The Beginnings of The Order in France and Scotland.	CH 1
"To Praise, To Bless and to Preach" The life of the Friars.	CH 2
The Dominicans and the Scottish Mission	CH 3
The Return of the Friars.	CH 4

1. The Beginnings of The Order in France and Scotland.

The Order of Preachers, known also as Dominicans and as the Black Friars, came to Scotland in 1230 according to the Melrose Chronicle. Long afterwards there was a story that Alexander II had met St. Dominic in Paris and invited him to send friars to Scotland. There is no evidence for this pious patriotic legend, but it is possible that William Malvoisin, bishop of St. Andrews and Chancellor of Scotland, may have met Dominic when in Rome for the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215-6; the bishop may have wakened the king's interest in what was then a new, heavily criticised, religious development. There is certainly no doubt that on coming to Scotland the Order of Preachers found a generous patron in the king.
The Order came into existence as the result of an unplanned encounter between a group of Spanish clergy, travelling through southern France in 1205, and local Albigensians - heretics in the Church's eyes. The Albigensians formed part of that stream of dualist heresies that swept across Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They had a highly selective attitude to scripture and rejected completely the sacraments and doctrine of the resurrection of the body. One of the Spanish party was Dominic Guzman, Canon of the cathedral of Osma in Castile, theologically well-educated and apostolic in outlook. He saw a need to meet heresy with preaching based on deep study and prayer, backed by the witness of dedicated lives marked by simplicity and cheerful asceticism. The local bishop, of Toulouse, supported him and slowly followers gathered.
When his associates were sixteen in number, Dominic scattered them about Europe, the largest group to the still young University of Paris. He had formed already a cloistered community of women, converts from the Albigensian movement, to support the preaching by their prayers. In line with the directives of the Lateran Council he gave his band of preachers a rule to follow, the so-called Rule of St. Augustine, which is little more than a letter of advice to Christians living in community. He added, by way of a constitution, a few pages borrowed from the regulations of the Premonstratensian Order. In Dominic's view, constitutions were designed to serve the work of bringing Christ's message to people, and could be dispensed with, for the sake of that work. His Order was to be apostolic, contemplative, constitutionally flexible, democratic, international, and highly mobile.
Little wonder that it seemed crazy to some people, especially in terms of the contemplative life. How could men who tramped about the world in small groups, often only two together, be contemplative? Contemplation of God required withdrawal from the world into the peace and stability of traditional monasticism. Black Friars lived in daily contact with the bustle of life in town and cities, although some monastic elements of prayer and silence were retained in the domestic life of their communities. They recited the daily prayer of the Church, the "Divine Office", but in a simpler, more streamlined way than the older Orders, so as to have more time for study; and not always in church! To some, Dominic's preachers were just another newfangled religious aberration, unlikely to survive. Others, however, supported the preachers who were trying to meet the spiritual needs of rapidly expanding city life, and the intellectual challenge in the new universities. Christian thought had to encounter not only Albigensians, but a wealth of knowledge from Jewish, Moslem, and ancient Greek sources which was rocking the schools of Europe, challenging the authority of the Bible and the saints of the Church. Black Friars did not retreat from that challenge and soon had to cope with a flood of recruits from universities, especially after receiving papal recognition and approval in 1216.
Brother Clement, who led the first group of Dominicans to settle in Scotland, was a Master of the University of Oxford and we may hazard a guess that it was in Oxford that he joined the Order, sometime after its arrival there in 1220. If we may judge by a sermon attributed to him, in a British Museum manuscript collection of sermons he was hardly an inspiring preacher. A contemporary writer said that the brethren drew "from the jars of the Old and New Testaments" and the Clement of the British Museum manuscript certainly quoted the Bible extensively - perhaps with the fervour of the popular preacher, something which is lost when words go on paper. Whatever the style of his preaching, Clement must have been an impressive personality, to judge from the part he played in the life of Church and nation in Scotland. Appointed Bishop of Dunblane in 1234, he pulled together a disorganised and impoverished diocese and launched a building programme which produced the impressive cathedral which is now Dunblane's pride. In different ways the papacy and the order recognised his worth during his lifetime. He seems to have been high in Alexander I' s confidence, and after the king's death was a member of the Council of Regents made necessary by the minority of Alexander III, not yet nine years old.
There is no reason to doubt that Clement was a Scot. Foundation groups of Dominicans were headed usually by a native of the country which they were entering. Clement seems indeed to have been a keen patriot, to judge by his association with Alexander II's efforts to secure Scottish control of Argyll and to push back Norse power on the west coast. During the minority which followed Alexander's death in 1249 he was active in opposition to English attempts to secure control of Scotland and its young king. The last glimpse we have of him is in 1256, when, with papal authority, he excommunicated the members of the pro-English party, among the nobles. He died not very long after that, not later than 1258.
