Dunkeld Cathedral

"Every man of us has all the centuries in him." John Morley

So, we all know I do a LOT of genealogy. 

If it's not genealogy, then it's reading or writing about the past. I also see a lot of pictures, but every now and then one awakens something deep within me in a mysterious, almost mystical way.

Such was the day I was researching Sir John Stewart and his second wife, Lady Eleanora Sinclair Stewart. John was born about 1440 to Lady Joan Beaufort and her second husband, Sir James Stewart, also known as the Black Night of Lorn. Joan had first been married to King James I of Scotland who was subsequently assassinated in 1437. Thus, Sir John Stewart was a stepbrother of King James II of Scotland, and his mother was a woman of some means in her own right as well. Both Sir John and his wife, Lady Eleanora, were buried in Dunkeld Cathedral, and, of course, Dugal McQueen is said to be a descendant of both Sir John and Lady Eleanora through his mother, Anne Mackintosh McQueen. 

And thus, one day I opened up a picture of the ruined part of the structure.

In the nave looking west

My first thought was - "I have been here before." And even weirder, was the feeling of walking down the center. 

Yes - well - we all know I have an over active imagination. But still  . . . I was now on my quest to find out more about Dunkeld Cathedral.

Ancient Origins

As with so many other Scottish cathedrals, the site of Dunkeld Cathedral, on the north bank of the River Tay in Dunkeld, Perth and Kinross, Scotland, was holy ground long before construction of the cathedral proper began in the 13th century. About 730 AD, Columba, later to become St. Columba, an Irish abbot and missionary for the Catholic faith, led an expedition to the site of what is now Dunkeld but was then known as Alba. He, along with others, built simple wattle huts of red stone for living quarters. 

The Picts being converted to Christianity by Saint Columba
by William Brassey Hole, about 1899
In the Scottish National Portrait Gallery 

One hundred and twenty-eights years later the original wattle huts were in bad need of repair, and Kenneth MacAlpin, the King of the Scots and of the Picts, set about rebuilding them. It was also about this time that Causantin mac Fergusa built a more substantial monastery of reddish sandstone. And then, because of increasing Viking attacks on the west coast, the relics of St. Columba were moved from there to Dunkeld and buried under the chancel steps to keep them safe. Dunkeld then became an important religious center of Scotland, and the dove motif symbolic of St. Columba can be seen in both the east window and on the specially woven chancel carpet. 

Growth Continues and a Cathedral is Built

In 1260 a cathedral was begun on the site in a square-stone style with largely grey sandstone. It would continue to be built in stages for the next 250 years, and as a result, the cathedral has both Gothic and Norman elements. The restored choir is the oldest part of the original church, having been completed in 1350. Some of the original red stone can be seen in the eastern gable of the cathedral. 

In 1512, Sir John Stewart died and was buried in the Dunkeld Cathedral Graveyeard. Lady Eleanora followed him in death six years later in 1518, and she, too, was buried there. 

Dunkeld Cathedral and Graveyard

Protestant Reformation 

Of course, as we have learned with other Catholic places of worship, the Scottish Reformation sought not freedom to worship as one chose, but the total destruction of all things Catholic. Dunkeld suffered the same as other Catholic places of worship, and in 1560 it too was desecrated and damaged. About this time, St. Columba's bones were, in fact, moved and taken to Ireland, although it is believed there are still some of his bones, or relics, buried within the cathedral grounds. 

Forty years later, about 1600,the chancel was repaired and re-roofed to serve as Dunkeld's parish church - this time under the headship of the Church of Scotland. 

Fate was not Done 

On 21 August 1689, during the first Jacobite Uprising, the Jacobites, fresh from their victory at Killecrankie to the north, attacked government forces based in Dunkeld. A long, bloody battle ensued, and much of the town, including the repaired parts of the Cathedral, were burned down. 

Today

Although partly in ruins, the cathedral is in regular use today by the Church of Scotland, but it is open to the public. The name cathedral is a misnomer, however, as it is no longer one. In the wake of the Scottish Reformation, Scotland no longer has cathedrals or bishops, but the names of such places were not changed.

