FEARN ABBEY is found on the fertile low-lying ground just east of the Hill of Fearn and two miles north west of the coastal village of Balintore. Yet this is actually all that is left of St. Michael's Aisle, added to the abbey church by Abbot Finlay McFaed in time to house his tomb and effigy on his death in 1485. St. Duthac, Bishop of Ross, in Scotland was an Irishman by birth, he was venerated for miracles and prophecies as he's often called today is the patron saint of Tain in Easter Ross. He is recorded to have predicted the Danish invasion- occuring in Chester in 616. The cathedral of Armagh was a place of some importance from very early times, and is said to derive its name of Ard Macha. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Etheldreda (or Aethelthryth, alias Audrey) founded the monastery at Ely in 673; the monastery was later destroyed in the Danish invasion of 870. York in the Scandinavian era when Harold of England fought his last battle ending an era as decisively for Anglo-Scandinavian York. The Church and School of York suffered in addition from the non-residence of archbishops, since from the accession of St. Oswald in 972 until 1016, and again for a while in 1040, the occupants of the see were also permitted to hold that of Worcester (St. Albans). In the kingdom of the Hwicce, then Merica, Gloucester was untouched by the monastic revival in the reign of King Edgar. In 1022 Wulfstan II, who held the sees of both Worcester and York, changed the community of secular priests into a convent of Benedictine monks and put them under the rule of Abbot Edric who can be said to have been one by the Gloucester tradtion. Lady Godiva was a widow when Leofric married her in 1040. St. Duthac is reputed to have died in the early 1060s either in Tain or Ireland and in 1468 saw the establishment of Morangie and Tarlogie as Chaplinaries of St Duthac's Church, Tain.
The first Fearn Abbey was founded at Fearn by the Earl of Ross in 1225. Ecclesiastical history was dealt with too as Fearn Abbey, Fortrose Cathedral and the various churches linked to St Duthac in Tain all received much support from the Earls of Ross, some of whom are buried at Fearn and some at Fortrose. The abbey was a Premonstratensian establishment of the order of St Augustine, founded by Ferquhard MacTaggart, Earl of Ross, around 1227 and is the most northerly mediaeval monastery in Scotland. As a reward for his help in quelling a rebellion in Ross and Moray, Alexander II granted Ferquhard, in 1234, extensive lands in Ross, Skye, Lewis and Moray. [Lincoln Cathedral]
Easter Ross has a number of spectacular Pictish Stones, carved in the 8th or 9th centuries. Tain's history is intertwined with the story of St Duthus, born here in about 1000. He died in Ireland, but his remains were returned to Tain and buried in the original St Duthus's Chapel, said to be built on the site of his birth. This first chapel rapidly became a place of pilgrimage and of sanctuary, though the latter was marked more in its breach than in its adherence. Robert the Bruce's family took shelter here en route to Orkney during his exile. But the Earl of Ross took them prisoner anyway, and handed them over to a grisly fate at the hands of the English in 1307. This idea of sanctuary also led to the chapel's demise, in 1427. A local outlaw had pursued an enemy into the chapel, and overcame the technicality of sanctuary by burning it down.
Hugh, 5th Earl of Ross of the O'Beolan line, went off to battle against the English at Halidon Hill in 1333 wearing the shirt alleged to be that of St Duthac. Rather at the hamlet of that name on the south side of the Dornoch Firth between Bonar Bridge and Edderton. In 1336, the Abbey was of rough stone and it was suggested by William, 4th Earl of Ross, that it should be rebuilt. That was begun in 1338 and completed in 1372. Known as the "Lamp of the North", this 14th-century church is one of the oldest pre-Reformation Scottish churches still used for worship.