Seventeenth Century Scottish Catholics

Extract

Our ignorance of the fortunes of Catholics in the Scotland of the Commonwealth period is for the most part utterly abysmal. Happily, Major Hay has been busy writh the manuscripts and other historical documents in Blairs College, with the result that now we may really know a good deal of what happened in the years that immediately followed the execution of Charles I. It is ‘a story of courageous struggle against cunningly-devised persecution’; of gallant adventure for Catholic clergy, regular and secular, with disappointments and hardships, hopes and fears, and the inevitable quarrels and mistakes. _

The Scottish Jesuits of this period ‘come to life again, with their virtues and defects, with theif likes and dislikes; they are real men of Scotland, not phantoms from a hagiological romance,’

Father John Seton, S.J., for instance, seeking to rally Catholics to the standard of Montrose (which work, no doubt, ‘was contrary to the rule of the society’), and keeping his mission secret, ‘not only from his enemies, but from his fellow-Jesuits in Paris.’ Howbeit the good fathers were not undisturbed by the mysterious comings and goings of this intrepid priest, whose fate it was to die of fever in the Scots College in Madrid.