Alexander Cameron (priest)

Father Alexander Cameron SJ
Genuflecting on the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans
Personal life
Born	(1701-09-17)17 September 1701 Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland
Died	19 October 1746(1746-10-19) (aged 45) Gravesend, Kent, England
Cause of death	Likely a mixture of typhus and starvation
Resting place	Cemetery of St George's Church, Gravesend 51.44410°N 0.36850°E / 51.44410; 0.36850
Religious life
Religion	Christianity
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Profession	Scottish priest

Alexander Cameron of Lochiel, S.J. (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Sandaidh, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn) (17 September 1701 in Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland – 19 October 1746 in Gravesend, Kent, England) was a Scottish nobleman, who became a Roman Catholic priest and a missionary.

Cameron was born the third son of John Cameron of Lochiel, the chief of Clan Cameron. After being fostered within the clan and raised by relatives, he travelled 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 Roman Catholicism.

After ordination as a priest, he was ordered by the Society of Jesus in 1741 to return to Scotland. Cameron illegally ran a ministry throughout The Aird and Strathglass for the Catholic Church. 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.

Family background

Achnacarry Castle

Arms of Clan Cameron of Lochiel

Alexander Cameron was born on 17 September 1701 at Achnacarry. He was 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.

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. "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

The river below Glendessary House, Lochaber

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 (Scottish Gaelic: Iain mac Aonghas Bheag), 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. 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. 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.

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

Palazzo Muti, Rome.

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.

Prince James, nicknamed the 'Old Pretender' by Whigs

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.

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

The Jesuit Church in Tournai where Alexander Cameron made his vows in 1736

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.

The 3 Colleges at Douai.

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 (Latin: "est indolis valde bonae atquae omnis tractabis, "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 ... [were] surprised 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."

By 2011, however, Thomas Wynne had become very skeptical of Rev. MacBean's allegations 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

The River Glass running through Strathglass.

"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.

In contrast, the underground Catholic Vicar General, clergy, and laity of the Highland District, motivated by the doctrine of Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, were equally determined to, "hold onto those followers they had and wherever possible win back others... For both sides the issue was a matter of (spiritual) life and death."

Meanwhile, Alexander Cameron lived with and shared his priestly ministry in Strathglass with two fellow Jesuits whom he had first met as fellow seminarians in Douai. John Farquharson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Iain, an-tAthair Iain Mac Fhearchair) was a veteran "heather priest" and early collector of local Scottish Gaelic literature. He often travelled disguised in a kilt and tartan hose to evade capture by the priest hunters. They were also joined by Charles Farquharson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Teàrlach, an t-Athair Teàrlach Mac Fhearchair), Maighstir Iain's brother.

Even reports from anti-Catholic sources confirm that Cameron was very successful as a missionary in the country of Clan Chisholm and Clan Fraser. In a 27 April 1743 report from Dingwall (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Pheofharain) to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, local Presbyterian ministers noted that Cameron, who "hath lately settled in the part of Strathglass that pertains to Lord Lovet, and is employed as a Popish Missionary in that neighbourhood and Glenstrathfarrar... a greater number have been perverted to Popery in these parts within the last few months than thirty years before. The Presbytery do instruct their Commissioners to urge the General Assembly to... take special care for providing these corners, not only with a well-qualified preacher, but also with a Catechist and Schoolmaster, and that the Assembly give proper order for executing the laws against Messrs. John Farquharson and Alexander Cameron."

Loch Craskie in Glen Cannich, from the southeast.

During his Victorian era interviews with Alexander Chisholm of Craskie, the grandnephew of John Farquharson's clerk, The Celtic Magazine correspondent Colin Chisholm was shown the three priests' former residence and secret Mass house, which was located inside a cave still referred to as (Scottish Gaelic: Glaic na h'eirbhe, lit. "the hollow of the hard-life"), and which was located underneath the cliff of a big boulder at Brae of Craskie, near Beauly (Scottish Gaelic: A' Mhanachainn) in Glen Cannich (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Chanaich). Odo Blundell considered Colin Chisholm's sources of information to be credible and used his article as a source.

When Cameron's conversion letter was first published in a 1994 issue of Innes Review, Wynne commented about the cave dwelling, "It was in the nature of a summer shieling (Scottish Gaelic: Àirigh), a command centre for monitoring the traditional activities of cattle reivers; as such it combined a civilising role with the building up of a Catholic mission outside Cameron territory in a way which must have reassured Lochiel on both counts."

