Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-07T17:50:25.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Scottish Catholic Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Extract

In the eighteenth century, most Scottish Protestants took it for granted that Roman Catholicism was antithetical to the spirit of “this enlightened age.” Amid the several polarities that framed their social theory—barbarism and politeness, superstition and rational enquiry, feudal and commercial, Highland and Lowland—popery in every case stood with the first term and Protestantism with the second. Sir Walter Scott's Redgauntlet, set in the 1760s, is redolent of these contrarieties. He draws a stark contrast between the world of Darsie Latimer, the cosmopolitan, bourgeois, and Presbyterian world of an Edinburgh attorney, and the world of Hugh Redgauntlet, rugged and rude, clannish and popish. When the Stuart Pretender appears on the scene he is disguised as a prelate, his odor more of sinister hegemony than of pious sanctimony. Scott's tableau captured the Enlightenment commonplace that the purblind faith of popery was a spiritual halter by which the credulous were led into political despotism. Catholicism, by its treasonable Jacobitism and its mendacious superstition, seemed self-exiled from the royal road of Scottish civil and intellectual improvement.

It is not too harsh to suggest that modern scholarship on the Scottish Enlightenment has implicitly endorsed this view, for next to nothing has been written about the intellectual history of Scottish Catholicism, let alone anything comparable with the two full-scale studies now available on the English Catholic Enlightenment. One historian has suggested an alternative view, by suggesting that, in the emergence of the Scottish Enlightenment, it was Catholics and Episcopalians who, as alienated outsiders, helped loosen the straitjacket of Calvinist orthodoxy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1991

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 Chinnici, Joseph, The English Catholic Enlightenment: John Lingard and the Cisalpine Movement, 1780–1850 (Shepherdstown, W.Va., 1980)Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, “Joseph Berrington and the English Catholic Cisalpine Movement, 1772–1803” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1973)Google Scholar.

2 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, “The Scottish Enlightenment,” Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 58 (1967): 1635–58Google Scholar.

3 Innes Review (hereafter IR), founded in 1950. This article draws considerably on material contained in this journal. Thomas Innes's chief works were A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain, 2 vols. (1729)Google Scholar, and the posthumous Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, A.D. 80–818 (Aberdeen, 1853)Google Scholar. For works published before 1800, place of publication is normally either Edinburgh or London.

4 See, e.g., T. C. W. Blanning, “The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany,” and Wangermann, Ernst, “Reform Catholicism and Political Radicalism in the Austrian Enlightenment,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikulas (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Beales, Derek, “Christians and philosophes: The Case of the Austrian Enlightenment,” in History, Society and the Churches, ed. Beales, Derek and Best, Geoffrey (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 Sher, Richard, Church and Society in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton, N.J., 1985)Google Scholar.

6 The Catholic Church in Scotland was referred to as the “mission” because it had the status of missionary territory under the direct supervision of the Office of Sacred Propaganda. It did not acquire a canonically established and autonomous episcopal hierarchy until 1878.

7 In the Blairs Letters collection, cited here as SCA BL. This collection formed the basis of the longest, though most undigested, account of Scottish Catholicism in this period; the “Life of Hay” by J. A. Stothert, which constitutes the fourth volume of Gordon's, J. F. S.Ecclesiastical Chronicle for Scotland (London, 1875)Google Scholar, is often known as Scotichronicon and is cited here as such.

8 Irving, D., The Lives of the Scottish Poets, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1804)Google Scholar; Gordon, H. G., Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1901)Google Scholar.

9 See the works cited in n. 1 above. As the name suggests, “Cisalpine” is the opposite of “Ultramontane” and involves delimiting the authority of the papacy on this side of the Alps.

10 Fuller, Reginald, Alexander Geddes, 1737–1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism (Sheffield, 1984)Google Scholar.

11 Mark Goldie, “Common Sense Philosophy and Catholic Theology in the Scottish Enlightenment,” Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (in press); “Elements of Metaphysics” (1792), SCA B-GH 2/1, 2/2.

