and, by the exertions of the late Provost M‘Leod and other gentlemen in the district, its cleansing and restoration were undertaken and completed in 1877, and the building is now set apart for monumental and memorial purposes. The old stonework has been preserved and slightly restored where necessary, and the roof has been renewed. The windows are filled with memorial stained glass, and the whole is kept in excellent order. A pulpit is said to have been presented to Tain by the Regent Murray, as a mark of his appreciation of the zeal of the town in the cause of the Reformation. Mr. Taylor informs us[190] that this valuable relic was “suffered to be broken, and its ornamentation carried away piecemeal by wanton hands;” but it has now been restored, so far as the fragments again brought together have enabled this to be done, and forms an ornamental feature in the restored church. FEARN ABBEY, ROSS-SHIRE. This abbey is one of the monastic establishments founded in the far North during the reign of Alexander II. It was originally settled, in 1221, by Farquhard, Earl of Ross, at Edderton, on the Dornoch Frith, and its first abbot was brought from the priory of Whithorn, in Wigtonshire. The occupants were therefore of the Premonstratensian Order of Canons Regular, being the order of the parent house. The situation originally chosen was found to be too near the turbulent tribes further north, and, in 1238, leave was granted to Malcolm of Uig, the second abbot, to transfer the abbey to a new and more peaceful site. The new locality is about ten miles south-east from the first site, and had the advantage of being in more fertile soil. Being well within the domains of the Earl of Ross, the abbey received his protection, and was also richly endowed by the successive earls. The connection with Whithorn was kept up, and many of the abbots came from the parent house. In 1321, Mark, a canon of Whithorn, and son of Sir Mark Ros, was presented to the abbacy by the Prior of Whithorn, and not chosen by the monks. He is said to have rebuilt the abbey about 1338, and the rebuilding was completed under the rule of Abbot Donald, in 1372. Abbot Finlay M‘Faed was appointed in 1442, and his rule lasted for forty-four years. He built the cloister, and procured an organ, tabernacles, chalices, vestments, and other ornaments from Flanders, with which he enriched the abbey. He died in 1485, and was interred in St. Michael’s aisle at Fearn, in which his monument was erected, and where it still survives. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the commendatorship of the abbey was held by a mere boy, afterwards destined to become famous in Scottish history--Patrick Hamilton, the first martyr for Reformation principles in this country. He was a natural son of the Earl of Arran, a M.A. of Paris in 1520, and also of St. Andrews. When twenty-six years of age he was burned as a heretic at the gate of St. Salvator’s College, in St. Andrews, in 1528.