METHVEN  , a

village and parish of Perthshire, Scotland, 7 ! M . W. by N. of Perth by the Caledonian Railway . Pop. of parish (1901), 1699 . Only an aisle remains of the collegiate church founded in 1433 by Walter Stewart, earl of Atholl (d . 1437) . One mile east of the village, Methven Castle, dating partly from 168o, occupies a fine situation in a park in which stands the Pepperwell oak, 18 ft. in circumference . At Dronach Haugh near the banks of the Almond, which bounds the parish on the N., the earl of Pembroke defeated Robert Bruce in 1306 . At Lynedoch, his estate on the Almond, Thomas Graham (1748–1843), the Peninsular general, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, carried on many experiments in farming and stock-breeding . He formerly owned Balgowan House, about 3 M. south-west of Methven, where many years after his death the proprietor discovered, during certain alterations, the portrait of Lord Lynedoch's wife, the Hon . Mrs Graham (a daughter of the 9th Lord Cathcart), one of Gainsborough's masterpieces, now in the National Gallery in Edinburgh; 41 M. north-west of Methven, occupying a beautiful position in Glenalmond, is Trinity College, a public school on the English model, the first of its kind in Scotland, founded in 1841 through the efforts of W . E .

Gladstone, J . R . Hope-Scott, Dean Ramsay and others, and opened in 1847 . In 1851 Charles Wordsworth, the first warden, afterwards bishop of St Andrews, added the chapel . At Tibbermore, or Tippermuir, about 3 M. south-east of Methven, Montrose won the first of a series of battles over the Covenanters on the 1st of September 1644 .