The rich temporalities of the Abbey of Deir, in Aberdeenshire, had been
held since the Reformation by one who was no friend to the Reformed
clergy--Robert Keith, second son of William, fourth Earl Marischal. In
1587, they had been erected into a temporal lordship, under the name
of the Lordship of Altrie, in their possessor’s favour, to descend,
after his death, to his nephew, George Earl Marischal. There was one
malcontent with this arrangement--Robert Keith of Benholm, brother
of the earl--probably because he had concluded in his own mind that
the abbey-lands formed a more appropriate estate for a cadet than for
the chief of the family, the latter being already a rich man. It would
appear, however, that the earl was understood to have requited the king
for the gift by the splendid style in which he conducted his ambassage
to Denmark, when negotiating the royal marriage.
At the present date, Robert Keith made an attempt to take forcible
possession of the abbey--an act which would have been rash and
dangerous at any ordinary time, but might look feasible enough in an
age so full of violences of all kinds as the present. We learn that he
kept the abbey for six weeks, at the end of which he was driven out
by an armed company brought against him by the Earl Marischal. Then
retiring to the castle of Fedderat, he stood a siege of three days,
which ended in his coming to a truce with his brother, upon what terms
does not appear.
The abbacy was well worthy of a struggle, as in 1565 it comprehended
a rental of £572, 8s. 6d., with thirteen and a half bolls of wheat,
fourteen chalders and ten bolls of beir, and sixty-three chalders
nine bolls of meal. The revenue of the earldom to which this became
an addition on the death of Lord Altrie in 1593, has been stated
at an amount for which there may be some difficulty in obtaining
credence--namely, 270,000 merks. Lord Marischal could enter Scotland
at Berwick, and travel in the leisurely style of those days through
the country to John o’ Groat’s House, and never need to take a meal or
a night’s rest off his own lands. That he used his wealth generously,
no one can deny, when it is remembered that he bestowed part of it in
founding the Marischal College in Aberdeen. Yet, in the eyes of the
common people, a weird hung over him. It was thought he did ill to
stain his hands with the plunder of the old Cistercian monastery on the
banks of the Ugie.
[Sidenote: 1590.]
‘This Earl George, his first wife, daughter to the Lord Home, being a
woman of a high spirit and of a tender conscience, forbids her husband
to have such a consuming moth in his house as was the sacrilegious
meddling with the abbacy of Deir. But fourteen score chalders of
meal and beir was a sore tentation; and he could not weel endure the
rendering back of such a morsel. Upon his absolute refusal of her
demand, she had this vision ... she saw a great number of religious
men, in their habit, come forth of that abbey to the strong craig
of Dunnottar, which is the principal residence of that family. She
also saw them set themselves round about the rock, to get it down and
demolish it, having no instruments but only penknives; wherewith they
foolishly (as it seemed to her) began to pick at the craig. She smiled
to see them intend so fruitless an enterprise, and went to call her
husband, to scoff and jeer them out of it. When she had fand him, and
brought him to see these silly monks at their foolish work, behold!
the whole craig, with all his strong and stately buildings, was by
their penknives undermined and fallen in the sea, so as there remained
nothing but the rack of their rich furniture and stuff floating on the
waves of a raging and tempestuous sea.’[181]
The earl is believed to have mocked the popular notions and his wife’s
foreboding dream, by inscribing on a tower he built at Deir, and
likewise on the wall of his new college, the defying legend: