Alexander Cameron (priest)

Fr. Alexander Cameron

SJ
Genuflecting on the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans
Scottish Priest, Missionary, Military Chaplain
Born17 September 1701[1]
Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland
Died19 October 1746
Gravesend, Kent, England
Venerated inCatholic Church
Feast19 October
PatronageDifficult Conversions, Military Chaplains, New Evangelisation, Scottish Highlands

Alexander Cameron of Lochiel, S.J. (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Sandaidh, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn) (17 September 1701[1] in Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland[2] – 19 October 1746 in Gravesend, Kent, England) was a Scottish nobleman, who became a Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus.

Cameron was born at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber and was the third son of John Cameron of Lochiel, the 18th chief of Clan Cameron. After being fostered within the clan and raised by relatives in nearby Glendessary House, he travelled in both Catholic Europe and the British West Indies. While employed at the House of Stuart government in exile in the Palazzo Muti in Rome as "an honourary gentleman of the bedchamber" to Prince James Francis Edward Stuart and Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, he converted from the high church and non-juring Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism.[3][4]

After attending the Scots College, Douai and ordination as a priest, he was ordered by the Society of Jesus in 1741 to return to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd. While living with two other Jesuit priests in a mountain cave and shieling near Loch Craskie in Glen Cannich, Cameron ran a ministry throughout The Aird and Strathglass as an outlawed "heather priest"[5] for the illegal Catholic Church. Lord Lovat credited Alexander Cameron with breaking his own health by doing the priestly work of ten men.[6] According to reports by the local Presbyterian Synods, Cameron convinced so many Chisholms and Frasers of Lovat to become, "perverted to Popery", that he unintentionally provoked a 1744 government crackdown at the insistence of the General Assembly of the established church. This crackdown, which was with the collusion of both Lord Lovat and the Chief of Clan Chisholm, ultimately forced Cameron to flee to his native district in the Rough Bounds of Lochaber.[7]

Cameron was assigned by his kinsman, Bishop Hugh MacDonald, 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.[7]

After reportedly carrying his brother off the field after Lochiel was shot through the ankles during the Battle of Culloden,[8] Fr Cameron was captured while in hiding from the British Army at the White Sands of Morar. He was handed over on 12 July 1746 to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone,[9] who, along with fellow Scotsmen Major James Lockhart and Captain Caroline Scott, remains one of the three "most bitterly remembered" figures in the government's post-Culloden pacification campaign in the Highlands and Islands[10][11][12] and who has received the nickname, "the Black Captain of the Forty-Five".[13]

Despite the efforts of Commander in Chief for Scotland Lord Albemarle to have him taken ashore for proper medical treatment,[14] Cameron died of prisoner abuse, the deliberately insanitary rations, starvation, and the conditions of his four month incarceration aboard Fergussone's prison hulk H.M.S. Furnace, then riding at anchor off Gravesend in the River Thames.[15]

Items formerly belonging to Fr Cameron are on permanent display at the Clan Cameron Museum, on the grounds of his birthplace at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber,[16] and at St. Mary and St Bean's Catholic Church at Beauly.[17][18] His first ever book length biography, by a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles,[19] was self-published in 2010. It was based, however, on a foundation of five decades of research and books by many historians including Robert Forbes, John Sibbald Gibson, Bruce Gordon Seton, Odo Blundell, Peter F. Anson, and John Stewart of Ardvorlich.[20] The Knights of St Columba, a Catholic fraternal service order founded in Glasgow in 1919,[21][22] has, among the many other lay evangelization activities of its recently founded chapter among the Millennial and Generation Z students attending the University of Glasgow,[23][24] been making and distributing holy cards since 2020 with a prayer for Alexander Cameron's Canonization as a Saint and a Martyr by the Roman Catholic Church.[25]

  1. ^ a b William Forbes Leith (1909), Memoirs of Scottish Catholics during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. Volume II From Commonwealth to Emancipation, Longman, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London. pp. 340-341.
  2. ^ Oliver, George (1845). Collections Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English, and Irish Members, of the Society of Jesus. C. Dolman.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ 'Cameron Memorandum', MS 20310 in vol. xiv of the National Library of Scotland's Catalogue of Manuscripts acquired since 1925.
  5. ^ "Scalan Ground Floor Plan". www.scalan.co.uk.
  6. ^ Odo Blundell (1909), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland, Volume I, London, pages 187-188.
  7. ^ a b MacWilliam, A. S. (1973). A Highland mission: Strathglass, 1671-1777. IR xxiv. pp. 95–99.
  8. ^ John S. Gibson (1994), Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince, University of Edinburgh Press. pp. 111-112.
  9. ^ Terry, Albemarle Papers, 407-8.
  10. ^ "Who was the most notorious '˜Redcoat' of the 1745 rebellion?"., The Scotsman, 7 March 2018.
  11. ^ John S. Gibson (1967), Ships of the Forty-Five: The Rescue of the Young Pretender, Hutchinson & Co. London. With a Preface by Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, Bart., L.L.D. pp. 44-54.
  12. ^ Maggie Craig (2010), Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh and London. p. 229-239.
  13. ^ John Ferguson, More than Nelson.
  14. ^ Robert Forbes (1895), The Lyon in Mourning: Or a Collection of Speeches, Letters, Journals Etc., Relative to the Affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Volume I, Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society. Pages 312-313.
  15. ^ John S. Gibson (1994), Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince, University of Edinburgh Press. p. 142.
  16. ^ Clan Cameron Museum Official Website
  17. ^ History of the Marydale Church, From the Website "Christianity in Strathglass."
  18. ^ "Rev. John Farquharson, Priest of Strathglass", by Colin Chisholm, The Celtic Magazine, Volume 7 1881-1882, pp. 141-146.
  19. ^ Monsignor Thomas Wynne R.I.P., official website for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles.
  20. ^ Thomas Wynne (2011), The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron, S.J., Print Smith, Fort William, Scotland. "Bibliography", Pages 92-93.
  21. ^ Herbermann, Charles George (1940). The Catholic Encyclopedia. Appleton.
  22. ^ St Charles and Thomas More, Knights of St Columba, Area 9, South Liverpool.
  23. ^ Meet the students flying the flag for Faith at Glasgow University, by Joanna Magoufakis, Scottish Catholic Observer, 1 November 2020.
  24. ^ 1,500-Year-Old Legacy of St. Columba Includes This New Scottish Catholic Pilgrimage, by Kevin J. Jones, National Catholic Observer, 21 June 2022.
  25. ^ Flower of Scotland by Joseph Pearce, from the essay series "The Unsung Heroes of Christendom", Crisis Magazine, 18 May 2024.