12 For a recent study of Scottish Catholicism in this period, see Johnson, Christine, Developments in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, 1789-1829 (Edinburgh, 1983)Google Scholar. The older standard histories are Scotichronicon; Bellesheim, Alphonse, History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, trans. Blair, D. O. Hunter, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1890), vol. 4, chap. 4Google Scholar; Anson, Peter, The Catholic Church in Modern Scotland, 1560–1937 (London, 1937), chaps. 8-11Google Scholar, Underground Catholicism in Scotland, 1622–1878 (Montrose, Scotland, 1970), chap. 6Google Scholar; Leith, William Forbes, Memoirs of Scottish Catholics during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols. (London, 1909)Google Scholar.

13 On Catholic Jacobitism see Scotichronicon, pp. 5 ff., 51; Johnson, pp. 5, 7–8, 42; Lenman, Bruce, The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689–1746 (London, 1980), pp. 228–29, 254Google Scholar.

14 On Scottish Jansenism see McMillan, J. F., “Scottish Catholics and the Jansenist Controversy: The Case Reopened,” IR 32 (1981): 2233Google Scholar, Thomas Innes and the Bull Unigenitus,” IR 33 (1982): 2329Google Scholar; Fuller, pp. 18–21; Bellesheim, 4:200–211; Anson, , Underground Catholicism, pp. 7982Google Scholar.

15 Darragh, James, “The Catholic Population of Scotland since the Year 1680,” IR 4 (1953): 4959Google Scholar. For contemporary Protestant estimates of the size of the Catholic population, see Erskine, John, A Narrative of the Debate in the General Assembly (1780), p. 58Google Scholar (William Robertson's figure of 20,000); Witherspoon, John (?), Scots Anticipation (1779), p. 63 (30,000)Google Scholar.

16 Anson, , Underground Catholicism, p. 182Google Scholar.

17 Scotichronicon, p. 371.

18 Ibid., pp. 414–16.

19 See, e.g., George Hayto John Geddes, February 21, 1793, SCA BL 4/73/9; Geddes to Hay, June 5, 1793, 4/71/14.

20 Scotichronicon (n. 7 above) is the fullest source for Hay's life, an d most later accounts derive from it. See Kerr, Cecil, Bishop Hay: A Sketch of His Life and Times (London, [1928])Google Scholar; John Strain, “Memoir,” in vol. 1 of The Works of the Right Reverend Bishop Hay, 7 vols. (London, 18721973)Google Scholar; Mason, George, Bishop Hay: A Memoir (Glasgow, n.d.)Google Scholar; Bishop Hay (1729–1811) (Edinburgh, Catholic Truth Society pamphlet, n.d.); Hedley, J. C., “Bishop Hay,” Dublin Review 149 (1911): 156–79Google Scholar. An independent and distinctively un-Victorian memoi r is Cameron, Alexander, A Short Account of the Right Reverend George Hay (Dublin, 1829)Google Scholar.

21 Gother, John, A Papist Misrepresented: or, a two-fold character of popery (1686)Google Scholar.

22 On Challoner, see Burton, Edwin H., The Life and Times of Bishop Challoner (1691–1781), 2 vols. (London, 1909)Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, ed., Challoner and His Church (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

23 In Hay's time there were two vicars apostolic, of the Lowlands and of the High-lands, who, with their coadjutors, were bishops in partibus infidelium, taking their titles, as was the custom, from defunct Mediterranean dioceses, Daulis in Greece, for Hay, and Morocco, for Geddes.

24 There is, unfortunately, no biography of Geddes. For material on him see notes 33, 101, 106, and 109 below.

25 Strain, p. xiii; cf. Kerr, “Preface,” p. 8: “Ecce sacerdos magnus!”

26 Scotichronicon, p. 348.

27 Ibid., pp. 239, 221; cf. p. 337.

28 Scotichronicon, pp. 99–100, 111–17; Hay, George, A Detection of the Dangerous Tendency (1771), p. 26Google Scholar; Johnson, , Catholic Church (n. 12 above), pp. 3538Google Scholar.

29 For instance, Alexander Geddes to John Geddes, February 15, 1791, SCA BL 4/28/8.

30 Geddes commented on Febronius in a letter to Hay, March 7, 1779, SC A BL 3/312/4; Geddes's attitude to the papacy is referred to again below, pp. 54–55; for Hay on infallibility see my article cited in n. 11 above. Febronius (J. N. von Hontheim) was a German bishop whose De Statu Ecclesiae (1763) gained a considerable following.

