Inchmahome there was a church on the island before the priory was established. The priory has a long history of receiving many notable guests. King Robert the Bruce visited three times, in 1306, 1308 and 1310. His visits were likely politically motivated, as the first abbot had sworn allegiance to Edward I, the English King. In 1358 the future King Robert II also stayed at the priory. In 1547 the priory served as a refuge for Mary, Queen of Scots, aged four, hidden here for a few weeks following the disastrous defeat of the Scots army at the Battle of Pinkie
Scots language mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as "ceilidh", "loch" and "clan". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs, which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I. In the fourteenth century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and the complementary decline of French, made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled in