Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T22:00:02.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The People, the Priests and the Protestants: Catholic Responses to Evangelical Missionaries in the Early Nineteenth-Century Scottish Highlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2016

Abstract

From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic communities with the co-operation and assistance of the people and their priests. The historiography of protestant-Catholic relations is dominated by conflict and that of nineteenth-century Scotland focuses on tension in the industrializing Lowlands. However, the key religious issue for Highland Catholics was the response to expansionist protestantism. The Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS) best epitomizes this movement. Letters from priests and the society's annual reports reveal how long-established rural Catholic communities reacted to missionary activity and how, building on the tense compromises of the eighteenth century, for a few decades evangelicals and Catholics co-operated effectively. The ESSGS learned to involve local priests, provide sympathetic teachers and modify the curriculum. Catholics drew on their experience as a disempowered minority by resisting passively rather than actively and by using the society's schools on their own terms. Many Catholic parents and clergy developed a modus vivendi with evangelicals through their common interest in educating children. The evidence of northwest Scotland demonstrates how a minority faith group and missionaries negotiated a satisfactory coexistence in a period of energetic evangelical activity across the British world.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Edinburgh Society for Support of Gaelic Schools, 19th Annual Report (1830), 17. Hereafter referenced with the number of the annual report followed by the page number (19AR17). The date of publication can easily be calculated as the first report was issued in 1811. Copies of the report can be found in various repositories in Scotland, including the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

2 John Chisholm to Andrew Scott, November 5, 1838, Oban Letters, Scottish Catholic Archives, Edinburgh (hereafter OL-SCA); Scott to Chisholm, June 21, 1838, OL-SCA.

3 The teachers were not missionaries in the same sense as Church of Scotland missionary ministers whose role was to assist with the provision of formal religious ordinances in large parishes, but in the classic evangelical sense of spreading their faith. An ESSGS editorial in 1850 explains they were “a Missionary Scheme. It is educational indeed, but the education it professes to give, and to which it rigidly limits itself is the faculty of reading the Scriptures. This it aims at, not as a part of secular education. The Bible . . . is not put into the hands of children and others simply to teach them to read; but to subserve the grand end of making them wise unto salvation. The Teachers are Missionaries” (39AR14).

4 For example Numark, in his otherwise delicately argued article, claims that “from the Reformation until the end of the nineteenth century, the prevailing English and Scottish attitude towards Roman Catholicism was one of emphatic hostility” (my italics). Numark, Mitch, “Translating Dharma: Scottish Missionary-Orientalists and the Politics of Religious Understanding in Nineteenth-Century Bombay,” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 2 (May 2011): 480Google Scholar. In the American historiography there is much interest in hostility. For example, see Charles R. Morris, American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners who built America's Most Powerful Church (New York: Random House, 1997); Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California, 1994); Mark Stephen Massa, Anti-Catholicism in America: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (New York: Crossroad, 2003). Andrew Stern calls for a greater recognition of complexity and acknowledgement that integration and acceptance was as strong a feature of relations as marginalisation in his Southern Harmony: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Antebellum South,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 17, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 165190Google Scholar.

5 Catholics are touched on in John MacInnes, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland, 1688–1800 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University, 1951), 20–21, 27–28, 43, 199–200; Douglas Ansdell, The People of the Great Faith: The Highland Church, 1690–1900 (Stornoway: Acair, 1998), 26–8; Allan MacColl, Land, Faith and the Crofting Community (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2006), 11, 122–125, 217. Paton focuses on a region in which there were very few Catholics. Paton, David M.M., “Brought to a Wilderness: The Rev. David MacKenzie of Farr and the Sutherland Clearances,” Northern Scotland 12 (1992): 75100Google Scholar (hereafter NS); David Paton, The Clergy and the Clearances (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2006). Older Scottish surveys largely disregard both the Highlands and post-Reformation Catholicism altogether, for example J.H.S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (New York: Oxford University, 1960).

6 Rowan Strong, Episcopalianism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Religious Responses to a Modernizing Society (New York: Oxford University, 2002). In addition to Meek's publications on evangelical groups he has authored an article on a Catholic Crofter MP: Meek, Donald, “The Catholic Knight of Crofting: Sir Donald Horne MacFarlane, MP for Argyll, 1885–86, 1892–95,” Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 58 (1992–1994): 70122Google Scholar (hereafter TGSI). Several of Roberts's articles are cited below. Clotilde Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004).

7 Wilby, Noel, “The ‘Encrease of Popery’ in the Highlands 1714–1747,” Innes Review 17 (1966): 91115Google Scholar (hereafter IR); Christine Johnson, Developments in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland 1789–1829 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983); Szechi, Daniel, “Defending the true faith: Kirk, State and Catholic missioners in Scotland 1653–1755,” Catholic Historical Review 82 (1996): 397411CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.F. McMillan, “Mission accomplished? The Catholic underground,” in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: New Perspectives, ed. T.M. Devine and J. Young (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1999), 90–105; Prunier, Clotilde, “‘They must have their children educated some way’: the education of Catholics in eighteenth-century Scotland,” IR 60, no. 1 (2009): 2240Google Scholar.

8 Tom Gallagher, Glasgow: An Uneasy Peace (Manchester: Manchester University, 1987); Elaine McFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in 19th Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1990); Elaine McFarland, “Marching from the Margins: Twelfth July Parades in Scotland, 1820–1914,” in The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum, ed. T.G. Fraser (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000), 60–77; Martin J. Mitchell, “Irish Catholics in the West of Scotland,” in New Perspectives on The Irish in Scotland, ed. Martin J. Mitchell (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008), 1–19; Geraldine Vaughan, The ‘Local’ Irish in the West of Scotland 1851–1921 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013).

9 Bernard Aspinwall “Catholic Devotion in Victorian Scotland,” in New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland, 35.

10 The Catholic Highlands include Barra, South Uist, Benbecula, Eigg, Canna, Knoydart, Glengarry, Morar, Arisaig, Moidart, Lochaber, western Badenoch, Braemar, Strathavon, Glenlivet, Strathglass.

11 New Statistical Account, vol. 14 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1834–1845), 216, 196, 511, 430, http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/. Hereafter NSA.

12 James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1976, 2000), 142.

13 Despite being mainly concerned with national level strategizing about the perceived Catholic threat, Prunier's study also deals effectively with grassroots relations between Catholics and the SSPCK in the eighteenth century. Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies.

14 For example Sneddon, Andrew, “‘Darkness Must be Expell'd by Letting in the Light’: Bishop Francis Hutchinson and the Conversion of Irish Catholics by Means of the Irish Language, c.1720–4,” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr 19 (2004): 3755Google Scholar; Bugge, Henriette, “Christianity and Caste in XIXth Century South India: The Different Social Policies of British and Non-British Christian Missions,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 43, no. 103 (July-Sep. 1998): 8797Google Scholar.

15 Roberts, Alasdair, “Education and Faith in the Catholic Highlands of Scotland,” Recusant History 27, no. 4 (2005): 537Google Scholar; Wilby, “The Encrease of Popery,” 104, 107, 113.

16 The State of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1729), 37–40, University of Glasgow Special Collections, Bf 67-h.12; Sneddon, “Darkness Must be Expell'd by Letting in the Light,” 38.

17 Lachlan McIntosh to Bishop John Geddes, November 24, 1783, Blairs Letters (hereafter BL), SCA; Prunier, “They must have their children educated some way,” 40.

18 S. Karly Kehoe, Creating A Scottish Church: Catholicism, Gender and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University, 2010), 59; Stewart, Ian, “Teaching Careers and the Early Catholic Schools,” IR 46, no. 1 (1995): 62Google Scholar; Aspinwall, Bernard, “Catholic Teachers for Scotland: The Liverpool Connection,” IR 45, no. 1 (1994): 5269Google Scholar.

19 Vaughan, Geraldine, “‘Papists looking after the Education of our Protestant Children!’ Catholics and Protestants on western Scottish school boards, 1872–1918,” IR 63, no. 1 (2012): 4244, 47Google Scholar.

20 Jones, Brad A., “‘In Favour of Popery’: Patriotism, Protestantism, and the Gordon Riots in the Revolutionary British AtlanticJournal of British Studies 52, no. 1 (January 2013): 79102Google Scholar.

21 Donovan, Robert, “The Expression of Anti-Catholic Feeling in Scotland, 1778–1781,” IR 30, no. 1 (1970): 6276Google Scholar; Muirhead, Ian A., “Catholic Emancipation: Scottish Reactions in 1829,” IR 24, no. 1 (1973): 40Google Scholar.

