Alexander Cameron (priest)

Alexander Cameron of Lochiel, S.J. () (17 September 1701Forbes-Leith 1909 pp. 340-341 in Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland – 19 October 1746 in Gravesend, Kent, England) was a Scottish Catholic priest and outlawed missionary, who became a Jacobite Army Captain and military chaplain. After being captured after the Battle of Culloden in Lochaber, he died while being held by the Royal Navy as a prisoner of war.

Cameron was born the third son of John Cameron of Lochiel, the 18th chief of Clan Cameron. After being fostered within the clan and raised by relatives, he made his Grand Tour in both Catholic Europe and the British West Indies. While employed at the House of Stuart government in exile in Rome as "an honorary gentleman of the bedchamber" to Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, he converted from the Scottish Episcopal Church to Catholicism.'Cameron Memorandum', MS 20310 in vol. xiv of the National Library of Scotland's Catalogue of Manuscripts acquired since 1925.

After ordination as a priest, he was ordered by the Society of Jesus in 1741 to return to Scotland. Living in a cave and aided by two fellow priests, Cameron ran an underground ministry to Clan Chisholm and Clan Fraser of Lovat throughout The Aird and Strathglass for the illegal Catholic Church in Scotland. It was so successful that it provoked a 1744 government crackdown at the insistence of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which forced Cameron to flee to his native district in the Rough Bounds of Lochaber.

Cameron was assigned as a military chaplain to the regiment of the Jacobite Army commanded by his elder brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the 19th chief of Clan Cameron. Alexander Cameron served in this position for the rest of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Cameron was captured while in hiding at the White Sands of Morar. He died four months later of the conditions of his incarceration aboard Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone's prison hulk ''H.M.S. Furnace'', at anchor off Gravesend.John S. Gibson (1994), ''Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince'', University of Edinburgh Press. p. 142.

Family background

Alexander Cameron was the son of John Cameron, tanist of Lochiel, and grandson of Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who had led the clan during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Jacobite rising of 1689. Alexander Cameron's mother, Lady Isobel Campbell of Lochnell, came from a cadet branch of Clan Campbell and was, through maternal descent, the granddaughter of the 7th chief of Clan Stewart of Appin. Her older brother was Sir Donald Campbell, 7th of Lochnell, who commanded one of the Independent Highland Companies in the service of the House of Hanover in the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Alexander Cameron was the younger brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who would later become the chief of Clan Cameron and lead the Clan's regiment in the 1745 uprising. His other siblings were John Cameron, 1st of Fassiefern (1698–1785), Dr Archibald Cameron (1707–1753), and Colony of Jamaica planter Ewan Cameron.John S. Gibson (1994), ''Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince'', University of Edinburgh Press. p. 33.

The Camerons of Lochiel appeared on the surface to be Presbyterians and belonged officially to the established Church of Scotland, but were in reality nonjuring Episcopalians. According to historian Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, the family had remained Catholic for several generations after the Scottish Reformation and supported the Episcopalian hierarchy of the Church of Scotland against the Covenanters during the Bishops' Wars.Blundell 1909 p. 146 "Indeed the Camerons, surrounded as they were on three sides by the great Catholic clans of the MacDonalds of Clanranald, Glengarry, and Keppoch, had early learned those principles of toleration which distinguished many districts of the Highlands long before they were known elsewhere in Britain."

Early life

Alexander Cameron was born on 17 September 1701 at Achnacarry Castle. As soon as he was weaned, Cameron was given by his parents in fosterage, as was traditional practice among Irish and Scottish clans, to be raised by relatives within Clan Cameron. During the 1754 trial of John Cameron of Fassiefern, the testimony of Donald Cameron of Clunes identified Cameron's foster-father as John MacIngveg (), wadsetter of Glendessary House. Moreover, both his foster and biological fathers each set thirty head of cattle and their produce aside to be sold on Alexander Cameron's majority to provide for his future adult life. When the cattle were sold, "it amounted to £150 Sterling and upwards."

At the same time, Cameron's immediate family ties were not severed and remained close.Wynne 2011, pp. 10-13 Cameron was in his early teens when his father fled to France after leading the clan during the Jacobite rising of 1715 and not quite 18 when he returned to lead them again in that of 1719. After the 1719 uprising failed, his father left Scotland once again for what would become a permanent exile in France, while Cameron's mother, Lady Isobel, remained behind at Achnacarry Castle. For this reason as well as the senile dementia of his grandfather, Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, Alexander's eldest brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, led Clan Cameron as ''de facto'' chief.

In addition to being taught almost from birth how to live off the land, how to withstand cold and other hardships, and how to always follow the code of conduct demanded of a Scottish clan chief, Cameron was also more formally educated at Glendessary House by tutors. He later attended a boarding school at St. Ninian's near Stirling at the expense of his foster-father.Wynne 2011, pp. 14-15 He was later described as multilingual and, in addition to his native Scottish Gaelic language, also spoke and wrote Ecclesiastical Latin, English, French, and Italian.Wynne 2011, p. 31

As a young man, Cameron travelled to the British West Indies to visit the Colony of Jamaica, where the plantations his eldest brother had purchased as an investment were managed by their youngest brother, Ewan Cameron. He had been sent to Jamaica on raise funds for the family, but was unsuccessful and returned to Scotland. Although the exact regiment has not yet been traced, he then briefly served in the French Royal Army, where he was granted an officer's rank. Around 1727, Cameron had an emotional reunion with his exiled father in France.

