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A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700)

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First published 1971 (DOST Vol. IV).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

Mensal(l, a. (n.) [In this sense Irish e.m.E. (1605): cf. late ME. mensal (Prompt. Parv.) table-(knife), late. L. mensālis f. mensa table.] Applied to a church or benefice the revenues of which were appropriated to the bishopric, ? orig. for the maintenance of the bishop's table. Also absol. as n.Only in Irish and Sc. use. 1661 Decis. Lords G. 2.
Drysdail was not a personadge but a mensal kirk of Glasgow 1684 Symson Descr. Galloway Append. 130.
It [sc. Kilpatrick] hath examinable persons 600 or above; was a mensal-church of the Bishop of Edinburgh who got 500 merks of the stipend 16.. Abercrummie in Macfarlane's Geog. Coll. II. 19.
The parish of Kirkmichael … is a mensall kirk of the Bishop of Galloway who is patron thereof a1691 Sir George Mackenzie in Macfarlane's Geog. Coll. III. 80.
Bishops also have mensal churches so called because they are de mensa episcopi, being a part of his patrimony in which he serves by his vicar 1681 Stair Inst. ii. viii. 35. 1683 Martine Reliq. Divi Andreae 54.
The mensall and patrimoniall churches belonging to the archbishop of St. Andrews are these 1687 Lauder Notices Affairs II. 809. 1694 Id. Decis. I. 603. a1705 Forbes A Treatise of Church-lands & Tithes (1705) 385
Ministers in mensal churches under episcopacy had no decreets of localityabsol. 1666-74 Fraser Polichron. 60.
John Bisset conduced with Bricius, lord bishop of Murray, about the transplantation of St. Mauritius his church … to Fingasck … and there erected into a mensall Ib. 186.