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John Cor
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John Cor or John Carr (fl. 1495) was a fifteenth-century Scottish mendicant friar. He is significant partly because of his connection to the earliest written record of Scotch whisky.
In a Latin entry in the Exchequer Rolls John Cor is addressed by King James IV of Scotland, with the order to use "eight bolls of malt (brasium) to make whisky (aquavitae)."[1] Historian Janet Foggie has called this the "first mention of whisky in a Scottish source".[2] The reference to Cor and Scotch Whisky occurs on 1 June 1495.[2] Another historian, Mairi Cowan, referred to it as "the first written record of the distillation of whisky".[3]
John Cor has been identified as a member of the Order of Preachers, a Dominican.[3][4] Although John's specific friary is unclear from the source itself,[2] the twentieth-century archivist and medievalist scholar Anthony Ross claimed that it could be identified as the Blackfriars house at Edinburgh based on references in the Protocol Book of Peter Marche.[5]
He may be the same as the 'Friar Cor' (frere Cor), gifted 14 shillings on Christmas Day at Linlithgow Palace in 1488 by King James IV,[6] and then at Christmas time in 1494 given black cloth from Rijsel (i.e. Lille) in Flanders for his livery clothes as a clerk in royal service.[7]
Notes
[edit]- ^ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland Volume 10: 1488–1496, ed. George Burnett, p. 487: "Et per liberacionem factam Fratri Johanni Cor per preceptum compotorum rotulatoris, ut asserit, de mandato domini regis ad faciendum aquavite, infra hoc compotum viij bolle brasii."
- ^ a b c Foggie, Renaissance Religion, p. 266.
- ^ a b Cowan, Death, Life, and Religious Change, p. 116.
- ^ Foggie, Renaissance Religion, p. 87.
- ^ McRoberts, Essays, p. 190, fn. 22, citing the manuscript, National Records of Scotland, B22/22/1 ff. 38v., 39r.
- ^ Dickson, Compota Thesaurariorum, p. 100.
- ^ Dickson, Compota Thesaurariorum, p. 232.
References
[edit]- Burnett, George, ed. (1887), Exchequer Rolls of Scotland: 1488–1496, General Register House, retrieved 6 January 2025
- Cowan, Mairi (2012), Death, Life, and Religious change in Scottish Towns, c.1350–1560, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ISBN 978-0-7190-8023-4
- Dickson, Thomas, ed. (1877), Compota Thesaurariorum Regum Scotorum. Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland 1473-1574: Volume 1 1473-1498, General Register House
- Foggie, Janet P. (2003), Renaissance Religion in Urban Scotland: The Dominican Order, 1450–1560, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 90-04-12929-4
- McRoberts, David, ed. (1962), Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1513-1625, Glasgow: J.S. Burns
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