This secret cave dwelling commanded a wide view of the surrounding landscape, which further allowed the three Jesuits to keep watch for anyone, whether anti-Catholic civilians or detachments of government troops, who might be coming to arrest them. The cave at Brae of Craskie accordingly remained the centre of the Catholic mission in Lochaber at the time, where Cameron and the two brothers secretly ministered to the local Catholics and, whenever possible, they secretly visited the covert "Mass houses" at Fasnakyle, Crochail, Strathfarrar (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Farair), and at Balanahaun.

According to local historian Flora Forbes, Alexander Cameron, "ministered principally to the people of Lower Strathglass and in Glenstrathfarrar." Also, "a Catholic chapel at this time anywhere throughout the Highlands was usually a barn-like structure, with no windows and a mud floor."

Cameron caught what is believed to have been pneumonia and almost died at this residence due to its coldness, but still refused to retreat to Beaufort Castle because he considered it his priestly duty to minister to the people of Glen Cannich throughout the winter. On 26 January 1743, Lord Lovat, a practicing Catholic whose changes of allegiance attracted the nickname "the Fox" (Scottish Gaelic: an t-Sionnach), wrote from Beaufort Castle to Lochiel, begging him to order his brother to the castle, where Lovat promised to "furnish him with all the conveniences of Life". Lovat further pleaded with Lochiel, saying, "I beg you to use your endeavours to get an order from his superiors to make him remove to a milder climate; they cannot in honor and conscience refuse it, for he has done already more good to his Church than any ten of his profession has done these ten years past, except your uncle (Bishop Hugh MacDonald) who is so famous for making converts."Cameron still refused to go.

On 1 May 1744, the presbytery of Inverness resolved that something had to be done urgently about, "the great growth of Popery in the country of Strathglass where Allexr. Cameron and John Farquharson, Popish priests, have been trafficking for considerable time past and have their constant residence and their public Mass-houses". An appeal was made to the General Assembly, "that the Assembly may fall on effective methods to stop this contagion and particularly that they appoint a committee of their number to represent this matter to the Lord Justices Clerk, that the law may be put into execution against these priests, and proper orders given for demolishing these Mass-houses". The Presbytery further reported that the chief of Clan Chisholm had recently, "promised to protect the officers of the law in demolishing the Mass-houses in his ground, and the Presbytery expect the same of the Lord Lovat, his Lordship having written to this Presbytery, that he would, what in him lay, discourage priests and Popery in his bounds."

Whenever it was not possible for the three priests to safely leave Glen Cannich, their parishioners would come to the cave at Brae of Craskie for Mass, the sacraments, and, especially, for the illegal Catholic baptisms of their children. A Bullaun, or natural cup stone, known as (Scottish Gaelic: Clach a Bhaistidh, lit. "the stone of the baptism") was used by the three priests as a baptismal font. According to Colin Chisholm of Lietry, the cup stone had been used for performing baptisms, "from time immemorial". This may mean that, similarly to what was common practice at the time among persecuted Catholic Gaels in Ireland, the natural cup stone had been brought to the cave from the ruins of a local church or monastery dating from before the Scottish Reformation, such as the former Celtic Church monastery at Clachan Comair, which is alleged locally to have been founded by St Baithéne as a daughter foundation of Iona Abbey, or the 13th-century Valliscaulian Order monastery still known as Beauly Priory. This explanation is plausible, as what Marcus Tanner has termed, "the links between the region and Ireland", still remained very strong. Before a Highland minor seminary had been founded, first at Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar and then moved to Scalan in Glenlivet, Catholics in the Gàidhealtachd of Scotland were largely ministered to by Ulster Irish-speaking missionary priests sent by the Catholic Church in Ireland. At least two such Irish priests, Frs. Hugh Ryan and Vincent White, are known to have served under the Penal Laws in Strathglass. Fortunately for the Jesuits and their many secret visitors, the entrance to the cave was so well hidden that the three priests successfully eluded, "all attempts of the local garrison to find them".

