these parts". 

 

The threat from the MacDonalds didn't go away until 1545 when Donald Dubh died and, with him, all hopes of restoring the Lordship of the Isles. And as this post is already far too long, I'm going to break it here and resume the story of Redcastle and the Lordship of Ardmannoch in the next post.

 

Nothing remains today of Dingwall Castle although there appear to have been enough ruins of it still left to see in Castle Street in 1821 to merit being marked (top right) on this map of the town drawn in that year. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland and you can zoom in for a closer view of this map here