Transactions. 129 
to £395 18s 8d Scot (Keith’s Hist., app., p. 185). What 
remained of the property of this monastery after much waste was 
vested in the King by the General Annexation Act in 1587. In 
1617 an Act of Parliament was passed dissolving the said annexa- 
tion as to the whole temporal property of the Abbey, and the 
spiritual property of the same, consisting of their parish churches 
of Holywood, Dunscore, Penpont, Tynron, and Kirkconnel, par- 
sonages and vicarages, with their tithes and revenues, in order 
that the King might grant the whole to John Murray, of Loch- 
maben, and his heirs, and might erect the same into a free 
barony, to be called the barony of Holywood, for the yearly 
payment of £20 Scots, in name of blench ferm (Acts Parl. Scot. 
iv., 575). Murray accordingly obtained a charter of the whole 
on the 9th of April, 1618, and it was ratified in Parliament on 
the 4th August, 1621 (Zid. iv., 665). Murray, who had been 
about the King from his youth, and was one of the grooms of the 
bed-chamber, acquired from the King before this the barony of 
Lochmaben and other property in Dumfriesshire. 
Thomas Campbell, the last abbot of Holywood, was prosecuted 
by the Regent Murray for assisting Queen Mary after her escape 
from Lochleven, and he was forfeited on the 19th August, 1568 
(Acts Parl, iii., 54). A charter of grants of lands by this abbot 
Thomas to John Charteris, in Rydingwood, dated 7th June, 1548, 
is in the National Museum of Antiquities. The seal attached to 
this charter is similar to one figured by Laing (Scottish Seals, ii., 
p. 202, pl. xv., 2). It is circular, in the centre a bird sitting on 
a tree; in the lower part are two estoiles, legend—s COE ABBIS 
ET CONVENTI sAC NEMORIS—‘“ Common Seal of the Abbey and 
Convent of Sacra Nemoris.” 
IIL. Meteorological Notes on the past Winter. 
By Mr Parrick DupcGeEon. 
.The exceptional characteristics connected with the winter of 
1890-91 deserve more than a passing notice, and the few subjoined 
notes may perhaps be thought worth placing on the records of 
the Society for reference at any subsequent period :— 
Much attention has been given of late years to the subject of 
meteorology, and although in the present state of the science it 
appears impossible to deduce anything like true conclusions as to 
17 