By the time of Bishop Clement's death there were Dominican houses in Berwick, Ayr, Glasgow, Edinburgh, all to remain in existence until the religious upheaval of 1559-1560. Later in the thirteenth century, Wigtown and Montrose completed a chain of preaching centres flung across the most populous and accessible parts of Scotland. . A Dominican community consisted, in principle, of at least eight priest brothers who had completed studies in arts, philosophy and theology, and were available for preaching, teaching, hearing confessions and administering the affairs of the Order. One of them, elected by secret ballot, acted as superior, or Prior, his term of office limited by the order to a few years. Another acted as procurator, or bursar; a third as "reader" or lecturer, responsible for teaching and the organization of study in the community; another was responsible for music and liturgy. A community usually contained also a number of brethren who were not priests, and had not gone through the long course of study required for ordination. These "lay brothers" maintained the community buildings, and the church, which dominated all other buildings; they worked the garden or croft belonging to the priory, and were often skilled in some craft, like a friar who mended the town clock in Aberdeen, or that noted carpenter and wheelwright Andrew Lisouris who in the reign of James 11, took care of the king's great bombards - the new guns which proved fatal to James's life. It seems unlikely that Scottish communities were large, even with lay brothers, in the first period of expansion. Perth Blackfriars was the Order's major centre of Study but it is doubtful if it contained more than three dozen brethren at any time: priests, laybrothers and students.
Friars would be sometimes out of a priory on preaching journeys, preaching in the vernacular for the most part. We hear of two having success in the Isles, routing evil spirits! Others appear, travelling to Norway as envoys of the Scottish king. Some probably taught grammar to local youths; centuries later some Scottish schools, e.g. Inverness Royal Academy, would claim a medieval Dominican origin. In the thirteenth century popes directed Scottish Dominicans to preach and. collect money in support of the crusades. A few became bishops, especially in Argyll, which had Dominican bishops for over a hundred years. Some, in the period of Scotland- peace and prosperity before the War of Independence might go to Oxford for advanced study.
Priories were grouped in Provinces and the Scottish priories, like others in the British Isles, were part of the Province of England; one of the "visitations" into which that province was divided for administrative convenience. A friar was a member of a particular province and the Provincial Prior and his council could move men from one house to another or from one type of work to another. So could the Master General and his council, elected by a General Chapter of the brethren. English rulers were generous friends of the Dominicans, just as Scottish kings were, but of course on a scale appropriate to their greater wealth. When Edward 1 set about his campaign to control Scotland he expected, and obtained, support from the Provincial Prior of England. But if he hoped to obtain, as a result, an information and propaganda base in every Dominican Priory in Scotland, he was grievously disappointed. The English king was not entirely without support in Scotland, it must be admitted, for Friar Andrew, Bishop of Argyll was the subject of gifts from him in 1313, and no doubt there were others, Scots or English friars in Scotland.
Brother Clement, however, was clearly not unique in his zeal for Scottish independence. A prior of Stirling appears on the town's defence committee at one stage. Friars of Berwick were removed to England and replaced by English brethren of assured loyalty to their king. The Dominicans of Ayr were credited in later legend with having massacred English soldiers, billeted in their barn, by the simple device of setting fire to the building and cutting down any soldiers who tried to escape from the smoke and flames, as they staggered out. Whatever truth may be in the story it represents a traditional view of Dominican patriotism as peculiarly wholehearted. When Edward I secured papal appointment of an English Dominican to the bishopric of Glasgow the document proved a "dead letter". If Bishop John of Eaglescliff had ever visited the Glasgow Blackfriars he would have found an uncomfortable reception to say the least. Some of the community's friends were close to Robert Bruce, who was generous to the Black Friars when he was established in his kingdom.
Nevertheless, the period of peaceful expansion and consolidation in Scotland was over. Scotland would turn increasingly to France in view of repeated efforts by English rulers to conquer the country. In these circumstances the old relationship of Scottish priories with the English Province could not be maintained, and sometime before 1349 they seem to have been recognized as a vicariate, no longer under the English Provincial, but directly subordinate to the Master of the Order.
The prosperity of pre-war Scotland would not return. The Scottish Vicariate shared with the rest of the country problems resulting from war, weak government, feuding nobility, debased currency, famine and pestilence. There are no figures to show how the Black Death affected Scottish friars. It seems reasonable to assume however that the fourteenth century saw a serious decline in numbers and, as in many other places in Europe, the decay of standards among religious communities. The founding of a small friary at Cupar in Fife in 1348 does not alter the picture. It did not help matters that after 1378 the papal schism was echoed by a schism in the Order, which had rival Masters-General, one in the Roman obedience, the other in the obedience of Avignon; to which Scotland adhered.
After the period of first enthusiasm changes were inevitable and doubtless occurred in Scotland as they did elsewhere in the Dominican Order. Abstinence from meat was abandoned generally and there was less insistence on fasting. Times of recitation of Divine Office were re-arranged to ensure that hours of sleep were no longer broken into. There was less insistence on silence in the priory, and on guests being received only in the guesthouse; less emphasis on personal poverty and detachment from possessions. As primitive observance was modified, Dominican communities would be more closely identified with the town life around them. Their guest quarters might be used by some friend or benefactor of the community coming in from the country for a few days. A bigger guesthouse might be occupied, as in Edinburgh, by some ambassador and his retinue, or by the auditors of the Exchequer; or by the king himself at Easter, or Christmas, as at Perth, where James 1 was murdered in 1437. Accommodation must have been stretched beyond limit on some occasions, for example when James IV's queen, Margaret Tudor, arrived in Edinburgh with a retinue hundreds strong. A priory church might be used for meetings of parliament or a church council. That of the Edinburgh Blackfriars saw the trial for heresy of Adam Wallace in 1550.
Guesthouses, and priory kitchens also, must have been popular clearing-houses for news and gossip. Each priory had its own "limit", its recognized area for begging and preaching. Chaucer's description of a "limiter" could surely find echoes in Scotland:

