A Corpus of Scottish Medieval
Parish Churches

Historical outline

Dedication: unknown

What appears to be the first surviving reference to the church of Seton is the record of its dedication on 6 October 1242 by Bishop David de Bernham of St Andrews.(1)  It was as an independent parsonage that Seton next occurs in a surviving source, being recorded in the accounts of the papal tax-collector in Scotland in the mid-1270s as having paid two merks in tax.(2)  In the tax-roll for the archdeaconry of Lothian, drawn up in the 1290s, the church was valued at £20 annually and paying 40s in tax.(3)

Seton was still an independent parsonage in 1411 when Thomas Cairns, rector, was named as a papal judge sub-delegate.(4)  Patronage of the church had probably lain with the Seton lords of Seton from the thirteenth century and continued in their hands throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages.  On 13 April 1470 George lord Seton, as patron, started a process for the erection of the parish church into a collegiate establishment.(5)  He supplicated the pope that because Seton was ‘notable amongst the parish churches of the diocese, and abounds sufficiently in rents’, and since he was ready to augment the fruits of the church from his own goods, it should be erected into a collegiate church, with a provostship, and prebends for six further canons, who would maintain two boy choristers and a clerk.   Although Pope Paul II gave a mandate for the erection of the college at that time, it was not until 29 November 1492 following a second supplication by George, 2nd lord Seton, that the bull of foundation was issued by Pope Alexander VI.(6)  By that foundation the whole fruits of the parish were assigned to the provost and prebends, who were responsible thereafter for the cure of souls.  They remained annexed at the Reformation, at which time the provostship was valued at £40 annually.(7)

Even before the formal institution of the collegiate church in 1492-3 there is evidence that additional altars and chaplainries had been established at Seton before the 1490s.  In 1491, reference was made to Nicholas Fleming as chaplain of the altar of the aisle of St Mary at Seton.(8)  It is likely that this refers to one of the lateral aisles or transepts of the surviving structure.

Notes

1. A O Anderson (ed), Early Sources of Scottish History, ii (Edinburgh, 1922), 522 [Pontifical Offices of St Andrews].

2. A I Dunlop (ed), ‘Bagimond’s Roll: Statement of the Tenths of the Kingdom of Scotland’, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, vi (1939), 33.

3. The Correspondence, Inventories, Account Rolls and Law Proceedings of the Priory of Coldingham, ed J Raine (Surtees Society, 1841), cix.

4. Calendar of Papal Letters to Scotland of Benedict XIII of Avignon 1394-1419, ed F McGurk (Scottish History Society, 1976), 240.

5. Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, v, 1447-1471, eds J Kirk, R J Tanner and A I Dunlop (Glasgow, 1997), no.1438.

6. I B Cowan and D E Easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland, 2nd edition (London, 1976), 226.

7. J Kirk (ed), The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices (Oxford, 1995), 99-100.

8. Protocol Book of James Young, 1485-1515, ed G Donaldson (Scottish Record Society, 1952), no.450.

Summary of relevant documentation

Medieval

Synopsis of Cowan’s Parishes: Erected in to a college in 1492, the fruits were devoted to the upkeep of the provost and canons who were responsible for the cure.(1)

1411 Thomas de Carnis described as rector of Seton.(2)

1424-33 William de Foulis (secretary of Earl of Douglas) holds the church; patronage with Sir John Seton. On his promotion to archdeaconry of St Andrews he is succeeded by Robert Leche.(3)

1470 Petition by George Seton, the patron, for the erection of the church into a college with 6 canons, 2 boys and a clerk. Motivation given as: ‘since the parish church of Seton is notable amongst parish churches of said diocese and beyond, and is sufficient in rents’.(4)

1558 (13 April) Alexander Bannatyne, prebend and chaplain of the College of Seton (prebend of East Fertoun and Harpdene). James Scott prebend of West Dundesk in same church also appears.(5)

Altars and chaplaincies

Our Lady

1491 Nicholas Fleming, chaplain of the altar of the aisle of St Mary in Seton.(6)

Post-medieval

Books of assumption of thirds of benefices and Accounts of the collectors of thirds of benefices: The Parish church: provostry of the college valued at £40 (provost complains that this was mostly made up of corpse fines etc).(7)

[The parish of Seton was annexed to Tranent after the reformation with the parish church located in Tranent]

Statistical Account of Scotland (Rev Hugh Cunninghame): [No reference to church at Seton]

