WHITHORN; the See of Galloway was first known (in Latin) as Candida Casa, a small burgh in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, about ten miles south of Wigtown. 'Whithorn' is a modern form of the Anglo-Saxon version (actually a literal translation) of this name, Hwit Ærne, 'white house'. St. Ninian, a Galloway Pict born in the mid fourth century had brought the Gospel back from a visit to Rome and St. Martin of Tours, founding Candida Casa, or the church of Whithorn in 397. The southern Picts, among missionary efforts and the people of Strathclyde succeeded the century before Columba and his Brethren from Ireland. Gilla Aldan of Whithorn, was a native Galwegian who was the first Bishop of the resurrected Bishopric of Whithorn or Galloway. He was the first to be consecrated by the Archbishop of York, who at that time was Thurstan. The recreation of the Bishopric suited both the ruler of Galloway, Fergus, and the Archbishop, who had few suffragans and needed more in order to maintain his independence from Canterbury.
The island of Iona (Mull) lies at the heart of the Christian traditions of the British Isles, the Southeast of England apart, an early missionary foundation of the Irish church which had in turn evangelised Scotland and Lindisfarne. The resurrection of the Galwegian Bishopric probably saved York. In 1128, the creation of the Bishopric of Whithorn probably encouraged the wrath and enmity of Bishop Wimund of the Isles, who seems to have regarded the area as his natural area of authority. The name of St Patrick's Isle held name from the yeare 447, untill the coming of Magnus, King of Norway, an. 1098, which is full 651 years, and for some years after, for Wimundus, the first Bishop after the union of the 2 bishopricks, and John, his successor, were Olave, the son of Gødred, King of Man, died in St Patrick's Isle.
In Marown, at Greeba, the lands are 420 acres; and there a church and hospice were rehabilitated about that time. Because, first, the remains of Norman work (Irish-Norman) of about 1175 abound in the walls of St. Trinians (Ninians) at Greeba; second, the founding, or at least rehabilitating of hospices had then a vogue in Ulster, and by the royal family of O'Loughlin; third, reference is made to Gødred and Phingola by their son Olaf II of Dublin and Waterford, in the Charter of 1215 (circa), by which he granted this church and hospice to Whithorn Priory. The priory of Whithorn, Candida Casa, held lands in the parish of Kirk Marown. It has been surmised that Middle takes its name from the central valley between Douglas and Peel. In the sheading of Middle there are only about two dozen Norse place-names found, and its toponomy belongs to the later Gaelic period.
Whithorn Priory is located in Wigtownshire, Galloway. It was founded about the middle of the twelfth century, in the reign of David I, by Fergus, Lord of Galloway, with Bishop Gilla Aldan, for Premonstratensian, or White, Canons. The link to the sea was the port known as the Isle of Whithorn, a peninsula used in the Middle Ages by pilgrims arriving by boat. The thirteenth century St Ninian's Chapel marked the point where pilgrims came ashore the roofless remains are looked after by Historic Scotland. It was the centre of the revived See of Galloway (or Candida Casa) under the patronage of Fergus, Lord of Galloway and Bishop Gilla Aldan from the 12th century.
A later Benedictine monastery occupied the site as part of the gradual suppression of the Irish religious tradition alongside the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland itself and the Europeanisation of Scotland's political and church structures in the 12th century. The Isle of Bute belonged to a see set up in the wake of the Norse invasions on the Isle of Man for several centuries, although given its strategic and economic importance at the centre of the Clyde estuary this was long contested. This see also claimed Iona itself and was claimed by the English Church as a part of the see of Peel under York jurisdiction.
The Cistercian Abbey of Savigny in Normandy, from which that of Furness, the mother of Rushen Abbey, in Man, was founded. Even before the erection of Furness and Rushen, the monks of Savigny, in Normandy, seem to have had the right of furnishing Man with bishops, which right was subsequently transferred—first to Furness and then to Rushen. The Mother house of Fermoy is Inishlouhnaght. Calder Abbey was founded A.D. 1134. In 1147 the order of Savigny was united with the house of Citeaux, and the community at Erenagh and Inch Abbey joined the Cistercian Order as a daughter house of Furness. The affiliation of the abbey was changed from Inishlounaght to Furness. The small port of New Quay is situated about a quarter of a mile to the north of the village of Burren while Furness, in Lancashire had a cell annexed to it in Kilshanny, in the adjoining barony of Corcomroe.
The colony under Evan or Ewan arrived on the 13th of July 1124, but after a stay of three years and three days they removed in July 1127 to Furness, into the valley of Becknngs-giii, or deadly nightshade, so called from that plant growing plentifully in the neighbourhood. Like Savigny and later Cashel, Furness followed the rule of St. Benedict, until the of the fifth abbot, Richard of Bayeux, when they adopted the rule of Citeaux, which had its rise in 1078. The monks of Furness objected to the change, and Peter of York, their abbot, went to Rome to plead against it, but on his return he was intercepted, stripped of his abbacy, and conipeiled to learn the new rule at Savigny. Richard was appointed to succeed him. Peter was afterwards made abbot at Areton, in the Isle of Wight. We learn from Stubbs "Acta Aichiep. Eboracen., p. 1217, as well as from Mathew Paris, p. 60, amid Chron. Nordmann., in the collection of Duchesne, p. 986, that some years before 1114, Wimund, a monk of Savigny, and at the same time priest in the Isle of Skye, was ordained Bishop of Man by Archbishop Thomas of York, and that when he went away (we shall see afterwards that lie became a pretender to the Scottish crown), John, a monk from the diocese of Seez (probably from the Abbey of Savigny), became his successor, being in his turn again succeeded by Nicholas a monk from Furness, as we learn from two letters directed by King Olaf b to Archbishop Thurstan of York, preserved in the " White Book " at York, and printed in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum.
Although elements of Roman church structure were developed from this period, dioceses and a few monastic settlements, most were modest, and little architectural structure survives at most of the monastic sites, with the notable exceptions of Iona and Kingarth, Bute. Saddell (Cistercian) was founded from the substantial Irish house of Mellifont, but its church was relatively simple and has disappeared; Ardchattan (Valliscaulian) and Oronsay (Augustinian) preserve some details of aisleless churches, the latter only a single-celled structure, whose most distinctive feature is a 14th-century cloister walk of triangular-gabled openings.