31 Herr, Richard, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, N.J., 1958), p. 26Google Scholar.

32 On Campomanes, see ibid., pp. 18–19, 25–26, and passim.

33 For Geddes's period in Spain see Taylor, Maurice, The Scots College in Spain (Valladolid, 1971), chaps. 3–7Google Scholar. See also chaps. 8–9 for his successor, Alexander Cameron.

34 Hay to John Geddes, March 7, 1786, SCA BL 3/474/9; Hay to Count Gastaldi, June 21, 1786, 3/475/12.

35 For the strained relations with the Scots College in Paris and the fate of the Stuart papers see McRoberts, David, “The Scottish Catholic Archives, 1560–1978,” IR 28 (1977): 7594Google Scholar; Fuller (n. 10 above), p. 19.

36 Cameron (n. 20 above), p. 20.

37 For Alexander Geddes's account of the contrast between opinion in England and Scotland see Alexander Geddes to John Geddes, April 3, 1779, SCA BL 3/311/5, and letters of Hay and both Alexander and John Geddes throughout 1786 and 1790–91.

38 For the suggestion that “Episcopalianism was the ‘natural’ religion of Jacobitism in Scotland—far more than Catholicism,” see McLynn, Frank, The Jacobites (London, 1985), p. 65Google Scholar. About 70 percent of the Jacobite army in 1745 had been Episcopalian and 30 percent Catholic.

39 Wilby, N. M., “Letter of Bishop George Hay to Prince Charles,” IR 22 (1971): 111–13Google Scholar.

40 Scotichronicon, p. 77; Anderson, W. J., “Father Gallus Robertson's Edition of the New Testament, 1792,” IR 17 (1966): 4859Google Scholar.

41 Wall, Thomas, The Sign of Doctor Hay's Head: Being Some Account of the Hazards and Fortunes of Catholic Printers and Publishers in Dublin from the Later Penal Times to the Present Day (Dublin, 1958), chap. 1Google Scholar. Aside from Coghlan letters in the SCA, there are also Coghlan papers in the Lancashire Record Office (RCBU 14).

42 Hay's polemical pamphlets are titled A Detection of the Dangerous Tendency (see n. 28 above); Memorial of the Suffering Catholics, in a Violent Persecution for Religion at Present Carried on in one of the Western Isles of Scotland (1771) (hereafter cited as Memorial of the Suffering Catholics); Letters on Usury and Interest; Shewing the Advantage of Loans for the Support of Trade and Commerce (1774) (hereafter cited as Letters on Usury); Roman Catholic Fidelity to Protestants Ascertained (1779); and A Memorial to the Public on Behalf of the Roman Catholics of Edinburgh and Glasgow (1779) (hereafter cited as Memorial to the Public); for “Elements of Metaphysics,” see n. 11 above.

43 Hay, Memorial of the Suffering Catholics, passim; Scotichronicon, pp. 80–82.

44 Scotichronicon, p. 49.

45 For Hay and the South Uist emigration, see Bumstead, J. M., The People's Clearances: Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770–1815 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 57–59, 69, 78Google Scholar; cf. Cameron (n. 20 above), p. 16.

46 Scotichronicon, p. 81. The estates of Macdonald of Clanranald had been forfeited after the rebellion and several times surveyed; they were major producers of kelp, used to supply industrial alkaline.

47 George Hay, Commonplace Book, SCA Bl-G H 2/7.

48 Hay, , Letters on Usury and Interest, pp. 16Google Scholar.

49 Noonan, John, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Harvard, 1957), pp. 356–57, 373–74Google Scholar; Nelson, Benjamin, The Idea of Usury, 2d. ed. (1949; reprint, Chicago, 1969), pp. 102–6Google Scholar.

50 Hay, , Letters on Usury, pp. 7–11, 3137Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., pp. 22–31, 37–44.

52 Ibid., p. 59.

53 Noonan, pp. 360–61, 356–57.

54 Hay, , Letters on Usury, pp. 63 ff., 75 ff., 86 ff., 91 ff., 118–20, 136–39Google Scholar.

55 There is a very long extract from Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy in Hay's Commonplace Book, SCA B1-GH 2/10.