New Statistical Account of Scotland (Rev John Henderson, 1839): ‘The old collegiate church of Seton is the finest monument of antiquity in the parish… [built before 1390]… The building remains carefully preserved by its present proprietor, the Earl of Wemyss’.(8)

Notes

1. Cowan, The parishes of medieval Scotland, 182.

2. CPL, Ben, 240.

3. CSSR, iv, nos. 89 & 90, CPL, vii, 298 & 360, CPL, viii, 458 & 561.

4. CSSR, v, no. 1438, CPL, xii, 346.

5. NRS Prot Bk of Thomas Stevin, 1548-1565, B30/1/5 fols. 206v & 211v-212r.

6. Prot Bk of James Young, 1485-1515, no. 450.

7. Kirk, The books of assumption of the thirds of benefices,  99-100.

8. New Statistical Account of Scotland, (1839), ii, 291.

Bibliography

NRS Prot Bk of Thomas Stevin, 1548-1565, B30/1/5.

Calendar of entries in the Papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal letters, 1893-, ed. W.H. Bliss, London.

Calendar of Papal letters to Scotland of Benedict XIII of Avignon, 1976, ed. F. McGurk, (Scottish History Society) Edinburgh.

Calendar of Papal letters to Scotland of Clement VII of Avignon, 1976, ed. C. Burns, (Scottish History Society) Edinburgh.

Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome 1433-47, 1983, ed. A.I. Dunlop and D MacLauchlan, Glasgow.

Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome 1447-71, 1997, ed. J. Kirk, R.J. Tanner and A.I. Dunlop, Edinburgh.

Cowan, I.B., 1967, The parishes of medieval Scotland, (Scottish Record Society), Edinburgh.

Kirk, J., 1995, The books of assumption of the thirds of benefices, (British Academy) Oxford.

New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1834-45, Edinburgh and London.

Protocol Book of James Young, 1485-1515, 1952, ed. G. Donaldson (Scottish Record Society), Edinburgh.

Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-9, ed. J. Sinclair, Edinburgh.

Architectural description

There has been a parish church at Seton from 1242 at the latest, since on 6 October that year Bishop David de Bernham carried out one of his many dedications aimed at ensuring that churches in his diocese were properly constituted for worship.(1)

The rectangular church that is likely to have been in existence by then remained in use as the nave after a college was founded and an impressive cruciform new building was progressively added to its east as the setting for the services of a college of priests,(2) though it was allowed to fall into decay after the Reformation. The new collegiate church, which was to provide an architectural model for a number of others that followed it, including Dalkeith and Biggar, was the creation of successive members of the Seton family, whose principal residence was a short distance to the west of the church. The history of their architectural activities at the church, was recorded by Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington in 1561.(3)

As in many other cases, the college grew out of an earlier chaplainry; at Seton this had been founded by Lady Catherine Sinclair, following the death of her husband, Sir John Seton, in about 1434. The chapel was intended to serve as his burial place, and within it she made provision for a priest to offer perpetual prayers. Excavations carried out after the church was placed in state care in 1948 established that this chapel had been a rectangular structure attached to the south wall of the chancel of the original church, but it was later replaced by the existing south transept.(4) A new chancel for the planned collegiate services, was started by George, first Lord Seton, who had been elevated as a lord of parliament in 1448–9. He completed the building works as far as the vaulting of the eastern parts of the chancel, before his death in 1478.

The first attempt to create a college, which was to consist of a provost, six canons, a clerk and two choristers, was made in 1470,(5) and it is possible that building had started not long before then, but it was not until 1492 that collegiate status was finally achieved.(6) That was in the time of the second Lord Seton, who completed the vaulting of the choir before his death in 1508. The choir was paved, glazed, roofed and furnished by the third Lord Seton, who was killed at Flodden in 1513.

