Templeton

Ya follow out the details, regardless, and then - wow.

Thankfully, there are days like this one. I was poring through the few ‘facts’ I unearthed last Saturday, chasing thin, thin leads, when I came upon a page with this:

Seal of the abbot of Kilwinning Abbey, circa 16th century.

I didn’t get back to “update” my previous post as I thought I would. Got distracted by the detective work, I suppose. That, and was getting a bit discouraged by that cruel, miserly she-devil, Fortuna. But, then the worm turned — maybe.

I’ve spent my genealogy time this week trying to fill in the blanks in that page of the Calendar of entries in the Papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 2 that I bought online last Saturday. See, it was confusing to me just when the grant that I found Gilbert witnessing was drafted and made. Hell, I wasn’t even able to tell who the grant was made TO since the grantee was “same as above” on my page, and I didn’t purchase the page before Gilbert’s mention. Just what church body or perhaps bishop that the grant was in favor of seemed not all that important at first. I just wanted to nail down WHEN the grant was made, and by whom — politically speaking.

The issue needing clarification was that the entry to the Calendar… was made in 1333, but mentions a handful of documents dated, first in 1327, and by reference in the previous entry, to 1330, 1312 & 13, and even as early as 1286! I figured that the only non-1333/1327 reference in the entry containing Gilbert — “4 Non. Nov. anno 14” — referred to “fourth nones (dictionary.com says ‘nones’ is the ninth day before the ides, or the 5th?), November, in the year 14 (meaning the 14th year of Pope John XXII’s pontificate, or 1330).” That was the working theory, anyway. But, if this was a recording & confirmation of a grant made by Walter Stewart, Earl of Menteith, as it says right up there at the top, then there was a problem with those dates: Walter died before 1294.

I started by finding out just who Gilbert’s co-signatories were and filling in their birth and death dates. That turned out a bit ambiguous as well. Among the other signatories, a Soulis senior died in 1310 and his junior in 1318. The Reginald de Crauford that was William Wallace’s uncle and sheriff of Ayr died in 1297, and his son, Reginald, seems to have died in 1307. The son of Menteith, Alexander, may have died as early as 1297 as well.

Any which way you cut it, Gilbert wasn’t signing any document along with all of them in the 1320s or ’30s. So my notion that Gilbert was young in 1296 when he signed the Ragman Rolls because he was still around 30 years later was not being supported, and I was no further along figuring out if Gilbert was of the same generation as the James de Templetone that appears in 1316, or if he was, rather, an older uncle perhaps.

And then, while Googling “Andrew Kras’ “, I discovered that Google Books had put up a full version of the Calendar of entries… since I last searched for Gilbert. Or at least that’s what I’m thinking, since this entry hadn’t come up in my many, many searches weeks/months ago. That discovery brought me the page that precedes the one I bought from the folks at theoriginalrecord.com, where I found out that the grantee of Walter Bailloch was Kilwinning Abbey’s abbot and convent.

Seeing what I could find out about the Kilwinning Abbey at the time, I came upon the above seal of its abbot.

“Oh-h, damn! This changes a lot of things,” is what immediately flitted into my mind.

You see, Gilbert’s seal is described as having a praying monk kneeling before the Virgin and Child. My “artist’s rendering” drew on a couple of iconic altarpiece paintings of the period, and looks like this:

The Kilwinning abbot’s seal did not come up in my survey of seals of the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Ugh! Up til now, I’ve gone with the assumption that Gilbert was a Clunaic priest under the aegis of Paisley Abbey. — And, no, Gilbert was not ever an abbot of Kilwinning — But, the fact that Mestre Gilbert adopted the iconography of that office’s seal as his own strongly suggests that he came up through that abbey, or at least was of its Tironensian Benedictine order and may have had some kind of attachment to the abbey.

[The fact that Gilbert swam with the big fishes, knew William Wallace’s family (and Reginald was apparently not such a “minor lord” after all) and that our ancestor was closely associated with the Steward is doubly confirmed, however.]

And here I’d thought I’d scoured Gilbert to a glossy sheen and was done with him! There’s a lot more reading to do, even though it doesn’t auger for all that much more by way of re-write on Gilbert’s bio.