The nave looking east

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51115191/eleanor-stewart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart,_1st_Earl_of_Atholl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkeld_Cathedral

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/dunkeld/cathedral/index.html
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46673709/john-stewart_1st_earl_of_atholl
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51115191/eleanor-stewart

Benjamin Franklin Bean: County Attorney & Legislator

When George Pleasant and Ellenor “Ellen” (Burke) Bean’s first child was born, they gave the boy a name of singular distinction and privilege – Benjamin Franklin Bean. Little did they know the boy would apparently have the aptitude of his namesake – eventually becoming a lawyer and serving in the Texas House of Representatives. He certainly followed good company, for his uncle Captain John Thomas “Jack” Bean and his “cousin” James Walter Barclay also served in terms in the same capacity.  

Benjamin was born in the middle of a sweltering east Texas summer on 24 June 1852. His father was a veteran of the Mexican War, and his uncle was Capt. John Thomas “Jack” Bean of Civil War fame. He was related to the Barclays and the McQueens, many of whom held various public offices in Tyler and surrounding counties. Not to be forgotten, he was eight when the Civil War broke out, and he was twelve when Reconstruction slashed its way across Tyler County. No doubt such hardships impressed him, although no record exists of his difficulties during that time. Still, he managed to get a decent enough education in the local schools, and he must have been of a bright aptitude.

In  1877, at the age of 25, he married Minerva “Minnie” Belk, the daughter of Andrew Belk and Amanda Wilson. Her father was a boot and shoemaker who had moved to Jasper County from Tallapoosa County, Alabama, sometime between 1856 and 1860. The Belks may have lived for a short time in Mississippi, for census records indicate Minnie was born there and not in Alabama or Texas. 

Three years after their marriage, in the 1880 Jasper County, Texas, census, Benjamin, Minnie, and their one year old daughter, Evie, were living with her parents and Benjamin was working as a schoolteacher. He may well have been studying the law because he later did work as an attorney after attending school at Sam Houston, Normal at Huntsville and the University of Texas at Austin.

Sometimes between 1880 and 1895 or so Bejamin and Minnie moved to Trinity County, Texas, and it was while living here that he ran for and was elected to the 25^th Texas Legislature, The House of Representatives, representing the counties of Montgomery, Trinity, and Walker County and serving from 12 January 1897 to 10 January 1899. He served on the committees for Commerce and Manufactures, Insurance – Statistics – and History, Judiciary No. 1, Penitentiaries, and Roads – Bridges – and Ferries.

Between 1900 and 1910, Ben and Minnie moved back to Polk County, and here he served as a county judge. On 5 August 1910, Minnie passed away. Ben remarried sometime before 1920 and in the census that year, even at the age of 68, he is still listed as being an attorney.

Census records indicate Benjamin and Minnie may have had only two children that live to adulthood. Evie, born 1859, and who it appears at least according to the 1900 census married Albert Collins. Albert and Evie were living with her parents that year. Also in Benjamin's household that same year was a 15 year old son also named George. Likely other children were born to the couple but they must have died while young.

Benjamin passed away on 14 February 1921. His memorial was read in the Texas Legislature. He was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Polk County, Texas, beside Minnie.

NOTES: 

1) For sources see Porter, Metes & Bounds III: John McQueen & Nancy Crews, Children & Grandchildren. 

2) Both the picture and the memorial are taken from the Texas Legislature website. 

3) Caution must be taken when researching Benjamin Franklin Bean, because there was another  Benjamin Franklin Bean born to James and Martha Bean in 1858 who lived in Jasper County who was a doctor and also served in the Texas Legislature. Both men sometimes went by the initials B. F. The two men do not appear to be related, as the 1870 census Jasper County, Texas, census records this second Benjamin Franklin Bean’s parents as having both been born in Georgia, with their oldest son born in Louisiana.

Medieval Masterpiece: Dunfermline Abbey

An Ancient Church and a New Abbey 

King Malcolm III meeting Margaret
as she arrives in Scotland

 In 1066, after the Norman conquest of England, English Princess Margaret of Wessex, now known as St. Margaret of Scotland, and then about twenty years of age and the sister of Edgar AEtheling, fled her beleaguered country with her mother. Their ship was blown off course and they landed in Scotland where some sources say they sought the protection of King Malcolm III. Having been born in exile in Hungary, Margaret was now to take to it yet again.