56 Hay, , Letters on Usury, pp. 71, 109, 113–14Google Scholar.

57 Nelson, pp. 100, 114–24; Noonan, pp. 373–74. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (19041905; reprint, London, 1930)Google Scholar.

58 Nelson, p. 114. The Letters on Usury are briefly summarized, with attributions, in Scotichronicon, pp. 123–25.

59 Hay to Geddes, February 21, 1792, SCA BL 4/62/7, and April 1, 1793, 4/73/15; Scotichronicon, pp. 228, 242, 330. McBain, A. G., “The Bishop Hay Bequest Fund,” IR 28 (1977): 5051Google Scholar.

60 Quoted in Erskine, , Narrative (n. 15 above), p. 58Google Scholar.

61 Hay, , Letters on Usury, p. 96Google Scholar.

62 See Fitzpatrick, Martin, “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration,” Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 330Google Scholar.

63 Berrington, Joseph, State and Behaviour of English Catholics, From the Reformation to the year 1780 (1780)Google Scholar.

64 Donovan, R. K., “The Military Origins of the Roman Catholic Relief Programme of 1778,” Historical Journal 28 (1985): 79102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Home, Henry, Kames, Lord, Statute Law of Scotland Abridged (1757)Google Scholar. A tally of the penal laws was printed in Considerations on the State of the Roman Catholics in Scotland (London, 1779), pp. 8 ff.Google Scholar, and in the Scots Magazine in 1778, a journal sympathetic to toleration.

66 Scotichronicon, pp. 137, 153.

67 Hay to Geddes, October 8, 1779, SCA BL 3/318/4. See Donovan, R. K., “Sir John Dalrymple and the Origins of Roman Catholic Relief, 1775–1778,” Recusant History 17 (1984): 188–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 SirDalrymple, John, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (1771)Google Scholar.

69 Lenman, Bruce, The Jacobite Clans of the Great Glen, 1650–1784 (London, 1984), chaps. 9–10Google Scholar; Donovan, “Military Origins.”

70 Hay to Dalrymple, January 1, 1779, SCA BL 3/316/1, and a letter of May 1779 quoted in Donovan, , “Military Origins,” p. 97Google Scholar.

71 Hay to Geddes, April 3, 1778, SCA BL 3/304/11.

72 Hay, George, Roman Catholic Fidelity to Protestants Ascertained (London, 1779), pp. 24Google Scholar. This tract is the same as An Answer to Mr W. A. D's Letter to G. H. in which the Conduct of Government in Mitigating the Penal Laws against Papists is Justified (1778).

73 Hay, Memorial to the Public (n. 42 above). For a fuller account of the Relief Bill crisis see Donovan, , “Military Origins,” No Popery and Radicalism: Opposition to Roman Catholic Relief in Scotland, 1778–1782 (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1964; facsimile ed., New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Sher (n. 5 above), pp. 277 ff.; Johnson, , Catholic Church (n. 12 above), pp. 1618Google Scholar; Bellesheim (n. 12 above), 4:229 ff.; Anson, Underground Catholicism (n. 12 above), pp. 177–82; Forbes Leith (n. 12 above), 2:367–83; Scotichronicon, pp. 141 ff., Kerr (n. 20 above) pp. 89 ff.

74 The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 10 vols. (Cambridge, 19581978), 4:99102Google Scholar (Hay to Burke, July 12, 1779); see also letters of Burke to James Boswell and Patrick Bowie (pp. 45, 53–57). The checklist in this volume notes a series of further unpublished letters between Burke, Hay, and both Alexander and John Geddes. See also Blacklock, Thomas, Protestant Interest Vindicated. In a Series of Letters to Edmund Burke (1779)Google Scholar.

75 Sher (n. 5 above), pp. 277 ff.

76 See Donovan, R. K., “Voices of Distrust: The Expression of Anti-Catholic Feeling in Scotland, 1778–1781,” IR 30 (1979): 6276Google Scholar. The only Protestant prepared to go into print on behalf of Catholic toleration during this crisis was George Campbell of Aberdeen: Address to the People of Scotland (1779).

