The Colonsay Catechist - PART V
Dr. Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart's series of articles has uncovered much outstanding information and is of such great interest that plans are now afoot to publish a printed copy of the finished work. When the series is complete, information about such a publication will appear here. Advance subscribers and expressions of interest will be welcomed by the Editor.
This issue I will be taking a closer look at the rather chaotic first year of the Royal Bounty Committee. As ever, the material seems to expand and fill up all available space, but I hope that it will be of some interest to readers. More to follow!
The first attempts at administering the Royal Bounty
1725: too much too soon
On 18 May 1725, the day after the end of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Committee for the Reforming of the Highlands and Islands and the Management of the King’s Royal Bounty had its first meeting. Their task was as follows:
to Appoint Itinerant Preachers and Catechists to go to the proper places designed in His Majestie’s Warrant; And for that end they are carefully to inform themselves of the fit places where the said Itinerant Preachers are to be sent and employ’d, And of persons duly qualify’d for that Service, of good Abilities for the same, of a pious Life & Conversation, Prudent, of undoubted Loyalty to His Majesty, and competently skill’d in the Principles of Divinity, And in Popish Controversies.
The committee was to cooperate with local presbyteries, who would be responsible for certifying and supervising the catechists, and with the committee of the SSPCK, many of whom, crucially, would be the most assiduous attenders of the meetings of the Royal Bounty Committee. The preachers’ duties were as much political as religious:
And the said Preachers are also appointed to catechize, And both they and the Catechists to instruct the people from house to house, and visit the Sick, and in all their labours among the people to be careful to teach them the Principles and Duties of the true Christian Protestant Religion, And the Obligation they are under to Duty & Loyalty to Our Sovereign King George, and Obedience to the Laws; And the Committee are impowered to give them such Instructions as to their Work and Behavior, as they shall Judge meet, And they are appointed to obey the same.
The allowances for the missionaries were remarkably generous by later standards: a preacher would earn up to £40 a year – an average salary for a minister – while a catechist could expect up to £25, although special circumstances could push his salary yet higher. The fund could also pay at the most £4 a month to ministers to go to areas where they would baptize and marry. A subcommittee, which would meet every week, was appointed to prepare a relevant report. Like the Commission of the Church of Scotland, this particular subcommittee would meet in the hall of the SSPCK.
The subcommittee worked speedily, and three days later it presented the report. Its members had read over the various presbyterial petitions and representations handed in to previous General Assemblies and Commissions. They also drew upon the 1716 Register of Royal Commission which had been appointed by George I to enquire into establishing schools in the Highlands, a hugely ambitious report which contained a description of the region and its population, "Shewing where there are Papists and the greatest Ignorance." The subcommittee listed the various Roman Catholic areas of the Gàidhealtachd, and also stressed the importance of "Abertarff and the vast bounds of the Presbytery of Gairloch [which] have very few Ministers, and Ignorance and Barbarity abound therein". After the relevant areas had been enumerated, the subcommittee turned to nominating the missioners themselves.
As well as the rather generous salaries it awarded, the first year of the Royal Bounty administration is striking for the sheer confusion of its organisation, and its rather hopeful and overambitious arrangements. The very first missionary scheme illustrates this very well.
The Revs. Archibald MacLean in Mull and John Skeldoch of Kilmonivaig were to go to supply the Garbh-Chrìochan, the Rough Bounds, before the 1 August 1725. Each minister was to stay there for three months, being paid the regular £4 a month. While they were absent, their parishes would be supplied by two probationers in Argyllshire, Robert Fullartoun and James Campbell. After his three months were up, the Rev. Archibald MacLean was to be succeeded in the Rough Bounds by the Rev. James Gilchrist of Kilmallie, who would in turn stay there another three months, on the same salary. The probationer Robert Fullartoun was thereupon to supply Kilmallie. The Rev. John Skeldoch would be replaced in Ardnamurchan by the probationer James Campbell, who was to remain there for three months, at the end of which he would once more exchange posts with Skeldoch, and thus to continue for the remainder of the year, unless the committee were to order otherwise. The Rev. John Skeldoch, who had no stipend, nor any expectation of one in the near future, was to be given £24 as a half year’s advance to enable him to undertake his mission. Again, a student of divinity, Alexander Shaw, was to preach an entire year in the Rough Bounds, for £18 salary.
