Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/687

 SCOTLAND

621

SCOTLAND

Bishop Nicholson had obtained the s- ■ ■'^ioes of a coadjutor, James Gordon, in 1705, and tl - devotion of the two prelates to their difficult duties was un- bounded. In spite of the penal laws, Catholics were still numerous in the North and West speaking chiefly the Gaelic language; and in 1726 it was de- cided to appoint a second vicar Apostolic for the High- lands, Hugh Macdonald being chosen. During his vicariate occurred the ill-fated rising of Charles Edward Stuart, the final failure of which, consequent on the disastrous battle of CuUoden, brought fresh calamities on the Highland Cathohcs. The High- land clans were proscribed and dispersed, more than a thousand persons were deported to America, Catholic chapels were destroyed, and priests and people pros- ecuted with the utmost severity. To the suffering of the Catholics under the first two Georges from their enemies without, was added the misfortune of dis- sensions within the fold. Regular and secular mis- sionaries were at variance on the question of juris- diction; and there is abundant evidence that the Scottish Church at this period was tainted with the poison of Jansenism, the Scots College in Paris being especially affected. Every means was taken by the Holy See to secure the orthodoxy of the Scottish clergy, who continued however for many years to be divided into the so-called liberal party, trained in France, and the more strictly Roman section, for the most part alumni of the Scots College at Rome. By far the most prominent of the latter was the illus- trious Bishop George Hay, the chief ecclesiastical figure in the history of Scottish Cathohcism during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Bishop Hay's life has been dealt with elsewhere, and it will suffice to say here that his episcopate lasted from within a few years of the accession of George III almost to the close of the long reign of that monarch. He saw the fanatical outburst caused in Scotland by the English CathoUc Relief Bill of 1777, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were the scenes of outrage and pillage worthy of the blackest days of the penal laws; and he also saw in 1793 the Catholics of Scotland released by Parliament from the most op- pressive of those laws, though still liable to many disabilities. He did much to improve the condition and status of the Scots Colleges in Paris and Rome, which from various causes had fallen into a very un- satisfactory state; and his devotional and contro- versial writings won him repute beyond the limits of Scotland. During his long vicariate the Scottish Catholics, whose numbers had greatly fallen after the disastrous Jacobite rising of 1745, only very gradually increased. They numbered probably .some 25,000 souls in 1780; and of these, it was stated, not more than twenty possessed land worth a hundred pounds a year. In 1800, seven years after the pass- ing of the Relief Bill, the faithful were estimated to number 30,000, ministered to by three bishops and forty priests, with twelve churches. Six or seven of the priests were emigres from France. With the cessation of active persecution, a good many new churches were erected throughout the country, and at the same time the Catholic population was aug- mented by a large influx of Irish. In 1827 Pope Leo XII added a new vicariate to the Scottish mission, which was now divided into the Eastern, Western, and Northern Districts. By this time the Catho- lic population had increased to 70,000, including fifty priests, with over thirty churches and about twenty schools. The concession to Catholics of civil and political liberty by the Emancipation Act of 1829 was preceded and followed in Scotland, as in England, by disgraceful exhibitions of bigotry and intolerance, although many prominent Scots- men, including Sir Walter Scott, were entirely in its favour.

The immediate result of the salutary measure of 1829 was the rapid extension and development of the Church in Scotland. A new ecclestiastical seminary was, by the generosity of a benefactor, established at Blairs, near Aberdeen : the first convent of nuns since the Reformation was founded in 1832, in Edinburgh; and in Glasgow alone the number of Catholics mounted up from a few scores to 24,000. Prominent among the bishops of Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century was James Gillis, who was nominated as coadjutor for the Eastern District in 1837, the first year of the reign of Queen Victoria, and laboured indefatigably as administrator and preacher for nearly thirty years. The wave of con- versions from Anglicanism which originated in the Tractarian movement in the Church of England was felt also in Scotland, where several notable converts were received during Bishop Gillis's episcopate, and several handsome churches were built, and new missions established, through their instrumentality. Many new schools were also erected, and more than one convent founded, under the zealous prelate, and in the Western District the progress of Catholicism was not less remarkable. Bishop Andrew Scott, who was appointed to the mission of Glasgow in 1805 and died as vicar Apostolic in 1846, saw during the interval the Glasgow Catholics increase from one thousand to seventy thousand souls; and his suc- cessors. Bishops Murdoch and Gray, were witnesses of a similar increase, and did much to multiply churches, missions, schools, and Catholic institutions through- out the vicariate. While in the sparsely-inhabited region included in the Northern Vicariate there was not, during this period, the same remarkable numer- ical increase in the faithful as in the more populous parts of Scotland, the work of organization and de- velopment there also went on steadily and continu- ously.

During the thirty years' pontificate of Piua IX the question as to the advisability of restoring to Scot- land her regular hierarchy was from time to time brought forward; but it was not until the very close of his reign that this important measure was practi- cally decided on at Rome, partly as the result of the report of Archbishop Manning, as Apostolic Visitor to the Scottish Church, on certain grave dissensions between Irish and Scottish Catholics which had long existed in the Glasgow district. Pius IX did not live to carry out his intention; but the very first official act of his successor Leo XIII was to re-erect the Scottish hierarchy by his Bull "Ex Supremo Aposto- latus apice", dated 4 March, 1878. Thus re-estab- lished, the hierarchy was to consist of two arch- bishoprics: St. Andrews and Edinburgh, with the four suffragan sees of Aberdeen, Argyll and the Isles, Dunkeld, and Galloway; and Glasgow, without suffragans. The exotic religious body styled the Scottish Episcopal Church immediately published a protest against the adoption of the ancient titles for the newly-erected sees; but the papal act roused no hostile feeling in the country at large, and was gen- erally and sensibly recognized as one which concerned no one except the members of the Catholic body. They on their side welcomed with loyal gratitude a measure which restored to the Church in Scotland the full and normal hierarchical organization which properly belongs to her, and which might be expected to have the same consoling results as have followed a similar act in England, Holland, Australia, and the United States.

If the "second spring" of Catholicism in Scotland has been less fruitful and less remarkable than in the countries just named, Scottish Catholics have never- theless much to be thankful for, looking back through the past thirty years to what has been done in the way of growth, development, better equipment, and more perfect organization. Between 1878 and 1911