Chronicles of Strathearn. Various

within, so much apart from them as to leave a narrow passage round the building in the thickness of the wall. The east window is a peculiar triplicate, with the centre light much taller and wider than the others. The west front has over the doorway and its blind arch on either side three very long and narrow two-light windows of equal height, with a cinquefoil in the head of the central window and a quatrefoil in the head of the side windows; whilst above is a vesica, set within a bevelled fringe of bay-leaves, arranged zigzag-wise, with their points in contact—the last the subject of a well-known rhapsody by Ruskin. The root of the cathedral history in this case lies in the tower. It stands awkwardly a little out of line in the south aisle of the nave, an evident remnant of an older church, exactly like the similar tower in Muthill, of the eleventh century, retained in a church built c. 1430. A tower, almost exactly similar, but more ornate, probably twenty or thirty years later in date, exists at Dunning, in the same diocese, and also a Celtic Church settlement associated with St. Serf. The old Culdee Church of Markinch has a tower of the same peculiar style, originally with a square, upright, saddle-backed roof, and crow-stepped gables. Some vestiges remain of the bishop's palace, overlooking the Allan on the south-west of the cathedral; and the triangular space in front of the south side of the cathedral, and forming the end of the High Street, has some old houses which are believed to have been canons' manses.

      The chapter consisted of—Dean (Muthill), praecentor, chancellor, treasurer, archdeacon; Prebendaries—Abbot of Cambuskenneth in 1298, Abbot of Arbroath for Abernethy from 1240; Crieff primo (probably parish of), Crieff secundo (probably St. Thomas at Milnab), Logie, Fordishall, Kinkell, Kippen, Monzie, Comrie. Eighteen finely carved oak stalls of the dignitaries and canons belonging to the sixteenth century still survive. Other carved work was destroyed in 1559 by the Prior of St. Andrews and the Earl of Argyll. The line of bishops ended with three of the neighbouring family of Chisholm of Cromlix. Bishop James Chisholm was eldest son of Edmund Chisholm, and was a good administrator. Bishop William Chisholm, his half-brother, was an ecclesiastic of the worst possible type for fornication, church robbery, and persecution of so-called heretics. Bishop William Chisholm, nephew of the robber-bishop, became, after the Reformation, a Carthusian monk at Lyons. He is supposed to have taken with him the writs of the See, which have been lost. Marshall[6] gives an account of this branch of Chisholms. The same writer says[7]: "Among the sepulchral monuments in the cathedral is that of Malise, eighth Earl of Strathearn, and his countess. It is in the vestry of the choir, and is a flat block of gritstone, having on it full-sized figures of the Earl and Countess. When discovered in the choir, the block was above a coffin of lead with date 1271. In the centre of the choir is the dust of Lady Margaret Drummond, mistress (but probably privately married) of James IV., and her sisters the Ladies Euphemia and Sybilla, daughters of Lord Drummond, who were poisoned (apparently to clear the way for the King's marriage to the Princess Mary of England in 1503). Their remains were deposited here by permission of their uncle, Sir William Drummond, then Dean of Dunblane. Three blue slabs covered and marked their resting-place. The recumbent figure attired in pontifical vestments and mitre, and which is in a niche of the wall under a window of the choir, on the right of the pulpit, is supposed to represent Bishop Finlay Dermock, and to be his sepulchral monument. The other recumbent figure under one of the windows of the nave represents Bishop Michael Ochiltree, who greatly added to the rich adornments of the cathedral."