A fortnight later, after further representations, the committee decided to send the unfortunate James Campbell to Appin and Glencoe as well as to Kilmonivaig. The Presbytery of Gairloch, meanwhile, was to be supplied by by a catechist, two itinerant ministers and three parish ministers from the neighbouring Presbyteries of Ross and Dornoch. The ministers were to travel to the west coast before the 1 July – giving them about a month’s notice – and to remain there for three months, each receiving £4 a month as salary. In the ministers’ absence, their parishes were to supplied by their presbyterial colleagues. After they had finished, two Skye ministers were to carry out the same mission, under the same terms. If such arrangements proved impossible, then the presbyteries themselves had the duty to supply replacement missionaries. In addition, it was expected that all preachers and catechists were to be equipped with two testimonials for the presbyteries they were sent to: "a Certificate upon trial, from a Presbytery of this National Church, Of their Orthodoxy, Piety, Literature, Prudence and other necessary Qualifications for the Work they are respective called unto; As also An Authentick Certificate from a proper Judge of their Loyalty to His Majesty King George and good Affection to His Royal Family and Protestant Succession therein".
Of course, the system was totally unworkable. As soon as the news about the Royal Bounty spread, a flood of petitions came in from synods, presbyteries, and individual ministers, each claiming a share of the grant. However, the money was already divided up; the funds could bear no more. To make matters worse, the notoriously rapacious Barons of the Exchequer who were responsible for granting the Royal Bounty decided to deduct a tax of 6d. in the pound. By August, barely three months into the scheme, the committee were already thinking about shortening the times allotted to their missioners. Demand for their services was just too high.
There was one major problem with the scheme: many of the missionaries nominated were either unwilling or unable to bid farewell to their homes and families and spend months travelling through rugged, unknown territory, among disaffected, hostile and even dangerous inhabitants. It only needed one missioner to refuse his call for an entire mission scheme to break down. For instance, the Rev. Walter Ross minister of Creich informed the committee that a local student Murdo MacDonald was "very averse from going in Mission to the Presbytery of Gairloch, for which he is appointed". MacDonald asked to be excused, or else that a certain Andrew Robertson probationer in Caithness might be named in his place (for which Robertson must have been heartily grateful), or, otherwise, that he only preach in Coigeach and Assynt, immediately to the west of what must have been his native parish of Creich.
The Presbytery of Lorn had even worse luck. By August, and then again in October, it was enquiring why not one of the missioners appointed for the Rough Bounds had yet arrived. The Rev. John Skeldoch of Kilmonivaig replied that he couldn’t leave his parish because those appointed to supply him had not arrived. Alexander Shaw, the probationer who had been appointed to preach in the Rough Bounds for a year, said that as neither the ministers nor the probationer who had been ordered to go to the region had gone, "he did not think it safe for him alone to go there, And besides he Judged the Allowance granted him is not sufficient for his going to that Place". Shaw was nevertheless ordered to repair forthwith to the bounds of the Presbytery of Lorn.
For those ministers and catechists who did go to preach, it was all too often a dispiriting experience. A slightly later letter, written at Kenmore in Lochaber on 22 July 1726 by James Murray, is an excellent account of the difficulties the poor missioners, used to more comfortable lives in the low-lying Gàidhealtachd peripheries, or in the Lowland university towns, faced on their travels:
I must go wth a hired Sernt to carry My Cloaths viz shirts and Blankets to lie in for here I must not expect to get bedcloaths, or bed in every house I come to (though I find the people abundantly kind, as yet, according to their ability) but they have for the most pt neither beds nor bed-cloaths to themselves, except one plaid and one pair of blanckets that the good-man & Good-wife have for their own bed wch is a Sorry hand-full of Straw; heather, or fearns, shaken on the floor, for none of the Common people have any bed-steeds of Timber or feather or Chaff beds served up in Eeiking or Coars harn. I shall endeavour to stay here as a Catechist, for one quarter, if the Lords be pleased to spare me health and strength, though I should spend 6 lib. ster: but I assure I will not continue any longer unless my allowance be Augmented, for Mr Balladine, who was an Appointed Catechist for the paroch of Kilmaly, only had 18 lib ster:
I cannot say that in weaty weather when I am treavling from town to town in Winter that my foot will be drie from time that I rise and go out in the morning, till I go to bed at night, for I have been so seall days already in this Countrie, besides the weading of waters daily if I treavel one mile of way, for there are no Bridges upon their Watters here, and how it will agree with me every Cold, frosty, Snowy & weaty night in the winter time it will agree with me every day to be changeing my quarters, and every night my bed; and to lie in my own Cloaths, which sometimes will be Weat and Cold, on a Sorry pickle of neasty fearns &c – or handfull of Straw or heather time must determine. I find that that the Common people here have, or at least seem to have a great desire after, and a love to Spirituall things, and wish well to King George and the Government for their bounty, and they say that yr was never a King on the Throne yt showed such favour to the Hillands.