In July of 1744, the Presbytery of Inverness announced that they were credibly informed that, in Clan Chisholm territory, "Mass was being said publicly in a house built for that purpose while the two Mass-houses at Crochail and in Strathfarrar, which had been shut by order of Lord Lovat, were now open again, one of them for the accommodation of Alexander Cameron. It was agreed on 3 July to write to Lord Lovat, desiring him to put such effectual stop to the progress of this priest by demolishing the Mass-houses and turning the priest out of the country."

Shortly before the Jacobite rising of 1745, John Farquharson informed his two colleagues that a detachment sent by the chief of Clan Chisholm was on the way to arrest them. He suggested, "Let us go to meet them then, and save them the trouble of coming all this way for us." Cameron and Charles Farquharson declined this suggestion and, seeking to buy time for his fellow priests to escape, John Farquharson walked towards the detachment, met them, and surrendered to them. One Protestant member of the detachment, Iain Bàn Chisholm, is alleged to have first told the Jesuit that he was wanted at the Chief's judgment seat at Clachan Comar and then to have physically assaulted Farquharson before they took him into custody. For this reason, the field where the priest surrendered was afterwards known as (Scottish Gaelic: Achadh beulath an tuim, "The field of the frontal blow").

In a 4 September 1744 meeting, the Presbytery announced that they had received assurance from Mr. Shaw of Petty that Lord Lovat had followed their request, the recent arrest of Farqhuarson at Brae of Craskie, and the flight of Cameron and Charles Farquharson from Clan Fraser's territory.

Following his arrest, Farquharson managed to secretly send word to his fellow underground priests in Glengarry country to look after the Catholic population in Strathglass until his return. Charles Farquharson is known to have been hidden by his kinfolk in the vale of Braemar. Cameron, on the other hand, is known to have sought and received the protection of his eldest brother at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber.

"Bishop Hugh must have been equally saddened by the news of Farquharson's arrest, and also moved by his heroism and self-sacrifice for his fellow priests. He knew that he had lost one of his finest priests on whom he had come to depend so much. However, he would have been consoled by the fact that Cameron was safe and enjoying a well-earned rest with his family at Achnacarry, where he would be secure, well looked after, and nursed back to health."

Jacobite rising of 1745

Main article: Jacobite rising of 1745

(Scottish Gaelic: An bratach bhàn), the Jacobite Standard of the 1745 Uprising.

According to Bishop John Geddes, as outlawed clergymen of an illegal and underground church denomination, it is understandable why both Bishop Hugh MacDonald and Alexander Cameron would have felt very hopeful about Jacobitism, due the House of Stuart's promises of Catholic Emancipation, freedom of religion, and civil rights to everyone outside the established churches of the realm. Due to the ongoing religious persecution they faced, many members of Scottish Catholic laity were just as hopeful about a Stuart Restoration, which seemed poised to restore to them the rights and privileges of "free-born citizens."

Alexander Cameron's Nonjuring Episcopalian brothers felt similar hopes for virtually identical reasons. Both the Bishop and Lochiel, though, had expected Prince Charles Edward Stuart to arrive at Loch nan Uamh with a larger military force than the Seven Men of Moidart and only agreed to support the Jacobite rising of 1745 with great reluctance.

Alexander Cameron, who is believed to have been present when Bishop MacDonald blessed the Jacobite Army standard before its raising at Glenfinnan, was one of the priests of the Highland district whom the bishop reluctantly assigned as military chaplains with a captain's rank. According to the muster roll, Donald Cameron of Lochiel's regiment had three military chaplains: non-jurant and unregistered Presbyterian minister John Cameron of Fort William, non-jurant Episcopalian rector Duncan Cameron of Fortingall, and Catholic priest Alexander Cameron, "brother to Lochiel". Cameron's other brother, Dr. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, appears in the muster as "ADC to the prince."

John S. Gibson has written, "In all, Lochiel's tolerant approach to religion was in marked contrast to that of the Protestant Keppoch Chief. Early on in the rising, Keppoch would bring about large desertions from his mainly Catholic following by denying them a padre of their own religion."

Jacobite military chaplains wore their own distinctive tartan, and were equipped with a pistol and a sword, but only as an insignia of their rank. Chaplains were non-combatants, because, as Wynne explains, "the hands that had been anointed to bless and to administer the sacraments would not be raised in anger to strike a foe."

For this reason, Alexander Cameron's duties would have involved saying Mass, administering the sacraments, and caring on the battlefield for the wounded and dying, rather than fighting.