"A frere there was, a wantoun and a mery,
A limitour, a ful solempne man."

As limiters came and went on their aims questing rounds they would be as heavy with news as bees with pollen. There were probably " stations", dependent lodgings at a convenient distance from a priory which facilitated journeys and also casual meetings of brethren from different houses. As examination of a map will show, the Dominican network must have been an effective grapevine at any time, even when the brethren travelled everywhere on foot and denied themselves the use of horses in the name of poverty. In the circumstances of the fourteenth century it was not easy to develop and preserve that "inner cell" of contemplation which Dominican spirituality hoped to achieve, that existence truly in the world but not of the world which Christ commanded to his disciples. Nor can it have been easy to achieve the level of regular study which would nourish both prayer and preaching. In theory each house had its "lector" or reader to inspire and teach others. After reaching a satisfactory level in humanities students would go on to the Scottish Vicariate's central study house, in Perth, from which the ablest might go later to one of the great international study houses, such as St. Jacques in Paris or even, given peace with England, to the priory in Oxford.

"2. To Praise, To Bless and to Preach" The Life of the Friars

 We do not know much about standards of teaching in the Perth Blackfriars. The programme corresponded presumably to what was laid down by Thomas Aquinas and other Dominicans around the middle of the thirteenth century. A preliminary study of Arts was required for entry upon the study of philosophy and theology. The name of at least one teacher of Arts survives, Brother Thomas Robertson or Robson, ordained at Bologna in 1469, later in Chester and appointed to teach liberal arts in Glasgow in 1476. Teaching was by means of lectures which were essentially commentaries on approved texts. Dominicans had engaged in the study of Aristotle which revolutionised the universities of Paris and Oxford in the thirteenth century, and his works were standard texts in philosophy. The chief text for theological study was the Bible, followed by Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences, a large twelfth century collection of opinions gathered from earlier Christian writers. Thirteenth century French Dominicans produced a huge concordance, and other tools for biblical study. If the Perth study-house possessed copies of these and other essential books they would be chained in the priory's library, to be consulted there only.
It may be seen perhaps as recognition of quality in the Perth Blackfriars that one of its teachers became a bishop; William Comyn. Comyn seems to have been academically distinguished, as was Finlay of Albany, who was appointed to the See of Argyll in 1420. He was described in a document a few years before that as a professor and Bachelor in Sacred Scripture. He was Vicar-General in Scotland in 1409. His episcopal appointment was possibly political rather than a mark of academic or spiritual recognition. He seems to have been a member of the family of the Stewarts of Albany which made an unsuccessful bid for power in 1425,. and was overthrown by James I. At any rate when the Albany Stewarts were crushed, Bishop Finlay fled to Ireland, where he died probably not long after.
The fifteenth century saw fresh stimulus to study in the Dominican Order generally, as part of a movement towards restoration of its primitive ideals. In Scotland itself there was a development of academic institutions, an expression perhaps of a growth of national consciousness especially evident during the reign's of James III and James IV. St. Andrews University began in 1411; Glasgow was founded in 1451; Aberdeen in 1494. In 1481, with the support of James III, the Scottish Vicariate was successful in gaining the status of a Province in the Order. The existing Vicar- General, John Mure, Bachelor in Theology, incorporated in Glasgow University in 1470, was its first Provincial. Royal favour was expressed in his appointment as commendatory superior of the Trinitarian house at Failford, an odd appointment for a Dominican friar to hold; it may have been intended to provide for his maintenance as Provincial, but could be seen as evidence that he was not a keen supporter of ideas of primitive observance.
The Black Friars were involved with the beginning of Glasgow's university, which operated for a time in their premises before securing property of its own.
Several studied or taught there, for example David Craig, formerly professor of theology in Paris, in 1487; and Robert Lyle, who had taken his bachelors degree in theology in Aberdeen, in 1522. The Dominicans were much more closely associated with the university in Aberdeen, whose founder, Bishop Elphinstone, was a particular friend of the friars, of learning, and of reform in the Church. Aberdeen's first graduate in theology was a Black Friar, John Adamson, who was to make more of a mark in the Order than any Scottish friar before or since, excepting Clement of Dunblane; he was also to be the centre of a traumatic upheaval in the Scottish Province.
The Dominican Order's internal reform had gathered strength particularly in parts of Europe with which Scotland had very close links, France and the Low Countries. Tension between supporters of strict and more relaxed observance of constitutions was accompanied by tensions rising from developments in scholarship, especially those associated with some form of humanism. Scotland could not escape such tensions. There appear to have been two parties among the Black Friars; one, which was in the majority when the Scottish Province was established, was influenced by monarch and court to a degree which struck the other party as worldly. The stricter party was gaining strength in the Order's highest legislative body, the General Chapter, an international elected assembly which met at different places in Europe every six years. The leader of the stricter party in Scotland was John Adamson and in 1510, after the inspection of the Scottish situation by visitators from the reformed "Congregation of Holland", the Provincial, David Anderson, was removed from office and replaced by John Adamson, at that time Prior of Aberdeen.
John Adamson did not lack vigour. He was probably physically tough; tough enough certainly to walk to Rome in 1517 for a General Chapter, keeping to the letter of the Order's fasting rules all the way and making no use of the dispensation from fasting which he could have had. It is likely that he was mentally tough also, possibly rather rigid. He had a dear idea of what needed to be done and launched a programme of reconstruction and reform, undaunted by popular riots associated with the removal of David Anderson from office. He had some firm supporters among the older brethren, among them John Spens, who had attended the General Chapter in 1518 with him and who, as Prior of Elgin, commissioned the chartulary of the Elgin Blackfriars, now in the National Library of Scotland, and possibly James Crichton who had studied in Italy and been judged a learned and entertaining conversationalist by Pope Clernent VII.