Other missionaries were not only uncomfortable, but were in danger of their very lives. In a letter of February 1726, Murdo MacLeod minister of Glenelg told how "Fire was in the Night time set to the House where Mr Archibald McQueen & Mr Norman Mccleod Ministers sent in Mission were lodged, And that if by the Good Providence of God, it had not been timeously discovered, they might have perished in the Flames". The following year the unfortunate James Johnston, a catechist in the bounds of the north-east Presbytery of Alford, sent a letter to the committee "Shewing that he had got an house in that Country with great Difficulty, But that in his Absence Some People had taken off the Roof thereof, and he Craves advice What to do thereanent". The Committee kept their distance and "Left him to pursue these Who had done the Injury as Law directs."
Meanwhile, other young ministers on probation who had begun to preach were immediately snapped up by the presbyteries to whose bounds they had been sent, a turn of events which had been foreseen by the Royal Bounty Committee from the beginning: "the Committee’s Appointment shall be no impediment to their accepting thereof, And that thereupon they are free to leave the Places they are sent to". The best-qualified and most able employees of the Royal Bounty scheme had thus to be replaced by inferior catechists. It is hardly surprising then that by November Archibald Bannatyne, a very able young man who was serving as a catechist in Lochaber, was pressing for a pet scheme of his, a two-tier scheme of catechists, "that some of smaller Abilities may serve in that place to go from house to house to learn the people the Ten Commands and first Principles of Religion, and the Catechism by heart, to prepare them for others of greater Abilities, And that such may be had for Fourty, Fifty or Sixty Pounds scots yearly, who may be maintain’d as to their diet in the families they come to". Twelve pounds Scots, incidentally, was the equivalent of only one pound sterling.
By November the Royal Bounty Committee, "finding that diverse of the Missioners have not as yet obey’d, that some of them are otherways disposed of, and cannot obey, And that others who have gone to the Places design’d have not stay’d out their full time", decided to grant no further allowances in advance.
The system was evidently in trouble, nowhere more so than in the Presbytery of Gairloch, taking in the troubled districts of Wester Ross, Lochalsh and Kintail, a jacobite heartland many of whose inhabitants had taken part in the Risings of 1715 and 1719, and had still been in open rebellion against crown representatives barely four years previously.
Local problems:
If the establishing of the Presbytery of Gairloch in 1724 was meant to increase the authority of the church on Wester Ross, it appeared to be tending to exactly the opposite result. At the General Assembly of 1725, the Synod of Ross and Sutherland presented a petition. In it, they described how they "were inclined cheerfully to accquiesce in the Erection of the New Synod of Glenelg", expecting "that in this Countrey we would be freed of the disturbing Opposition, Influence and Power of those in these Parts, who have signalized themselves by their Disaffection to Our happie Constitution in Church and State". Instead, the weakness of and the hardships suffered by the two ministers who constituted the new presbytery to the west, "And the encouragment taken from the Impunity of those who do oppose them, does encrease Opposition and Disaffection within the bounds of this Synod, and Grievances insupportable are thrown upon such of our Members as are upon their Confines". In other words, the Presbytery of Gairloch was quite inadequate, was unable to exert its authority, and the resulting disturbances in its bounds were now spilling over into the parishes on its eastern border as well. In addition, the Rev. James Smith, minister of Gairloch, had been threatening for two years to leave his parish, given his mere 600 merks stipend, and his total lack of a manse, glebe, or roofed kirk.
Something would obviously have to be done, but the preachers who were ordained as new ministers for the presbytery, Archibald Bannatyne in Lochbroom and Aeneas Sage in Lochcarron, were soon caught up in their own struggles for stipends and other ministerial dues from the recalcitrant heritors. Although the Presbytery of Gairloch, and indeed the Synod of Glenelg as a whole, was supposedly the focus of the Royal Bounty Committee’s efforts, the understandable reluctance of preachers to travel there, and the slow and tedious legal processes the church was forced to go through in order to obtain their stipends, led to increasing tensions with Edinburgh, tensions which would eventually flare up into open disagreement.
If some preachers were extremely unwilling to undertake their mission, others were much more aggressive. The most gung-ho of them all was the Presbytery of Strathbogie in the north-east, whose ministers had been prosecuting a long and bitter feud with Alexander, second duke of Gordon, the most influential Scots Catholic of the day. Thanks to the huge and scattered estates he either owned or of which he was the superior, the duke of Gordon was able to promote Catholicism across great swathes of the country, from the Spey right through Badenoch to Lochaber. The duke protected the priests who worked on his estates, and was patron of the Catholic seminary at the Scalan in Glenlivet. The local presbyterian ministers had long chafed at his open support for Roman Catholicism. The Royal Bounty gave them the opportunity and the excuse to take their struggle almost right into the duke’s own household.
At the beginning of September 1725 two men employed by the Royal Bounty Committee, the Rev. Walter Morison and the catechist Patrick Duncan, began to preach in St. Ninian’s, the duke of Gordon’s private chapel, near Fochabers. This evidently created a great stir in the neighbourhood, for a couple of days later the earl of Findlater sent a letter post-haste to the duke, sympathising with him and pledging his support in trying to prevent a similar occurrence the following Sunday. Findlater had been the King’s Commissioner to the General Assembly the previous year, where he had been urged to take action against popery; however, he was also sheriff of Banffshire, and public order was evidently uppermost in his mind:
I am extreamly concerned that Your Grace meets with any trouble of this kind I did tell Mr Kerr that You woud not alou them to come ther again and advised them not to attempt it He said He did not know what they would doe, al I wish is that in defending Your Graces possession ther may be ass litle violence and dissorder as possible this is al I know, and the sooner You accquant them of Your resolutions it is the better
The draft of Gordon’s reply is somewhat ominous:
I was in hopes as Sherriff you would allow No Ryots But since your Authority is Not thought sufficient I will give a litle Necessary Concurrence but shall take care it be legall I shall not trouble Mr Gilchrist with any Demands of liberty to protect my own property Since No Necessity Nor I hope Never will to cringe in the least to any such.
However, whatever measures the duke planned taking, it is unlikely that he approved of the full-scale riot which took place the following Sunday. Morison, Duncan and the local SSPCK schoolmaster William Scobie were ambushed at the chapel by a sizeable mob. According to the Committee’s report, they badly beat the preachers and those in the congregation:
with great clamour, rage, and fury to the Effusion of the Blood, and Danger of the Lives of many of them, Uttering many execrable Oaths, and cursing the foresaid Preacher and his Congregation, and reproaching Our Holy Religion, and swearing it shall never get footing there, And after they had violently dispersed the people who came to hear the Word, they did pursue the Preacher and them with the foresaid Weapons for near a mile of Way, through the several roads by which they were oblig’d to flee to save their Lives, And while the said Mr Archibald Anderson and others of the persons abovenamed and complained upon, were in pursute of the said Mr Walter and the other persons who came to the foresaid place for Worship, they cry’d after them, Saying Dogs, Dogs you shall dy this minute
The "rabbling" at St Ninian’s became something of a cause célebre among church circles. Representations concerning the riot were presented at the very highest level of government in London, and eventually five of the rioters were charged in Edinburgh. However, only one of them was actually convicted, and that probably more for his position as the duke’s man rather than for any actual involvement in the affray. The authorities were prepared to make an example of one man as a warning, but it is clear that they were not prepared to encourage the local church authorities to carry out further provocations. By spring 1727, the other rioters, after lying low for a while, "do notwithstanding live and reside in Safety in the forsaid Country, going to Mercats, and other publick places avowedly".
