Conrack, New Leslie and the Suppression of the Catholic North

Abstract

The linking of two places hardly known in their own counties of Moray and Aberdeen with such a large subject demands explanation. In two previous papers1 we have combined architectural and socio-religious history to show that, long after the Reformation Parliament rendered it illegal, castles and houses of north east Scotland were built to include Catholic symbolism. The problem of missing evidence was noted: 'Religious symbolism provoked acts of destruction, and some north-eastern houses vanished completely.'2 Having gone on to argue that symbolism could include apertures in castle walls,3 we now turn to Conrack and New Leslie in order to focus (but with a more general intent) on two houses which 'vanished completely. There is nothing on record to suggest that the farm of Conrack or Conrock, south of Rothes, was ever a significant place, and no trace now of a former chapel there dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. 4 Little is known of the other lost building in the Garioch district of Aberdeenshire beyond a 19th century report that 'the remains of the castle of New Leslie have been eradicated by the progress of agricultural improvement.'5 Commenting on the reduced property of his co-religionists, a son of Conrack was prophetic: 'The Calvinists . . . are eager to blot out if possible the memory or record of Catholics having ever existed in the world at all.' 6 Looked at from Holyrood where Privy Councillors met to govern Scotland for James VI and I, 'the North' was culturally defined. Excluding Gaelic-speaking areas, it comprised the north east Lowlands - in the ecclesiastical world of James's reformed bishops, the dioceses of Aberdeen and Moray. The term 'Cock of the North', applied to the head of the Gordons, renders distinct a virtual principality, while the Earl of Huntiys offer to set up the mass in three shires for Mary Queen of Scots 7 helps to establish 'the Catholic north'. At Corrichie early in the reign and again after Glenlivet in 1594, northern Catholics learned the futility of war, but their faith was well rooted: 'The earls of Huntly were liable to remain Catholic sympathizers because their power was largely derived from Catholic supporters. Catholicism was built into the regional structures of social and political life, and it was to prove a long time before they could be dismantled.' 8 Up to a third of the Scottish nobility were suspected of popery, but only in 'the North1 could a majority of lesser lairds be claimed as Catholic. 9 We are mainly concerned here with the reign of Charles I, who succeeded in 1625 and married Henrietta Maria of France in the same year. By treaty her household included twelve priests and a bishop 10 so that a climate of toleration emanated from the royal court which, for a while, held Edinburgh in check. Northern papists reacted over-confidently as Jesuit priests arrived from the Continent in numbers: twenty-one from 1616 to 1633 compared with sixteen for the earlier post-Reformation period.11 The reformed bishops of Moray and Aberdeen reported that mass was being said