John Geddes: a Mission Accepted

John Geddes: A Mission Accepted As well as the Scots College in Madrid, there were other British seminaries in Spain at the time of the suppression of the Jesuits. The English had colleges in Madrid, Seville and Valladolid; the Irish at Salamanca, Seville, Compostela and AlcalA de Henares. All were administered by Jesuits and, after the expulsion of the Society from Spain, the English and Irish bishops lost little time in initiating the necessary efforts to safeguard their nations' properties. The, Scots, on the other hand, were so dilatory that their college was nearly irretrievably lost. With the expulsion of the Society at the beginning of April 1767, a special sub-committee of the Council of Castile (the supreme advisory body of the kingdom for domestic affairs) was established to deal with all matters connected with the Society and its houses. It met most mornings, immediately after the ordinary session of the full Council. This sub-committee had six or seven members and was known as the Extraordinary Council. Through it, Dr. O'Rian, an Irish priest delegated by his hierarchy, soon recovered the colleges of his nation; but furthermore, he received the Extraordinary Council's consent that the Scots College in Madrid should be united with, and incorporated in, the Irish College in Alcala on the specious grounds that, since there were so few Catholics in Scotland, no students could be expected; and that, anyway, most of the priests working in Scotland were Irish. As a result, the house furnishings, the sacred vessels and the vestments which were stored in the Scots College were taken to Alcal&, along with a chest of money collected, in rents, from the tenants in the Scots' property. No Spaniard or Irishman informed anyone in Scotland about these decisions and developments. The English bishops had also acted swiftly with regard to their Spanish property. In May 1767, the month after the expulsion, Bishop Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, presented a memorial on the subject to the Spanish ambassador in London and, early the following year, the English bishops sent one of their 48 John Geddes: Mission to Spain priests, Philip Perry, a doctor of the Sorbonne, to Spain as their representative. His mission was soon successful, at least in the sense that the College of St. Alban in Valladolid began to function again as a seminary under his rectorship, while St. George's College in Madrid was sold and the proceeds dedicated to the Valladolid col1ege.l But more important from the Scottish point of view, Dr. Perry was to play an invaluable part in the successful recovery of the Scots' property. On his way to Spain, he had passed through Douai and Paris and had been asked by Robert Grant and John Gordon, the principals of the Scots Colleges of those places, to look into the matter of the Scottish property in Madrid, a commission which he was kind enough to carry out. The first news to reach Scotland of the possibilities in Madrid came in a letter from Principal Gordon in Paris, written on 27th March 1768 and addressed to George Hay, recently become priest in charge of the mission at Edinburgh: "...I now write to you on a subject of a different nature which, if well managed, may turn out to greater advantage to you than anything that has happened in my time...". After describing how the English had been quick to claim their Spanish property, Gordon urged that the Scots bishops should send a similar emissary at once and warned that they should also be prepared to send a superior and some students at a later date; in the meantime, they should make Dr. Perry their procurator in Spaim2 Hay received Gordon's letter on 6th April and wrote next day to Bishop Grant, Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District, to tell him that Perry thought that the Scots had an excellent claim in Spain to colleges in Madrid and Seville, whose income was of the order of £1.000 per ann~m.~(The suggestion that there had been a Scots College in Seville was erroneous, as was discovered later; the Madrid net income, derived from the rents and various extraneous sources, was roughly 63,000 reals a year, which, at the prevailing exchange rate of ninety reals to a pound sterling, was about £700.)' From Aberdeen, Bishop Grant replied on 21st April to say that the bishops were to meet soon at Preshome and would discuss the Spanish question; but. as for sending out a superior and students, "we will be also much puzzled and in some degree nonplussed if the Donns in Spain insist on our planting a new colony among them, considering our extreme scarcity of hands".5 Bishop Grant and Bishop Hugh Macdonald, Vicar Apostolic of 1. After generations of effort and much litigation, the Spanish government in 1963 finally paid the English College in Valladolid compensation for the confiscated property in Seville. 