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Education and Faith in the Catholic Highlands of Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Alasdair Roberts
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Extract

The Highland policies of the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) have been much discussed. In light of subsequent efforts of Royal Bounty catechists directed to areas where ‘Popery and Ignorance do mostly prevail’, it is worth considering how questions of education and faith were regarded within the Catholic Highlands of Scotland. The geographical scope of what Archbishop Mario Conti, chairman of the Scottish Catholic Heritage Commission, has described as a ‘broad swathe’ from east to west can be seen in the Historic Catholic Sites brochure which accompanies this issue of Recusant History. ‘Popery’ was routinely linked with ignorance by Established Church ministers who sent reports, but these same reports emphasised ‘the number of small schools, which apparently were established, and the existence of women catechists, trained by the clergy as their own fore-runners, in early eighteenth-century Scotland.’

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 537 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2005

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References

1 Clotilde Prunier’s Anti-Catholic Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Scotland has come to hand since this paper was submitted. It is very well researched, with a fine chapter on education which complements the nineteenth-century concerns discussed here.

2 Withers, Gaelic Scotland, p. 142. See also Durkacz, Celtic Languages; Anderson, R. D., Education and the Scottish People (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar

3 See Blundell, O., The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. 1 The Central Highlands (Edinburgh, 1909)Google Scholar; 2 The Western Highlands (Edinburgh, 1917); Roberts, A., ‘Roman Catholicism in the Highlands’, Kirk, J. (ed.), The Church in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 63–88 Google Scholar; Downs, P. and Roberts, A., ‘Dom Odo Blundell (1868–1943): a different kind of historian’, IR, 55, 1 (Spring, 2005)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

4 Wilby, N. M., ‘The “Encreasce of Popery” in the Highlands, 1714–1747, IR, 17 (1966), p. 91 Google Scholar. It is likely that ‘women catechists’ went no further than the teaching of religion and were often themselves illiterate. Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, p. 135.

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8 Bellesheim, A., History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, 4 (Edinburgh, 1890), p. 369 Google Scholar. In 1694 Thomas Nicolson was appointed as the first ‘Highland bishop’ since the Reformation, serving Gaelic-speakers from Lowland Banffshire.

9 SCA/BL. Thomas Innes to Lewis Innes, Paris, 9 Aug., 1698; Thomas Innes to William Leslie, 13 Oct. 1701. The name of George Panton does not appear in Records of Scots Colleges at Douai, Rome, Madrid, Valladolid and Ratisbon (Aberdeen, 1906).

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14 Forbes Leith, Memoirs, p. 281. Three years later a senior seminary was opened at St James’s Abbey, Ratisbon (now Regensburg in Bavaria) to add to the Scots colleges at Rome, Paris, Douai and Madrid.

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19 Anson, Underground Catholicism, p. 154. For the SSPCK’s 1729 decision to concentrate resources on Protestant areas lacking permanent ministers, rather than Catholic ones where no headway could be expected, see Watts, J., Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite and Bishop (Edinburgh, 2002), p. 81, n.38.Google Scholar

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23 The minister of Tullich, Glenmuick and Glengairn was given the assistance of a Royal Bounty missionary in 1739, but an SSPCK report of 1755 emphasised the difficulties of ‘three parishes under the charge of one minister assisted by one itinerant having three places of worship to attend in turn.’ NAS. GD 95/11/5. Provision of schooling was an even greater problem north of the River Dee.

24 SCA/BL. Lachlan McIntosh, Glengairn, to Bishop John Geddes, Edinburgh, 24 Nov. 1783. A Catholic Gaelic catechism for oral teaching by ‘questions’ had been compiled at Braemar earlier in the century. MacWilliam, A. S., ‘The Jesuit mission in upper Deeside, 1671–1731’, IR, 23 (1972), p. 35.Google Scholar

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27 The quality of education at Scalan may be inferred by the number and range of books held. Doughty, D. W., ‘Chapeltown, Braes of Glenlivet, and Tombae, “the debris of the old Scalan library”’ Deeside Field, 19 (1987), pp. 79–85.Google Scholar

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30 Gaelic Schools Society (1823), Appendix III, p. 18.

