Appendix 1 - The St Andrews Foundation Account

Summary

THE two Latin texts translated in appendices 1 and 2 are (1) the St Andrews Foundation Account B [hereafter FAB], also known as the longer St Andrews Foundation Legend or Foundation Legend B, and (2) the Augustinian's Account [hereafter AA]. They are generally treated as two separate entities, but were conceived of as one text by their mid-twelfth-century compiler, who was almost certainly Robert, first prior of the cathedral priory of St Andrews. A crucial and unique text for understanding the politics of church and state in the period in which it was compiled, it also presents a twelfth-century version and vision of the early history of both. There is a no less important shorter St Andrews Foundation Account, known as Foundation Account A [hereafter FAA]. Only the translation of FAB is given here. For the Latin text with full editorial apparatus, the reader is referred to PNF, iii, Appendix 1, where this translation can also be found.

FAB and AA survive as a continuous text only in an eighteenth-century copy of the lost St Andrews Register (London, BL Harleian MS 4628, fos 224v to 238r) [hereafter H]. This manuscript is described by Marjorie Anderson, and the two texts are printed in W. F. Skene's Chronicles of the Picts: Chronicles of the Scots (Edinburgh, 1867), no. XXXI (pp. 183–93) [hereafter S], with no break between the two (FAB pp. 183–8, AA pp. 188–93). In the copy of the St Andrews Register, and presumably also in the Register itself, now lost, FAB is immediately preceded (on fo. 224v) by a list of priors headed by Prior Robert himself (1140) and ending with the succession of John of Forfar in 1313. The fact that Prior John is the last in this list, and that the year of his death (1321) is not given, suggests that the list was compiled during his priorship. It also suggests that this is when the combined text of FAB and AA, which as we have seen immediately follows the succession of priors, was copied into the Register. It is probably significant that it was also during John's priorship that the cathedral church of St Andrews was consecrated, with great ceremony, on 5 July 1318.