The choir was supplemented by the addition of a pair of transepts and a central tower in the course of the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Maitland of Lethington states that this was done for Lady Janet, the widow of the fifth Lord Seton after his death in 1513. The initial intention may have been no more than to add a single transeptal chapel off the north side of the east end of the nave, which would thus have been an asymmetrical pendant to the chapel built on the south side of the nave by Lady Catherine Seton in about 1434. By April 1541 this chapel is apparently being described as built.(7) It was probably damage caused in the course of an English attack in 1544 that prompted a more ambitious scheme, whereby Lady Catherine’s chapel was replaced by a transeptal chapel that mirrored the north chapel already built. A crossing was formed between the two transepts, at the east end of the earlier nave, and a tower capped by a splayed-foot spire was raised over that crossing. The surviving stump suggests that the spire was never completed before the Reformation brought a halt to building operations. There may have been an aspiration to remodel the nave in due course, to make it a more architecturally appropriate adjunct of the splendid collegiate choir. However, as was often the case at rural collegiate foundations, where the founding family’s chief focus was the place where prayers were offered for their welfare in life and salvation in death, work on the nave appears never to have been started.

Following the Reformation the church appears to have remained in use until the parish was united with Tranent in 1580; despite proposals in 1650 that it should again become parochial, this never happened. In 1715 it suffered desecration at the hands of the Lothian Militia because of the Jacobite allegiance of the last of the line of the Lords Seton (whose predecessors had been elevated to the earldom of Wintoun since 1600). A view of the church published by Francis Grose in 1789 shows that the windows by that stage were blocked up, with much of the tracery missing, and with shrubs growing out of the roof of the choir.(8) This situation was eventually reversed when in 1878 the church was carefully restored as his family’s burial by the ninth earl of Wemyss. In 1948 the twelfth earl placed it in state care, after which the church and area around it were archaeologically investigated.

The excavated foundations of the church that became the nave of the collegiate church show that it was a rather irregularly set out structure, with walls of rubble that were covered by an alarmingly asymmetrical timber roof on the evidence of the raggle incorporated in the west wall of the later tower. The chancel that was planned and almost completed by the first Lord Seton to the east of that church was of three bays, with a three-sided apse at the east end, and with a square two-storeyed sacristy and treasury block off the middle bay on the north side. The new chancel was wider than the existing building, with the consequence that its walls overlapped those of what had become the nave. On the north side a diagonal buttress was constructed at the exposed west end of the chancel wall, of which the lower courses remain, while on the south side the junction would initially have been masked by Lady Catherine’s chapel. No other buttresses were required on the north side because of the presence of the sacristy, but they were provided to mark the bays along the south flank and at the angles of the apse. The division between presbytery and collegiate choir was emphasised by two doorways: a priest’s entrance on the south, and the access into the sacristy on the north.

The ashlar-built walls rise from a base course consisting of a bottom chamfer and a double-chamfered string course. The buttresses each have a corbel and a canopy for images to the face between the two principal offsets, and they rise above the wall-head cornice, where they were capped by pinnacles that have not survived. The two doorways are round-arched, and have continuous mouldings rising from ogee-profiled bases and framed by hood mouldings. The window tracery was largely renewed in the course of restoration in 1878, but early views confirm that it is essentially trustworthy, and it consists of two related types that were to be very widely used in late medieval Scotland. In the two-light variant, two curved dagger forms rise around the semi-circular light heads, and meet on the central axis. The three-light variant is essentially similar, except that, while the side lights have semi-circular heads, the central light is ogee-headed, and there is a central quatrefoil at the junction of the curved daggers that rises up to the window apex. There is ample sculptural enhancement of the image corbels and wall-head cornices. The roof was of stone flags resting on the extrados of the vault, but it was slated in the restoration of 1878.

Internally, the choir is covered by a steeply pointed barrel vault, with the portion to the east of the two doorways embellished by a surface application of ribs rising from corbels. In the bay to the west of the apse the ribs are set out to what reads as a quadripartite pattern. These ribs were presumably intended to give enhanced emphasis to the presbytery area, but any pretence that they were performing a structural function is forfeited when it is seen that the continuation of the vault over the west bay has no ribs. The arch at the west end of the choir has responds with broadly filleted shafts flanking smaller keeled shafts, and there is slightly formulaic foliage to the bell of the capitals, which, like the abacus above it, extends diagonally in straight lines that ignore the triplet of shafts of which each respond is composed.

