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When they burnt down the chapels

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This picture of St Andrew’s is more than a century old. It has not changed much

The last large-scale religious persecution in Scotland was in 1746. After that there were still penal laws on the statute book, and religious minorities often had reason to grumble, but never again were troops used to burn down churches. The heartland of the Episcopal Church was the north-east of Scotland, and the intention was to extirpate it. They said you could go from the Tay up and round to the Spey and beyond, and never be out of sight of the column of smoke from a burning Episcopal chapel. There was a fire risk in bigger towns, so the chapels in Stonehaven and Peterhead and Inverness were demolished, and the bill for the demolition was sent to the congregation.

Two of the chapels burnt down were St Andrew’s Chapel in Banff, and the chapel at Portsoy (New Durn). After about five years St Andrew’s was rebuilt on the same site, and the present St Andrew’s is a rebuild of the replacement. It may well be that a future archaeologist will find traces of burning in the foundations of the present church. St Andrew’s had to disobey its bishop in order to become legally qualified to rebuild. The new “Qualified” chapel by law had to have a clergyman ordained in England. For forty years they sent north-east loons down to England to be ordained. (One was ordained by an Irish bishop on holiday, but that’s another story). Then Charles III (‘Bonny Prince Charlie’) died and the Episcopal Church decided after all to pray for King George, and the “Qualified” priest at Banff happily became what he had always wanted to be, an ordinary Scottish Episcopalian. It took several years before the government recognized that this particular religious minority was no threat.

You might say that this religious persecution was political, not religious. The Episcopal Church was hunted down because, in conscience, they supported a rival line of kings. Historically, there have been cases were religious groups stacked guns in their cellars. But burning down churches, and saying by law that no minister may be in a room with more than five other people, are deeds of tyranny.

It is good to think that St Andrew’s Church is still there, in the same place on the High Street as when Cumberland’s dragoons burnt it down on November 10th 1746, and you can see, now on loan in the Museum of Banff, the chalice rescued from the ruins of the New Durn chapel.

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GORDON’S HORSE

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It is a real achievement to raise a regiment. We all remember how the Duchess Jean raised the Gordons by giving a kiss to each recruit, with the king’s shilling between her teeth. Here is the story of a native of Banff who raised a regiment. His name was Sir John Bury Gordon (1781-1835) and the regiment he raised was the 30th Royal Lancers (Gordon’s Horse).

Sir John was a hereditary baronet, a Gordon of Park. The fine Castle of Park is still there, beside Cornhill, a few miles inland from Banff. The family had long links with Banff. His grandfather Sir William was made a Burgess of Banff in 1730, but then he was out in the 1745 Jacobite Rising, fought at Culloden, and was very nearly captured skulking near Banff. The government troops reported that a man identified as him had galloped off up a hill, and those pursuing him got bogged down, and he got away because he knew the country and they didn’t.

His young wife Janet (we have a picture of her in the Museum of Banff) was a daughter of Lord Braco, who became first Earl Fife. One story says the two of them eloped. A Jacobite son-in-law was rather an embarrassment in 1746, but Sir William escaped to the continent, and we find he was recognised as nobility in the peerage of Hungary. He had handed over his castle to his half-brother, Captain Gordon of the Marines, so it was not forfeited, but however, as Sir William’s children were born overseas – the brave Janet joined him – they were not entitled to inherit a Scottish estate ‘as natural subjects of the French king’. In any case, Captain Gordon was determined not to give it back. Our Sir John was born in Banff because the other side of the family kept the castle. His father was a professional soldier, an excellent man except when drunk, and was killed fighting in India a few months before our Sir John was born. There was a surge of sympathy for the young widow with her fatherless child, and money was found. And when he was 14 Earl Fife, who was after all related, got him an ensigncy in the Coldstream Guards, and the rest of his life he was a soldier.

Sir John spent the last 23 years of his life at Madras, and there he raised his regiment. It was in fact part of the private army of the fabulously rich Nizam of Hyderabad, but there was status involved in being a British regiment, raised by a British officer.

Sir John was the last of the hereditary baronets of Park. He married the daughter of an Anglican cathedral dean, but she fell in love with another man, and Sir John divorced her. Her son by her new husband became Speaker of the House of Commons. Sir John remarried, but there were no children.

The 30th Royal Lancers (Gordon’s Horse) fought in the First World War. There is a picture of the Lancers’ last charge – perhaps not these particular Lancers – but there was no real call for cavalry in the trenches. 

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A Jacobite Adventurer in Banff

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A model of Chevalier de Johnstone in Museum of BanffBPHSMOB
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