Conversion to Catholicism

After this, Alexander Cameron travelled on a Grand Tour throughout Europe. After arriving in the Papal States, Alexander Cameron stayed at the Palazzo Muti in Rome, the home and the government in exile of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, who was known to Whigs as "The Old Pretender" and to Jacobites as, "The King over the Water." Through the influence of his uncle, Alan Cameron, Alexander Cameron was granted a position as an honorary gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince. He would have joined both his Royal master and Maria Clementina Sobieska, the Queen in exile, at formal Roman Feasts, which would also have involved attending the Tridentine Mass when it was accompanied by the liturgical polyphony of Palestrina, Tomas Luis de Vittoria, and many other great composers like them. These experiences are believed to have had an enormous influence upon his future spiritual development.

During his time in Rome, Alexander Cameron converted to Catholicism. Odo Blundell suspected that Alexander Cameron was, "possibly led thereto", by his future Jesuit colleagues, Charles and John Farqhuarson. In reality, a 1730 letter by Alexander Cameron from Boulogne to his brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, and which was first published in a 1994 issue of the ''Innes Review'', attributes his conversion solely to the influence of their uncle Allan Cameron, a fellow household servant of the Prince and Princess who had played a great part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715.

Alexander Cameron explained elsewhere that, while in Rome, he had expressed his desire to become a Catholic to the Stuart king and queen in exile. Both Prince James Francis Edward and Princess Maria Clementina were reportedly overjoyed and immediately arranged for their household servant's instruction and reception into the Catholic Church. The name of the priest who instructed Cameron, as well as the precise location and date of his reception into the Roman Catholic Church, are still unknown.

In the letter sent from Boulogne in 1730, Alexander Cameron wrote to his brother Donald to explain his reasons for converting:

″I doubt not that a piece of extraordinary news, as that of my being converted to the Catholick Faith, and quitting of the religion in which I was bred up, and educat, will at first surprise you and my Relations. I should be sorrie ever to do anything wherby I would run the risque of incurring the displeasure of a Brother whome I so much love and esteeme; but in an affaire of so great Consequence as this is, and wherupon alone my eternall Salvation depends, my first duty is to God."

Cameron's letters indicate that he understood his family would be upset with his religious conversion, but explained, "The missfortoune of such as have been borne in protestante Countreys is that they heard and knowe all that can be invented or said against the Catholick Religion (which upon examination they would soon finde to be calumny) but they never have occasion to know what can be said for them..."

Alexander Cameron admitted with regret to having previously lived a "wilde" life before his conversion, but vowed to make up for his past by seeking to more productively serve the Christian God. He also expressed unconditional love for his brother, his new sister in law, the former Lady Anne Campbell of Auchinbreck, whom he had not yet met, and all other relatives and only asked that they would still be willing to continue loving him and to remain in contact with him,

"If I can not have the pleasure of seeing you and liveing in the same Countrey with you, let me have the satisfaction at a distance of being loved by you as one Brother ought to be by another... if we never are to meet let me at least have the pleasure of corresponding with you, and heareing from you"

At the end of the letter, Alexander Cameron issued instructions to his brother about who within the family was to be given his arms, as giving all one's personal weapons away to male relatives is customary for Gaels who were choosing to enter the clergy or monastic life.

The 1730 letter was accompanied by a 13,000 word memorandum in which Alexander Cameron explained the reasons for his conversion at much greater length.Wynne 2011, pp. 25-26, 29

In the memorandum, Alexander Cameron tells Donald why he thinks that the Clan Cameron should revert to Catholicism and laments that both their clan and dynasty had left the Catholic Church in Scotland. He reminded Donald that their ancestor, the 15th-century chief, Eòghann Beag mac Ailein Camshròn, had built seven Catholic churches throughout Lochaber, including, it is believed, Cille Choirill in Glen Spean, as an act of penance. Cameron also condemned what he called the secularist tendency among many members of the Protestant faiths to leave religion only to their ministers, adding, "Was ye or any Man in possession of an estate told by a Lawier that the charters or rights by which you held your Estate were not valid, and that if ye did not get new Charters, your King or Superior could turn you out when he pleased, would ye not immediately make all the diligent searches in your power... If then we are at so much paines to search and examine into what regards our worldly and momentary interest: how much more ought we to examine into what regards our eternall salvation."

Alexander Cameron's memorandum also quoted from the copy of Samuel Butler's ''Hudibras'', a mid-17th-century ''Don Quixote''-inspired mock epic taking aim at both Puritanism and Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England, which the future Jesuit had borrowed from his elder brother's library before going abroad,

"Call fire and sword and desolation,
A godly thorough Reformation,
Which allways must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done,
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended."

