John Cor or John Carr (fl. 1495) was a fifteeth-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 David McRoberts 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 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]
- ^ 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, where the author directs the reader to manuscript, "(S.R.O.) ff. 38v., 39r.".
- ^ Dickson, Compota Thesaurariorum, p. 100.
- ^ Dickson, Compota Thesaurariorum, p. 232.