Alexander Cameron (priest)

Fr. Alexander Cameron S.J. Roman Catholic Priest, Outlawed Missionary, Military Chaplain, Catholic Martyr
Before the Battle of Prestonpans
Personal details
Born	17 September 1701 Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland
Died	19 October 1746 Gravesend, Kent, England
Sainthood
Feast day	12th July, 19th October
Patronage	Difficult Conversions, Military Chaplains, New Evangelisation, Scottish Highlands

Alexander Cameron S.J. (Scottish Gaelic language: Maighstir Sandaidh Camshròn, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn (17 September 1701 – 19 October 1746) was a Scottish nobleman who became a Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus during the 1560-1829 religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Scotland. After serving as a missionary to Clan Fraser of Lovat and Clan Chisholm, he became a Jacobite Army Captain and military chaplain, who died after Culloden while being held under inhumane conditions by the Royal Navy as a prisoner of war. His Canonization by the Catholic Church is being actively promoted.

Cameron was born into Clan Cameron as the second son of 18th chief John Cameron of Lochiel, was the grandson of 17th chief Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who had led the clan during the Bishops' Wars, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and at the Battle of Killiecrankie. Through both his father and mother, Isobel Campbell of Lochnell, Cameron was closely related to the chiefs and nobility of many other Highland clans. After being fostered and raised by relatives at Glendessary House and his Grand Tour in both Catholic Europe and the British West Indies, Cameron lived in Rome as a groom of the bedchamber to Prince James Francis Edward Stuart at the Palazzo Muti.

In Rome, he converted from the Non-Juring and Anglo-Catholic Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism. He then entered the Scots College in Douai, was ordained as a Jesuit priest, and returned to Scotland as a strictly illegal missionary. While living in a cave and secret Catholic chapel in Glen Cannich along with legendary fellow outlawed "heather priests" Frs. John and Charles Farquharson, he ran a highly successful 1741-1744 ministry in and around Strathglass. After their success provoked a government crackdown at the insistence of the General Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland, Alexander Cameron, who was in extremely poor health at the time, fled to his native district in Lochaber.

After the arrival of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobite Army standard raising at Glenfinnan, Cameron was assigned as a military chaplain to the regiment commanded by his brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, and served in this position for the rest of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

While in hiding after the Battle of Culloden, Fr. Cameron was captured by Campbell of Argyll Militia Captain Lachlan MacNiel at Morar and handed over to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone of HMS Furnace on 12 July 1746. Despite interrogation under torture, Cameron held out for more than two weeks and even then gave Captain Fergussone only deliberately misleading information about the locations of the Prince and certain other high profile fugitives with very high bounties promised for their capture. Despite the efforts of Lord Albemarle to have him taken ashore for proper medical treatment, Alexander Cameron died four months later of disease, starvation, and the many other hardships of being held as a prisoner of war aboard the Furnace, which was then a prison hulk anchored off Gravesend in the River Thames.

While those responsible for his death were reviled in verse by Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and John MacCodrum, two of the greatest poets of the 18th-century "Golden Age" of Scottish Gaelic literature, Fr Alexander Cameron was long forgotten by history. So much so, in fact, that despite their 1740-1744 monopoly on serving the Catholics of Clan Fraser of Lovat, Father Cameron and the Farquharson brothers do not appear as characters in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of romance novels or their adaptation into a television series.

His first book length biography was published in 2011. Similarly to fellow Catholic military chaplains Willie Doyle, Rupert Mayer, Max Josef Metzger, Emil Kapaun, and Vincent R. Capodanno, since 2020 Alexander Cameron has been actively promoted for Roman Catholic Canonization by the Knights of St Columba at the University of Glasgow, by well-known Catholic biographer Joseph Pearce, and by the Scottish parishes of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Ancestry

A romanticized Victorian era depiction of a Clan Cameron member.

"Cha tearma tigeadh ceart oirnn

'Prasgan nan Garbh-chrìoch'

Ach cruithneachd nan gaisgeach

Chuir ceartas am fear-ghnìomh,

Fìor-eitean nan curaidh

An am curaidse dhearbhadh,

Luchd-bhualaidh nam buillean

Ann an cumasg nan dearg-chneadh."

"Unjustly they termed us

'The Mob from the Highlands'

We were the flower of the heroes

Who to manly deeds trusted,

The true kernel of valour

When courage was proven,

Who stout blows were a-striking

In the red-wounding contest."

~Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c.1700-1770), translated by John Lorne Campbell.

According to Celticist Ronald Black, the surname Cameron is believed to be derived either from the Scottish Gaelic Camshròn, meaning "crooked nose", or from the Pictish or Old Welsh term Cam Bron, meaning "crooked hill."

The Clan Cameron descends from the tribal confederation known as the Mael Anfhaidh, which consisted of the Clans MacMartin of Letterfinlay, Macgillonie (Mac Ghille-Anfhaidh), and MacSorlie of Glennevis (Sliochd Shoirle Ruaidh) and traditionally held its territory in the southwest of the Great Glen in modern Lochaber. During the 14th century, Dòmhnuill Duibh Camshròn succeeded, allegedly through his leadershipg qualities and his marriage to the daughter of the MacMartin Chief, in rising to Chief over the whole confederation. In a 1472 charter, the surname Cameron is first given to the whole clan, but after their ancestors, the Chiefs carried the title MacDhomhnuill Duibh.

Alexander Cameron was the son of John Cameron of Lochiel, and grandson of Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who had led the clan against Oliver Cromwell during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and and against William of Orange during the Jacobite rising of 1689.

Even though the militantly anti-Catholic Whig political party, which governed Great Britain as an oligarchy and single party state from 1714 to 1783, did not, despite their later claims, invent either concept as part of the 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart, their decision to seek regime change was rooted in the principle of a social contract between the government and the people, which if violated meant that a monarch could be resisted and deposed under the right of revolution. Whig history, which was until recently the unchallenged official history of the British Empire, alleged that by seeking to grant freedom of worship and civil rights to religiously persecuted Catholics and Protestant dissenters from the establishes churches against the opposition of Parliament through his Royal Prerogative, King James II of England was in violation of the many anti-Catholic passages in the post-Reformation Coronation Oath taken by British monarchs, which in turn justified his overthrow in favor of his Dutch son in law William of Orange.

In reality, the concept of kings being bound by laws and customs which, if violated, justified a monarch's overthrow has roots in Imperial Rome and is mentioned in the Old Norse Sagas. There are also references to it in the writings of St Augustine and of Medieval Scholastics like St Thomas Aquinas. In the Gaelic Irish and Scottish clan system, internal leadership disputes and regime change wars were very common and, according to Celticist Michael Newton, the two qualities of an unworthy clan chief deserving removal were raising the rents unnecessarily and spending the money on overpriced luxuries for himself.