22 Hagan, Francis J. and Davis, Robert A., “Forging the compact of church and state in the development of Catholic education in late nineteenth-century Scotland,” IR 58, no. 1 (2007): 73Google Scholar.

23 The other islands in the parish are Muck and Rum.

24 2AR19.

25 Donald MacAskill was the son of a previous minister and was tacksman of Kildonnan. The fifty-four year-old was found the next day on the beach, having died of a heart attack trying to swim in his heavy blue cloak. Camille Dressler, Eigg: The Story of an Island (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1998), 44, 66.

William Fraser was from Kiltarlity, near Inverness and replaced Neil McLean in Small Isles in 1816. Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 7:177.

26 Thomas Innes to Lewis Innes, August 9, 1698, BL, SCA; Innes to Leslie, October 13, 1701, BL, SCA; Minutes of [SSPCK] Directors’ Meetings, May 3, 1750, in Anti-Catholic Strategies, Prunier, 138.

27 The [Old] Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. 17, ed. John Sinclair (Edinburgh, 1791–1799), 290 (hereafter OSA); 2AR19; Dressler, Eigg, 70.

28 2AR19.

29 OSA 17:284. The “preaching house” and the school building at Sandaveg may have been one and the same. By 1836 the minister reported that “we assemble in the schoolhouse for public worship.” NSA 14:153.

30 2AR19; OSA 17:284, 290; Royal Bounty Register, CH1/5/60, 363; CH1/5/61, 25, 390, National Records of Scotland. Hereafter NRS.

31 Dressler, Eigg, 46, 54–55.

32 Scott to Chisholm, February 25, 1834; Donald MacKay, Eigg, to Scott, February 9, 1835, OL, SCA. Donald Mackay (1804–1887) was from South Uist and was educated at Lismore and Rome. A talented linguist, he ministered in South Uist (1833–1834); Small Isles (1834–1842); North Morar (1842–1871) and Drimnin (1871–1887). See Johnson, Christine, “Scottish Secular Clergy, 1830–1878: The Western District,” IR 40, no. 2 (1989): 130Google Scholar.

33 MacKay to Scott, January 8, 1838, OL, SCA.

34 Ibid. While Catholic catechists are rarely mentioned in surviving documents, catechizing seems to have been common practice. Halloran, Brian, “Jesuits in 18th Century Scotland,” IR 52, no. 1 (2001): 9596Google Scholar.

35 The characteristics of evangelicalism as defined by David Bebbington in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989): conversionism, biblicism, activism, and crucicentrism.

36 Sneddon, “Darkness Must be Expell'd by Letting in the Light,” 38, 41–42.

37 Numark, “Translating Dharma,” 476.

38 3AR35; 23AR17. This regulation was often ignored.

39 39AR14; Muirhead, Ian A., “Catholic Emancipation in Scotland: The Debate and the Aftermath,” IR 24, no. 2 (1973): 116Google Scholar.

40 33AR23.

41 Neil MacLean (1784–1859) succeeded his father in 1811 after an assistantship in Coll. While in Eigg he married Isabella, the daughter of a retired military man from North Uist. Their eldest son, Donald, was born in 1815 before their move to Tiree. He lived until 1859.

42 2AR19. The 1790s population of Eigg was given as 399 and of Canna, 304. Statistics from the whole parish are given as 799 protestants and 540 Catholics. OSA 17:280.

43 2AR19.

44 OSA 17:290.

45 2AR19.

46 Royal Bounty Records, November 1725, quoted in MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 199; Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 138.

47 There is evidence of intermarriage in South Uist, Eigg, Glengarry and Glencoe. See NRS, CH2/361/1, Presbytery of Uist Minutes, 392, 408; James MacGregor to Charles Grant, March 4, 1835 OL SCA;  MacKay to Scott, February 9, 1835 OL SCA; John Murdoch to Donald Walker, May 29, 1835, OL SCA; Archibald Chisholm to Scott, January 31, 1840, OL SCA. In the 1770s at Ardentoul, in 1828 at Kilmonivaig, and in the 1840s at Dornie and Morven, protestants attended mass. See Alasdair Roberts, “Catholic Kintail: A Marginal Community,” TGSI 58 (1993–1994): 127, 130; 17AR22.

48 Anderson was a Baptist minister and was highly active in various religious charities including many years’ involvement in a leading role of the ESSGS. Meek, Donald, “Protestant missions and the evangelisation of the Scottish Highlands, 1700–1850,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 21, no. 2 (1997): 69Google Scholar.

