The book Arran; - Cook Clan

46 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
' cursed invaders ' of Kintyre or other Islesmen were at work
again. ^ Once more the king and the Douglases are in con-
flict or in strained relations, and the young John Lord of
the Isles is aye ready to take a hand for his friends. For
three years the rents of Arran are correspondingly depreciated.
It may have been with the idea of opposing some
better resistance in this quarter that in May 1452 we find all
Ranald's farms, with Imachar and Dougarie (Dubhgharadh),
conferred by charter, as a military holding, on Alexander,
Lord Montgomery, who already had Sannox, and who had
previously had a mission of the same sort elsewhere. But
the arrangement did not meet with Ranald's approval, and
it was easier to get rid of him on the sheepskin than in person.
In the record of 1453 he is reported to have occupied his old
lands by force and violence, and is found charged with the
rental of £15, 3s. 4d., which means he has been in them for
rather more than a year. Meantime a new transaction had
been carried through, in which Ranald was to be even more
conspicuous as a withholder of rents, or a special victim of
misfortune.
In 1452 James ii. was obliged with a loan from the funds
of Glasgow Cathedral, in particular from the offerings made
in the church in the time of indulgences and intended for
' pious uses,' to the amount of 800 marks or £533, 6s. 8d. To
meet this debt he, in April 1452, assigned to Bishop William
TurnbuU, and, in the event of the bishop's death, to the dean
and chapter of the diocese, the rents of Bute, Arran, and
Cowal, with the royal customs of three neighbouring ports ;
the beneficiary to set the lands and collect the revenues,
take £100 annually, and account for the balance to the royal
exchequer—until the mortgage was paid up.^
Arran was still in a dilapidated condition, but the bishop
secures a payment in the first year. Then, perhaps to save
^ In 1453 there is an allusion to a capture of the castle of Brodick.
2 Begistrum Magni Sigilli (1424-1513), p. 121, No. 542.