The year 1518 was a high point for Adamson. A Spanish chronicler noted that he was considered by the friars assembled for the General Chapter as a possible successor to the retiring Master-General Cajetan - now made a cardinal. He had enjoyed Cajetan's support in his efforts at reform and had secured papal and government backing for what he was doing. There must have been unhappiness among the "court friars", such as the "Freir Gill" alluded to caustically by David Lyndsay in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, and some went to look for an easier life across the Border, in England.
Adamson emphasised prayer, penance, and study. Following St. Dominic's example, he wanted a community of Sisters to pray for the brethren and their work. So the convent of St. Catherine of Siena was established in Edinburgh, where St. Catherine's Place now is, giving its name to the district of Sciennes. This community of less than twenty cloistered women continued into the 1560's and is instanced as an example of poverty and chastity in David Lyndsay's Satyre, the one community of nuns for which he had respect.
In regard to study, Adamson's most interesting project was the foundation of a Dominican house in St. Andrews, to contain five or six students reading theology in the university. This may be seen as an attempt not only to extend the friars' part in the Scottish universities, but as a way of shifting the centre of interest in the province from the political capital to the religious capital of Scotland. With houses in Glasgow, Aberdeen and St. Andrews, there was ample opportunity for theological study and preparation for yet more advanced study in larger continental universities, to which some at least had gone in the past. In the records of the General Chapter held in 1525 there is an impressive list of graduates in theology, part of the fruit of Adamson's academic plan. He gave the Scottish Province a strong intellectual orientation, but it is uncertain how aware he was personally of new currents in European thought; how appreciative, for example, of trends in biblical scholarship represented by people like Erasmus and Cajetan; how sensitive to people and the times in which he lived. In 1517, in Wittenberg, the Augustinian, Martin Luther, started something which would have major repercussions among Adamson's young men, beyond anything he, or they, could have foreseen at the time.
There is an account in Aberdeen Burgh Records of action taken by Adamson, when Prior of Aberdeen, for the non-payment of rent by a tenant of one of the small properties which produced an important part of the friars' modest income. Prior and procurator had gone to seize some of the tenant's goods, and there was a ludicrous tug of-war on the doorstep between tenant and friar, holding on to opposite sides of some metal vessel. The incident serves to illustrate one kind of friction, which existed increasingly as the century advanced, and was expressed in litigation between Black Friars and townspeople. Even if the friars enjoyed only a modest, even frugal standard of living, that was luxury compared to the bitter poverty which many experienced in town and country. Litigation to recover rents for however reasonable purposes, such as repair of buildings or maintenance of students, must have helped to build up a serious body of antagonism towards the friars. It may have been fuelled also by instances of their acquiring such property as the "Maison Dieu" in Elgin, St. Mary's hospital in Montrose, the hospital of St. Laurence in Haddington, and the leper hospital of St. Leonard, in St. Andrews. There was much homelessness and starvation in sixteenth century Scotland. Hence the force of a demonstration in Perth, when a pot of broth stolen from the Blackfriars' kitchen which had been broken into while the friars were in Church, was paraded through the town one morning, in 1543. The broth might mean little to a prosperous burgess, but much to members of what John Knox would call "the rascal multitude".
There was social and economic pressure which could not be avoided and which was intensified by war, famine, and plague. There was intellectual and moral confusion to add to the problems of those who took religion seriously. Responsibility lay painfully on sensitive consciences, caught in a world where high ranking authorities at home and abroad, in church and state alike, were often discredited by their flagrant misbehaviour. It is perhaps hardly surprising that the Scottish Dominican province should have reflected the times by deep division among its members. Some would work for internal reform of the Church they knew, faithful to popes and bishops in spite of scandals; others would work to create a new and. better system closer, they hoped, to God's word; some would do their best to slip into peaceful obscurity. But, before and after the destruction of priories in 1559-1560, Scottish Dominicans were prominent on both sides of the great religious division. Here there is no space to do more than pick out a few names to show how varied were the histories of individual friars.
First should be that of John Grierson, who succeeded Adamson as Provincial in 1523 and was still in office in 1560. His length of time in office was unconstitutional, unless exceptional tenure was covered by dispensation. In any case it suggests that he was probably a compromise choice acceptable to parties who could not agree on anyone else. He seems to have been primarily a scholar, to judge by the books which we know him to have used. He had been educated at Aberdeen University and appears in 1553 as professor of theology in the University of St. Andrews, and dean of the Faculty of Theology. It appears from his books that in addition to theology he was interested in history. He possessed Erasmus's notes on the New Testament (Annotationes in Novum Testamentum. Basle 1522), and Cajetan's commentaries on St. Paul's letters (Paris 1532). He was widely acquainted with scholastic and patristic thought; a man perhaps conservative on the whole but not untouched by the New Learning, appreciative of Cicero and Livy both of whom are represented among his books. At the Reformation the old man went through a humiliating ceremony of renunciation of his faith, in St. Andrews, but Protestant allegiance was brief in his case. In 1561 he was trying, from the shelter of Seton, to safeguard the future of the Province, in expectation of a reversal of political fortunes. He died probably two years later in Easter Ross, under the protection of Henry Sinc lair, bishop of Ross and President of the College of justice.
A number of the brethren had been involved in the early and later stages of the protestant movement. Some like Alexander Seton, sometime Prior of the St. Andrews' Blackfriars, who fled to England about 1537, in fear of his life, may have got into trouble first of all by preaching against scandal in high places. He may have witnessed the burning of Patrick Hamilton in 1528, the horror of which, according to John Knox, drove the then prior, Alexander Campbell, out of his mind. It may have haunted Seton, who was still alive in England in Mary Tudor's reign and formally renounced then any attachment to Protestantism, so escaping the fires of Smithfield. Another Scottish friar, John Rough, did die there as a Protestant martyr, welcoming the death which would release him from the troubles of this world and unite him to Christ:

"Death is to my great advantage; for there the body ceaseth from sin, and, after, turneth into the first original; but after shall be changed, and made brighter than the sun or moon. What shall I write of this corporal death, seeing it is decreed of God that all men shall once die? Happy are they that die in the Lord, which is to die in the faith of Christ, professing and confessing the same before many witnesses."

Another fugitive from Scotland was John Macalpine, like Alexander Campbell one of the graduates of 1525. From England he went.about 1540 to the university of Wittenberg where he graduated again, and came under the influence of Melancthon. From one point of view his was a success story. He married a sister of Miles Coverdale, the English translator of Scripture, and became eventually professor of theology in the university of Copenhagen, a chaplain to the Danish king, and involved in the work of translating the Bible into Danish. The Scottish Black Friar from Perth was transformed into Doctor Johannes Maccabaeus of Copenhagen. His son would come, as Knox's did, not back to Scotland but to Cambridge and England. A stranger transformation was that of John Macdowell, a Bachelor of Theology of Cologne, incorporated in Glasgow University in 1530, and later Prior of Wigtown, from which he fled to England in 1534, ending his life as a burgomaster somewhere in Germany.

A Reconstruction of the appearance of the Edinburgh Priory as was c.1540. Illustrated in The Blackfriars of Edinburgh by W Moir Bryce.