And I was so ready to move on to Roger and James in the 16th century.

Alright. I may be changing my mind. At least I’m less certain.

I got sick of trying to word-by-word translate non-Classical Scots Latin and dropped that particular ball, when it comes to sorting out James Tempilton’s relationship to the newly-minted baron of Kilmarnock back in 1316.  I’ve allowed myself to get distracted with other online piddling — Facebook is a great time-waster — and in general taken a break.

Today, I kind of got back to it in more than the desultory manner that I’ve snatched at the occasional Google term these past few weeks, only to find myself reading pages I scoured for info on the Boyds, the Rosses or whatever, a month ago.  I’ve even taken a fresh look at the charter that mentions “Jacobi de Tempilton de Achindolosk.”  And I might be changing my mind about what that document indicates about James holding onto his tenement.

It just might be that James is being described as being a vassal “in the same service” on Ross or Balliol lands that were being transferred to the 1st Boyd baron.  I can now be persuaded that he wasn’t losing his lands to the freshly coined Lord, but was just changing his landlord to the new guy.  I just can’t tell for sure.  I know it’s buried there in the Latin, but I haven’t any way to know the contextual meaning of inadequately, literally translated words given to me in English, in the wrong tense.  I mean, what does “pron. pl. masc. gen.” tell me about the usage of eorundem for the base Latin idem, f’chrissakes?

I guess I should have paid closer attention in fifth grade and again in ninth, when we studied the parts of speech.

Whatever the case, there’s at least this Interesting NOTE: James is mentioned as “Jacobi de Tempilton de Achindalosk” (or Jacobi de Templetone de Achendolosk) among names that are singular in their “de place-name” nomenclature, indicating that ‘Tempilton’ was already being used as a proper last name by James and his family, where the others may have been merely “John of Kilmarnock” in the pre-Norman manner of indicating persons.

This supports our notion that Gilbert de Templeton was using ‘Templeton’ as a proper Norman last name rather than simply an “of Templetoun” indicator, and that he and James de Tempilton were probably blood kin.

Puttin’ a seal on Gilbert.

Quite a while ago someone wrote me asking for the graphic or picture of Gilbert de Templeton’s official seal mentioned in Black’s The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin…[etc.]. Well, George didn’t include a picture his book, but I figured that I’d look into Medieval art of the time and dummy up a seal in Photoshop. After all, there are Gothic paintings of priests adoring the Madonna and Child; the conventions were pretty standard back then … throw some Celtic font around the border … I figured that it’d be pretty easy, and an amusing way to pass an evening.

And then I got into trying to locate this guy in his time and place, with just this to go on:

Gilbertus de Tempilton, rector of the church of Rothir’ (Rothesay) in 1295 is probably Mestre (Master) Gilbert de Templeton of the county of are who rendered homage for his possessions in 1296. His seal bears the Virgin and child, a monk at prayer below, and S’ Gilb’ti de Temp[leton cl]’ ici.

A Wikipedia search and look around the Web quickly convinced me that a cleric with an appointment as a rector in the Scotland of 1295 was no small thing, particularly on the Isle of Bute just then. That’s obviously a more complicated story that is going to be interesting to get into next. But first came the search for examples of personal seals from the 13th Century, and that turned out to be pretty fascinating in itself. I’m getting the impression that in the 1200s, the men that required a personal seal were of pretty high station in society, having significant property or official office. Not everyone wrote documents that required the verification and privacy of a seal. Hell, not very many could write at all!

I also discovered that clerical officials generally had seals of a different shape than your secular lord or aristocrat. The men of the cloth used what’s known to coin & antiquities dealers as a “Vessica seal” which seems to refer to its shape as a vesica pisces, the ‘mystical’ geometric area where circles of the same diameter overlap when you put the edge of each at the center point of the other. It’s roughly the shape of the fish early Christians drew.

Below are examples of seals, the first is a 13th Century seal from a secular gentleman named “Montfort,” the second a seal of a cleric coincidently named Roger — Roger de Northburgh, bishop of Coventry from 1322 to 1366.