David Morier's depiction of the 1745 Battle of Culloden – An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745

On the evening before the Battle of Culloden, Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass on the battlefield for the Catholics of his regiment, while wearing a tartan chasuble. During the ensuing battle, the conduct of the Clan Cameron regiment received high praise in subsequent reports by Hanoverian officer James Wolfe. Donald Cameron of Lochiel, however, was shot through his ankles and carried off the field by four of his clansmen, two of whom were later alleged by John Home, based on interviews with John Cameron of Fassiefern, to have been Lochiel's brothers, Dr. Archibald and Alexander Cameron.

According to a later report by Bishop John Geddes, at least one Catholic military chaplain lost his life, either during the battle itself or as part of the no quarter given afterwards to the Jacobite army; Alexander Cameron's maternal uncle, Colin Campbell of Lochnell, whose body was never found. At least one other Catholic military chaplain, John Tyrie, who was assigned to the Jacobite army regiment from Banffshire commanded by John Gordon of Glenbucket, received two gashes on his head from a cavalryman's sabre, but survived the Battle of Culloden.

Furthermore, non-juring bishop Robert Forbes later wrote, "[MacPherson of Breakachie and MacPherson of Benchar] joined in affirming it to be their opinion that the Camerons suffered the loss of three hundred good men from first to last."

After the Battle of Culloden

See also: Raids on Lochaber and Shiramore

After Culloden: Rebel Hunting by John Seymour Lucas depicts the rigorous search for Jacobites during (Scottish Gaelic: Bliadhna nan Creach "The Year of the Pillaging").

According to John Geddes, "Immediately after the Battle of Culloden, orders were issued for the demolishing all the Catholic chapels and for apprehending the priests." Historian John Watts confirms that this policy was followed by government troops and that, "In doing so, they appear to have been acting on official orders."

While the prince's secret movements as a fugitive after Culloden are well-documented, those of other fugitives are often harder to trace. For example, while the region where Alexander Cameron's kinsman, Bishop Hugh MacDonald, was in hiding is known as a general location, the Bishop always said in later years only that he, "lurked the best way he could." If the statements of John Cameron of Fassiefern to John Home are correct, Alexander Cameron is likely to have remained with his brothers Donald and Dr. Archibald Cameron for at least part of their flight from the field of Culloden. According to Lochiel's own written report to Louis XV, after being wounded and carried from the battlefield, he and those who travelled with him had gone first to the house of their relative, Ewen MacPherson of Cluny. Furthermore, Thomas Wynne believes that Alexander Cameron was one of those who barely escaped arrest when government troops surprised a secret clan gathering called by Lochiel near Achnacarry Castle on 15 May 1746, before going back into hiding.

Further complicating Alexander Cameron's flight and survival, the Hanoverian military had enacted a scorched earth policy in order to force former rebels to come out of hiding by leaving neither houses where they could seek shelter nor any food supplies that they could be given by the civilian population.

On 28 May 1746, government soldiers from Bligh's Regiment, under the command of Lt.-Col. Edward Cornwallis, and the Independent Highland Company, commanded by George Munro, 1st of Culcairn, burned Alexander Cameron's birthplace of Achnacarry Castle to the ground. Culcairn and his unit were also responsible, according to Geddes, for the burning of multiple "Mass houses", priestly vestments, and other similar items in Cameron country. Wynne believes, instead of escaping back to Badenoch with his brothers after the burning of their birthplace, Alexander Cameron remained behind in The Rough Bounds of Lochaber.

His biographer Thomas Wynne believes Alexander Cameron fled from Achnacarry Castle to Borrodale Bay, and then remained in hiding along the Atlantic coast, near Morar and Arisaig. The population of this region remained staunchly Roman Catholic and, more importantly, Borrodale Bay, Morar, and Arisaig were part of the estates of Clan MacDonald of Clanranald, which, unlike those of the other Jacobite Clan Chiefs, had escaped forfeiture to the Crown by using a minor loophole under Scots property law. Furthermore, Alexander Cameron's kinsman, Hugh MacDonald, the underground Catholic Bishop and Vicar General of the Highland District, was hiding in the same region, as were at least two other Catholic priests.

The sands at Morar.