49 3AR30.

50 Anthony MacDonald (1770–1843) studied at Samalaman and Douai. He was sent to the Small Isles around 1782. Forbes, F. and Anderson, W.J., “Clergy Lists of the Highland District, 1732–1828,” IR 17, no. 2 (1966): 162Google Scholar.

51 3AR60.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 J.L. Campbell, Canna:  The Story of a Hebridean Island (New York: Oxford University, 1984), 145.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Campbell, Canna, 146.

58 If measured in missionary terms it was perhaps less successful as in 1835 the priest described the Canna folk as being “inviolably attached to their religion.” MacKay to Scott, February 9, 1835, OL SCA.

59 Campbell, Canna, 145.

60 4AR12.

61 9AR11.

62 Campbell, Canna, 145.

63 4AR41. Various communities did this when the school closed, e.g., Port Henderson, Gairloch; Scarp, Harris; and Glencalvie, Ross-shire. 10AR8; 13AR37, 17AR39–40.

64 4AR12.

65 Ibid.

66 5AR85.

67 6AR appendix.

68 Donald McLean was born in Kinlochscrisort in 1793. After studying at Kings College, Aberdeen, he was missionary minister in Rum and Canna. He was twenty-five when he was ordained as the Small Isles minister. Four years later he married Isabella MacLean and in 1826, Charles was born, followed by Allan, Lachlan, Margaret, Breadalbane and Marion. He developed an alcohol problem and his horse could often be seen tied up at the inn in Galmisdale where he would drink with his Catholic friend Allan MacDonald of Laig. Subject to several official complaints to the presbytery from evangelical members of his congregation, he was finally deposed for intemperance in 1838 when he appeared before the General Assembly in Edinburgh, roaringly drunk. The next year he died travelling on a steamer between Glasgow and Greenock. Alcohol was also the downfall of his friend. When Allan heard that his sister Mary was unhappy in her marriage he rode 140 miles without a break from Arisaig to Leith to prevent her sailing with her husband to India. He arrived just as the ship sailed. The ride caused sores on his backside and Allan was told they would not heal unless he gave up the drink. He would not, and he died, presumably from infection. Dressler, Eigg, 74.

69 10AR27.

70 11AR42.

71 Hugh Miller, The Cruise of the Betsey (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1859), 107.

72 22AR10, 15.

73 23AR appendix. Among the thirty students, nineteen were males, and sixteen were females.

74 32AR30–31.

75 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn: Yale University, 1985); Symonds, James, “Toiling in the Vale of Tears: Everyday Life and Resistance in South Uist, Outer Hebrides, 1760–1860,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3, no. 2 (1999): 112, 114116Google Scholar.

76 The Directory for Family Worship (Edinburgh: Evan Tyler, August 24, 1647).

77 Hector's father, Lachlan, was from Protestant Skye. They first farmed at Cleadale then, in 1770, moved to Hulin. Lachlan was the first to try sheep-farming on the islands. Profits from sheep and kelp financed the building of the house referred to here. Previously tacksmen had similar houses to their tenants but this edifice was two storeys high, with a vast kitchen on the ground floor and bedrooms upstairs. Adjoining the house was a byre and a slated hay loft, plus a walled garden and orchard. He was in arrears by 1827, probably because of the collapse of the kelp market. Forced to give up Hulin, Lachlan died in poverty a few years later in Skye. Hulin was incorporated into Kildonnan (Keill) and leased to John Macdonald. It seems therefore that Hector was subletting Hulin from MacDonald of Keill and continuing to reside in the big house his father had built. This suggests a close relationship between the two men. Dressler, Eigg, 46, 69.

78 Kiell was later known as Kildonnan and should not be confused with Keill in Canna. After Dr. MacAskill of Kildonnan drowned, John MacDonald took over the tack. He was from Balranald, Uist. MacDonald continued to be a thorn in the priest's flesh. In 1840 he persuaded a Catholic girl who was marrying a protestant to have the service conducted by the minister in Arisaig rather than by the priest. The new family therefore became protestant. Neither MacDonald nor MacKinnon supported their own minister, Donald McLean, probably because of his moderatism and alcoholism. They organised a written complaint about him to Presbytery in 1831. Dressler, Eigg, 69, 88; MacKay to Scott, Mar. 19, 1840, OL SCA; NRS, CH2/330/3, Skye Presbytery Records, April 27, 1831.

