A saint and a sin lie at the heart of this Scottish town’s story

I also appear not to have offended anyone with serious errors, but as always, if you think I’ve got something factually wrong then please email me – I can’t fix any mistake in the print edition of The National but I can rectify matters online.

I have already covered Brechin, Elgin, Falkirk, Arbroath, Ayr, Paisley, Dumbarton, Dumfries and Lanark and still to come are Stornoway, Hamilton, Kilmarnock, St Andrews, Montrose, Forfar, Kilwinning, Irvine, Renfrew and two more, which are revealed below.

To be included in the list of ancient towns I set the following rules: they all have to have played a part in the history of Scotland and be “ancient”, which I interpret as being established as a town, usually a burgh, before the Reformation in 1560.

Regular readers will recall that in recent weeks I have urged anyone who wants to promote their own town for a column to contact me on nationalhamish@gmail.com and as a result of readers’ pleas, today I am going to write about Tain, while next week I will feature Haddington.

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My interest in Tain was sparked by Malcolm Anderson who emailed me to say: “I am no historian but I would suggest you include the Royal Burgh of Tain in your series. This is Scotland’s oldest Royal Burgh.

“Several Scottish kings made repeated pilgrimages, and if my schoolboy memory serves me well, King Robert the Bruce sent his wife and family to the chapel in Tain for sanctuary but the Earl of Moray ignored the sanctuary, captured Bruce’s family and burnt the chapel. The ruins remain.

“As I say, most of the above comes from my memory of history lessons at Tain Royal Academy but worth a little confirmation from yourself.”

It’s good to know that Scottish history was taught at the Academy, as so many other schools in Scotland had a curriculum which minimised the subject if they included it at all.

Malcolm is mostly correct in what he writes, apart from the fact that it was the Earl of Ross and not Moray who broke the sanctuary rules – one of the saddest incidents in Scottish history, which I will explore at length in this column today.

Readers will also know that as a writer about history I always depend on the accounts of local historians and Tain is no different, as I am very much relying on the 1882 work Researches Into The History Of Tain: Earlier And Later by local minister Rev William Taylor. It can be seen on that excellent website electricscotland.com, to which I am always grateful.

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Tain is indeed the oldest of the royal burghs, if you believe local claims – remember, very little is certain about Scotland in mediaeval times. Situated in the ancient county of Ross-shire on the south side of the Dornoch Firth, Tain either gets its name from the River Tain, the word coming from an ancient Celtic description meaning “flow”, or from the Norse word Ting, a meeting place, the Vikings having raided the area and liked it so much that some settled around what became Ross-shire in the ninth century. I prefer the Celtic derivation as the Picts undoubtedly settled here in the first millennium, by the end of which the local people, comprising both Picts and Scots joined under one monarch, were devoutly Christian.

That religious connection is a defining factor for Tain, because it was in the immediate environs of the town that Saint Duthac, or Duthus, was born. There has been an ongoing dispute about the origins of the saint, particularly the date he was born. Some have placed him as late as the 12th or 13th century but I very much prefer the local tradition that he was born before the year 1000.

The Gaelic name of Tain shows just how important was the connection with the saint. Baile Dhubhthaich means “Duthac’s town”, and he undoubtedly made a huge impression on the church in both Scotland and Ireland as a confessor and preacher.

Unlike other locations in the north of Scotland, there are no records of any kind about Tain before the 11th century. No major archaeological finds were ever made, though Pictish stones were extant in the area. But in 1066, Tain gained a royal charter which enables it to claim to be the oldest royal burgh.

Taylor concluded: “In this neighbourhood no one of the races absolutely prevailed. Hence, I think, it came to pass that neither Pictish, Gaelic, nor Norse history or tradition proved strong enough to outlive, as in many other parts of Scotland one or other did outlive, that chaotic period of bloodshed and social revolution; and that it is only in the 11th century that the history of Tain can be said to commence, when the Norse domination in this quarter having come to an end, and the province of Moray and Ross, to which it belonged, having been conclusively annexed to the kingdom of Scotland, it received from King Malcolm Canmore its constitution as a free Scottish town.”

It was a lot more than that, because King Malcolm (below) in honour of Duthac gave Tain a “girth” of sanctuary in 1066. That would make sense, because Duthac’s death at Armagh in Ireland is reported by Irish chronicles as having taken place on March 8, 1065, and Canmore would definitely have wanted to lay an early claim to the veneration of a holy man who was acclaimed as a saint upon his death. In 1966, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother opened a rose garden in Tain to mark the 900th anniversary of the charter, and that’s good enough evidence for me of the truth of the Canmore charter, for no-one would have dared hoax that formidable Scottish woman.

