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".
[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.