79 MacKay to Scott, Feb. 9, 1835, OL SCA.

80 Bangor-Jones, Malcolm, “Sheep farming in Sutherland in the eighteenth century,” The Agricultural History Review 50, no. 2 (2002): 201Google Scholar; Gray, Malcolm, “The Kelp Industry in the Highlands and Islands,” The Economic History Review 4, no. 2 (1951): 200201, 205Google Scholar; Dressler, Eigg, 46, 69.

81 24AR20.

82 11AR28.

83 12AR42.

84 Samalaman was the Highland district seminary until it moved to Lismore in 1803. Chisholm was factor to Clanranald and a kelp merchant. He moved into the seminary property formerly occupied by his kinsman, Bishop John Chisholm. His transcription of their words was “gu dthugadh Dia mor nargras paidh dhaibh o nach urain sinn a dheanamh.” See 3AR52; 4AR12.

85 For example in Sweden. Janken Myrdal and Mats Morell, The Agrarian History of Sweden: From 4000 BC to AD 2000, (Lund: Nordic Academic, 2011).

86 McDermid, Jane, “Gender and Geography: The Schooling of Poor Girls in the Highlands and Islands of Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” History of Education Review 32, no. 2 (2003): 31, 3738, 42Google Scholar.

87 McDermid, Jane, “Catholic Working-Class Girls’ Education in Lowland Scotland, 1872–1900,” IR 47, no. 1 (1996): 74, 79Google Scholar.

88 Dressler, Eigg, 62; Hunter, Crofting Community, 71; MacAskill, John, “The Highland Kelp Proprietors and their Struggle over the Salt and Barilla Duties, 1817–1831,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 26, no. 1–2 (2006): 60Google Scholar.

89 14AR23.

90 30AR8.

91 32AR26–27.

92 Boy tutors were widespread, e.g. in Coll; Sleat, Skye; Aird, Skye; Back, Lewis. 3AR28; 4AR25; 5AR19; 25AR31.

93 12AR39.

94 Ranald Rankine to Scott, March 11, 1839, OL SCA.

95 The “in kind” payment required for an ESSGS school was usually manageable. However, the need for windows, partitions and doors meant that occasionally a community, such as Balvraid in southeast Sutherland, was too impoverished to provide a building. 14AR22.

96 Ritchie, Elizabeth, “Looking for Catholics: Using Protestant Missionary Society Records to Investigate Nineteenth-Century Highland Catholicism,” IR 65, no. 1 (2014): 5275Google Scholar; MacKay, Iain, “Clanranald's tacksmen of the late 18th century,” TGSI 44 (1964): 75Google Scholar; 19AR17.

97 Campbell, J.L. and Eastwick, C.The MacNeils of Barra in the Forty-Five,” IR 17, no. 2 (1966): 82Google Scholar; Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 137–138.

98 McDermid, “Gender and Geography,” 40–41; McDermid, “Catholic Working-Class Girls’ Education,” 73.

99 10AR8.

100 This was also the case for protestants. Elizabeth Ritchie, “‘Most Anxious to have a Teacher’: Gaelic Schools in the Northern Highlands,” History Scotland (January-February 2016), 42–45.

101 McDermid, “Gender and Geography,” 32.

102 Based on returns from fifty-eight schools. Charles Withers, Gaelic in Scotland, 1698–1981: The Geographical History of a Language (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984), 152.

103 Withers, Gaelic in Scotland, 152; Victor Durkacz, The Decline of the Celtic Languages (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983), 124–125.

104 All statistics are calculated from the figures in the appendices of the annual reports.

105 Based on returns from forty schools. Withers, Gaelic in Scotland, 152.

106 Naming practices could be inconsistent so this may have been in Iochdar, South Uist, or in Uachdar in neighbouring Benbecula, which had a higher proportion of protestants.

107 From six, four and four years of data respectively.

108 Evidence that Gaelic speakers learned to read their own language in order to learn English is found in the ESSGS reports. For example, 4AR25, 8AR18; 13AR32.

109 Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 139.

110 10AR44.

111 Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 145.

112 Prunier, “They must have their children educated,” 34; Johnson, Developments, 226.

113 Johnson, Developments, 82.

114 Prunier, “They must have their children educated,” 35.

115 11AR43.

116 3AR50.

117 11AR30.

118 15AR5.

