John Cor

John Cor or John Carr (fl. 1495) was a fifteenth-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 Anthony Ross 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 at Linlithgow Palace 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]