392 
fers, as his authority, to ‘““A short Description of Iona, 1693. 
Advoc. Libr. MS.” 
William Sacheverell, who was Governor of the Isle of 
Man in 1688, was employed in that year in the attempt to 
recover the stores of the Florida, one of the great vessels of 
the Spanish Armada, which was blown up and sunk in the 
harbour of Tobermory in Mull. He shortly after published a 
little book, entitled,‘‘ An Account of his Voyage to I-Columb- 
kill,” in a letter addressed to a friend, dated the 7th of Sep- 
tember in that year. In this he states (at page 142), that 
‘the Synod of Argyll ordered sixty crosses to be cast into the 
sea.” 
Mr. Huband Smith, who had been unable to discover at 
Iona the remains of more than fifteen or twenty crosses, was 
disposed to think that the number so stated to have been de- 
stroyed in Pennant’s Tour, and Sir Walter Scott’s poem, arose, 
perhaps, from accidental mistake of some transcriber, who, by 
the prefix of a single figure, added three hundred to the sixty 
spoken of by Sacheverell. 
In Mr. Maclean’s “ Historical Account of Iona,” published 
in 1841, he states that—* A.D. 1561. The Act of the Con- 
vention of Estates was passed at the desire of the Church, for 
demolishing all the abbeys of monks and friars, and for sup- 
pressing whatsoever monuments of idolatrie were remaining 
in the realm. In consequence of this edict,” he proceeds, 
‘ensued, as we may easily conceive, a pitiful devastation of 
churches and monasteries. It was at this time the mobility 
destroyed and carried away so many of the crosses which 
adorned Iona. The very sepulchres of the dead were rifled 
and ript up—Bibliothecs, and other volumes of the Fathers, 
together with the Registers of the Church, were cast into the 
streets, and afterwards gathered in heaps and burnt.” For 
these statements Maclean cites ‘‘ Keith, Hist. p. 503.” 
We may infer from the foregoing passages that it was 
about the close of the sixteenth century that the two first- 