Even so, in July 1746, British Army Commander in Chief for Scotland Lord Albemarle was informed that Cameron had just been surprised and captured by a detachment of government troops commanded by Captain McNiel while hiding at the White Sands of Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Mòrar) and then handed over to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone (c.1708-1767), whose ship was then cruising off the island of Raasay (Scottish Gaelic: Ratharsair). The Albemarle Papers, which are believed to be based on a now lost second ship's log of H.M.S. Furnace, give Alexander Cameron's date of arrival onboard as 12 July 1746.

H.M.S. Furnace

Captain John Fergussone of H.M.S. Furnace was a native of Old Meldrum, near Inverurie (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Uaraidh) in Aberdeenshire. During the Skirmish of Loch nan Uamh and the later Seven Years' War, he proved very successful as officer commanding in "those lengthy ship to ship engagements which distinguished naval war in that century" and his tactical advice to Admiral Edward Boscawen led to the British victory at the 1758 Siege of Louisbourg. These all have revealed Captain Fergussone as "the very stuff of Britain's naval greatness". Even so, John Fergussone was also, according to non-juring Episcopal Church Bishop Robert Forbes, "a man remarkable for his cruelties... Even in his younger years he was remarkable for a cruel turn of mind among his school fellows and companions, and therefore he is the fitter tool for William the Cruel."

During "the year of the pillaging", Captain Fergussone and his crew, "[were] responsible for so much destruction and death on the West Coast", that even though more than two centuries have passed since the, "inhumanity and contempt for authority that he displayed throughout", his quest for Jacobites and for the £30,000 bounty promised for the capture of the prince, he remains not only notorious, but has both taken "his place in Jacobite demonology." Fergussone also received, even in his own lifetime, the nickname, "the Black Captain of the Forty-Five." "Fergussone came from a family with a long tradition of enmity towards the Stuarts"; but his actions may also have been motivated by a belief that, as a Scotsman serving the Hanoverian government, he, "had something to prove."

As a newly arrived prisoner aboard H.M.S. Furnace, Cameron joined Fr. James Grant of Barra, Lord Lovat, Captain Félix O'Neille y O'Neille, the 70-year old chief of Clan MacKinnon, the two men who smuggled Prince Charles Edward from Skye to Morar, all 38 Jacobite Army veterans from Eigg, briefly Flora MacDonald, at least two non-jurant Episcopal ministers, and many other Catholic priests.

In addition to once having, "had a Skyeman flogged insensible for having been the prince's boatman", Captain Fergussone, according to the Jesuit's sister in law, similarly "brutalised" Cameron by denying him a bed and instead placing him in iron chains among the ropes and cables of the Furnace as she cruised up and down the notoriously cold and rainy west coast of Scotland. This behaviour was not only motivated by anti-Catholicism, as Captain Fergussone treated non-juring Episcopal ministers aboard the Furnace, with the same deliberate and unnecessary cruelty. "Captain John Fergussone [was] an Aberdeenshire man with an Aberdeenshire man's antipathy towards Highlanders".

Fergussone tended to use interrogation methods now considered torture overwhelmingly against prisoners whom he suspected of withholding information about the location of the prince or of other fugitives with similarly large bounties promised for their capture.

Unfortunately for Fergussone's Jesuit prisoner, during the summer of 1746, "The capture of the Cameron chief was seen as the main objective." What is worse during the aftermath of Culloden, Alexander Cameron's immediate superior, underground Catholic bishop Hugh MacDonald, was being hunted for just as doggedly by the Hanoverian government and it's military.

According to detailed notes taken by Robert Forbes after interviewing Jean Cameron of Dungallon, the Jesuit's sister-in-law, Cameron fell seriously ill aboard the Furnace and complaints were duly made about John Fergussone's treatment of Lochiel's brother to senior officers in the British armed forces. In response to these complaints, Lord Albemarle, who had replaced the Duke of Cumberland as British Army Commander in Chief for Scotland, assigned a doctor to visit the prisoners aboard HMS Furnace. After the doctor, "returned and said if Mr. Cameron was not brought ashore or was better assisted he must die soon by neglect and ill-usage", Lord Albemarle immediately sent a party aboard "with an order to Ferguson to deliver up Mr. Cameron". In reply, Captain Fergussone, "said he was his prisoner and he would not deliver him up to any person without an express order from the Duke of Newcastle or the Lords of the Admiralty". Other friends of the priest then attempted to deliver proper bedding and "other necessities" to the Furnace, but Captain Fergussone, "swore if they offered to put them on board he would sink them and their boat directly. The Captain soon afterwards sailed..."