In response to regime change plotting by both Catholics and Protestants alike, a key tenet of the House of Stuart since the reign of James I was legitimist monarchism and the doctrine that kings governed by divine right and were accountable to God alone, making the post-1688 Whig regime and the Act of Settlement 1701, which denied the throne to all non-Protestant heirs, illegal. Furthermore, King James II's eldest son and eventual heir, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, "The King over the Water", formed a government in exile, where he crafted a series of promised political reforms. In particular, the Prince's promises to put an immediate end to the religious persecution, the denial of civil rights, and the continuing disenfranchisement of those worshipping outside of the established churches drew his cause wide support from both Catholics and Protestants alike. Jacobitism was also a coalition of the disaffected and thus was a complex mix of ideas, many opposed by the exiled Stuarts themselves, such as Jacobites invoking the social contract and the right of revolution against both the Hanoverian monarchy and the Whig political elite and their ideology. Other Jacobite demands included the dispossession of the Anglo-Irish landlord class, linguistic rights for minority languages at a time when even many established church clergymen opposed the Whig party's English only policy enforced by corporal punishment in the Welsh and Scottish school system, devolved government rather that the Whig policy of government centralization in London, and, in later years, freedom of the press.

Following the ascension of King George I as the first British monarch of the House of Hannover in 1714, the ascendant Whig party leadership launched a political purge of all real and suspected sympathisers with the Opposition, whom they termed "Tories", (derived from Irish language:Toraídh lit. "cattle raiders" fig. "outlaws"), and "dupes of Jacobites", from government, the legal profession, and the established churches. The Whigs alleged afterwards and greatly to their cost, that the principles of the social contract and the right of revolution applied only to abuses of power by their political opponents rather than to their own.

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. According to Blundell, "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."

Alexander Cameron's mother, Lady Isobel Campbell of Lochnell, on the other hand, came from a cadet branch of Clan Campbell and was, through maternal descent, the granddaughter of the 7th chief of Clan Stewart of Appin. Even though Clan Campbell, whose surname is believed to be derived from the Scottish Gaelic term Caimbeul, meaning "crooked mouth", and whose chiefs and members claim common descent from the star-crossed lovers Diarmuid and Grainne from the Fenian Cycle of Celtic Mythology, is widely assumed by modern historians, according to John Lorne Campbell, to have always been a, "monolithic Whig organization", the truth is far more complex.

For example, Lady Isobel's father, Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell, had taken in the survivors of the Massacre of Glencoe and steered a neutral course in the Jacobite risings.

Lady Isobel's eldest brother was Sir Donald Campbell, 7th of Lochnell, who commanded one of the Independent Highland Companies in the service of George II during the Jacobite rising of 1745, only to be praised in verse by Scottish Gaelic national poet Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair as an honourable man and a true Jacobite at heart after the rising had ended. Another of Lady Isobel's brothers was Fr Colin Campbell of Lochnell, a Catholic convert and well-known "heather priest" based in Ardnamurchan. Much to the distress of the Church of Scotland presbytery of Argyll, whose reports reveal that they considered all Catholics, "enemies to our Constitution both in Church and State", Fr Colin Campbell successfully converted his brothers, Alexander and James Campbell, and many of the other Campbells of Lochnell to Catholicism. In addition to being a mortal enemy of Crypto-Calvinism, or Jansenism, whose efforts almost singlehandedly caused an investigation by the Vatican's Congregation for Propaganda into the alleged prevalence of that ideology among the underground priests of the Highland District, Fr Campbell is also known to have been, "a staunch Jacobite".

For these and, it is believed, many other reasons, in his poem An Airc, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair predicted another Great Flood that would punish Clan Campbell, except for those who were to be rescued and brought aboard a second Ark. Alone of Clan members who had taken military salaries from the House of Hanover, the Campbells of Lochnell were to be welcomed aboard the new Ark without even being punished by a dunking in sea water and then given a comfortable cabin with an unlimited supply of fine French wine.

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 Jamaican sugar planter Ewan Cameron.

Early life

The River just below Glendessary House, Lochaber.

Alexander Cameron was born on 17 September 1701 to John Cameron of Lochiel in Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland. 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 (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.

Alexander Cameron would have been taught almost from birth how to live off the land, how to withstand cold and other hardships, and how to follow the code of honour demanded of Scottish clan chiefs and in Gaelic warfare. In his biography of Rob Roy MacGregor, W.H. Murray described the code of honour as follows, "The abiding principle is cast up from the records of detail: that right must be seen to be done, no man left destitute, the given word honoured, the strictest honour observed to all who have given implicit trust, and that a guest's confidence in his safety must never be betrayed by his host, or vice versa. There was more of like kind, and each held as its kernel the simple ideal of trust honoured... Breaches of it were abhorred and damned... The ideal was applied 'with discretion'. Its interpretation went deeply into domestic life, but stayed shallow for war and politics."

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 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 desir e 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 language: "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.

According to John Watts, "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.

According to George Scott-Moncrieff, "Papists were forbidden to take employment or to employ others. Their houses could be broken into and robbed without redress. Fines and penalties brought many families to ruin. There are tinkers in Scotland today who come of families driven to take to the road for their faith. Every now and again the execrated ornaments of the Church would be discovered, to be carried through the streets in mocking procession, the common hangman wearing the priest's vestments, the crucifix jeered at and spat upon and finally burnt with the other baubles at a Mercat Cross that had been given a fresh significance. Catholic marriages were not recognized, so that husband and wife could be branded and savagely punished as fornicators."

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 language: 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 language: Maighstir Teàrlach, an t-Athair Teàrlach Mac Fhearchair), Maighstir Iain's brother.

According to John Grant of Glengairn, the oral tradition of Strathglass alleges of the Farquharsons, "Both the fathers, John and Charles, were held to be saints. Many persons possessed by devils were brought to them from far and near, and by them restored and cured. They had also, we are told, the gift of prophecy. Their piety gained them the veneration, their learning the esteem, and their urbanity the love of all those who knew them."

The destruction of Bishop Hugh MacDonald's personal papers during a raid by the Royal Navy on the Mass house upon Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar on 8 June 1746 make it impossible to know with certainty all the reasons why Alexander Cameron was assigned by the Vicar General to assist the mission in Strathglass. The fact that he was multilingual, however, almost certainly played a role.

