Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/43

 Rh was born, and the Town Council has undertaken that, in the event of this house being pulled down in the course of municipal improvements, the bust will find a place in the wall of the new Town Hall which it is proposed to erect on the spot. After the formal unveiling and a brief speech by Mr. Jamieson Paton handing over the bust to the town, and another from the Provost accepting its custody, a meeting was held in the Municipal Chambers, the Provost and Council entertaining the company to a cake and wine banquet. At this meeting Mr. Carruthers was the principal speaker, and we are able to give the following extracts from his speech:—

I owe the pleasure of being present and the honour of saying something on the life and work of Robert Brown to the fact that for a quarter of a century I have occupied Mr. Brown's chair in the Botanical Department of the British Museum, and perhaps also because, like Mr. Brown, I have filled the honourable office of President of the Linnean Society. It is 122 years since Robert Brown was born in the house we have just visited, and where we have seen Mr. Stevenson's admirable bust of the great botanist unveiled by his relative Miss Paton, and presented by her to the town. The inhabitant of the house at that time was the Rev. James Brown, a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church, whose father, a Forfarshire farmer, lost his life in fighting for Prince Charlie at Culloden. The Scottish Episcopalians were decided Jacobites, but when Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts, accepted a pension from George III., the Church, interpreting this act as a renunciation of his claim to the British throne, resolved to introduce the name of George III. into their prayers. This gave great offence to many members of the Church. In Edinburgh, one man rose, put on his hat, and walked covered out of the church as a protest against the change. I am somewhat interested in this incident, as the protestor was Charles Smith, my wife's great-grandfather. Those who sympathised with him formed themselves into an independent Episcopal Church, and invited the Rev. James Brown to be their pastor. He accordingly left Montrose, preferring to separate from his Church rather than renounce his "lawful hereditary sovereign." A prelatic church without a bishop being an anomaly, he sought for consecration at the hands of Bishop Rose, who fully sympathised with Mr. Brown and his flock, but did not see it to be his duty to leave the denomination. Accompanied by his two churchwardens (one being Charles Smith) as witnesses, he proceeded to the Bishop's residence at the Bridge of Doune, and was consecrated. I have read the original document, with the attestations of the churchwardens. Bishop Brown prepared a statement in which he maintained the validity of his consecration, and adduced cases in which, in extraordinary circumstances, consecration by a single bishop was accepted as valid. Bishop Brown had no inferior clergy, but was the sole ordained official in this small Episcopal Church. He continued to minister to the flock until his death. He was buried in the Canongate Churchyard, Edinburgh.

I have ventured to narrate this curious and interesting story, as