As HMS Furnace sailed around the North of Scotland via Inverness towards London, each prisoner was to be given a daily ration of 1/2 lbs. of food, "brought in foul nasty buckets", and into which, according to survivors, Fergussone's crew occasionally used to urinate, "as an ill-natured diversion". Due to severe overcrowding, however, even this ration of food was often diluted with seawater or withheld completely. Furthermore, an epidemic of typhus broke out in the hold and many prisoners succumbed to the disease or the deliberate starvation well before the ship ever reached the River Thames. At such times, both the dead and even emaciated prisoners who were still dying were taken out of the hold and thrown into the sea. "For Alexander Cameron, whose health had been broken at the hands of Captain Fergussone even before his imprisonment, the voyage was an agony."

In what almost certainly further contributed to what Wynne has termed Fergussone's, "personal vindictiveness against Fr. Cameron", on the sixth rescue attempt, the prince, Lochiel, Dr Archibald Cameron, and Bishop Hugh MacDonald were successfully evacuated from Loch nan Uamh to France on 19 September 1746.

Death and burial

Portsmouth Harbour with Prison Hulks, painted by French corsair and survivor of eight years incarceration aboard Royal Navy prison hulks Ambroise Louis Garneray (1783-1857).

By the time HMS Furnace finally reached the Thames and anchored off the coast of Gravesend as a prison hulk for those too ill to be transferred elsewhere or transported to the British West Indies for sale to the sugar planters, Cameron was already near death. By this time, an estimated 900 real and suspected Jacobites were imprisoned aboard the H.M.S. Furnace and the other prison hulks anchored in the Thames, under similarly inhumane and insanitary conditions, which are confirmed by Whig eyewitnesses and primary sources, such as the inspection reports of surgeon Dr. Minshaw.

"The total mortality in the prison ships must have been enormous because of the semi-starvation, disease, and semi-clad condition of the men. It is estimated that out of the first batch of five hundred and sixty four prisoners transported to the Thames in June 1746, one hundred and fifty seven died in five weeks after their arrival."

Historians John Watts and Maggie Craig have both alleged that Alexander Cameron was first removed from the Furnace, imprisoned at Inverness, and then transported to the River Thames aboard a different prison ship. "From the evidence that is available, it appears that Fr Alexander was not transferred to the prison hulks at anchor in the Thames, but was kept aboard the Furnace, by Fergussone, in the hell-hole which he had endured for more than four months. He was a desperately ill man by now. As a result of the ravages of starvation, rampant infection, disease, the cold and damp, which he could not resist with such flimsy clothing, his condition was weakening all the time. He had now lost the comfort and consolation of his fellow priests, as they had been transferred to other ships, and those prisoners who were left in the stinking hold of the Furnace were by this stage probably too weak to be moved and would have died if an attempt had been made to transfer them."

The Jesuit's sister in law, Mrs. Jean Cameron of Dungallon, also alleges that Alexander Cameron remained aboard H.M.S. Furnace both during and after the voyage to the Thames.

Even had Alexander Cameron been willing to abjure Roman Catholicism by taking the Test Act as well as to inform Captain Fergussone where to find the Prince, his brothers, and Bishop MacDonald, there is a distinct possibility that it still would not have mattered. In a 1779 letter to Robert Forbes, Jacobite Army veteran John Farquharson of Aldlerg, who survived more than a year at Inverness Gaol and then aboard a Thames prison hulk, denounced the conditions in both as worse than being sold into the Barbary slave trade. According to Farquharson, Christians enslaved by the Barbary pirates who recited the Shahada and underwent conversion to Islam were immediately set free from slavery in obedience to Sharia Law. In contrast, POWs who formally renounced Jacobitism and swore an oath of allegiance to the House of Hanover were not released and continued to "meet the same usage, because they loved [the Stuarts] once". Farquharson continued, "The gallys is nothing to it, for there they have meat with their labour and confinement. Even the Inquisition itself is nothing to our scene."

Robert Forbes wrote about the Furnace in The Lyon in Mourning, "the beef they got was so bad and black that they could not take it for anything else but horse flesh or carrion. ...When Donald [MacLeod] was asked how the beef went down with them, he replied, (Modern Scots: 'O what is it that will not go down wi' a hungry stomack? I can assure you we made no scruple to eat anything that came our way.')."