At this time, according to historian A. Roberts, the Society of Jesus was only beginning to send missionary priests to the Gàidhealtachd, a region they had previously for the most part ignored. Frs. John and Charles Farquharson were very similar to other Jesuits assigned at the time to the Highlands; even though it was their heritage language, they did not know Scottish Gaelic. Therefore, in keeping with the 1373 règle d'idiome of Pope Gregory XI, which commands priests to both preach and communicate in the mother tongue of their flocks, both Jesuits had to immediately begin learning the local vernacular with the assistance of Mrs. Margaret Fraser (née MacDonnell of Ardnabie) (1705-1774), the wife of the 8th Laird of Guisachan and Culbokie; and a well known Scottish Gaelic poetess and literary scholar known as (Scottish Gaelic language: Baintighearna Ghuiseachain, lit. "Lady Guisachan").

In contrast to Lewis Farquharson of Auchindryne, the father of Alexander Cameron's Jesuit superior, and a growing number of other "Highland gentlemen" at the time, John Cameron of Lochiel had considered it vitally important for all of his children to know, "the language of the cuntrie" (sic) just as well as they knew English. This is why, unlike the children of his brother Donald Cameron, Alexander Cameron was a fluent Scottish Gaelic speaker.

Even reports from anti-Catholic sources confirm that Alexander 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 language: 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, and trafficks with great success... the Presbytery do find that 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 language: 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 language: A' Mhanachainn) in Glen Cannich (Scottish Gaelic language: 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 language: 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 language: 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 language: 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 language: 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 language: 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.

According to Thomas Wynne, "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 language: An bratach bhàn), the Jacobite Standard of the 1745 Uprising.

"Ceum nam Mìltean.

Bha ceothragach mìn a-muigh

'S cha chluinnteadh osna na gaoithe,

Bha solas an latha mùchte

'S cha mhuthaichinn guth nan daoine.

"Thàinig cianalas air m' anam,

Thog mi mo cheann far na chuasaig,

Cha do shiubhail an anail ach ainneamh

'S bu làidir mo chridhe a' bualach;

"Tha fuaim 'nam chluais 's 'nam cheann

A tha fàgail geilt air mo chridhe,

Mar cheum nam mìltean aig imeachd san ùr-shneachd

Dol gu gleac ás nach till iad."

"The March of Thousands.

There was a fine mist outside

And the wind's sighing fell silent,

The light of day was obscured

And I heard no people's voices;

"Despondency possessed my soul,

And I raised my head from the pillow,

My breath was coming seldom

And my heart beating strongly.

"There's a sound in my ear and my head

That's leaving dread upon my heart,

Like thousands marching through fresh snow

Going to strife they won't come back from."

~Fr. Allan MacDonald of Eriskay (1859 - 1905), translated by Celticist Ronald Black.

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 is believed to have been present when Bishop MacDonald, in violation of strict orders from the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith to maintain an apolitical stance, reluctantly blessed the Jacobite Army standard before its raising in the presence of an overwhelmingly Protestant audience at Glenfinnan. If so, Cameron would also have listened while his distant relative, the poet Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair, was afterwards presented to the prince and sang his song of welcome Teàrlach mac Sheumais.

Afterwards, he 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 example, on 17 January 1746, Fr Alan MacDonald, the prince's spiritual director and military chaplain to the Clanranald Regiment, rode along a line of kneeling Jacobite Army soldiers and gave them both his priestly blessing and a general absolution before the Battle of Falkirk Muir.

Despite bearing a Captain's rank, Fr 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, Fr 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 and successfully escaped afterwards from enemy custody.

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."

The year of the pillaging

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

"The Lord’s my targe, I will be stout

With dirk and trusty blade.

Though Campbells come in flocks about

I will not be afraid.

The Lord’s the same as heretofore,

He’s always good to me;

Though red-coats come a thousand more,

Afraid I will not be.

Though they mow down both corn and grass,

Nay, seek me underground;

Though hundreds guard each road and pass—

John Roy will not be found."

~John Roy Stewart (1700-1752), Colonel of the Jacobite Army's Edinburgh Regiment and war poet in both Scottish Gaelic and Highland English.

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."

According to Bruce Gordon Seton, these official orders did in fact exist and actually preceded Culloden. On 6 December 1745, a proclamation had revived two laws formerly rendered obsolete by the Popery Act 1698, the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 and the Popish Recusants Act 1605, and further promised a bounty of £100 for the capture of Roman Catholic priests.

According to historian Daniel Szechi, however, the government's post-Culloden backlash focused upon the Catholic clergy and laity of the Highland District, while leaving the much larger and better organized Lowland District reasonably unscathed.

According to Maggie Craig, "The Duke of Cumberland issued a proclamation soon after Culloden telling lurking Jacobites that they should surrender themselves and their weapons to the nearest Church of Scotland minister. Yet despite keeping an inquisitive eye on their Jacobite neighbours before, during and after the event, many Presbyterian ministers refused to supply lists of those either well-effected or disaffected in their neighbourhood. Many, to their eternal credit, hid Jacobite fugitives and helped them to escape."

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 commanded by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland 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.

The British war crimes that followed were motivated by what American Civil War historian Thomas Lowry has termed "the European tradition … that to victors belong the spoils - the losers could expect pillage and plunder", and that enemy civilians are "grist for the mills of more hardheaded conquerors such as Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Ivan the Terrible."

The redcoats in the garrison accordingly transformed Fort Augustus, located within striking distance of the lands of Clan Donald, Clan Cameron, and Clan Grant, into an open air livestock market where they openly engaged in war profiteering. As the surgeon to the Royal Scots Fusiliers later recalled, "Whilst we stayed here, we had nearly twenty thousand head of cattle brought in such as oxen, sheep, and goats taken from the rebels (whose houses we also frequently plundered and burnt)... so that great numbers of our men grew rich by their shares in the spoil which was bought up by the lump by jockeys and farmers from Yorkshire and south of Scotland, and few common soldiers were without horses."

As can easily be imagined, the indiscriminate repression of Catholic, Protestant, Whig, and Jacobite Highlanders alike led to very hard feelings being expressed in primary sources, such as the Scottish Gaelic bardic poetry of the period. For example, Rob Donn, a Gaelic poet from the staunchly Hanoverian Clan MacKay in Strathnaver, considered the ban on traditional Highland garb in the Dress Act 1746 to be so insulting that he called upon his clan to change its allegiance.

Even Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724-1812), who fought for King George II in the Campbell of Argyll Militia during the Battle of Falkirk Muir, similarly offers in his own poetry, according to John Lorne Campbell, "an interesting testimony to the bitter disillusionment of the Highlanders who had come to the aid of the Government, to be in the end treated no better than those who had rebelled against it":

"Is ann a nis tha fios againn

An t-iochd a rinn Diùc Uilleam ruinn,

'N uair dh'fhàg e sinn mar phrìosanaich

Gun bhiodagan, gun gunnachan,

Gun chlaidheamh, gun chrios tarsuin oirnne,

Cha n-fhaigh sinn prìs Nan dagachan,

'Tha comannd aig Sasunn oirnne

O smachdaich iad gun buileach sinn;

'Tha angar agus duilichinn

'San am so air iomadh fear

Bha 'n campa Dhiùc Uilleam,

Us nach fheairrd' iad gun bhuidhinn e;

Nan tigeadh oirnne Teàrlach

'S gun éireamaid 'na champa,

Gheibhte breacain chàrnaid,

'S bhiodh aird air na gunnachan."