Much of what is seen in Seton’s collegiate choir represents ideas that had been previously explored at other buildings. The three-bay plan, with presbytery and choir separated by opposed doorways, is like that at Crichton Collegiate Church founded in 1449, but with the added element of an apse, which was itself probably inspired by that at St Salvator’s Chapel in St Andrews founded in 1450. Looking more closely at the details of Seton, the way that the walls of the choir overlap those of the nave is reminiscent of a similar approach at Buittle and Corstorphine. The pointed barrel vault was foreshadowed at Dunglass, Corstorphine and Crichton; but the addition of a quadripartite pattern of ribs to one part reflects ideas seen at Dundonald Castle and Edinburgh St Giles in the last years of the fourteenth century, and that were perhaps also anticipated at St Salvator’s College in St Andrews. The provision of image corbels behind the location of the altar suggests an awareness of the apse at Trinity College Church in Edinburgh, started in 1460. So far as the tracery is concerned, there were earlier examples of the type in the two-light windows of Seton in the east chapels of the south transept at Melrose Abbey, and those in the choir clearstorey at Haddington Church possibly also predated the Seton examples. Amongst variants on the three-light type of window that could be earlier than those at Seton are examples in the nave aisles at Haddington, and in the south nave aisle at Paisley Abbey. The diagonally continuous mouldings of the chancel arch capitals had been anticipated in the transepts of Torphichen Preceptory Church of around the 1430s, while a growing taste for round-arched doorways seen earlier at Melrose Abbey, Trinity College Chapel and Fowlis Easter Church, amongst many other examples, is also reflected at Seton.

Yet, in identifying those buildings where the potential of one or more of the ideas to be developed at Seton had been previously investigated, it should not be concluded that Seton is simply a derivative amalgamation of elements. On any estimation it must be regarded as a seminally important building, in which those ideas were brought together in a fresh and carefully balanced synthesis that was in turn to provide a model for a number of later buildings, and the assurance that the master mason of Seton brought to his work was to be seldom equalled. Indeed, in any list of buildings to be chosen as a touchstone against which Scottish late Gothic architecture should be judged, Seton must occupy a prominent place.

In adding the transepts to the choir, great care was taken to ensure that the architectural forms sit sympathetically with what had already been built. They were covered with un-ribbed pointed barrel vaults like that over the western bays of the choir, while the crossing was closed off at the same level by a quadripartite vault with ridge ribs and a central bell hole. There were slight variations in the form of the responds and arches opening from the nave and into the transepts. The differences in the arch mouldings, in particular, suggest that, as  might be expected from what we know of the building sequence, those from the nave and into the south transept are contemporary, and by implication later than the others. It may also be noted that the east respond of the north transept appears to have been attached to an existing length of ashlar walling, suggesting that the east end of the south nave wall had been partly rebuilt at its junction with the collegiate choir. All of this supports the likelihood that there had been no intention of creating a defined crossing before the south transept was started. A feature that may be noted in passing in the west crossing arch is the way that the foliage emerges from a dragon’s mouth, a feature that was to be copied at Dalkeith Collegiate Church, a building that was probably greatly influenced by Seton.

The east walls of the transepts are blank, as was by now usual for side chapels, while the west walls have windows that follow the three-light windows in the choir. The transept gable ends are almost entirely taken up by large four-light windows that have doubled-up versions of the two-light window type in the choir, within sub-arches that are of a comparably massive scale as those in the west front of Haddington Church for example.

Seton Church is notable for the range and interest of its liturgical fixtures. In the angles of the apse behind the site of the altar are image corbels. The piscina in the presbytery has a handsome gabletted and pinnacled canopy flanked by miniature buttresses, with a basin carved with lush foliage. The piscina in the south transept is less complex, but has a delightful bat-winged demon supporting its basin. Also within the presbytery area is a recess with a three-centred arch carried on engaged shafts; the function of this recess is not entirely clear, but since it is too high and too small to have served satisfactorily as sedilia, it may have been a credence shelf. Within the sacristy is a lavabo bowl, presumably for washing the sacred vessels, with a drain through the wall, and there is also a squint which provided a view of the high altar. On the east side of the west crossing arch south respond there is an ogee-arched holy water stoup, with a bowl supported by three grotesque heads.

Two fonts are preserved within the church, though it is not known if they both originated at Seton. One has a roughly tooled circular basin, with a band of nailhead between two rolls around the rim: this could pre-date the foundation of the college, and may thus have been the earlier parochial font.  The other has an octagonal bowl, the panels of which are carved with various arms, including those of Seton and Sinclair.(9) perhaps in reference to the second Lord Seton, who married a daughter of the earl of Argyll. With reference to items provided to aesthetically enhance the celebration of the church’s services, it may be added that Maitland of Lethington says that Lady Janet was especially generous in giving the church many precious furnishings, ornaments and vestments, so as to ensure that the collegiate services were carried out with the greatest decorum and splendour; these have - inevitably - been lost, but Maitland’s statement is a reminder of just how important the collegiate churches were to the families of their founders.