She soon earned King Malcom’s favor, and in 1070 they were married probably in an early but forgotten church were Dunfermline Abbey now stands. Margaret was said to have been enchanted by the place, founded a piory on the site, and brought a small community of Benedictine monks from Canterbury.

Reign and Battle

King Malcolm III and Margaret ruled from 1058 until 1093 when the king and their eldest son, Edgar, were killed in the Battle of Alnwick against the English. Margaret died three days later supposedly of a broken heart, and she and Malcolm were buried before the high altar in Dunfermline Abbey. It is because of Margaret and Malcolm that we have an interest in Dunfermline Abbey, for it is said that Dugal McQueen’s mother, Anne Mackintosh-McQueen, was a descendant of King Malcolm III and St. Margaret through their son, King David.

Dunfermline Abbey as it stands today

The Most Important Abbey in Scotland 

King David transformed Dunfermline Abbey into what was supposed to become the most important abbey in all of Scotland. In 1128 he started work on the church, founded as The Benedictine Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity and St. Margaret. The nave, which was built from that era still survives as the western half of the building. Romanesque in manner, the church and abbey were built over the foundations of the earlier church. In the decades after its foundation, considerable endowments were gifted to the abbey, including the dedication of 26 altars donated by individual benefactors and guilds. At the height of the abbey’s power, it controlled four burghs, three courts of regality, and a large portfolio of lands from Moray.

The nave built under King David

In 1250 Margaret was canonized by Pope Innocent IV as St. Margaret of Scotland in recognition of her personal holiness, fidelity to the Roman Catholic Church, work for ecclesiastical reform, and charity. Later in June of that year, Margaret’s remains and those of her husband were exhumed and placed in a reliquary on the high altar. They may later still have been moved to a side chapel.

In the winter of 1303 and during the First Scottish War for Independence, Edward I of England held court in the abbey. On his departure the following year, most of the buildings were burned, and King Robert the Bruce undertook to rebuild the church. It was he who was said to have added the royal palace next door.

Noteables in Life and Death

Throughout these years, a number of noteables were buried within the abbey walls - including Duncan II of Scotland (1094), Edgar of Scotland (1107), Alexander I of Scotland (1124) and his queen Sybilla de Normandy (1122), our ancestors David I of Scotland (1153) and his queen, Maud, Countess of Huntingdon (113), Alexander III of Scotland (1286) and his first wife Margaret of England (1275), Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Robert I of Scotland (1327), and Malcom IV of Scotland (1165).

In 1329 Robert the Bruce’s bones were buried in the choir which is now the site of the present church. (His heart rests in Melrose.) In 1818 his skeleton was discovered and the bones reinterred with great ceremony below the new church’s pulpit. Seventy years later, the pulpit was moved back and a brass inserted in the floor to above the royal vault.  

Also buried here were Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Robert I of Scotland (1353), our ancestress Annabella Drummond, wife of Robert III and the mother of James I (1401), and Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany (1420).

Destruction and Disintegration 

And then, in a further terrible turn of events, the Scottish Reformation swept across Scotland and in March of 1560 the abbey church, like so many others, was sacked. The structure was spared, including the refectory and rooms over the gatehouse that were part of the former city wall, as was the nave. Everything inside, however, including the graves, were ransacked and pillaged, and since that time, various parts have fallen into disuse and disintegrated. King Malcolm and Margaret’s graves were vandalized as well, and it is currently not known where their bones lie.

Site of the ruined shrine of St. Margaret & King Malcolm

The Abbey Today 

Very little of the original structure as built by King David is left. The Church of Scotland holds services in the current church which occupies the site of the ancient chancel and transept.  

The parish church today

Part of an existing wall

Sources:

Abbey Church, https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/dunfermline/abbeychurch/index.html.

Dunfermline Abbey, http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/dunfermline_abbey.html.

Dunfermline Abbey and Palace, https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/dunfermline-abbey-and-palace/history/.