"And now 'tis we who surely know

The mercy that Duke William's shown,

Since he's left us like prisoners

Without our dirks, without our guns,

Without our belts, without our swords,

We may not even pistols have,

For England has command of us

Since she did wholly conquer us;

There's anger, too, and misery

In many a man who at this time,

Who was in William's camp before

Who's now no better that he's won;

And if Prince Charles to us returned

We would arise and follow him,

The scarlet plaid once more be worn

And all the guns be out again."

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, whose junior officers included Alexander Cameron's first cousin, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, were also responsible, according to Bishop Geddes, for the burning of multiple "Mass houses", priestly vestments, and other similar items in Cameron country. Fr Cameron's biographer Thomas Wynne believes, instead of escaping back to Badenoch with his brothers after the burning of their birthplace, the Jesuit remained behind in The Rough Bounds of Lochaber.

Wynne also 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, British Army Commander in Chief for Scotland Lord Albemarle's personal papers contains a partial travel journal by Lt. George Anderson, the Aide de Camp to Major General John Campbell of Mamore. According to the journal, Alexander Cameron was ultimately surprised and captured near Morar by a detachment of government troops commanded by Lachlan Dubh McNiel, (d. 31 January 1781) the second son of the Laird of Ballygrogan (Scottish Gaelic language: Baile a' Ghroigein), near Machrihanish in Argylleshire and Captain of the Ardnacross company of the Campbell of Argyll Militia.

According to a letter by Independent Highland Company Captain Donald MacDonald of Castleton to Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat, the search party had landed ashore at the White Sands of Morar in search of South Uist native, former staff officer to the prince, and Gaelic war poet Nial MacEachen. Instead of finding MacEachen, a report by Castleton to General Campbell reveals that the Jesuit's arrest took place, "in a small hut where the Lady Moror (sic) lodged" on 11 July 1746. Inside the hut, "they found the prisoners now sent, namely Mackinnon, commonly called the old Laird of Mackinnon, and Mr Cameron (whose name I believe is Alexander) a priest, a brother of Lochiel's... With Mackinnon was found two letters and two receipts, seven guineas, and with Mr. Cameron three guineas and a piece of old gold coin and a silver watch; all these are in the custody of Mr MacNiel."

While Lt. Anderson and General Campbell were also onboard, Alexander Cameron was delivered by Castleton's subordinate, Lt. MacLeod, to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone (c.1708-1767), whose ship, H.M.S. Furnace, was then cruising off the isle of Raasay (Scottish Gaelic language: Ratharsair).

Like many other Highland Presbyterians at the time, the Laird of Raasay was a Jacobite and had harboured the fugitive Prince for two days. In retaliation, despite Raasay's overwhelmingly Protestant population, according to two letters sent to Robert Forbes, dated respectively April 1748 and 20 October 1752, by the Laird of Raasay, Raasay House and many other dwellings were burnt down, all the islanders' livestock were confiscated and slaughtered, and two women, "the one called Christian Montgomery, and the other Maron MacLeod, who walks on stilts", were sexually assaulted.

The Laird's allegations are also confirmed by a still extant letter from Captain Fergussone to his Royal Navy superior, Commodore Thomas Smith, and by a brief entry in the HMS Furnace ship's log, "Set Raasa Isle afire."

The Anderson journal states that the Jesuit arrived with four fellow prisoners, two of whom were from Clan MacKinnon, including the elderly Chief, Captain John MacKinnon. After hearing Fergussone, "swearing bloodily that when he got him on board, Barisdale and the cat o' nine tails should make him squeak", both MacKinnons reluctantly shared accurate information about the prince's planned movements. Lt. George Anderson's journal also gives Alexander Cameron's date of arrival onboard the Furnace as 12 July 1746.

H.M.S. Furnace

Interior of the British prison ship Jersey

Captain John Fergussone of H.M.S. Furnace was a native of Old Meldrum, near Inverurie (Scottish Gaelic language: 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." According to Maggie Craig, "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 from a notoriously "disaffected" district, who was serving as a military officer for 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, the 70-year old chief of Clan MacKinnon, the Clan MacLeod Laird of Raasay, the two men who smuggled Prince Charles Edward from Skye to Morar, all 38 Jacobite Army veterans from Canna and Eigg, briefly Flora MacDonald, at least two non-jurant Episcopal ministers, and many other Catholic priests.

According to Lt. George Anderson's diary, on 23 July 1746, Captain Colin Campbell of Skipness arrived from South Uist and delivered to the HMS Furnace a party of seven additional prisoners; including former Clanranald Regiment military chaplain and confessor to the prince Fr Allan MacDonald and Captain es (Félix O'Neille y O'Neille), a dispossessed member of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland in Spanish service and former staff officer to the prince from Creggan, County Armagh.

Captain O'Neille, who was captured near Rushnish, Benbecula, on 6th July and similarly robbed of his money and gold watch by Captain Lachlan Dubh MacNiel, later recalled, "Captain Fergussone... used me with all the barbarity of a pirate, stripped me, and ordered me to be put into a rack and whipped by his hangman, because I would not confess where I thought the Prince was. As I was just going to be whipped, being already stripped, Lieutenant MacCaghan of the Scotch Fusiliers, who commanded a party under Captain Fergussone, very generously opposed this barbarous usage, and coming out with his drawn sword threatened Captain Fergussone that he's sacrifice himself and his detachment rather than see an officer used after so infamous a manner."

On this and several other occasions, the 18th-century British class system sometimes caused fellow Hanoverian officers to successfully intervene to protect prisoners aboard the Furnace who were fellow members of the gentry from interrogation methods now considered torture. Captain Fergussone, however, tended to use methods of torture, such as flogging with the cat o' nine tails or the use of "Barrisdale's machine", 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.

According to Celticist Ronald Black, regarding the use of the term "Barrisdale" by the British armed forces as a euphemism for interrogation under torture, which, according to Lt. George Anderson's letters and reports in the Mamore Papers at the National Library of Scotland, was usually administered aboard the Furnace by Captain Lachlan MacNiel of Ballygrogan, "It is an excellent example of the propaganda war that lay at the heart of the Government's cause. The Prince's men were cruel savages backed up by the Inquisition, vermin that must be exterminated; Cumberland's men were noble heroes representing enlightened government and true Christian values. When the latter used torture, therefore, it was routinely cloaked in a name that evoked its use by the cattle-thief Coll MacDonnell of Barisdale, the Highland Jacobite who approximated most closely to the sinister racial stereotype which the Government sought to portray."