In the same 1779 letter, John Farquharson of Aldlerg recalled, "Oh Heavens! What a scene open to my eyes and nose all at once; the wounded feltering in their gore and blood; some dead bodies covered quite over with piss and dirt, the living standing in the middle in it, their groans would have pierced a heart of stone..."

Bishop Forbes continues, "Almost all those that were in the same ship with Donald and Malcolm [MacLeod] were once so sick that they could scarcely stretch out their hands to one another... at last there was a general sickness that raged among all the prisoners on board the different ships, which could not fail to be the case when (as both Donald and Malcolm positively affirmed) they were sometimes fed with the beeves that had died of the disease that was then raging among the horned cattle in England."

St George's Church in Gravesend, Kent with a statue of Pocahontas in the foreground.

After the cries of a dying Catholic prisoner for a priest were heard by the captains of the surrounding prison hulks, Captain Fergussone grudgingly allowed John Farquarson to board HMS Furnace to minister to his dying fellow priest. An emaciated Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass while Farquharson served him at the altar. Soon after, Cameron died, after first receiving Holy Communion and the Last Rites, and with Farquarson by his side on 19 October 1746. Cameron's remains were taken ashore and buried in unconsecrated ground in the nearest graveyard to the ship: the Church of England cemetery attached to St George's Church, Gravesend, which also holds the grave of Pocahontas.

The news soon reached Cameron's fellow Jesuits at the Scots College in Douai. On 2 January 1747, the Rector, Alexander Crookshank, wrote to Franz Retz, the General of the Society of Jesus, "I have lately received news of the wretched and afflicted state of our mission. We have lost that fine missionary and religious, Fr. Alex. Cameron, who was captured in June last and put in chains in a man-of-war where he bore all kinds of insults and cruelty with unconquerable patience and Christian fortitude and where he contracted a deadly disease. He was finally taken to the fort of Tilbury (sic) where he died last month (sic). Frs. John and Charles Farquarson are imprisoned in the same place."

According to Gravesend Historical Society president Tony Larkin, the surrounding area was very anti-Catholic and anti-Jacobite in the 1740s and any Catholics or Jacobites who died locally were listed in burial records as "unknown", even if their names were known. Alexander Cameron, therefore, is believed to rest in an unmarked singular or mass grave whose location in the churchyard cannot be precisely determined.

Veneration and sainthood cause

Part of the tartan chasuble that Cameron wore during Mass on the eve of the Battle of Culloden was donated to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by Angus John Campbell, 20th hereditary captain of Dunstaffnage Castle. It is preserved as a relic in the manse of St Columba's Cathedral in Oban, and has been on loan to the Clan Cameron Museum at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber since 2011.

The bullaun, or natural cup stone, used as a font in the cave at Glen Cannich was eventually removed from the cave following Catholic Emancipation and during the later Victorian era, "in order to protect it from damage", by Black Watch Regiment Captain Archibald Macrae Chisholm, the widowed husband of John and Charles Farquharson's grandniece, as a memorial to his late wife. Chisholm placed the font upon a stone column, where it is now venerated as a relic on the grounds of St Mary and St. Bean's Roman Catholic Church at Marydale, Beauly, Glen Cannich. In memory of Alexander Cameron and the many other outlawed priests of the Society of Jesus who served despite the Penal Laws in Strathglass, Captain Chisholm also constructed a holy well dedicated to St. Ignatius Loyola at Glassburn House. The stone crucifix from the former "Mass house" at Fasnakyle was built into the cairn that tops the well.

Cameron also appears in a 1927-1929 tapestry commissioned by John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute entitled The Prayer for Victory, Prestonpans 1745 by William Skeoch Cummings. The tapestry depicts the Cameron Regiment of the Jacobite Army kneeling in prayer before the Battle of Prestonpans. Cameron is shown genuflecting in the left.

In 2011, after decades of research with the assistance of the Lochiel family, Monsignor Thomas Wynne (1930 - 2020), a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles long assigned to St. Margaret's Church in Roybridge (Scottish Gaelic: Drochaid Ruaidh), Lochaber, self-published a book-length biography of Cameron, "The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J.".