77 See The Articles of Popery Examined (1780); A Letter to all Opposers of the Repeal of the Penal Laws (1779); Drysdale, W., Popery Dissected (1779)Google Scholar; Macarthur, Daniel, The Church of Rome the Mother of Abominations (1778)Google Scholar.

78 Erskine, , Narrative (n. 15 above), p. 5Google Scholar; Witherspoon (?) (n. 15 above); Some Reflections on the Scheme at Present Adopted by Parliament (1778); A Short View of the Statutes at Present in Force in Scotland against Popery (1778); Lawrie, John, The Completion of Prophecy (1781), pp. vii, 6Google Scholar (this last reference thanks to David Allan).

79 For instance, Erskine, , Narrative, p. 41 (speech of Rev. Stevenson)Google Scholar; cf. Donovan, , “Voices of Distrust,” p. 67Google Scholar.

80 Quoted in Fitzpatrick (n. 62 above), p. 3.

81 Miller, John, Religion in the Popular Prints, 1600–1832 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar, item no. 82.

82 Drummond, William Abernathy, The Lawfulness of Breaking Faith with Heretics proved to be an Established Doctrine of the Church of Rome (1778)Google Scholar, A Second Letter to Mr G. H. Concerning Breach of Faith with Heretics (1779). A decade later Drummond's case for transferring Episcopalian allegiance to George III rested on the argument that the Stuart claimant, being a cardinal, must owe allegiance to the pope and so could not be an authentic sovereign: A Letter from Bishop Abernathy Drummond to the Lay Members of his Diocese (1788).

83 Hay, , Catholic Fidelity (n. 72 above), pp. iii–iv, 143–44Google Scholar; Drummond, , Lawfulness, pp. 2, 2425Google Scholar, and “Advertisement.”

84 Hay, , Catholic Fidelity, pp. 61128Google Scholar. Hay had already rehearsed his arguments concerning Hus in his Detection of the Dangerous Tendency (n. 28 above), pp. 36–48. Many Protestant arguments were drawn from Grant, D., Two Dissertations on Popish Persecution and Breach of Faith (1771)Google Scholar. For the deposing power and breach of faith in the English context see Chinnici (n. 1 above), pp. 16 ff.; Fitzpatrick, pp. 4, 22n.

85 Hay, , Catholic Fidelity, pp. 123, 147–51Google Scholar.

86 Erskine, John, Considerations on the Spirit of Popery (1778), pp. 67Google Scholar; Erskine, , Narrative, pp. 4546 (speech of Rev. Stevenson), pp. 3435 (speech of Rev. D. Carlyle)Google Scholar; Porteous, William, The Doctrine of Toleration (1778), pp. 3033Google Scholar.

87 Witherspoon (?) (n. 15 above), pp. 1 and passim; cf. By Anticipation (1779), p. 4Google Scholar; Erskine, , Narrative, p. 40 (speech of Rev. Stevenson)Google Scholar; Short View, p. 3.

88 Some Reflections (n. 78 above), p. 14.

89 Drummond, William Abernathy, An Answer to Mr Burke's Speech (1779), pp. 8, 30Google Scholar, A Vindication of the Opposition to the Late Intended Bill (1780), p. 21Google Scholar.

90 Ganganelli, Francis, Interesting Letters of Pope Clement XIV (Ganganelli), 4 vols. (1777)Google Scholar; The Life of Pope Clement XIV (Ganganelli), translated from the French by Monsieur Caraccioli (1776).

91 Robertson, William, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (London, 1769)Google Scholar; Pietro Giannone's Storia Civile del Regno di Napoli had been published in English translation by a Scot, James Ogilvie: The Civil History of Naples (1729).

92 Guthrie, William, A General History of Scotland, 10 vols. (London, 17671968)Google Scholar.

93 Some Reflections (n. 78 above), p. 14.

94 Campbell (n. 76 above), p. 33.

95 Hay to Geddes, June 28, 1779, SCA BL 3/312/16, and March 7, 1779, 3/312/4.

96 Alexander Gordon to Hay, June 9, 1779, SCA BL 3/313/7.

97 Hay to Lord North, SCA BL 3/318/16.

98 Hay, , Memorial to the Public on Catholics (n. 42 above), pp. 1–2, 39Google Scholar; cf: G[eorge] by the mercy of God, and the Favour of the H[oly] S[ee] B[ishop] of D[aulis] and V[icar] A[postolic] in S[cotland], to all the Clergy under his Jurisdiction (1779); this was reprinted and answered in Pastoral Letter from George Bishop of Daulis to his flock and A Letter to the Bishop on his Pastoral Letter (1779).