31 The Gaelic Society of Edinburgh’s policy was based on a Welsh model and avoided anti-Catholic animus. Durkacz, Celtic Languages, p. 112.

32 Campbell, Canna, p. 146.

33 Gaelic Schools Society (1823), Appendix II, p. 4.

34 Gaelic Schools Society (1822), Appendix III, p. 14.

35 Campbell, Canna, p. 145.

36 Durkacz, Celtic Languages, p. 63; Withers, Gaelic Scotland, p. 122.

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38 Campbell, Canna, pp. 145–6.

39 SCA/OL. Donald McKay, Eigg, to Bishop Andrew Scott, Greenock. 8 Jan. 1838. All clergy letters following are to or from Scott. The Rev. Ewan MacEachen was responsible not only for the manual (or catechism) Iul a Chriostaidh of 1834 and An Cath Spioradail of the following year, but also for a pioneering Gaelic dictionary. See Roberts, A., ‘Maighstir Eobhan Mac Eachainn and the orthography of Scots Gaelic’ TGSI, 63 (2003–2005, forthcoming).Google Scholar

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42 Cruickshank, M., The History of the Training of Teachers in Scotland (London, 1970), p. 31 Google Scholar. McIntosh exaggerated progress outside the Highlands: ‘We fear that, in the majority of both parochial and private schools in the Lowlands, the intellectual or explanatory system of Mr Wood has not yet been adopted.’ Lewis, G., Scotland a Half-Educated Nation, both in the Quantity and Quality of her Educational Institutions (Glasgow, 1834), p. 34.Google Scholar

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59 A noted classicist and tutor of James VI and I, George Buchanan (1506–82) began his Latin paraphrase of the Psalms while confined for heresy in a Portuguese monastery.

60 William McIntosh wrote from Arisaig: ‘I cannot get a Testament from the school unless I either steal it or ask the loan of it. Now either might seem insidious and I am averse to run the risk of committing myself. Will it not suffice to get the deposition of two creditable witnesses should the assertion be denied or called in question?’ SCA/OL. McIntosh, Arisaig, 31 Jan. 1839.

61 SCA/OL. Scott to Chisholm, Bornish (South Uist), 7 June 1838.

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64 SCA/OL. Scott to Chisholm, 13 Nov. 1840.

65 SCA/OL. Scott to Chisholm, 11 Aug. 1841.

66 SCA/OL. Chisholm, Bornish, 21 June 1838.

67 Hansard, Third Series 42, 1167.

68 SCA/OL. Scott to Chisholm, 5 Nov. 1838.

69 SCA/OL. Chisholm, Bornish, 4 Feb. 1839.

70 SCA/OL. John MacDonell, Keppoch, 5 Feb. 1839.

71 Campbell, Canna, p. 146.

72 SCA/OL. John MacDonell, Keppoch, 10 Dec. 1840.

73 SCA/OL. Alexander Gillis, Fort Augustus, 26 March 1840.

74 The Rev. Angus MacLaine of Ardnamurchan, which included Moidart, Arisaig and South Morar, lived far off at Kilchoan, facing Mull. In 1839 he was given leave to visit Australia on health grounds, which led to the Presbytery of Mull being censured by the General Assembly. Scott, H., Fasti Ecclesiae Scotticanae, 4 (Edinburgh, 1927), p. 107.Google Scholar

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76 SCA/OL. McIntosh, Arisaig, 27 May 1838.

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84 Angus MacDonald of Glenaladale was Arisaig’s main Catholic landholder. One of his sons moved from the Highland see to become Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and another was Bishop of Aberdeen.

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88 Undated press cutting.

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91 Ornsby, R., Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott of Abbotsford, 2 (London, 1884), pp. 233, 236Google Scholar. James Hope, a friend of John Henry Newman, was received into the Catholic Church at Easter 1851 along with the future Cardinal Henry Manning. Ffinch, M., Cardinal Newman: The Second Spring (London, 1991), p. 190.Google Scholar

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100 Quoted and discussed by J. L. Campbell in his introduction to Rea, South Uist.

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