A shrine and chapel were duly erected and named for St Duthac while the sanctuary girth was completely believed – anyone fleeing their pursuers, even law authorities, could take up residence inside the bounds of the sanctuary and would be protected by the church. Most people who sought sanctuary were eventually sent into exile, but some people lived and died in sanctuary.

With its royal trading privileges and sanctuary, the town of Tain grew steadily. Taylor wrote: “We can easily imagine that the combined advantages which have been mentioned would operate in the following centuries to give it importance and prosperity. As the market town and centre of trade for a large district, as a seat of magisterial authority and law, as a place of considerable ecclesiastical importance, a resort of pilgrims, and a sanctuary of refuge for the distressed, it would not only obtain a permanent population of its own, but would besides attract many visitors from the surrounding neighbourhood.”

Local tradition was that the body of St Duthac was perfectly preserved at Armagh until his remains were moved to Tain in 1253 where ever more numerous pilgrims came to pray at his grave. What is left of the ancient chapel can still be seen near the town’s golf club.

Tain was also the scene of the most egregious breach of sanctuary in Scottish history. In 1306, having been crowned king at Scone, Robert the Bruce sent his family north to escape the clutches of the English army who were in hot pursuit of him. With his brother Nigel in charge, the king’s wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, his daughter Marjorie, his sisters Mary and Christina, and Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, took refuge in Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire.

As the English advanced north, it was decided that the women would seek sanctuary at Tain, with Orkney, then a Norwegian province, their ultimate destination. Nigel Bruce and his men stayed at Kildrummy to allow the women to escape. Nigel’s courage cost him his life – he was captured and then hanged, drawn and quartered.

Meanwhile, William, the 2nd Earl of Ross, one of the many nobles in Scotland who flip-flopped their loyalties during the Wars of Independence, intervened grievously. He was a relative of the Comyn family who thus had no love for the Bruces. In early 1307, he was a supporter of England’s King Edward I – he would die in July that year – and he duly rode to Tain and broke the sanctuary, capturing the Bruce women.

They were either then sent into English convents or placed in cages on the walls of English castles, kept in captivity by Edward II until after the Battle of Bannockburn.

The breach of sanctuary was soon regretted by the Earl of Ross, who joined the Bruce camp and later attached his seal to the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. His son Hugh, the 3rd Earl, became a favourite of King Robert and married his sister Matilda or Maud.

The concept of sanctuary at Tain survived into the 15th century, when, according to Taylor, in 1427 a “bandit chief” called Thomas McNeil of Creich pursued an enemy laird called Mowat into the sanctuary and burned the chapel to the ground with several men trapped inside. McNeil’s actions were so offensive that his own brother turned him in to King James I.

St Duthac’s remains were then moved again, this time to the Collegiate Church in the town (perhaps confusingly named St Duthus). After Duthac was accepted on to the official list of saints, Tain became a major place of pilgrimage, and King James IV made an annual journey to the shrine at Tain, possibly in penance for his role in the regicide of his father, or because he had a mistress conveniently located nearby.

Pilgrimages effectively ceased long before the remains of St Duthac were lost after the Reformation of 1560, but religion continued to play an important part in the affairs of Tain. When King James VI became King James I of England, he basically wanted to amalgamate the Presbyterian Kirk with the Episcopalian Church of England. Rev John Munro, minister at Tain, was one of the famous seven dissenters who defied the king. He was sentenced to internal exile in Kintyre but soon returned to Tain to care for his flock. The Scottish Privy Council warned the council and people of Tain against harbouring Munro but the town sheltered him for 20 years until his death in 1630.

In 1650, Tain played a small part in the defeat of the great Royalist general, James Graham, the Marquess of Montrose, whose forces were gathered at Carbisdale across the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland. The army of the Covenanting government in Edinburgh was sent north and the horsed troops gathered at Tain. From there, they moved to confront Montrose and his clansmen in a one-sided slaughter which saw Montrose flee, only to be captured and executed in Edinburgh.

Oliver Cromwell showed his “gratitude” to Tain during his conquest of Scotland – Parliament troops were quartered in the town in 1656 and they did so much damage that much of the population fled. Even more destruction was to come 40 years later when a devastating fire razed many of the dwellings in the town. That meant a lot of rebuilding which is why there are so many fine edifices from that era in Tain, including the splendid Tolbooth. The 19th-century Maitland family of architects are largely responsible for the distinctive “look” of Tain.

Tain prospered as a market town and administrative centre in the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution largely passed it by. The town does have one nearby famous business, the Glenmorangie Distillery. Like the town itself, it’s well worth a visit.