Bagimont's Roll

Bagimont's Roll, the name given to a valuation according to which the ecclesiastical benefices of Scotland were taxed from the end of the 13th century to the Reformation. It took its name from an Italian churchman, Boiamond (or Bajimont) of Vicci, a canon of the cathedral of Asti in Piedmont, who was sent by the pope to Scotland in 1274 to collect the tithe or tenth part of all the church livings, for a crusade. Hitherto, the Scotch clergy had been taxed according to a conventional valuation called the Antiqua Taxatio; but Boiamond set this aside. The clergy protested, and in a provincial council held at Perth in August 1275, they prevailed upon Boiamond, by promises and money, to return to Rome, there to entreat the pope to modify the subsidy. But the pope refused. Boiamond returned to Scotland to complete a valuation roll of its benefices; but he died before the tax itself was wholly collected. No complete copy of Bagimont's Roll in its original shape is now known to exist. A contemporary manuscript of so much of the Roll as applies to the archdeaconry of Lothian is preserved at Durham. A copy of Bagimont's Roll, as it appears to have existed in the reign of King James V. (1513-42), is preserved in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, in a hand of the beginning of the 17th century. It is full of inaccuracies; and it omits all livings of less than 40 marks a year. It was printed in Archæologia, vol. xvii. (1813). See J. Robertson's Concilia Scotice (Ban. Club), I. lxx.