Saint Margaret of Scotland, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Margaret_of_Scotland

Tullibardine Chapel: A Medieval Treasure

Tullibardine Chapel from the northeast.
Photo from www.undiscoveredscotland.com.

In 1446, Sir David Murray and his wife, Lady Margaret Colquohon, set about to build a chapel just south of their home, Tullibardine Castle. Such was not an unusual undertaking for a nobleman at the time. Such nobleman would build churches and house a college or small group of clerics and/or priests. These priests and clerics who would then spend their days in prayer for the health and well-being of their benefactor and his family during their lifetime and for their release from Purgatory after their death. The prayers extended to those that had walked before and to those that were to come, and no one envisioned a time when Catholicism would be wrenched from the fabric of Scotland. The prevalent belief at the time was that these churches would be around forever.

At this time, Scotland was Catholic. Martin Luther had not published his thesis, nor had King Henry VIII started killing and marrying wives. These churches/chapels served not only the nobleman’s family, but the surrounding community as well, many of whom were indebted to the noblemen for their care. Mass, Confession, First Communion, and Catechism classes were offered to the local populace, and in those days, a church’s door was never locked. The faithful, regardless of rank or station, were welcome within its walls.

If you, like me, are a descendant of Dugal McQueen, then your connection to Tullibardine Chapel is through his mother, Anne Mackintosh McQueen. Dugal's great-great grandmother was said to have been Lillias Murray (Dugal to Anne Mackintosh McQueen to Margaret Graham to Anne-Agnes Grant to Lillias Murray), and Lilias was a direct descendant of Sir David Murray.

Inside the chapel looking east
Picture from www.undiscoveredscotland.com

Tullibardine Chapel, located in the wooded, peaceful countryside two miles northwest of Auchterarder in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, was of a plain, rectangular construction divided by a chancel at the eastern end and a nave at the western end. It is generally believed Murray intended to found a collegiate church, and it is generally believed Tullibardine Chapel functioned as one. Interestingly enough, however, no records exist of the legal steps taken to acquire collegiate status.

Gravesone in chapel floor
picture from www.undiscoveredscotland.com

Sir David died about 1452 and shortly after the chapel’s completion. He is buried in the church, and an armorial plaque can be found on the north wall of the chancel. The plaque has the quartered arms of his mother and father, Isobel Stewart and Sir David Murray. Fifty years later, Sir Andrew Murray, grandson of the chapel’s founder, enlarged the chapel possibly in anticipation of his marriage. The renovations included a squat bell tower and northern and southern transepts which gave the chapel a cross-shaped layout. 

And then, in 1560, a hundred years after Tullibardine Chapel was built and fifty years after its enlargement, the Scottish Reformation swept the country. The unthinkable had happened, and very few Catholic churches survived the devastation and neglect. Even fewer still can be found in their original state.

Tullibardine Chapel is one of those few.

Even better, the chapel, stands today much as it did after Sir Andrew’s renovations, although it is no longer a collegiate chapel or a center of worship. It does sport a timber roof, and the signatures of the masons, called mason’s marks, can be seen in the chapel as well. The Murray Coat of Arms is displayed inside and out, and even after the Reformation, the Murrays continued to use the burial vault.

One of the vertical windows in the chapel
photo from www.undiscoveredscotland.com

The Murrays supported the Jacobite cause in 1715 and 1745, and Lord George Murray led part of the Jacobite army to victory over Government troops at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745. It was not enough, of course, to secure the Jacobite cause. In the aftermath of the rising of ’45, Tullibardine Castle was badly damaged, and today nothing remains of it, although the chapel is considered one of the best, most unchanged examples of a medieval church.

In 1816 the Murray family sold their estates to the Drummonds who later became the Earls of Perth. The last Murrays were buried in Tullibardine Chapel in the early part of the 20^th century.

Tullibardine Castle has been in state care since 1951. More recently, the time-traveler series Outlander filmed an episode titled Vengeance is Mine in the chapel. It is open to the public at certain times of the year, although the surrounding area can be visited at any time.

Sources

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/auchterarder/tullibardinechapel/index.html

http://www.outlanderlocations.com/locations/tullibardine-chapel/

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/tullibardine-chapel/

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/tullibardine-chapel/history/