by Janine Fitzpatrick

Last year marked the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath (Open House 287). The old name of the town was ‘Aber Brothoc’. Three miles south of Auchmithie on the Angus coast, the town invited the fisherfolk of Auchmithie to bring their fish preserving skills, learned from the Vikings, to the community. They were offered booths by the harbour and the prospect of lucrative trade.

Arbroath Abbey was Tironensian. Tiron, near Chartres, in northern France, was the place from where the Benedictine abbeys were reformed. King William I established Arbroath Abbey in 1178 and dedicated it to Thomas à Becket, the clergyman of Norman origin who was murdered by two knights of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales gives us several vignettes of the pilgrims who journeyed in late spring to the shrine. Chaucer’s ‘poor priest’ is an attractive character who ‘gladly learned and gladly taught’.