Lindores, Abbey of
LINDORES, ABBEY OF
Former Benedictine monastery of the Tironian congregation (see tiron, abbey of) in Fifeshire, Scotland, within the Diocese of St. Andrews. Founded and richly endowed in 1191 by David, earl of Huntingdon and grandson of david i, the abbey was colonized from Kelso and dedicated to St. Mary and St. Andrew. Like dunfermline and balmerino, Lindores was popular with, and frequently visited by, English and Scottish monarchs in the 13th century and emerged almost unscathed from the wars of independence. One of its monks, Laurence of Lindores, was a distinguished teacher at the nearby University of St. Andrews in the early 15th century. In 1543 the abbey was sacked and its monks expelled by an army of reformers; and in June of 1559 under John knox's leadership they utterly desecrated it. The last abbot, the historian John Leslie, who was also bishop of Ross, died in exile in 1596; and the abbey was erected into a temporal lordship for Patrick Leslie in 1600. It is now a ruin.
Bibliography: Chartulary of the Abbey of Lindores, 1195–1479, ed. j. dowden (Edinburgh 1903). j. wilkie, The Benedictine Monasteries of Northern Fife (Edinburgh 1927). d. e. easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland (London 1957) 60.
[l. macfarlane]