The term was also rooted in Captain Fergussone's confiscation of a torture device from Coll MacDonnell of Barisdale, during the looting and eventual arson of the latter's house on 9 May 1746. The device was afterwards kept aboard the Furnace, where it was used routinely.

According to Celticist Ronald Black, MacDonell of Barisdale had used the torture device, not only upon both real and suspected cattle raiders, but also upon those from whom he allegedly wished to extort money. One former victim of the machine later recalled, "The supposed criminal was tied into an iron machine, where a ring grasped his feet, and another closed upon his neck, and his hands were received into eyes of iron contrived for that purpose. He had a great weight upon the back of his neck, to which, if he yielded in the least, by shrinking downwards, a sharp spike would infallibly run into his chin."

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.

While it is not yet established whether or not Captain Lachlan MacNiel was ordered to, "put", the Jesuit, "into Barisdale", it is known that in addition to once having, "had a Skyeman flogged insensible for having been the prince's boatman", Captain John 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".

Even so, Alexander Cameron held out for more than two weeks without disclosing information. Lt. George Anderson's journal reports that beginning on the evening of 28 July 1746, the Furnace sailed overnight from Canna to Loch nan Uamh. Anderson explained, "we are now preparing to search all the country about Loch Morar, where there are a great many caves and subterranean places where Lochiel and a good many of the rebel chiefs were concealed sometimes past and narrowly escaped Capt. Fergussone when he was in that country."

In reality, the Prince had recently been in hiding along Borrodale Bay, but had escaped with the assistance of three officers from the Clanranald regiment. Also, Donald and Archibald Cameron were both in hiding near Ben Alder, in the territory of Clan MacPherson in Badenoch. Lastly, while Morar, and particularly the former "Mass house" and library upon Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar, had been a recognized gathering place for the Vicar Generals and priests of the Highlands since at least 1700, none of them had any reason to visit the Loch since the destruction of the chapel, books, and papers of Bishop MacDonald on 8 July 1746. Captain Fergussone is known to have had a temper and must have been enraged when he realized that he had been duped.

By late August 1746, when the Furnace, with its many "wretched prisoners", was riding at anchor in Tobermory, while awaiting orders from Commodore Thomas Smith to withdraw completely from The Minch, Alexander Cameron had fallen seriously ill 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 prisoners who were emaciated but still dying were also taken out of the hold and thrown alive into the sea. According to John Watts, "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 the site now marked by the Prince's Cairn along Loch nan Uamh and set sail for 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).

"Chualas cinnteach an sgeula

Ceannard prìseal na clèire

Chumadh dìleas ri chèil' iad

'Sa stiùireadh le cèill iad

A bhith na shìneadh air dèilidh gun deò.

"'S cùis iargain gan dìth thu

Bu tu riaghladh 's an fhìrinn

Bha riaghailtean prìseal

Gun robh Dia ann a sìth riut

'S tu nach fiaradh 's nach dìobrach a chòir...

"Nis bho 'n chàireadh 'san ùir thu

Tha sinn cràidhteach gach ionndrainn

Thug ar slànuighear ga ionnsaidh

Thu a' phàrras do d' chrùnadh

Gu bhith ghnàth a'seinn cliù anns a' ghlòir."

"The news was confirmed

That the cherished Church leader,

Who could unite his people in loyalty

And guide them in wisdom

Is stretched out lifeless on the boards.

"Without you, they are grieving

For your administration was righteous

Your decrees were worthy

You were at peace with God

You never altered or deviated from justice...

"Now since you have been laid in the earth

We bitterly lament you

Whom our Saviour has called to himself

To his paradise to crown you

Forever to sing praises in glory."

~Allan the Ridge MacDonald (1794-1868). Translated by Celticist Effie Rankin.

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, at least 2500 Jacobites were held in multiple prisons throughout England. Moreover, an additional 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. According to historian Bruce Gordon Seton, one might easily be forgiven for feeling sceptical about the "lurid" accounts collected by Robert Forbes from Jacobite prison hulk survivors, but these accounts are fully confirmed by Whig eyewitnesses and multiple primary sources in the British State Papers, such as the ship inspection reports of surgeon Dr. Minshaw.

According to Thomas Wynne, "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 Gaol, and then transported to the River Thames aboard a different prison ship. Thomas Wynne, however, disagrees, "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 really find the Prince, his brothers, and Bishop MacDonald, 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."

According to Bruce Gordon Seton, the first report of an epidemic of typhus among the Jacobites aboard the prison hulks was in a 11 August 1746 letter sent by Major John Salt from Woolwich "to the Principle Clerk of the Duke of Newcastle". Even so, very little was done and Gordon Seton has written, "it must be concluded that the epidemic was deliberately allowed to pursue it's ordinary course."

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.

Legacy

Lochaber No More – 'Bonnie Prince Charlie and Lochiel leaving Scotland', painting by John Blake MacDonald, 1863

After escaping to France, Donald Cameron of Lochiel was appointed by King Louis XV as colonel of the Régiment d'Albanie and commander of the Garde Écossaise in the French Royal Army. He was also made a member of the Order of Saint Michael and was knighted by Prince James Francis Edward Stuart. He died prematurely, however, of a stroke at Bergues on 26 October 1748. Lochiel's courage and the leadership skills he repeatedly displayed on the battlefield during the rising were praised in the Scottish Gaelic poetry of Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and Alexander Cameron of Dochanassie.

Despite the 1750 efforts by British intelligence to trick the Prince into believing that he had helped himself to £6000 of the missing Loch Arkaig treasure, Fr Alexander Cameron's younger brother, Dr. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, remained a trusted emissary of the Stuart government in exile. Dr Cameron, however, was eventually captured during a secret visit from French exile to Cameron country in Lochaber, after being fingered to the Whig government by both his own clansmen and Alistair Ruadh MacDonnell of Glengarry, a highly placed mole inside the Jacobite movement codenamed "Pickle the Spy." Before his execution, Dr Cameron insisted upon being spiritually counselled and accompanied to the scaffold by Nonjuring Episcopal clergyman James Forrester, who had also been held by Captain Fergussone as a prisoner aboard HMS Furnace.

On 7 June 1753, Dr. Cameron was drawn on a sledge to Tyburn. He addressed the crowd before his death, "Sir, you see a fellow-subject just going to pay his last debt to his King and country. I the more cheerfully resign my life, as it is taken from me for doing my duty according to my conscience. I freely forgive all my enemies, and those who are instrumental in taking away my life. I thank God I die in charity with all mankind. As to my religion, I die a steadfast (tho' unworthy) member of that Church in which I have always lived, the Church of England, in whose communion I hope, thro' the merits of my blessed Saviour, for forgiveness of my sins, for which I am heartily sorry."