The St Ninian’s riot is merely the most notable and spectacular of a number of Catholic actions taken in response to what might be described as the more proactive policy taken by the missioners of the Royal Bounty. Church documents of this period are crammed with references to growing "popish insolence" from the Catholic population they were trying to convert. The Catholic population, of course, saw things rather differently. What is clear that during these years both sides, and indeed the episcopalian church too, were intensifying their missionary efforts. To a large degree this escalation was as a response to their rivals. The process of "confessionalization", through whatever denomination, was spreading to all parts of the Gàidhealtachd. Like it or not, everyone was being forced to take sides.
The most spectacular protestant coup of this time was the conversion of the people of the Island of Rum by its then landlord Hector MacLean younger of Coll. The Rev. Daniel MacAulay, the very competent minister of Bracadale in Skye, had been sent as a missioner to the Small Isles by the Royal Bounty Committee. He reported as follows:
as to the Isles of Cana and Roum to which he was sent, He represented that he had no Access in Cana to deal with the people, Because they would not hear him, being under the Influence of Priests and Popish Managers and dare not hear a Protestant Minister preach or pray; But in the Isle of Roum, the Reformation goes on successfully by the Zeal of their Worthy Superior Hector McLean of Coll, which should be duly noticed by the Church and other good friends of the Government to encourage others to follow his laudable Example; For about three years ago there were few Protestants in the Isle of Roum And new there is only One little Family and some silly Women there continuing under Antichristian Delusion.
This was what was later described to Dr. Samuel Johnson as creideamh a’ bhata bhuidhe, the religion of the yellow cane. Whether Hector MacLean did indeed drive the entire population with a gold-topped cane to listen to the minister, or whether he in fact just used his stick to beat a single zealous Catholic, the laird of Coll nevertheless became something of a hero to the church authorities. In the absence of support from distant local magistrates, Hector MacLean was a beacon of support. He had shown what could be achieved by a well-affected and none too scrupulous landowner, indeed – perhaps – how easy it would be to convert erstwhile Catholic Gaels as long as their papist superiors could be got disposed of. MacAulay and other ministers encouraged the committee in fantasies that they might, with suitable legal support, be rid of Catholic heritors and thus spread the Reformation in earnest. There was, however, a great deal of difference between the relatively small, isolated island of Rum, and the wider and wealthier estates of Clan Ranald, for instance. Despite official support from the earl of Ilay himself, early eighteenth-century realpolitik meant that such a project was bound to come to nothing. Hector MacLean, however, must have had an enjoyable few years, being invited to the General Assembly to tell his story, and being sent as a ruling elder to the Synod of Glenelg to encourage them in their labours.
The Royal Bounty Committee and the SSPCK
We have already seen how SSPCK schoolteacher William Scobie was present at the St Ninian’s rabbling, and indeed how the Royal Bounty Committee shared many, perhaps a majority of its members with the charity-school organisation. The Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge was a joint-stock charity whose task was to set up charity schools in the Highlands. Founded in 1709 following the jacobite invasion scare of the previous year, the society was a zealous and extremely well-motivated organization, which over a decade and a half had developed sophisticated techniques for raising donations. The 1714 Account of the rise, constitution and management, of the Society in Scotland, for Propagating Christian Knowledge is a good case in point. Not only does the little booklet give potential donors an instant guide to the constitution, aims and successes of the organization, it also by way of thanks and encouragement lists those who have already given money.
Just as the Church of Scotland had passed a whole raft of anti-Catholic measures as a result of the Atterbury Plot, the SSPCK used it as an opportunity to try to attract more money, lobbying the government in an attempt – unsuccessfully as it turns out – to secure the grant of the up to £20,000 it felt it was due from income from the Forfeited Estates. A memorial concerning the state of the Highlands was composed and printed in 1723, luridly warning that:
untill methods be fallen upon to Civilize and Instruct them, and extirpate the Irish Language from amongst them that Great Britain will alwayes be in most evident danger, ffor as these people will never fail to Join with fforreign popish powers, to advance the Interests they have espoused, So they alwayes have been, and infalliblie will be Instruments and Tools in the hands of those who have a design to enslave or embroil the British nation.