2. Scottish Catholic Archives, Columba House, Edinburgh: letter rack 5-M. 3. Id., ibid. 4. College archives 191109. At the time, El sterling was worth about 90 reals; about ten years later, El was worth 100 reals. 5. Columba House 5-M. L-"A NOVENA! DEL GLORIOSO APOSTOL a& DE LAS INDIAS fg Poster announcing a novena in honour of St. Francis Xavier, to be held in the chapel of the Scots College in Madrid, 1765 (i.e., two years before the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain). (College archives 39/40.) THE SCOTS COLLEGE, MADRID Since the time of the college's transfer to Valladolid in 1771, the Madrid property had been let as houses and shops. This photograph, which shows the main fagade in the Calle Jacometrero (centre) and the side of the building in the Calle Chinchilla (right), was taken shortly before the property was demolished in 1920. ON PHELIPE VICTOR10 AMADEO, Ferrero ,Fiekhi ,Principe de Maiferano , Marqub Dde Crevecoeur ,Caifalvalone ,Villata, y Ponfana ,Conde de Candel, Bena, Galiafiico, Lavafia, Roafio , y Boriana, Gran Potefia de S. Dillano, Grailde de Efpafia de primera Clare ,Cavallero del Infigne Orden del Toyfcin de Oro, y del Real de S.Genaro,Comeridador de Almuradiel en el de Calatrava, Gentil-Hombre dt Camara de S.M. Catho- lica,con Exercicio, Theniente Beneral de fus Reales Exer- citos,Capitan de la Compafiia Italiana de fusReales Guar- dias de Corps, y fu Embaxador Extraordinario S. M. Britanica. or ragencargo B 10s Miniftros de S. M. afsi de Mar , corno de Tierra, de Guerra, y de IuRicia de las ~iudades,Puertos, y Lugares par donde eranficare, y i 10s que no lo Ton pido, y ruego no le pongan irn~edimentoalguno en Cu viage, antes Lien le d2n todo el fivor ,y auxilio que lluviere meneller para coniinuarlc, idyofin le acompa'no con elPrefentePaiXaporce, firnlado de mi mano ,Jellado con el SeUo de misArmas, y retrendado por el infrafcripro Secretario. o(& 7r m h dd- ,-j&=, de mil letecientos y iekm gp" Passport issued by the Spanish Ambassador in London, 4th March 1770, for John Geddes' journey to Spain. It is made out in favour of "Dn. Juan Geddes, Retor del Colegio de Escoceses de Alcala, con dos maestros." (College archives 19/17.) 'p!loDelleA u! znlj ewes ap o!6alo3 aql jo spuno~6aql u! mou s! 'aJ!j aql wo~jpahes 'lel~odanb0Jeq aieuJo aql aaq pale201 aq 01 anp Alleu!6!~0 seM '(1euopeN o!Jeniueg aq) mou) ueqals3 ueS jo qxnq2 aql pue ,,iJed MaN,, aql uaamlaq uaas aq ue2 q>!qm 'a6allo3 ~102saql 'sIxJJeq e uaaq peq Ja!lJea inq '~~61u! aJ!j Aq paA0JlSap sern 11 'O!POJqUIV UOS jO a6a1103 aqI $0 ,,I-led MaN,, pallems aql 'purl0~6a~ojaq) U! 'SMOqS '0061 Inoqe Uaqel Alqeqo~d 'qde~6010qd S!ql The Scots College in Spain 49 the Highland District, duly met at Preshome in July and despatched letters to the Spanish ambassador in London, to Dr. Perry empowering him to act in their name, and to the rectors in Douai and Paris encouraging them to do all that they could to have the management of the Madrid college restored. A postscript to the letter to Grant in Douai added that, although there was a desperate shortage of priests in Scotland, they were willing, if it were necessary, to spare one to be sent to Spain. The bishops had been encouraged to envisage the possible adoption of this last measure by the man who, the prevjous December, had arrived to be priest in charge of Preshome, where the bishops were meeting. It was he, John Geddes, who was destined to be the principal human agent in the recovery of the college. John Geddes was born on 29th August 1735 (0.S.), the son of John Geddes and Marjory Burgess6 His father was a small and obscure tenant-farmer or farmworker at Corridoun on the Gordon estate of Letterfourie in the Enzie of Banffshire. In 1742, the boy had become a pupil in the parish school at Rathven and had begun to study Latin; at this time, he lived with his mother's uncle during the week and returned home at weekends but, by the following Easter, he had left the school and been brought home, in order to thwart a scheme, of which we know nothing, to make him a Pr~testant.~For the next five years he was taught by a succession of mastirs in various small schools, except for some months in 1745-46 when, following Culloden and the resultant upset state of the country, he was kept at home.

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