A personal reflection on Our Lady of Eton and the place of Marian devotion in English culture

The hitherto accepted date of the priory's foundation, 1144, was copied on the bishop's diploma from the bull of Lucius II, and is impossible; Bower's 1140 is to be preferred. The foundation narrative (FN) probably by Robert, the first prior, ascribes to a Pictish king the grant to St Andrew of the Boar's Raik, but that was ignored by Wyntoun and Bower and is probably wrong. It seems that Alexander I made this gift, renegued on it, and restored it towards the end of his life. Though intended to found an Augustinian priory, the Raik was kept by the bishop until in 1138-9 David I obtained from Nostell a prior, Robert; Robert was unable to advance the foundation through his reluctance to recruit canons from elsewhere, perhaps resisting Scone and/or Holyrood. He and clerics of his resided in a ‘parsonage’, the vacant house of one of the seven ‘parsons’ who represented the earliest clerics of St Andrews, and are uniquely described in FN; they developed the hospital. In 1140 David I and Earl Henry at St Andrews compelled the bishop to disgorge the Raik and thereby establish the priory. The date was probably St Andrew's day, 1140, a month after the foundation of the abbey of St Mary at Newbattle. Both foundations should be seen as thanksgiving for Henry's recovery from serious illness. A narrower dating is suggested for some St Andrews charters, the endowments showing a closer relationship with those of Holyrood abbey than with those of Scone priory. Prior Robert probably wished from the beginning to recruit the céli Dé (Culdees) as canons and to obtain their endowments, succeeding at Lochleven but, despite papal and royal approval, failing at St Andrews. A final section asks why David I was so generous to the regular orders, suggesting that he was much influenced by the development of Marian devotion in his lifetime, when the Virgin had become head and most powerful of the hierarchy of saints.

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