An intriguing source for a Gothic novel — f’real.
Well, not for real, really, but while surfing for background and keeping an eye out for the glint of gold among the pebbles about Dundonald parish and the immediate enviorns of the Templar farm that’s just east of the castle — the ‘Temple land’ that gave us our name — I came across this nugget:
In 1229, Walter Stewart of Dundonald, the Third High Steward of Scotland, founded and granted properties for a “convent for canons and nuns, of the order of Simpringham” in Dalmulin* — almost certainly the Dalmilling area near the present-day Ayr Dalmilling Golf Club next to the race track. For the duration of its brief existence, it was the only Gilbertine establishment in Scotland, so named for Gilbert of Simpringham in Lincolnshire who was the only Englishman to found an holy order in England in the Middle Ages, much less found a mixed monastery for both men and women as far back as 1148. One Victorian historian rather insinuatingly characterised the Saint Gilbert’s mission as…
All his substance and patrimony he spent in alms and took particular care of distressed girls who were ashamed to make known to the world their poverty and condition.**
The cloistered nuns were served their food and other necessaries through screens that didn’t allow the men and women of the secular side of the home monastery to see (or identify?) them.
Despite the wealth showered upon this Gilbertine outpost in Scotland by Walter, a mere nine years later the Simpringham ‘canon regulars,’ monks and nuns, complaining about the un-healthful weather, left for their home in Sixile in Yorkshire. The monastery and all its income-producing properties — including the parish of Dundonald and its outlying chapels in “Crossby and Richardstoun” — were turned over to the Clunaic monks of Paisley Abbey.
If I had a mind bent on finding closeted conspiracies of privileged elites, I’d wonder at how this episode could neatly explain the origin and royal favor enjoyed by our enigmatic Gilbert de Templeton.
What if one of Walter Stewart’s daughters became in a family way without benefit of wedlock? He’d need a discrete, out-of-the-way place to secret her and then her and the infant, possibly for just long enough for the little man to enjoy a childhood as a ward of the Church in order to become a Novice or Oblate. Say, about nine- or ten years?
And then, he’d have to transition his young ward into ‘polite society’ without the baggage of the boy’s birth circumstances weighing him (or the Stewart daughter’s good name) down. He’d especially have to insulate his daughter’s good name without the stain of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that would reduce her value on the marriage-for-profit-&-power market.
Hm-m-m. How to do that?
What better way than to set up and fund what looks essentially like a home for well-born unwed mothers? Have these monks and sisters from out-of-town care for a surely penitent daughter that remains not just incommunicado, but incognito as well, and her child.
What to name the boy? Well, you can’t name him Alan or Walter, as the patriarchs have done for generations, and you can’t name him for the stable boy (OK, ‘retainer’) that is his actual, biological father, certainly. Why not name him for the sainted founder of the Order that is raising the child? “Gilbert.”
And then, after the boy has grown and shown himself to be a diligent and able student, how about erasing that questionable provenance by packing off the monks and nuns that know (or suspect) the truth, and turn the boy, the monastery, and the whole shebang over to the home-grown monks you’ve maintained through your own benevolence, that of Paisley Abbey? Keep him close, in your home parish of Dundonald, so as to keep an eye on his development, and when the time comes for him to be ordained and in need of a proper last name so that he can move on into the Church hierarchy, why not have him adopt the illustrious name of the Cistercian farm that Dundonald parish virtually envelops: “Templeton.”
It’s a very neat flight of fancy that explains everything. It explains the lack of record of a laird, knight or property owner named Templeton that’s of sufficient status to swing an appointment to a very prestigious post as rector of St Blane’s, that could afford the gifts to the Church and material support for a course of study and travel that could result in the man’s coming to be acknowledged “Maestro”, and it even explains how the boy came by his name.
Plus, the dates work — pretty much. The convent/monastery at Dalmulin was set up in 1229 and the monks packed up and returned to Yorkshire in 1238. If he was born in 1229-30, this fictional Gilbert would have been coming up on ten years old, the minimum age to become an Oblate, just as the Gilbertines were packing to move out. He’d have been 65 years old when he signed as witness to a property transfer at Paisley Abbey in 1295, and 66 when he signed the Ragman Roll. A ripe old age for the time, sure, but consider that the original Gilbert, the Saint Gilbert that founded his order a hundred years earlier, suppressed a revolt of his own monks at the age of 90, and then lived on to the age of 106!
It’s a compelling story. One worthy of a truly bodice-ripping, steeped in intrigue Gothic Novel. But not very likely.
All the good reasons why this is very most likely NOT the story of our earliest known ancestor, beginning with that Victorian insinuation that is only an insinuating remark to our modern ear, but not so to its author. But all of that will have to wait for a later post.
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* Robertson, William, editor, “Historic Ayrshire: being a collection of historical works treating …, Volume 1,” Thomson Brothers, Edinburgh, 1891. p. 217.
** Metcalf, W.M., D.D., F.S.A., editor, “Charters and documents relating to the burgh of Paisley (1163-1665) and extracts from the records of the town council (1594-1620)”, Alexander Gardener, Paisley, Scotland, 1902. p. xxvii.