119 Ibid.

120 15AR6.

121 10AR43.

122 3AR56. This was the same teacher liked by the people of Glenuig.

123 8AR15.

124 Either Duncan Campbell or Donald Cameron. 12AR14.

125 14AR10.

126 11AR41.

127 8AR16.

128 Linda Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family: Britain, 1850–1940 (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1995), 105–6, 140.

129 There was general acceptance that English was the language of progress however this was somewhat modified by a strengthening counter-discourse among some of the educated which regarded Gaelic as an important cultural artefact. Most priests’ reports accepted the former, but MacDonald clearly sympathised with the latter. Most probably accepted both, but weighed their advantages differently.

130 MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 290; Alexander Nicolson, Report on the State of Education in the Hebrides (Edinburgh: Education Commission, 1866), 3845-IV: 21.

131 William McIntosh to Scott, May 27, 1838, OL SCA.

132 McIntosh to Scott, January 31, 1839 OL SCA.

133 Ibid.

134 Roberts, “Education and Faith,” 540. In the eighteenth century some priests created catechisms in order to teach in question/answer format, but there was no widely available Catholic catechism in Gaelic until the early nineteenth century. This catechism, of course, would not be theologically acceptable to the ESSGS. MacWilliam, Alexander, “The Jesuit Mission in Upper Deeside, 1671–1737,” IR 23, no. 1 (1972): 35Google Scholar.

135 1AR intro.

136 Stern, “Southern Harmony,” 168–169.

137 Vaughan, “Papists looking after the Education of our Protestant Children!,” 32.

138 12AR40.

139 Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 139–142.

140 Macdonald, Roderick, “Bishop Scott and the West Highlands,” IR 17, no. 2 (1966): 117Google Scholar; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates 42, 3rd ser. (March 29-May 18, 1838), 1167; R.D. Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 1750–1918 (New York: Oxford University, 1995), 312.

141 Mitchell, “Irish Catholics in the West of Scotland,” 11. He even asked them secretly to acquire schoolbooks. William McIntosh of Arisaig explained the difficult position this put him in: “I cannot get a Testament from the school unless I either steal it or ask the loan of it. Now either might seem invidious.” McIntosh to Scott, January 31 1839, OL SCA.

142 The General Assembly school was at Kildonan. Donald Morrison taught twenty-eight pupils who learned Gaelic, English, writing and arithmetic. Pamphlets: Thomson's Collections 31, no. 3, 1837Google Scholar, Aberdeen University Special Collections (hereafter AUSC). Donald Cameron taught the ESSGS school at Iochdar. 25AR40.

143 Chisholm to Scott,  June 21, 1838, OL SCA.

144 Ibid.

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid.

147 This may have included William MacDonald's General Assembly school at Balivanich. Thomson's Collections 31/3, AUSC.

148 Scott to Chisholm, November 5, 1838, OL SCA.

149 Treble, James H., “The Development of Roman Catholic Education in Scotland, 1878–1978,” IR 29, no. 2 (1978): 112Google Scholar.

150 Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 139.

151 11AR41.

152 MacKay to Scott, January 8, 1838, OL SCA. The books were by Ewan MacEachen who was responsible for Iul a Chriostaidh (1834) and An Cath Spioradail (1835), as well as for a pioneering Gaelic dictionary. See Roberts, Alasdair, “Maighstir Eobhan Mac Eachainn and the orthography of Scots Gaelic,” TGSI 63 (2002–2004): 358405Google Scholar.

153 Roberts, Alasdair, “William McIntosh in the West Highlands: Changing the Practice of Religion,” IR 54, no. 2 (2003): 130Google Scholar.

154 Muirhead, “Catholic Emancipation: The Debate,” 119.

155 Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies, 154; McFarland, Protestants First, 51–52, 57, 65; Muirhead, “Catholic Emancipation: The Debate,” 116.

156 18AR13.

157 Coll MacColl to Scott, July 10, 1838, OL SCA.

158 40AR14; 41AR15.

159 Lesley Orr, “Orientalists, Missionaries, and Jains: The South Indian Story,” in The Madras School of Orientalism, ed. Thomas R. Trautmann (New York: Oxford University, 2009); Numark, “Translating Dharma,” 472–479.

160 Orr, “Orientalists, Missionaries, and Jains,” 265.

161 14AR23.

162 Andrew Stern, “Southern Harmony,” 165.