 Those friars who remained in Scotland through the stressful decades after Patrick Hamilton's death may have found relative peace in the three universities; but pressure on them al1 from those in power to be quiet and conformist must have been heavy at times, even although executions on heresy charges were relatively few in Scotland. In 1534 the Dominican and Franciscan Provincials were summoned by the Privy Council and told to see to it that new opinions were not put forward in preaching but confined to discussion "in the sculis. " Two Dominicans and a Franciscan (Friars Beveridge, Kyllour, and Russell) were burnt for heresy five years later. Some Black Friars who left the Order influenced John Knox, who was urged to take up preaching by one of them,john Rough, in St. Andrews' castle after the murder of Cardinal Beaton. Others worked for internal reform, preaching at Paisley for example at the request of Archbishop John Hamilton, who was Abbot of Paisley, or to the monks of Dunfermline, or to the burgesses who attended Mass in Dominican churches. It is thought that Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism may have been the work of one of these preachers, the English prior of Newcastle-on-Tyne, Richard Marshall, who had fled to Scotland from Henry VIII's Reformation. Other Dominicans appeared in the records of the Councils, or synods, which Archbishop Hamilton convened in his effort to resolve the crisis which was growing steadily more acute among Christians in Scotland. In spite of its losses in the thirties, and later, the Order of Preachers was enough of an obstacle in the way of the Protestant reformers to be a primary object of attack in 1559. The houses of the Black Friars and Grey Friars, (The Observant Franciscans), were sacked and their communities driven out, nominally in the interest of the poor.
When the Reformation settlement was made those friars who submitted to it received pensions of £ 1 a year on which they might live quietly, until they died. Few became ministers or exhorters in the Kirk, like Francis Wright at Olrig in Caithness. Some went to the continent, like William Henderson, sometime prior of Stirling, and John Hunter, Prior of Glasgow, who was to die with the Dominicans of Bordeaux, leaving a reputation for holiness. There were others who remained in Scotland, wearing ordinary clothing and ministering as well as they could to those who held still to the old Church. James Johnstone continued to work in Paisley and was charged with celebrating Mass there in 1563.
When Queen Mary came from France two Dominicans were supported by her at Holyrood, Andrew Abercromby, prior of Aberdeen, and John Black. The latter had been procurator in Aberdeen and taught theology later in St. Andrews. A few of the books which he used have survived, including a copy Aquinas's commentary on the canonical epistles, we annotated. He appears as someone aware of contemporary evils, of wicked judges, corrupt religions, an uncaring prelates. For him, as for St. James, faith was dead without good works. Prayer must not be merely mechanical. There should be joy in suffering persecution for Christ. He experienced something of what persecution meant when severely assaulted in the street an nearly killed one evening in Edinburgh. Rescued by Catholic citizens he found refuge in Northumberland returning to Edinburgh when he was well again. There he was murdered in Holyrood on the same night in 1566 as the Queen's Secretary, David Riccio.
John Black's death was noted with satisfaction among English and continental Protestants. That may have been partly because of his contribution to the Catholic revival in Edinburgh, illustrated by the thousands who received Communion at Easter, 1565. But there may have been another reason for his death. Queen Mary was surrounded by leaders of the Reformation party and correspondence with her friends abroad was difficult. It has been suggested that Black was a link in the chain of communication which went as follows: Queen to Riccio; Riccio to John Black; Black to the City Treasurer's wife in the chapel at Holyrood; Treasurer's wife to Timotheo Spagnuoli, an Italian banker in Edinburgh; Spagnuoli to Paris and/or Rome. It may be that we shall never be able to do more than surmise, but the plausibility of such a surmise is enough to destroy any likelihood of John Black being recognised in Rome as a martyr.
Two former Dominicans were influential in the new Kirk, John Willock, formerly of Ayr, and John Craig who had lived and worked before the Reformation mainly in Italy and is commemorated now by a plaque in the High Kirk of St. Giles, in Edinburgh. Of the two, Craig was the more important in the end, as the author of a compact, clear, and influential catechism, and as a minister in Edinburgh who concentrated on his pastoral duty and avoided much entanglement with politics. He was described by the historian Spottiswood as "sincere, inclining to no faction and, which increased his reputation, living honestly, without ostentation or desire of outward glory". He died in his eighty-ninth year, in 1600. It may well be that Willock was the more forceful preacher; but Craig was the more assured thinker, able to state his theological position clearly and patiently to the ordinary burgess. That was what was most needed among Christians in Scotland at the time and what John Black and John Craig were attempting to do, from different standpoints.
The province of Scotland had come to an end. The Irish Province, however, would maintain intermittent contact between the Dominican Order and Scotland, in spite of its heavy responsibilities elsewhere.