99 “An Apology for the Catholics of Scotland,” SCA B2-JG 2/9. Alexander Geddes also wrote a tract in this debate but did not publish it until much later: A Modest Apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain (1800).

100 It was a view that remained in the Catholic tradition; a century later, a Catholic historian would cite such infidels as Lecky and Buckle as authorities for the religious barbarism of Scottish Presbyterianism. The modern Whig, Trevor-Roper, repaid the compliment in suggesting that Catholics helped lead Scotland out of Knoxian bondage. Bellesheim (n. 12 above), 4:232, 244, 263–64; Trevor-Roper (n. 2 above).

101 McRoberts, David, “Ambula Coram Deo: The Journal of Bishop Geddes for the Year 1790, Part I,” IR 6 (1955): 46Google Scholar.

102 Scotichronicon, pp. 231, 227.

103 William Robertson to Geddes, February 27, 1786, SCA BL 3/486/9.

104 Joseph Black to Geddes, June 26, 1786, SCA BL 3/461/7.

105 William Cullen to Geddes, September 10, 1786, SCA BL 3/463/15.

106 Anderson, W. J., “The Autobiographical Notes of Bishop John Geddes,” IR 18 (1967): 56Google Scholar; Rolt, L. T. C., The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783–1903 (London, 1966), pp. 64 ff., 74–75, 95Google Scholar; Hodgson, J. E., The History of Aeronautics in Great Britain (Oxford, 1924), chap. 5Google Scholar; Lunardi, Vincent, An Account of Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland (1786; facsimile, Edinburgh, 1976)Google Scholar. I have found no other references to the St. Andrew's Club, other than a letter from Alexander Geddes to John Geddes apologizing for his absence at “your new club,” January 9, 1786, SCA BL 3/467/2.

107 Scotichronicon, pp. 190, 264–65; The Geddes Burns (Boston, 1908Google Scholar; facsimile of Geddes's copy of Burns, 's Poems [Edinburgh, 1787])Google Scholar. The editor's introduction thoroughly confuses Alexander and John Geddes. The subscription list for the Poems includes the Scots colleges at Valladolid, Douay, Paris, Ratisbon, and Wiirzburg.

108 Anson, , Underground Catholicism (n. 12 above), pp. 192–93Google Scholar, citing Burns, Robert, Works (1893), 4:301–2Google Scholar.

109 For what follows, see McRoberts, , “Journal of Geddes,” pt. 1, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar, and Anderson, W. J., “Ambula Coram Deo: The Journal of Bishop Geddes for the Year 1790, Part II,” IR 6 (1955): 135Google Scholar.

110 Lunardi, p. 63.

111 Geddes, John, Reflections on Duelling, and on the Most Effectual Means for Preventing it (1790)Google Scholar; Alexander Geddes to John Geddes, November 29, 1790, SCA BL 4/23/10.

112 Geddes to Hay, April 12, 1790, SCA BL 4/24/6, February 10, 1791, 4/43/1; cf. Forbes Leith (n. 12 above), 2:386.

113 Geddes to Hay, August 22, 1791, SCA BL 4/43/17, and September 1, 1791, 4/44/1; cf. Forbes Leith, 2:391.

114 Hay to Geddes, February 21, 1792, SCA BL 4/62/7, and December 3, 1792, 4/62/9.

115 See Cant, Ronald G., “David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, Founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,” in The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition, ed. Bell, A. S. (Edinburgh, 1981)Google Scholar; Lamb, James Gordon, “David Stuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan: A Study of His Life and Correspondence” (Ph.D. thesis, St. Andrew's University, 1963)Google Scholar; Emerson, Roger, “The Scottish Enlightenment and the End of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh,” British Journal for the History of Science 21 (1988): 3366CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

116 Ross, Anthony, “Some Scottish Catholic Historians,” IR 1 (1950): 21Google Scholar, quoting National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 29/3/14.

