a house of the Cluniac
Order of Benedictines, being the same order as the house at Wenlock.
Humbold in 1169 brought thirteen monks from the parent house, and,
having settled them at Renfrewshire in an island of the Clyde called the
King's Inch, returned to Wenlock. There was at this time in Paisley an
early church, dedicated to St. Mirinus, an Irish saint of the sixth
century, and a disciple of the great school of St. Congal at Bangor.
St. Mirin was a contemporary of St. Columba, and must have been a
friend of the great apostle of Scotland. He was probably the founder of
the early Celtic church at Paisley, and seems to have been an itinerant
preacher round the district, regarding Paisley as his centre, where at
last, "full of miracles and holiness, he slept in the Lord." It matters
little whether these legends regarding miracles are historically
correct, for the value lies in the moral of them. "The falsehood would
not have been invented unless it had started in a truth, and in all
these legends there is set forth the victory of a good and beneficent
man over evil, whether it be of matter or of spirit."[365]

When the monks had founded their church at Paisley they dedicated it to
the Virgin Mary, to St. James, St. Milburga, and St. Mirinus. St. James
was the patron saint of the Stewarts, and to him the church on the Inch
of Renfrew, where the monks first took up their abode, was dedicated.
St. Milburga was the patron saint of Wenlock, and it was natural that
the Shropshire monks should place their new home at Paisley under the
patronage of a saint whom they held in reverence, and who was a link
between Paisley and the scene of former days. St. Mirinus was the Celtic
saint of the neighbourhood, and by calling the new monastery after his
name they reconciled the sympathies of the people to themselves, and
connected their church with the old historic church of Scotland. The
monastery was at first in the second rank of religious houses, and was
ruled by a prior. The abbey of Clugny was very jealous of raising any of
its subordinate houses to the rank of an abbey, but it was very
inconvenient for the monastery of Paisley to be in subjection to one so
far away as the French abbot, and commissioners appointed by a papal
bull in 1219 decreed that the monks of Paisley might proceed to the
canonical election of an abbot, the patron of Paisley, the Lord High
Stewart, also giving his permission. Twenty-six years later, the abbot
of