Force would be no use; rather the government should persist in
the instructing and training up of that poor, Ignorant and deluded people in the knowledge of the Principles of the Reformed Protestant Religion and of vertue ffor were their Judgement and Consciences rightly informed, those people would soon throw off the yokes which those who now usurp unlimited authoritie over them, have Laid upon them, especially when they shall come to deserve and feel the benefite of Protection from the Government.
At the same time, the society was refining its management methods: its meetings were to be more streamlined, while inspection and surveillance of its schools was to be stepped up, with the use of English being encouraged. They themselves began lobby operations to identify potential donors in London, suggested that well-wishers might donate shares in the projected new fishery company, and indeed approached the government, unsuccessfully as it turned out, for a yearly fund out of the Royal Bounty.
Three weeks after the Bounty Committee was established, the SSPCK nominated a group of four of their members who also sat on the church committee to act as go-betweens; two months later, they presented a memorial to their colleagues. Crucially, the committee of the society had decided to follow the example of the Royal Bounty in redistributing its schools, informing them on 13 August 1725 that:
Bearing that there are many more Places needing and craving Schools, And that the Society being desireous to make the benefite of their Funds as extensive as they could, had been obliged upon the Death or Removal of Schoolmasters to diminish the Salaries formerly in use to be paid, in order to have the more Schools, And also to remove the Masters from place to place, after they have been three or more years therein, And yet they are not in case to answer all the Demands that are made; But having had Information concerning the State of the Parishes of Kilmanivaig, Gairloch and South Uist, With the Isles of Coll, Tirree, Egg, Roum, Muck and Canan and Country of Glenstrafarer, And being informed That there is a mixture of Protestants in South Uist, Kilmanivaig, Glenstrafarer, and in the Isles of Muck, Roum, Egg and Cana, And that now Southuist has given a Call to One to be their Minister, That one is lately settled in Kilmanivaig, And that these of the foresaid four Isles are about calling One, As likewise that Preachers and Catechists are sent to these Places, The Committee of the said Society Judged this a proper Season of sending Schoolmasters thither, Seeing Ministers, Preachers & Catechists may very much encourage the Schools, And have therefore under consideration the providing of these Places with Schoolmasters and Books, tho’ they should sink their Schools in other places where they are not so needful
In other words, the SSPCK was altering its scheme in order to collaborate with that of the Royal Bounty Committee (rather ironically, given that in four years’ time the Royal Bounty Committee would eventually alter their own scheme to accommodate that of the SSPCK). Perhaps an idea of the society’s eventual aim is hinted at in the request which follows:
And the said Committee of the Society Shew’d That they had laterly settled One Mr John Ewing in the Country of Ranoch, and allow’d him One hundred Merks, And the Lady Weem out of her Concern for the Good of that Country had agreed to give him Fifty Merks, But he having a numerous family cannot live upon so small An Allowance in that place, And the Society are not now in case to give him more, unless they diappoint one of the Popish Places abovementioned, wherein they design to settle Schools; And seeing the said Mr John Ewing is willing upon the Saturdays afternoon, And upon the Lord’s Days to travel from house to house as a Catechist in that Country, And in Summer to go the Shields, And may be very useful therein, the parish being very wide, It is craved He may on that Account have Ten Pounds Sterling more allow’d him for his further encouragment, And there was produced a Letter from Doctor Dundas Præses of the said Committee, Also A Memorial from Sir Robert Menzies of Weem to the same purpose, And a Representation from the Presbytery of Dunkeld, Giving an Account of the State of Ranoch and other Places in their bounds
Given the stress they put on the fact that they had backing from both local church and local landowner, the Society appear to have been rather nervous about making their proposal. Nevertheless, it was accepted by the Royal Bounty Committee, and thus John Ewing became the first, but by no means the last, schoolteacher-catechist jointly employed by both organizations. But no general principle was set down: during the first few years of its operation the Royal Bounty Committee viewed the SSPCK schoolmasters as being complementary to the catechists rather than possibly one and the same. For instance, on the very same day as the SSPCK memorial was read, the Presbytery of Kincardine O’Neil’s application for additional missionaries was turned down because "the Society for Christian knowledge have three Charity Schools therein." As for the wild country of Rannoch, John Ewing did not even last a year there, demitting his post in the summer of 1726.
