Note 219 — Chapter VIII · THE FIRST BOOK OF DISCIPLINE; OR, THE BOOKE OF THE POLICIE OF THE CHURCH.

[In the Articles addressed by some of the temporal lords and barons to the queen regent, and sent by her to the Provincial Council convened in Edinburgh a few weeks before the Reformation burst like a tempest upon the country, it was requested that "the corps presentes, kow, and [um]est claith, and the silvir commonlie callit the kirk richts, and Pasch offrands quhilk is takin at Pasch fra men and women for distribution of the sacrament of the blessit body and blood of Jesus Christ," should no longer be extorted under pain of excommunication or debarring from the sacraments, but left to the free will of the givers (Concilia Scotiæ, ii. 148, 149). The Council met this demand for reformation by enacting that in future the poor should be freed from mortuary dues, while those not quite so poor were only to pay them in a modified form; and the small tithes and oblations were to be taken up before Lent so as to avoid the appearance of selling the sacrament (Ibid., ii. 167, 168, 174). When, on the 27th of May 1560, the reforming vicar of Lintrathin raised a summons against his parishioners for payment of his teinds, "the cors present and umest clayth of all yeris and termes bigane restand unpayit" were specially excepted from his claim (Spalding Miscellany, iv. 121).