These were small — about 2.5 cm, or 1 inch in diameter — and made of bronze or lead. Most had a ridge down the back with a loop that could be hung on a lanyard. Below is a front, back, and imprinted view of a Vessica portrait seal found at the dealer’s site,
www.NumisAntica.com:

Somewhat ironically, the seal of the Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitaller, an order of knight-monks similar to the Knights Templar, had a round seal in 1185:

It’s been fascinating to find out about this detail of daily life in the era of Gilbert de Templeton. The speculation about his education, his alliances at Court, and what responsibilities he discharged as rector in a recently contested part of Scotland — just as it was being consolidated as the Scotland we know as a nation today — is still to be discovered.

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UPDATE: 2010.08.01 — Discovered the vessica seal of the Abbot of the Tironensian Benedictine abbey at Kilwinning which is a strong visual argument for Gilbert having been a high clergyman of that order because it appears to be a template for the personal seal described by Black.  See the blog entry.

“What’s in a name?” Vol. 3

Mom not only protested that it “sounds like you’re trying to make everyone Scottish” the other day, she wondered at the Scots origin of the Templeton name whatsoever.

“I’d always thought it was English. It just sounds so English,” she’d said.

Well, from what I’m reading now, it seems that not only is the Templeton family as thoroughly Scottish as any fruit of Alba, but that ours is among the oldest documented family names of Scotland.

This claim rests upon the appearance of Gilbert de Templeton as rector of the church of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute in 1295 and paying homage for his property in “Are” in 1296. Now, some may say that the Scottish Clans and their families go back well beyond the late thirteenth century, and there is some truth to that: after all, everyone that can trace their ancestry to the early kingdoms of Scotland will presume there is some connection to the ancient family groupings — more tribal than necessarily blood relations — of the clann or, earlier, cenel, and some of those — the Clan Macdougall, Clan MacDonald, for instance — can trace their family name past the year 1164 into the mists of Highland tradition.*

But I’m talking about the family names, here, not just kinship by blood or allegiance. And, among the ‘Worthies’ of Scotland, the Templeton go back to the very beginning of surnames being passed down from a father to his offspring among the better classes of folk in Scotland.

‘Last names’ that stayed the same from one generation to the next began among the French aristocracy during the eleventh century. Although he didn’t (or couldn’t) take advantage of the new fad himself, the knights and fine gentlemen that followed William the Conquerer (known earlier in life as William the Bastard) did bring the practice to England after the Conquest of 1066. The historians I’ve been reading all point out that the spread of the practice northward was a gradual one — taking 100-plus years — and that it’s adoption down the social ladder to the broad masses was even slower, not becoming anything like universal until well into the 1500s.

In the old way, in the countryside the population was sparse enough that a single name was enough to set one apart enough that people knew who they were talking about and, if it was needed, one ‘John’ could be told apart from another by a nickname — ‘John the Moor’ for a dark-complexioned man, say, or ‘John of the Moor’ for the one that lived out on the wet heath. Among the gentry, landowners, and the knightly classes in England, and to trace progeneration in the clann in what is now Scotland, sons used patronymic second names, taking their father’s name and adding a ‘Fitz’ or ‘Mac’ to denote ‘son of’ to it. Needless to say, this second name changed from generation to generation so it wasn’t a surname per se.

The practices, and the timing of the introduction of surnames into the aristocracy and gentry of Scotland, can be roughly traced through the names of the kings that reigned before and through the time of Gilbert de Templeton and past to the use of patrilineal surnames:

• Máel Coluim mac Eanric, 1153–1165 “Malcolm mac Henry”
• Uilliam mac Eanric, 1165-1214 “William mac Henry” (Malcolm’s brother)
• Alaxandair mac Uilliam, 1214–1249 “Alexander mac William”
• Alaxandair mac Alaxandair, 1249–1286 “Alexander mac Alexander”
• John de Balliol, 1292-1296, “John of Balliol,” the son of John, 5th Baron Balliol
• Roibert a Briuis, 1306-1329, “Robert the Bruce,” first son of another Robert de Brus
• Daibhidh a Briuis, 1329-1371, “David the Bruce,” son of Robert I (the Bruce)
• Robert the Steward,** 1371-1390, son of the hereditary Steward to the king
• Robert III (born John Stewart), 1390-1406, now the second of the Stewart Dynasty

