Alexander de Waghorn
Scottish bishop
Alexander de Waghorn (d. 1416 × 1418), Bishop of Ross, bears a surname that may suggest an origin in the Glasgow area of southern Scotland, though there are other possibilities.
His pre-episcopal life is not very well documented, but when he was provided to the bishopric of Ross in 1398, he already possessed a Bachelorate in Decrees (i.e. canon law) and bore the title Archdeacon of Ross. It is not known for how long he had held the latter title, but it could have been as early as August 1376, when the last known archdeacon Alexander Man was made Bishop of Caithness.
It was on 17 August 1398, that Avignon Pope Benedict XIII provided Waghorn to the vacant diocese of Ross; the papal mandate of provision informs us that Alexander had been elected by the cathedral chapter to the vacant see, but that because the Pope had previously reserved the see for his own appointment, declared the election invalid. However, "to prevent a long and harmful vacancy" he nevertheless provided Waghorn as bishop.
There is a papal mandate, dated 4 May 1404, in which three churchmen are told to confirm one clerk named William de Tayn ("of Tain") as Chancellor of Ross because William de Tayn "doubted the validity of his presentation and institution by Alexander, bishop of Ross". A similar mandate for confirmation, this time issued to the Bishop of Moray (Henry de Lichton) and dated 16 August 1417, was as a result of similar concerns, this time in relation to one John de Kylwos, regarding Kylwos' exchange of the Ross subdeanery for the treasurership, an exchange authorised by Bishop Alexander.
On 30 June 1407, a papal mandate was issued to the Bishop of Dunkeld and the Bishop of Caithness to receive Alexander's oath of fealty to the papal see, and to ensure that a copy of the oath was sent to the papal court by letters patent under Alexander's seal.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4720483. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1416, 1418, 1398 and 1376.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander de Waghorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.