3. The Dominicans and the Scottish Mission

 Scotland's Outer Isles by geography and by language were often associated more closely with Ireland than with the Kingdom of Scotland. Travel by boat in the western sea was in many ways easier than journeys by land to the east and south of the Scottish mainland. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Irish friars, mainly Franciscans, visiting the Scottish Gaidhealtachd and ministering to people there in the two centuries following the Scottish Reformation.
One of the most interesting was George Fanning, who had studied in Vienna and in Italy as a young Dominican and came to the island of Barra sometime in the first half of the seventeenth century. He was said to have nearly starved in his first years there, but his position improved when he won over the chief Who sent Fanning to Barra is not known, or who was responsible for his going later to Arisaig, where he died and was buried in 1678; he had worked for nearly 15 years, in Clanranald territory. He had been unhappy as a student in Vienna and presumably found peace and satisfaction as a priest in the Clanranald lands, since he remained there so long.
During most of George Fanning's time there was a Dominican Vicar-General once again in Scotland. A certain Patrick Primrose graduated at Edinburgh University in 1635; his antecedents are uncertain. There is reason to suspect that he belonged to the family later represented by the Earls of Rosebery; perhaps he was one of those members recorded simply by the words "went abroad". Perhaps it was abroad that he became a Catholic and a Dominican, through contact somewhere with Irish Dominicans, since he appears in records of the Irish Province. He dreamed of a Dominican mission to Protestant Scotland and hoped for the restoration of the Scottish Province, as another seventeenth century Dominican, Philip Howard, hoped and works for the restoration of the English Province.
Patrick Primrose was not the first Scot to become a Dominican after the destruction of the Scottish Province. Scottish Catholics were numerous abroad, where some rose to rank in church or state, and where centres such as the Scots Colleges in Paris and Rome, or the Scottish Benedictine Abbey at Ratisbon, represented a continuing Scottish Catholic tradition. Some were, not surprisingly, inclined to shift about before they settled; so one finished as a Dominican in Spain while another, who had been a Dominican in Italy, finished as a Protestant in London in 1620. An Aberdonian, James Forbes, who was a student in the Scots College in Rome in 1602, decided to become a Dominican, was briefly Vicar-General of the English Dominicans but was objected to so strongly because of his nationality that the appointment was cancelled. He settled after that among French Dominicans of strict observance where he held office as prior for some time before 1646.
Others from the Scots College in Rome became Black Friars in the first decades of the seventeenth century but little is known of their origins or later history. Several attempts were made to send Irish Black Friars to Scotland but on the whole they were understandably reluctant to face the wildness and poverty of the Scottish Highlands, and it is uncertain how many went, and where. The same is true equally of some of the Scots, for example two friars, Robert Callender and James Murray, who had been students at the Scots College in Rome. A considerable amount is known about Alexander Lumsden, son of a Catholic family in Aberdeen, but there are no details of where he worked in his own country. He escaped death as a victim of Titus Oates, in London in 1680, being reprieved as a Scot not subject to English Law; but he "had frequent experience of prison chains" according to a contemporary Dominican who knew him. He is believed to have died in England about 1700, as a member of the English Province.
Lumsden had been one of Primrose's recruits, met probably after Primrose was assigned to the Dominican house of Sancta Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, at the end of 1649. The assignation looks as though it was made with a view to advancing definite plans fora Scottish project. In September 1650 Primrose, supported by the Master-General, John Baptist de Marinis, and described as Bachelor in Theology, obtained faculties as a missionary in the three Britis Kingdoms from Rome's Congregation of Propaganda. In November the Master-General appointed him Vicar General of the Scottish Province, and wrote to several major superiors in the Order asking them to accept young Scots as novices. There was talk of a house in Paris for the formation of Scottish Dominicans, but nothing happened; Scottish recruits were placed instead in France or Italy. James Cunningham from Stirlingshire passed his novitiate in Brittany and is last heard of in 1658, assigned to the community at Rennes, but with permission to go to Scotland to settle some family business. Patrick Ogilvie from Banffshire died in Italy in 1684. Adam Brown from Teviotdale studied at Toulouse in 1681, fifty years after another Scot, Edward White, had studied there, and like him was destined for the English Dominican community at Bornhem in Flanders. Joseph Davidson, a member of the Roman Province, died somewhere on his way to work in Scotland, about 1678.
More tantalisingly shadowy than the others is the figure of a friar whose chalice, dated 1658, is preserved in Morar. A book which he used also survives, bearing his signature. He had been a novice apparently at Cologne and was later, briefly perhaps, in a community near Dunkirk. In 1677 the General Chapter meeting in Rome gave him the title of Preacher-General in recognition of his missionary labours, but regarding him as a member of the English Province! But the Master-General's records name him as "Vincentius Marianus Scotus". A Scot therefore. In 1654 he was urging the General to let him work in Scotland with Patrick Primrose. Not only is his chalice in Morar, but his book has been continuously in Scotland to the present day; yet we do not know where he came from, or where he worked.
It is possible to be a little more precise about Father Primrose and more about him may be discovered in the future. He seems to have decided that his time would be spent better in Scotland than on the continent and by 1655 at latest he was active in the Lothian region and described in a report to Rome as "an eloquent man and full of zeal". About 80 years later a rather unreliable reporter claimed to have seen some notes of his on the history of the Order and evidently had picked up some memory of his work in Lothian. Whatever the truth about his family, Primrose would have had contacts there from his university days at least, and it would make sense to begin work in Scotland in that area.
His position was affected favourably by the restoration of Charles II to the throne. Charles's queen, Catherine of Braganza, was particularly fond of the Dominican Order and had what was almost a Dominican community attached to her household. She had as chaplains two Portuguese friars and in 1665 Father Philip Thomas Howard, Vicar-General of the English Dominicans, was made her almoner and principal chaplain. Howard, son of the Earl of Arundel, had a Scottish mother, a Lennox Stuart; his niece Elizabeth came to Scotland in 1676 as wife of the fourth Marquis of Huntly, who became first Duke of Gordon.
It may have been through Father Howard's good offices that Patrick Primrose was named one of her chaplains, an appointment which could afford him some protection. Howard was active also in securing his recognition as a Master in Sacred Theology. A document from the Master-General, relating to this promotion, refers to his Herculean labours in Scotland over a long period. It contains also a reference to his literary labours which is meaningless now, however much, or little, it may have meant then. Perhaps he was the author of a small pamphlet, The Method of Saying T he Rosary of our Blessed Lady, a copy of whose 13th edition (1684) is in the National Library of Scotland. It is attributed usually to Father Howard. There is reference to a translation of some life of St. Rose of Lima. But nothing is certain and the reference to literary labours may be a polite formula.
What is certain is that Primrose was working in Banffshire and that his activity was worrying the Privy Council in Edinburgh. Orders for his arrest were given towards the end of September 1670 and on November 10th the Council discussed briefly what to do with him., He was imprisoned in Banff's Tolbooth, to be released at the end of December on the grounds that he was one of the Queen's servants, but on condition that he should go into exile and never return, under pain of death, unless bv permission of the King or his Council. He was too ill to travel, and was given permission to remain until February 5th. He did not leave Scotland, but died some time in 1671. On March 4th 1672 the Privy Council ordered that "a superstitious monument erected upon the grave of the deceased Mr Patrick Primrose" should be demolished. A hundred years later he was remembered by another Scottish priest: "Mr Primrose, a famous holy Man, he is bury'd in Peter-Kirk in Strathboggie." His chalice turned up some years ago in a sale in Aberdeen, was bought by a local Catholic who saw what it was, and through the generosity of the late Canon George Grant of Beauly was given to the Dominicans in Edinburgh. Canon Grant had it gilded; it had been plain, a typical example of seventeenth century Irish craftsmanship.
It is likely that by the end of the seventeenth century the small group of Scottish Dominicans had died out. Irish friars continued to work in the Western Isles from time to time, and in Lewis or Harris one was reputed to have made a laird's daughter pregnant. There are happier memories of another, probably the last Irish Dominican resident in Scotland until the present century, Father Wynn, who was described by the VicarApostolic of the Highland District, Bishop John Macdonald, in a letter to Rome: "Mr. Wynn is indeed a laborious and willing man, and behaves to everybody's satisfaction, for which he shall receive all the kindness we can show him. He is settled with Mr. Forester in South Uist, where he has enough to do, his companion being now old and infirm, so that the chief weight must be upon him, which he bears very cheerfully." That was in 1766. Four years later the bishop was recording his departure "to our great disappointment". Alasdair Macdonald, the laird of Boisdale, had been censured publicly by one or other of the priests for compelling his people to work on a traditional holiday - a holy day of obligation. Boisdale became a Protestant in consequence, it is said; and began that harassment of his people which resulted in hundreds from South Uist emigrating to America, with financial help from English Catholics, and the departure of Father Wynn to Ireland, so regretted in South Uist.