117 Archaeologia Scotica: or, Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1792), 1:xxi ff.Google Scholar and passim. For Geddes's involvement see Ross, Anthony, “Three Antiquaries: General Hutton, Bishop Geddes and the Earl of Buchan,” IR 15 (1964): 122–39Google Scholar; Scotichronicon, pp. 225–26; Geddes to Abbe Thompson, May 17, 1791, SCA BL 4/43/11.

118 Archaeologia Scotica, pp. xxi ff.

119 It should be said that there was another connection: the affable Abbe Peter Grant, the Scottish agent in Rome, was known to practically every Protestant British visitor there. However, Roger Emerson points out to me that Buchan seems to have elected a good few members to his society without their knowledge or permission.

120 Quoted in Ross, “Three Antiquaries,” p. 135. For Buchan's earlier manifesto for the society, see his Discourse Promoting a Society for the Investigation of the History of Scotland (1780). The political complexion of the society provided a provocation for the founding of the rival Royal Society of Edinburgh (see Shapin, Steven, “Property, Patronage and the Politics of Science: The Founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,” British Journal for the History of Science 7 [1974]: 141)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Emerson.

121 Archaeologia Scotica, pp. 402–68, esp. pp. 449–50, 454.

122 Ross, , “Three Antiquaries”; Lamb, pp. 111–12, 119–22, 180, 423Google Scholar.

123 Archaeologia Scotica, pp. 256–68; quotations at p. 259.

124 Ibid., DD. 205–15.

125 Geddes was a correspondent of Professor Ogilvie of Aberdeen who advocated radical land reform.

126 Taylor, Scots College in Spain (n. 33 above), pp. 117, 134Google Scholar; Anderson, , “Autobiographical Notes” (n. 106 above), pp. 4445Google Scholar.

127 Herr, Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (n. 31 above), passim.

128 Oglivie to Geddes, April 23, 1779, SCA BL 3/322/12.

129 Dugald Stewart, An Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, reprinted in Smith, Adam, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. Wightman, W. P. D. and Bryce, J. C. (Oxford, 1980), p. 311Google Scholar.

130 John Young to Geddes, December 26, 1786, SCA BL 3/489/16.

131 Archaeologia Scotica, p. xxvi; McRoberts, , “Journal of Geddes” (n. 101 above), pp. 47, 52, 53Google Scholar; Geddes, , Reflections on Duelling (n. 111 above), p. 41Google Scholar: that “ingenious gentleman” proposes that duelists should be put in madhouses or made to assist at public executions.

132 Herr, pp. 341–42, 347.

133 Ibid., p. 206; Geddes to Hay, April 3, 1780, SCA BL 3/328/2.

134 Scotichronicon, pp. 376, 380, 383. Stothert asserts that Geddes wrote an article on Stay, but I have not traced it in Britannica; it may have been commissioned but not printed. Boscovich wrote a supplement to Benedict Stay's De Syslemata Mundi.

135 Scotichronicon, pp. 360, 364. For Gother, see n. 21 above.

136 Encyclopaedia Britannica (3d ed., Edinburgh, 17881797), 15:375–79Google Scholar.

137 Ibid., 15:383. This remark suggests that Geddes may have been responsible for a new edition of Bossuet; I have not traced one.

138 “Boscovich” in ibid., suppl. (1801), 1:99–114; cf. Whyte, Lancelot, ed., Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J., F.R.S., 1711–1787 (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Gill, H. V., Roger Boscovich, S J. (1711–1787): Forerunner of Modern Physical Theories (Dublin, 1941)Google Scholar.

139 Olson, Richard, “The Reception of Boscovich's Ideas in Scotland,” Isis 60 (1969): 91103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Olson, Richard, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics, 1750–1880 (Princeton, N.J., 1975)Google Scholar.

140 Olson, , “Reception of Boscovich,” pp. 91–92, 96Google Scholar. The mistake is repeated Michael Barfoot's valuable thesis, James Gregory (1753–1821) and Scottish Scientific Metaphysics, 1750–1800” (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 1983), pp. 306, 310, 332, n. 134Google Scholar.