A Knights of St Columba council at the University of Glasgow has been distributing holy cards since 2020 with a prayer for Alexander Cameron's canonization as a saint and a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church. As shown by a photograph on its website, these holy cards are also available at the Clan Cameron Museum on the grounds of Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber. The cards express "the hope that [Cameron] will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession."

General references

• Wynne, Thomas (2011). The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron, S.J. Thomas Wynne. (Wynne 2011 in citations below).
• Forbes, Robert (1895). Paton, Henry (ed.). The Lyon in mourning : or, A collection of speeches, letters, journals etc. relative to the affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Edinburgh, Printed at the University press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish history society.
  • Volume 1 (Forbes vol. 1 in citations below)
  • Volume 2 (Forbes vol. 2 in citations below)
  • Volume 3 (Forbes vol. 3 in citations below)
• Blundell, Frederick Odo (1909). The Catholic Highlands of Scotland: the Central Highlands. Vol. 1. Edinburgh: Sands. (Blundell 1909 in citations below).
• Blundell, Frederick Odo (1917). The Catholic Highlands of Scotland: the Western Highlands and Islands. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: Sands. (Blundell 1917 in citations below).
• Forbes-Leith, William (1909). Memoirs of Scottish Catholics during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. London: Longmans, Green. (Forbes-Leith 1909 in citations below).

Further reading

Books

• Peter Anson (1970), Underground Catholicism in Scotland, Self-Published.
• Ronald Black (2016), The Campbells of the Ark: Men of Argyll in 1745. Volume I: The Inner Circle, Birlinn Limited
• Ronald Black (2017), The Campbells of the Ark: Men of Argyll in 1745. Volume II: The Outer Circle, John MacDonald Press.
• Maggie Craig (2010), Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh and London.
• John S. Gibson (1967), Ships of the '45: The Rescue of the Young Pretender, Hutchinson & Co. London. With a Preface by Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, Bart., L.L.D.
• John S. Gibson (1994), Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince, University of Edinburgh Press. Foreword by Sir Donald Cameron of Lochiel.
• John Grant (1910), Legends of the Braes o' Mar, A. Murray, Aberdeen.
• Charles MacDonald (2011), Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Birlinn Limited
• Bruce Gordon Seton (1928), Prisoners of the Forty-Five, Scottish History Society.
• John Stewart of Ardvorlich (1971), The Camerons: A History of Clan Cameron, Clan Cameron Association.
• John Watts (2004), Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite, Bishop, John Donald Press.

Periodicals

• "Rev. John Farquharson, Priest of Strathglass", by Colin Chisholm, The Celtic Magazine, Volume 7 1881-1882, pp. 141-146.
• "A Highland Mission: Strathglass, 1671-1777", by Very Rev. Alexander Canon Mac William, Volume XXIV, Innes Review, pp. 75-102.
• "The Conversion of Alexander Cameron", by Thomas Wynne, Volume XLV, Innes Review, Autumn 1994, pp. 178-187.
• Roberts, A. (2020). "Jesuits in the Highlands: Three Phases". Journal of Jesuit Studies, 7(1), pp. 103-115.

External links

• Flower of Scotland by Joseph Pearce, from the essay series "The Unsung Heroes of Christendom", Crisis Magazine, 18 May 2024.
• The Catholic Mission in Strathglass. Fr. Æneas Mackenzie’s Memoirs of 1846, Official Website for the International Clan Chisholm Society
• Clan Cameron Museum Official Website (Includes photographs of Alexander Cameron's 1730 conversion letter, the surviving piece of his tartan priestly vestments, and the holy card based on the "Prayer for Victory" Tapestry)
• History of the Marydale Church, From the Website "Christianity in Strathglass." (Includes a photograph of the Baptismal Font from the Cave at Brae of Craskie in Glen Cannich).
• Apology for his conversion to Roman Catholicism by Alexander Cameron, a younger son of John Cameron of Lochiel, and subsequently a Jesuit missioner in Scotland., Archives and Manuscript Catalogue, National Library of Scotland
• A Short Memoir of The Mission of Strathglass By John Boyd, Antigonish, Printed at Malignant Cove, 1850.
• The Part Played by the People of Strathglass in the Survival and Revival of the Faith in the Highlands by Flora Forbes (written for the 150th Anniversary of St Mary's Church in Eskadale, in 1977).