According to Rev. James Falconar, "Turning to the clergyman he said, 'I have now done with this world and am ready to leave it.' He joined heartily in the commendatory prayer, etc., then repeated some ejaculations out of the Psalms. After which he embraced the clergyman and took leave of him. As the clergyman was going down from the cart he had like to have missed the steps, which the Doctor observing, called out to him with a cheerful tone of voice, saying, 'Take care how you go. I think you don't know the way as well as I do.'"

After being hanged and posthumously beheaded, Doctor Cameron's remains were buried in the Savoy Chapel, Westminster. His arrest and execution were lamented in Scottish Gaelic poetry by An Taillear mac Alasdir, alias John Cameron of Dochanassie.

Following his evacuation to France with the Prince, Alexander Cameron's kinsman Bishop Hugh MacDonald arrived, destitute and in rags, at the Scots College in Rome. Despite the enormous risks involved, he returned to Scotland in 1749. In 1755 he was apprehended in Edinburgh for being a Catholic priest and for his share in the '45. The priest hunter responsible for his arrest was rewarded by the Royal Treasury.

The bishop was tried at Edinburgh on 1 March 1756, "and in punishment for his refusal to purge himself of Popery, was sentenced to be banished from the kingdom, never to return under pain of death." The sentence, however, was never enforced, and, though the Bishop was obliged to live outside his district, he contrived to visit his district occasionally to perform episcopal duties, such as the setting up of the covert Buorblach Seminary. Bishop MacDonald died at Glengarry in 1773.

Following their own lengthy and inhumane imprisonment aboard the Thames prison hulks and at Tilbury Fort, Frs John and Charles Farquharson were expelled from the British Isles and ordered never to return. They returned to Scotland almost immediately, however, and went back to their former missionary apostolate in and around Strathglass, where they both remained until Fr John Farquharson was appointed prefect of studies at the Scots College in Douai in 1753.

Following the suppression of the Jesuits, he returned to Scotland and worked as a resident chaplain and tutor to his nephew. His detailed manuscript collection of both the Scottish Gaelic literature and Celtic mythology of Strathglass had been left in Douai upon his return to Scotland and was tragically lost by being used to light fires by seminarians unfamiliar with its great importance. He died at Balmoral Castle, then the property of the Chiefs of Clan Farquharson, in 1782.

Fr. Charles Farquharson also continued to serve as an underground Catholic missionary until his own death at Ardearg on 30 November 1799. Upon encountering the Jesuit's funeral procession while on horseback, James Duff, 2nd Earl of Fife immediately dismounted, removed his hat, and said, "I wish to God I were such as he was; I would gladly lie where he does."

Fr Cameron's patroness in Strathfarrar, the poetess Lady Margaret Fraser of Guisachan, witnessed the burning of her family's house by government troops under the command of Captain Caroline Scott, but otherwise survived the "year of the pillaging". Her four eldest sons fell fighting as officers in the British and Austrian service during the later Seven Years War. Her remaining offspring emigrated to British North America, where two of her sons served as Loyalist military officers during the American Revolution. One, Captain Simon Fraser became a prisoner of war following the Battle of Bennington and died while held by American Patriots in Albany. Lady Guisachan's unpublished Gaelic manuscripts, consisting of both her original compositions and collections from the local oral tradition, were carried by her son from Scotland to the New World and are believed to have been lost due to the alleged arson of Captain Simon Fraser's house near Bennington, Vermont, by Patriot neighbors either before or following his capture. All remaining relatives migrated as United Empire Loyalist refugees to Glengarry County, Ontario. Fraser River in British Columbia is named after Lady Guisachan's American-born Canadian grandson, Simon Fraser, Jr. (1776-1862), who was the first explorer to map the river's entire course. Her husband's former estate in Strathfarrar fell ultimately into the ownership of Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, whose 19th-century evictions depopulated the once densely populated region.

After his role in the religious persecution of the many Catholics among Clan Fraser of Lovat helped force Alexander Cameron to flee from Strathglass, Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat responded to the outbreak of the Jacobite rising by making lavish promises of his loyalty to both sides, but eventually committed himself to only one by joining the Jacobite Army. After Culloden, he was attempting to reconcile himself to the Catholic Church by visiting the chapel at Eilean Bàn in Loch Morar and having his confession heard by Bishop Hugh MacDonald, only to be captured by Captain John Fergussone when his visit was interrupted by a Royal Navy raid on the island. After being brought to London for trial and unanimously convicted of high treason by his peers in the House of Lords, Lord Lovat was executed by beheading at Tower Hill on 9 April 1747. Although he remains notorious for his long history of two-faced behavior, Lord Lovat attempted to present himself in his last moments as a Scottish patriot, a freedom fighter, and a martyr. Among his last words was the quote from the ancient Roman poet Horace that war poet Wilfred Owen was later to revile in verse as "the old lie": (Latin language: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", "It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country"). Lord Lovat, whose role in the persecution of his Catholic clansmen had previously been reviled and whose execution by beheading and legacy of being despised "as a traitor to both kings" had been accurately predicted in a still extant 1744 Scottish Gaelic satire poem by Fr. John Farquharson, was also praised, without criticism or irony, in a 1751 Gaelic funeral lament by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair.

Nial MacEachan, the Jacobite Army staff officer from Howbeg, South Uist for whom Captain MacNeil was searching when he found Alexander Cameron instead, was later taken prisoner as well. He was held as a prisoner at the Tower of London, where he composed a still extant Scottish Gaelic poem that criticizes his cousin Flora MacDonald for, instead of making a decision and sticking to it, seeking to curry favor with both the Stuarts and Hanoverian royal families at the same time. MacEachan eventually succeeded in making his way to France, where he married into the French nobility and his legitimate offspring included Étienne Macdonald, who went on to become a Marshal of France during the Napoleonic Wars. During the 1820s, MacEachan's partially extant memoir of the Rising and it's aftermath posthumously resurfaced in the hands of a Paris bookseller who claimed to be the author's illegitimate son and was published in a magazine a few years later.

Following his role in the arrest of and robbery from Fr Alexander Cameron, the old Laird of MacKinnon, and Captain Felix O'Neil, Captain Lachlan Dubh MacNiel returned to his native district in Argyllshire. After a long and profitable history of smuggling, he began an equally profitable career as both a surveyor and an allegedly corrupt official of H.M. Customs, which continued until his death in Campbelltown on 31 January 1784.

