THE MONASTERY OF DEER

The Cistercian abbey of Deer was founded by William Comyn, earl of Buchan, in 1219, on the site about half a mile west of the village of Old Deer in north-east Aberdeenshire where its ruins still stand, in a beautiful situation among trees on a sunny, southern-facing slope beside the South Ugie Water. With the overthrow of the Comyns by Bruce, the local lordship passed to the Keiths, in the person of Sir Robert de Keith, Marischal of Scotland, and remained with them throughout the history of the monastery. One of the family, Robert Keith, son of William Keith the fourth Earl Marischal, was Commendator of the abbey when, in 1587, after the Reformation, all its lands, dues, and properties were resigned into the hands of James VI and made by him into a temporal lordship called the Lordship of Altrie, in favour of the said Robert Keith for life, and afterwards to his nephew George Keith, the then Earl Marischal, and to his heirs. The royal grant by which this lordship was set up is extant in the Register of the Great Seal, and includes a very complete list of the lands formerly belonging to the abbey and now to the Keiths. A slightly older list is to be found in the decree of 1574 for the teinds of Deer, Peterhead, and Foveran due to the Earl Marischal: and a later one, in a contract of 1638 between the Earl Marischal and the king.