4. The Return of the Friars.

The latest period in the history of the Scottish Blackfriars may be considered as having started in 1874, when a young native of Glasgow entered the novitiate Father Placid Conway (1854-1913), found time in a busy life of teaching, preaching, and pastoral work, to study the history of Scottish Dominicans before the Reformation. The results were not always satisfactory; for example an article published in the Order's Analecta in 1895 has been the source of a chain of errors about the first Black Friars in Scotland. Placid Conway was hopeful that the Order would return to Scotland and was something of a publicist for the idea. In 1910 there was some fulfilment of his hopes, with the opening of a convent of Dominican sisters in Hawick, to engage in teaching and nursing.
The Hawick convent, dedicated in honour of St. Margaret of Scotland, was the first of its kind in Scotland; a community of women who unlike the sisters in the preReformation convent, were not strictly enclosed, but free to engage in pastoral or other work outside the house itself. The Hawick sisters have taught in the local Catholic school, and provided in St. Margaret's Home a hospice mainly for terminally ill women which throughout its history has set an example of ecumenical spirit, in a town where there was initially considerable hostility to the presence of the Sisters.
The Hawick Sisters belong to what has been called "The Third Order" of St. Dominic, the brethren being "The First Order", and the enclosed Sisters "The Second Order". As the name suggests, the Third Order was a later development. It began with groups of lay people who were associated closely with the friars in pastoral work mainly, or who looked to them for spiritual support and direction. Eventually the Third Order branched into resident communities, usually of women, and non-resident groups of men or women meeting at intervals and with a Dominican priest-director. The nineteenth century saw a number of Third Order developments. The Hawick Sisters came from one of these, the Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena, founded by a remarkable woman, Margaret Hallahan, in 1845.
Non-residential Third Order groups also developed in Scotland early in the present century, most strikingly in Glasgow under the influence of a priest of the archdiocese of Glasgow, Dr. Patrick Flood, working in the Bridgeton district of the city. Dr. Flood attracted a group of men who formed a Third Order Chapter, studied logic, philosophy, and theology, and carried on a "pub apostolate". Their sense of being Dominican was so strong that after Dr. Flood fell ill, and left Glasgow, they continued for years on their own, without a director, until the return of the First Order to Scotland in 1931. Their membership cut across the familiar class divisions, one of the sharpest minds among them belonging to a cobbler, Michael McGoldrick.
Concurrently there were developments in Edinburgh where Canon John Gray of St. Peter's church in Falcon Avenue, and his wealthy friend, Andre Raffalovitch had settled. Both were members of the Third Order, and there appears to have been a Third Order Chapter at St. Peter's. Gray's dislike of preaching and Raffalovitch's munificence led to a constant stream of Dominicans travelling north to preach in St. Peter's on Sundays. At lunch in Raffalovitch's house they met awide variety of Scottish writers and artists, students and teachers. So it happened that, both in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, at opposite ends of the social scale ideas were growing about the possible return of the Black Friars to Scotland in the shape of a regular community of the First order.
Should they look for care of a parish? There were bishops eager to accept friars who would undertake care of parishes, especially where there was a struggle to make ends meet. A Scottish bishop with a number of debtridden parishes suggested two possible places. A historic house in Galloway was offered by its owner; it stood in beautiful surroundings, but far from centres of population. The head of the English Province when those prospects opened was Father Bede Jarrett, Oxford graduate, gifted preacher, and historian. He wished to see the brethren more involved in evangelization and study than would be possible under the pressures of parish life. Above all, he believed that Dominicans should return to universities, and face the challenge of twentieth century university life as the earliest brethren had faced thirteenth century life. The Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Andrew Joseph Macdonald, O.S.B., sometime Abbot of Fort Augustus, held the same view and invited the Black Friars to come to Edinburgh as chaplains in the university. With remarkable foresight he urged the Provincial to buy as much property as possible in George Square, because he believed that the university would be centered there one day. No. 24, long the home of members of the Scott- Moncrieff family, was bought at the end of 1931.
Father Bede had dreamed a long time of' a return to Scotland. He had written to a friend in 1916 that he hoped to open a Dominican house in Scotland in the following year: "quite a small house, a private house, where two Fathers could live and say Mass in a little Chapel of their own and go out to preach. of course that would depend on the amount of preaching they could get: whether it would be enough to keep them alive". Fifteen years later he entered the much larger house in George Square, "in the very best centre imaginable for our work'. It was, he said in another letter, "all rather empty and only partly furnished, bleak, bare, cold;", when he entered. Twenty minutes later he was celebrating Mass with "a contented feeling of deep gratitude to God", the giver of all good things. A few weeks later he wrote to a Scottish friend: "Please pray for the brethren there because their work will be responsible and their means very small. In time financially they will be all right but at first they will be hard put to it to live." They were three in number and there was £5 to their credit in the bank when they arrived.
It was a Chinese box situation. Within the city of Edinburgh there was a Catholic minority, within that an academic minority, and within that a Dominican minority suspect in the eyes of the many anti-intellectual clergy and laity in the Church at the time. There was anti-Catholic feeling in the university and the Protestant Action Party in the city could, and did, put thousands of its aggressive members on the streets from time to time; it frequently picketed the Dominican house during the time of Sunday afternoon service. There were challenges enough for friars in such a situation! This is not the place for a detailed account of how the work developed among students and staff, among professional groups of teachers and doctors, in the Newman Association, the Scottish Catholic Historical Association, conferences of psychologists, of historians, of social workers. The first chaplain to the students, Father Giles Black, preached in thie vacations all over the country. In the university he fostered joint meetings of Catholic and Protestant students, Christians and Jews, where initial uneasiness gradually relaxed. The community's official lecturer, Father Aelred Whitacre, addressed students who hoped to teach in Catholic schools, and groups on Saturday mornings who were interested in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He worked also as a sculptor and exhibited work in the Royal Scottish Academy and in London. The superior, Father Fabian Dix, kept the accounts, counselled students and others, preached, and kept things going smoothly, with a dry humour and enormous patience.
The initial financial hardship was eased by bequests from John Gray and Andre Raffalovitch, who died within a few months of each other in 1934. Their bequests, for the support of the Order.'s work in the archdiocese, made possible gradual acquisition of more property: No. 23, 23 B, 23A, and No. 25 George Square, in that sequence. Physical expansion made experiments in community life possible and the keeping of "open house"; these have influenced other places and people, inside and outside Scotland. The Edinburgh community has gained from the presence in it from time to time of such distinguished English brethren as the late Hugh Pope, who did much to advance Biblical study among English speaking Catholics, and the popular religious writer Gerald Vann. As Father Bede Jarrett had hoped would happen, recruits came to join the Dominicans. One of those recruits, Alexander Herbert Hislop, son and grandson of distinguished Presbyterian ministers, and better known as Father lan, was to be elected Prior Provincial of the English Province in 1966 and re-elected in 1970.
Shortly before his election as Provincial he had gone to Glasgow as the first chaplain to Catholic students and staff in the University of Strathclyde. Born in Glasgow, which he loved always, he had hoped that the Order would be fully active there one day. During years spent as Superior and chaplain in Edinburgh he had shared the hopes and efforts of Glasgow lay- Dominicans and through their efforts had become an extra-mural lecturer employed by Glasgow University. What neither he, nor any of the brethren, had foreseen was the arrival of enclosed Dominican Sisters in Glasgow at the invitation of Archbishop Campbell in 1948. The invitation resulted from an unexpected discovery of the Dominican Sisters of the Perpetual Rosary by the archbishop in the course of a visit to Rome. Father lan was not the head of a community of friars in Glasgow, being there only on individual contract with the diocese. His successor at Strathclyde University, Father Columba Ryan - by descent part Irish, part Scottish, Jewish, and Dutch graduate of Oxford and later graduate honoris causa of Strathclyde, - became the first superior of a modern canonically established community of Dominican friars in Glasgow, in 1980. Three brethren and three students from Strathclyde and Glasgow universities lived in a semi-derelict flat at 141 George Street until April 1981 when they acquired a house in Queen's Drive; and the traditional debt. The full Dominican family exists now in Glasgow, with the cloistered Sisters at 61 Hamilton Avenue, the lay-Dominicans scattered through the city, and the friars on the edge of Queen's Park.
A major decision taken by the Dominican Province in 1976 was that its own students should undertake part of their course of theological study in the Divinity Faculties of British universities. The first step was taken to put this policy into effect when two students were sent from Oxford to Edinburgh to study theology under Professor Thomas Torrance and his colleagues at New College. They both graduated as Bachelors in Divinity, with First Class Honours, in 1979, the year in which Father Anthony Ross - who had been the first Roman Catholic student to study in New College, between 1937-39 - was elected Rector of the university by vote of students and full-time members of staff. Graduation and election were evidence not only that the Black Friars had returned to university life in Scotland. They were part also of the evidence that, in Strathclyde and Edinburgh alike, there is an ecumenical development which promises well for the future in this country.
In 1980 Father Patrick Primrose's dream was realised by the setting up of a Scottish novitiate in Edinburgh, with three novices in No. 25 George Square, the former home of Sir Walter Scott and, more recently, of the late Dr. A.G. Badenoch and his family. Dr. Badenoch had been a devoted member of the Dominican Order, he and his wife keeping open house, and fully involved in the life and work of the brethren next door. In the former Scott drawing-room in No. 25 many ideas had been hammered out, including plans for the founding of The Innes Review, whose first editor was to be Father Anthony Ross. The Badenoch family was followed by the Rev. lan Simpson and his wife Dr. Eleanor Simpson, the one Presbyterian, the other Episcopalian. It was their friendship and generosity which made it possible for the friars to acquire 25 George Square, which is therefore in its way a fruit of Christian friendship and co-operation.
Dominic, Aquinas, Albert, and other early Dominicans, had gone out to meet people, to listen to them and try to understand them; searching for ways to offer the Gospel, by word and example, so that it would become meaningful to others; they had studied and prayed, and disciplined their own lives in the experience of community living and worship. They had learned from everyone without distinction of race or creed; ancient Greeks and Romans, Jews and Moslems. In this spirit the modern friars have been involved in the life of the universities, with the Simon Community in Glasgow and the Cyrenians in other parts of Scotland, with Telephone Samaritans, Alcoholics Anonymous, ecumenical study groups, publications such as Concilium, The Innes Review, Scottish International Review and many others. They preach, lecture and broadcast; but, always, they must not forget that what they do must be done for love of God and their neighbour and in total dependence on Him, "the giver of all good gifts". Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it.

Anthony Ross O.P.

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