Provision for a screen and rood loft within the east crossing arch, which would have been the chancel arch before the transepts and crossing were added, is seen in sockets cut into the jambs and soffit of the arch.(10) Those in the arch may suggest that there had been a panel with a depiction of the crucifixion above the screen, possibly like that which still survives at Fowlis Easter Collegiate Church. However, the screen may have been moved westwards when the crossing was formed, because there are beam holes that may have been provided for another screen on the inner side of the west crossing arch.

On the north side of the presbytery area is a tomb,(11) in the location that was often chosen as a last resting place by founders of colleges, one advantage of such a location being that it could also serve as an Easter Sepulchre, with additional redemptive benefits for the tomb’s occupant. In this case, however, since the first Lord Seton died before the new choir at Seton was complete, and was buried with the Edinburgh Dominicans, it is likely the tomb is that of either his son John, who predeceased him, or of his grandson, the second lord Seton. The tomb rests on a stone step that runs around the apsidal presbytery, and that is itself a most unusual feature for such a location. It is linked to the window above it by the way that the substantial pinnacled buttresses flanking the tomb clasp the bottom of the window embrasure, while the foliage-decorated segmental arch over the recess rises to just below the window sill. The front of the tomb chest is now plain, though short sections at each end which project from the lowest part of the flanking buttresses suggest that a decorated panel of some kind has been lost. A female effigy carved in relatively shallow relief is now located on the ledge within the recess, while a stylistically unrelated armoured male effigy carved in high relief is on the step below. Other tomb recesses were provided below the windows in the transept gable walls, similarly located to those below transept-end windows at Torphichen Preceptory and at Jedburgh Abbey, for example. The continued use of the church for burials after the Reformation is indicated by the number of memorials and ledger slabs that have survived.(12)

In addition to her architectural activities in enlarging the church, Lady Janet is also said to have built residences for the canons, while providing endowments to add two more to their complement. It seems likely that the excavated remains of a complex of structures to the south-west of the church are the remains of those residences, in which case this would be a particularly rare survival.

Notes

1. A.O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, Edinburgh, 1922, vol. 2, p. 521.

2. This description takes as its starting point the account in Richard Fawcett, the Architecture of the Scottish Medieval Church, New Haven and London, 2011, pp. 285-88. Accounts of the Church will also be found in David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, Edinburgh, vol. 3, 1897, pp. 223–35; Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of East Lothian, Edinburgh, 1924, pp. 115–21; Stewart Cruden , ‘Seton Collegiate Church’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, col. 89, 1955–6, pp. 417-37; John Durkan, ‘The Foundation of the Collegiate Church of Seton’, Innes Review, vol. 13, 1962, pp. 147-56; Ian B. Cowan and David E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland, London and New York, 1976, p. 226; Christopher Wilson in Colin McWilliam, The Buildings of Scotland, Lothian, Harmondsworth, 1978, pp. 425–8.

3. The History of the House of Seytoun...by Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, ed. John Fullarton, (Maitland Club), 1829; Sir Richard Maitland, The genealogy of the House and Surname of Setoun, Edinburgh, 1830. It should be noted that the currently accepted numbering of the Lords Seton differs from that given by Maitland. 

4. Cruden ‘Seton’.

5. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, ed. W.H. Bliss et al., London, 1893-, vol. 12, p. 346.

6. Registra Supplicationum in the Vatican Archives (held by Glasgow University Department of Scottish History), vol. 965, fo. 203, vol. 966, fo. 9v; Durkan ‘Seton’.

7. National Records of Scotland, Protocol Book of Alexander Symson, 1539–42, fo. 97v, cited in Durkan ‘Seton’.

8. Francis Grose, The Antiquities of Scotland, London, vol. 1, 1789.

9. J. Russell Walker, ‘Scottish Baptismal Fonts, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 21, 1886-7, pp. 427-32.

10. A sketch plan is given in Ian C. Hannah, ‘Screens and Lofts in Scottish Churches, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 70, 1935-6, p. 183.

11. Robert Brydall, ‘Monumental Effigies of Scotland from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 29, 1894-5, pp. 407-10.

12. George Seton, ‘Description of the Slabs and Other Sepulchral Monuments in Seton Church, East Lothian, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 22, 1887-88, pp. 174-87.