ctly consoled by the high-sounding title of Archbishop of Athens
_in partibus fidelium_, the poor See of the Isles, with, on November
26th, 1553, the Abbacy of Inchaffray _in commendam_, which last he held
till 1564. In 1558 he was promoted to the See of Galloway. Nine years
later he was accused before the General Assembly of the Kirk, and
confessed to the indictment that he had not visited for three years part
of the churches within his charge; that he had haunted Court too much;
that he had purchased to be one of the Session and Privy Council, which
cannot agree with the office of a pastor or a bishop; that he had
resigned Inchaffray in favour of a young child, and set diverse lands in
feu in prejudice of the Kirk. The young child was James Drummond of
Innerpeffray, second son of David, second Lord Drummond. The Abbey was
erected into a temporal lordship in his favour, and in 1609 he was
created Lord Maderty. From him is descended the noble family of
Strathallan.

And now the old Abbey fell on troublous times. The Reformation--that
harbinger of good not unmixed with evil--closed the book of the
monastery. It is strange and sad that ecclesiastical changes should
partake so largely in the destruction of buildings and the spoliation of
belongings. Never yet did religious fanaticism satisfy its own desires
without simultaneously and obligingly ministering to the rapacity of the
attendant greedy grabber. And so Inchaffray, experiencing the fate of
other such establishments, had its walls torn down, its vessels strewn
and broken, its canons put to flight or death, its revenues disposed by
rude, regardless hands. The Earl of Kinnoull is the proprietor of the
ruin and the few acres that surround it. These gave him the patronage of
the seven parishes with which, we observed, the convent had been endowed.

Quite a crop of stories are told in connection with the demolition of
Inchaffray. It is said, for instance, that long ago the ploughman-tenant
of the dwelling contiguous to the convent discovered, while digging, the
golden image "of a sow." This relic (for relic it was supposed to be of
the abbey practices) he carefully secreted, but latterly converted into
current coin, and became himself a very wealthy man. But perhaps the
most reliable and authenticated is the following:--A Fowlis widower,
lately bereaved, sought to find a grave-stone to honour his spouse's
memory. Either he was too fastidious or too ungen