According to Celticist Ronald Black, "MacNeil was proud of his work in arresting MacKinnon, Cameron, and O'Neil, but claimed particular credit for the last." In his 1751 Jacobite poem An Airc ("The Ark"), Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, whom 21st-century Celticist Robert Dunbar has termed, "the greatest poet of the eighteenth century Golden Age of Gaelic poets", called for Captain MacNiel to receive what is perhaps a much harsher punishment than any other Whig military officer whom the poet names;

"Lachlann Dubh ud Bhaile Ghrogan

'N do chinn làn crogain de phuinnsean,

Gun phàrladh, domain gu stoc e,

'S tilg sa bharr-roc e le tuinnseadh.

"On chaill e càirdeas gach tìre

'S gach Crìostadh rìoghail air thalamh,

Na toir fairge ghlas is tìr dheth --

Dèan ìobrabh do rìgh na mara!

"Gu'm bu luaithe ruigeas e 'n grinneal

Ceangail clach-mhuilinn m'a sgòrnan,

Cù, cat, nathair agus sionnach

Gu comann a chumail gu pòit ris.

"Clann Chamshroinn agus Clann Fhionghain

Òlaidh gu h-ionmhainn a mharbhdheoch:

Bhrath e na cinn-fheadhna thlachdmhor

Nach bu tais ri uchd nan garbhchath.

"'S cinnteach bidh a bhràthair Iùdas

Gu h-ùiseal an uchd Abràham

Ma tha dòchas aig an sgiùrsair

Anns a' chùirt ud bhith sàbhailt."

"With yon Black Lachlan of Ballygrogan

In whom a crockful of poison grew,

Don't parley, just drive him over the gunwhale,

Whack him [with a shinty stick] and throw him to the tangles.

"Since he has lost the friendship of every land

And of every loyal Christian on earth,

Do not deprive him of blue sea and land --

Make a sacrifice of him to the king of the sea!

"To help him reach the bottom sooner

Tie around his neck a mill-stone,

With a dog, a cat, a snake, and a fox

To keep him company while drinking.

"The Clan Cameron and MacKinnons

Will lovingly drink his funeral dram:

[For he] betrayed [their] popular chiefs

Who were not soft in the breast of battles.

"His brother Judas [Iscariot] must certainly

Be feted in Abraham's bosom

If [that torturer] has any hope

Of surviving [before] that court."

When he wrote these words, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was a recent convert from Presbyterianism to the Catholic Faith under the influence of his devoutly Roman Catholic sister-in-law, Lady Margaret (née Cameron of Achadhuan) MacDonald of Dalilea. Until the extinction of his line with the 1879 death of Union Army Captain Angus R. MacDonald in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, all of his descendants are known to have been staunch Catholics.

This is very likely at least part of the reason why, according to Scottish Gaelic literary scholar Ronald Black, "Although he was a Kintyre MacNeil and therefore no Catholic (unlike the MacNeils of Barra), [Captain MacNeil's] betrayal of [Alexander] Cameron was no doubt seen by Alastair as a particularly unworthy piece of behavior, the kind of thing only a Campbell would do, given the treatment likely to be meted out to a Catholic priest... Clearly Alastair blamed [Alexander Cameron's] death upon MacNiel; this will explain his reference to 'every loyal Christian.'"

After his arrest with Fr Cameron and incarceration, first aboard the Furnace and then at Tilbury Fort, the old Laird of Mackinnon was spared execution and pardoned due to his advanced age. It is said, though, that the Attorney General for England and Wales, Sir Dudley Ryder, asked Mackinnon, "If King George were in your power, as you have been in his, what would you do?" Mackinnon replied, "I would do to him, as he has this day done to me; I would send him back to his own country".

According to Celticist and literary scholar Ronald Black, Alasdair's references in An Airc to an unnamed Whig military officer whom he compares to Herod the Great during the massacre of the children of Bethlehem and who accordingly deserves to drown while tied to a millstone are believed to refer to either Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone or his close friend and passenger aboard HMS Furnace Major General John Campbell.

After Captain Fergussone's death, reportedly from natural causes, in 1767, John MacCodrum, a Bard from the staunchly Protestant Island of North Uist, composed a mock funeral lament in Scottish Gaelic verse as a means of celebration. Despite knowing full well his subject's real ancestry, MacCodrum called upon deliberately Campbell-related symbolism. He termed the "Black Captain of the Forty-Five" a (Scottish Gaelic language: torc nimhe, "venomous boar") and called for him to be buried deep beneath Ben Cruachan in Argyllshire. If, on the other hand, Captain Fergussone were buried at sea, MacCodrum declared,

"Gum b' aotrom leam clach-mhuilinn mhòr

Mar acaire g'a chumail sìos."

"Light would I deem a large mill-stone

As an anchor to keep him down."

Devotion and canonisation

The Clan Cameron Museum at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber.

"'S na doireachan dhlùth' an robh sùgradh is aighear

Chan fhaicear le sùil ach cùirt nan taighean

Gun eilid air stùc is crùnadh m' airsneil

Luchd-ciùil nam beannaibh air fògar.

"Gach sruthan is allt 's a cheann le bruthach,

Gach tulaich, gach meall, 's gach gleann a' tuireadh

Tha còisir nan crann gunn rann gun luinneag

Bhon chaill iad buidheann nan òran."

"In the dense thickets in which there was once merrymaking

The eye sees nothing but [the ruins] of houses,

Not a hind on any point, while the worst of my woes,

The musical people of the mountains are in exile.

"The head of every stream and river is downcast,

Every hillock, peak, and glen is [in] mourning,

The forest choir is without poetry or melody

Since they lost the singing folk."

~Attributed to Rev. Dr. John Stuart of Luss.

According to Marcus Tanner, "As the Reformed Church faltered in the increasingly industrialised Lowlands, Presbyterianism made its great breakthrough among the Gaelic Highlanders, virtually snapping cultural bonds that had linked them to Ireland since the lordship of Dalriada. The Highlands, outside tiny Catholic enclaves like in South Uist and Barra, took on the contours they have since preserved - a region marked by a strong tradition of sabbatarianism and a puritanical distaste for instrumental music and dancing, which have only recently regained popular acceptance".

More damaging by far than any change of religion to the traditional culture of the Highlands and Islands were the more than a century of mass evictions, in violation of dùthchas, the principle of "customary law" that clan members had an inalienable right to live in their ancestral territory, and known today as the Highland Clearances. In a further violation of the Gaelic custom of "rests", by which Irish and Scottish clan chiefs were expected to suspend all rent collection during times of severe hardship, the forced eviction of entire communities actually escalated during the Highland Potato Famine of the 1840s.