Balliol and Bruce brought a thoroughly Frenchified (Norman) cultural bent to the top of Scottish society by virtue of their own ancestral heritage. The surnames they employed had to do with the estates (at least in Balliol’s case) their forebears possessed before coming over to Britain in the entourage that followed William the Conquerer. As of now, I don’t know whether Gilbert de Templeton shared that Norman lineage or perhaps he was a son of Strathclyde Britons of sufficient station to afford an ecclesiastic education and clerical appointment as well as property in Ayr.

But we do know that he, if not his father or grandfather, adopted the new practice of the highborn and in the “fashionable for the Clergy” manner described by Thomas Fuller, ‘superadded’ a surname — perhaps drawn “from the place of their Nativity” — Templeton, near Dundonald (as far as we know at this writing).

We still don’t know when that Templar ‘toun’ was established, so don’t have an absolute earliest date the surname could have been coined. Perhaps it was established with the 1189 benefice of Alan FitzWalter, the 2nd Lord High Steward of Scotland to the Templars, who was resident in nearby Dundonald Castle at the time. But we do know by way of George Black that as early as 1295 the surname, and ‘modern’ lineage of Templeton, joined the earliest (and now among the oldest) Scottish family names.

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* Oxford Companion to Scottish History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007.

** Robert II would have been the seventh hereditary Steward of Scotland had he not been in line for the throne. His great-great grandfather, the third Steward, Walter, Steward of Dundonald died in 1246. Walter was the eldest son of Alan fitz Walter, 2nd High Steward and was the first to adopt Stewart as a surname, according to Wikipedia and The Royal House of Stuart: from its origin to the accession… by Samuel Cowan, pg. 22.  Both he and his son, later, were also designated “of Dundonald” in official documents.

“What’s in a name?” - Vol. 2

I’m getting intrigued by the people and events surrounding Dundonald Castle, ‘round about 1140 through 1330, or from King David I (Dabíd mac Maíl Choluim) through Robert I, ‘The Bruce.’ That period covers the introduction of the convention of hereditary surnames among gentlemen, the appearance of our first known forebear in Gilbertus de Tempilton, ‘rector of the church of Rothir,’ in 1295, and will involve learning a bit more about the transition from tribal & clan affiliation to feudal relations of vassal and lord. But I’m brewing some fascinating speculation by putting various things into a timeline about what may have been going on with our first family members known by the name, and it’s anchored in the proximity of Dundonald Castle:

Of course the story I think I’m going to come up with rests heavily on George Black’s assertion in his The Surnames of Scotland, Their Origin, Meaning, and History that our name came from a Templar land near Dundonald, and not from one of the other ‘Temple touns’ that may have existed in what is now Ayrshire in the earliest days of the order.

[ A full screen version of the slide show is here. - Ed.]

Discovering ‘Templeton’

2009.08.04.23:50 - This might be the time I finally make it to the natal place of our long Templeton family saga.  Although I have no direct evidence that the family Templeton ever lived at the intersection hamlet of Templeton in Ayrshire, Scotland, it’s generally assumed in chronicles of the name that our earliest ancestors took the place name of their home as their own, and that all the Templetons that now thrive in nations around the world can trace their origin to the countryside of Ayr.  So I’m going to go there and get a picture of that intersection that the British Ordinance Survey calls “Templeton.”

Up til now, I’ve only done a smattering of reading and research into the place and its history.  I’ve just now begun looking into how to get there and what Karin and I might want to see and do in the neighborhood.  Over the years, I’ve only been able to actually locate a few probable historical kinsmen living and working in the area, the earliest of them being one Gilbertus de Tempilton, who was “rector of the church of Rothir’” (or Rothesay) in 1295.  We don’t expect to be there long enough to hope to add much to the lore, but I do hope to find ways to get a sense of the place and to gain some impressions of how its history shaped the people that hail from there.

Or at least discover where the dislocations occur between an American and his Scottish heritage.