Although historian John S. Gibson believes that Lochiel was, "more than a little nettled at this", the memorandum was also considered so important that Donald Cameron of Lochiel arranged to bind all 48 handwritten pages in calf-skin leather. The resulting volume is now preserved at the National Library of Scotland, while the shorter letter that accompanied the memorandum remains in the Clan Cameron museum in Achnacarry Castle. The value is increased as they are both among the few Lochiel family papers to have "somehow survived the hurried dispersal of papers, plate, and furniture from Achnacarry on the approach of Cumberland's troops after Culloden."

Seminary studies

Alexander Cameron travelled to Douai in 1730. In a 1731 Italian language petition to Franz Retz, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and which still survives, Cameron explained that he had applied to the Scots College in Douai to be allowed to enter the novitiate in Tournai, but had been told that there was difficulty in admitting him. There was already another Scottish novice studying in Tournai and the Scots College could not afford to pay 300 florins a year for another. Reminding the Superior General that he had recently done so for an Irish novice, Cameron asked that the local Jesuit Provincial be ordered to admit him ''gratis''. Cameron also requested, as he was already somewhat older than the usual Jesuit postulant, that he be exempted from teaching after completing his theology studies, as he was also anxious to instead be sent to serve in the missions.

Alexander Cameron entered the Society of Jesus at Tournai on 30 September 1734 and took his first vows there on 1 October 1736. He then studied theology for four years at Douai and did his tertianship for seven months at Armentières. An Ecclesiastical Latin report preserved in the Stonyhurst Manuscripts, signed "Anselmus Battelet", and dated 1740, described Alexander Cameron as healthy, prudent, and (, "endowed with great goodness and every quality"). The report further explained that the Scotsman was, "obedient, humble", and able, "to adapt himself to the character of any nation." He was accordingly recommended for ordination to the priesthood. Although the precise date remains unknown, it ''is'' known that Alexander Cameron was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1740 and, despite the risk of criminal prosecution for violating the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, he returned to his native Scotland in June 1741.

A 1994 article for ''Innes Review'' stated, "It is hard to imagine that the arrival of his brother Alexander was any more more welcome to Lochiel than that of the Young Pretender four years later... the contemporary Whig writer's judgment (concerning the Clan's boast of steady Protestantism since the Reformation) that, 'Popish priests ... eresurprised at their resolution on this point', has a particular relevance to the family's only Catholic clergyman."

Writing in 1746, Rev. Alexander MacBean, the Church of Scotland minister of Inverness, alleged, "The Camerons boast of their being Protestant, and Lochiel hindered the priest his brother to preach among them, when he told them he would bring them from their villainous habit of thieving, if he would allow them to preach, and say Mass among them. His answer was that the people of Glengarry, Knoidart, Arisaig, etc, who were professed papists, were greater thieves than his people, and if he would bring these to be honest and industrious, he would then consider his proposal as to the Camerons, and till he would bring that good work to a bearing, he forbad him to meddle with his people."Wynne 2011, p. 59

By 2011, however, Thomas Wynne had become very skeptical of Rev. MacBean's allegationsWynne 2011, p. 44 and, according to John S. Gibson, there is considerable documentary evidence, "of the warm family feeling which animated the brothers". According to Wynne, the decision to assign Alexander Cameron to the Frasers and Chisholms of Strathglass, rather than as a missionary in his native district, is far more likely to have been made by their "uncle" (in reality their father's first cousin), Bishop Hugh MacDonald, the Vicar Apostolic of the Highland District, than by Donald Cameron of Lochiel. This theory is consistent, according to S.A. MacWilliam, with how the Catholic Church was organized at a time when Scotland was still considered a mission territory and therefore subject to the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith. All priests then serving in Scotland, including Jesuits and those from other religious orders, were assigned to their particular missionary fields at the sole discretion of their respective district's Vicar Apostolic.

The cave in Glen Cannich

"It is almost impossible today to appreciate the extent and vehemence of anti-Catholic sentiment in Scotland at this time. The language of Knox and the ''Book of Discipline'' of 1560 was still being invoked, and it's repetition over nearly a century and a half had succeeded in creating a national '' idée fixe'', according to which Catholicism was an evil to be extirpated, its leader the Man of Sin, its beliefs superstition and its Mass idolatry." For this reason, the State, ministers and elders of the Church of Scotland, parish schoolmasters, and the British armed forces were deemed to have a "God-given duty" to "free those still living in delusion... where the Reformation never obtained." Whenever possible, the Penal Laws, the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, and the other legislation passed by the Scottish Reformation Parliament were used to treat the existence of underground religious communities following Catholicism or Episcopalianism as high treason against the Crown.John Watts (2004), ''Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite, Bishop'', John Donald Press. p. 9.

In contrast, the underground Catholic Vicar General, clergy, and laity of the Highland District, motivated by the doctrine of ''Extra ecclesiam nulla salus

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