141 Encyclopaedia Britannica, suppl., 1:99Google Scholar.

142 Scotichronicon, p. 366; cf. p. 383. An English Catholic had already made use of Boscovich: Berrington, Joseph, Immaterialism Detected (1779)Google Scholar; see Duffy, , “Berrington” (n. 1 above), p. 113Google Scholar.

143 Whyte, pp. 104, 160; Barfoot, pp. 306, 310; Gill, pp. xiii-xiv; Olson, , “Reception of Boscovich,” pp. 98 ff.Google Scholar

144 Emerson, Roger L., “The PhilosophiciffSociety of Edinburgh, 1748–1768,” British Journal for the History of Science 14 (1981): 158CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The philosophical significance of Boscovich is explored in Goldie, “Common Sense Philosophy” (n. 11 above).

145 McRoberts, , “Journal of Geddes,” p. 65Google Scholar.

146 Whyte, p. 160.

147 McRoberts, , “Journal of Geddes,” p. 52Google Scholar.

148 Olson, , Scottish Philosophy, p. 104Google Scholar.

149 Encyclopaedia Britannica, suppl., “Dedication.”

150 See Morrell, J. B., “Professors Robison and Playfair, and the Theophobia Gallica: Natural Philosophy, Religion and Politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 26 (1971): 4363CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

151 Steuart, A. Francis. The Exiled Bourbons in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1908)Google Scholar; McGloin, James, “Some Refugee French Clerics and Laymen in Scotland, 1789–1814,” IR 16 (1965): 2755Google Scholar; Johnson, , Catholic Church (n. 12 above), pp. 8788Google Scholar.

152 See Meikle, Henry W., Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow, 1912)Google Scholar; Brims, John, “The Scottish Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution” (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 1983)Google Scholar.

153 Carmen Saeculare, pro Gallica gente tyrannidi aristocraticae erepta … A Secular Ode, on the French Revolution (1790).

154 Anderson, W. J., “David Downie and the ‘Friends of the People,’IR 16 (1965): 176Google Scholar; Johnson, Catholic Church, chap. 12, David Downie: A Reappraisal,” IR 31 (1980): 8794Google Scholar.

155 Thornton, Robert D., William Maxwell to Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1979)Google Scholar; Burke, , Correspondence (n. 74 above), 7:215, 217, 332–35Google Scholar.

156 Geddes to Hay, November 15, 1790, SCA BL 4/25/9; cf. Geddes to Hay, April 14, 1791, 4/43/8.

157 Geddes to Hay, Paris, January 5, 1791, SCA BL 4/59/2.

158 Geddes to Hay, Douai, December 4, 1790, SCA BL 4/44/11.

159 Anderson, , “Downie,” p. 172Google Scholar; Johnson, , “Downie,” pp. 8990Google Scholar.

160 Geddes to Hay, December 18, 1790, SCA BL 4/25/11, April 14, 1791, 4/43/8, and March 23, 1791, 4/46/5.

161 Alexander Geddes to John Geddes, February 15, 1791, SCA BL 4/42/8, and November 29, 1790, 4/23/10.

162 Robertson, J. K., “Young Mr Kyle and His Circle,” IR 1 (1950): 4142Google Scholar.

163 Duffy, Timothy, “A Contemporary Portrait of Bishop Cameron,” IR 27 (1976): 8587Google Scholar.

164 Anson, , Underground Catholicism (n. 12 above), pp. 253 ff., 293–95Google Scholar.

165 Scotichronicon; Anderson, , “Downie,” p. 176Google Scholar.

166 Geddes to Hay, May 24, 1792, SCA BL 4/60/2.

167 Hay to Geddes, January 22, 1793, SCA BL 4/73/5.

168 Johnson, , Catholic Church (n. 12 above), pp. 101–3Google Scholar.

169 Geddes to Hay, November 11, 14, 1791, SCA BL 4/44/6–7.

170 Scotichronicon, pp. 414–16; Meikle (n. 152 above), pp. 196–97; Johnson, Catholic Church, chap. 16.

171 See Goldie (n. 11 above). For Strain's edition of Hay, see n. 20 above.

172 Scottish Catholic Observer (August 15, 1986).