After the death in French exile of Alexander Cameron's brother, the unusually blonde Donald Cameron of Lochiel, a local proverb prophesied that, "It will be a sad day for Lochaber when there is next a fair-haired Lochiel." The prophecy was fulfilled after the bill of attainder of the Lochiel family was reversed in 1784 and ownership of the estates was restored to Alexander Cameron's grandnephew, the unusually fair-haired and completely Anglicized Donald Cameron, 22nd Lochiel. The 22nd Lochiel unleashed mass evictions that decimated the population of both Glendessary and Loch Arkaigside. By 1858, no one with the Cameron surname still remained living as tenants on the Lochiel estate.

Although Alexander Cameron's former mission field in and around Strathglass remained staunchly Roman Catholic and was referred to as a "nursery of priests", including Rt.-Rev. William Fraser, the first Bishop of Halifax and Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the similarly densely populated region was also depopulated after Culloden and "the year of the pillaging" by both voluntary emigration and the Highland Clearances ordered by Anglo-Scottish landlords Archibald Campbell Fraser of Lovat and Lady William Chisholm of Chisholm.

The population of the district of Morar, where Alexander Cameron remained in hiding until his capture by Captain MacNiel on 11 July 1746, remained so overwhelmingly Catholic that it was widely said that no Protestant sermon was so much as heard there until the railway was extended to the region during the late Victorian era.

Due to both voluntary emigration and the Highland Clearances, however, more than one person has commented ruefully that the Gaelic dialects, oral tradition, and culture of both Lochaber and Strathglass have been better preserved in Nova Scotia and Glengarry County, Ontario than in Scotland itself.

It speaks, however, to strength of Jacobite ideology that even after all possibility of a Stuart Restoration had evaporated, public demand for the political reforms promised by "the King over the Water" did not similarly evaporate; and the very reforms for which the Jacobite Army fought and died trying to achieve have since been granted by His Majesty's Government. Despite strong opposition by Kings George III and George IV, Catholics in the British Isles were at last granted freedom of worship and civil rights under the law by the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829. The avowedly anti-Catholic passages of the British monarchy's traditional Coronation Oath were belatedly removed in 1910, at the insistence of King George V. The use of other languages of Britain as the medium of instruction in the school system also had to wait until the 20th-century, as did the restoration of the traditionally devolved Scottish Parliament in 1996.

In the aftermath of the Catholic Emancipation Act, part of the tartan chasuble that Alexander Cameron wore while saying Mass on the eve of the Battle of Culloden was donated to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles 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.

St. Mary and St Bean's Roman Catholic Church, Marydale, Beauly, Scotland.

The bullaun, or natural cup stone, used as an illegal baptismal font in the cave at Glen Cannich was eventually removed from the cave during the Victorian era, "in order to protect it from damage", by Black Watch Regiment Captain Archibald Macrae Chisholm, the widowed husband of Frs. 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. Despite the depopulation of Strathglass, the parish church was built in 1866 and formally consecrated two years later.

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.

Alexander 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 language: 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.".

In 2020, the Knights of St. Columba at the University of Glasgow launched a campaign to canonize Fr. Cameron, "with the hope that he will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession." They erected a small petition book at their altar of St. Joseph in the University Catholic Chapel, Turnbull Hall. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for Canonisation in the Roman Catholic Church that there is a Cult of Devotion to the saint.

The Knights distributed prayer cards for Cameron that were written by Jamie McGowan KSC. It reads:

O God, who will that every nation and people be converted unto you, you gave us Father Alexander Cameron as a preacher of the gospel, so that Scotland may once again love the Faith entire and true.

May his example of humble ministry in the midst of greater danger stir up in us a zeal for the Gospel. May his capturing, enduring of torture, suffering and death be an example witness to the one true faith, so that by imitating his courage we might surrender to the Divine Will.

Through his intercession, hear our petitions for the conversion of Scotland and for the conversion of our own hearts, so that brought to closer unity with you, we may more faithfully contemplate the truth and show forth the fruits of that contemplation.

Father Alexander, please pray for this particular intention.

Heavenly Father, grant that Father Alexander may be deemed worthy of canonisation, so that we may merit from his intercession, for the glory of your Church, the praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the evangelisation of our nation. Amen.

See also

• Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
• Hell ship
• Irish Catholic Martyrs
• Mass rock

Scottish Catholic Martyrs

• St Blathmac of Iona (c.825)
• St Donnán of Eigg (d. April 17, 617)
• 68 Martyrs of Iona (c.822)
• St John Ogilvie, S.J. (1579 - 10th March 1615)
• St Maelrubha (642-April 21, 722)

In popular culture

• Although Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novels and the television series adapted from them both take place within a Catholic family belonging to Clan Fraser of Lovat during the period when Alexander Cameron and the Farquharson brothers were the only priests ministering to the Catholics of that clan, the three Jesuits do not appear as characters in either series; their place is taken by the comparatively ignorant priest and self-appointed witch-hunter Fr Alexander Bain. Even though he also does not appear in the series, Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone, on the other hand, has been proposed by The Scotsman as a possible model for the sadistic redcoat Captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall. In a 2021 article published in The Lamp, however, Jamie McGowan, the University of Glasgow student responsible for writing the prayer for Fr Alexander Cameron's Canonization, credited what he termed "The Outlander Effect" with making Roman Catholicism, not only socially acceptable, but even into a fashionable element of Scottish national identity and cultural nationalism. In 2024, Police Scotland data revealed, in contrast, that 33% of all anti-religious hate crimes in Scotland are directed against Catholics, despite Catholics making up just 13% of the population. In January 2025, the Bishops Conference announced that, although regular Mass attendance in Scotland hadn't returned to it's pre-COVID-19 numbers, a dramatic increase had recently been noticed. Just as in England and Wales, the increase was overwhelmingly driven by young adults raised by completely secular families.

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.
• Odo Blundell (1909), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland: Volume I, The Central Highlands, Sands & Co. 21 Hanover Street, Edinburgh & 15 King Street, London.
• John Lorne Campbell (1979), Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, Arno Press, New York City.
• 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.
• James Hagerty and Barry Hudd (2024), Defend Us in Battle: Catholic Chaplains in the British Military, Sacristy Press.
• Charles MacDonald (2011), Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Birlinn Limited
• Bruce Gordon Seton (1928), The Prisoners of the '45: Edited from the State Papers. Volume I, Scottish History Society.
• Bruce Gordon Seton (1929), The Prisoners of the '45: Edited from the State Papers. Volume II, Scottish History Society.
• Bruce Gordon Seton (1929), The Prisoners of the '45: Edited from the State Papers. Volume III, Scottish History Society.
• John Stewart of Ardvorlich (1971), The Camerons: A History of Clan Cameron, Clan Cameron Association.
• Charles Sanford Terry (1902), The Albemarle Papers: Being the Correspondence of William Anne, Second Earl of Albemarle, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, 1746-1747. Volume II, Printed for the New Spalding Club, Aberdeen.
• 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).