Robert Munro, secular priest in the Highlands (1645-1704)

Abstract

on Loch Oich, near the south-west end of Loch Ness. In the latter half of the seventeenth century it provided a base for the Highland mission equivalent to that for the Lowlands at Gordon Castle, Speymouth. That Munro should also die at Invergarry, tended by the Protestant Lady Glengarry whose marriage he had arranged from exile to the Scots College Paris seven years previously, is somehow typical of the man's remarkable career as a priest. This extended over a period of thirty-three years, when, in co-operation with a considerable number of Irishmen, he was the sole Gaelic-speaking Scottish priest known to be in the Highlands. As the title implies, Munro was also distinctive in operating as a secular priest outside the security of a regular order or society of clergy. There is room for conjecture about Munro's early years. He was eighteen when enrolled as 'Robertus Munroy' in the Scots College Douai on 17 May 1663.1 He must have been sent out by Alexander Winster or Dunbar, prefect-apostolic of the Scottish mission from 1662, who may also have received him into the Church. Robert was thirteen when Winster (a Moray man) returned from Rome as a priest in 1658. Five years later young Munro was a Catholic and on his way to Douai in the company of Alexander Fraser of Kinneras. Fraser's older brother had been sent to Douai four years earlier. Neither brother became a priest, but Munro later served Kinerras (which is above Eskadale in Strathglass) and Alexander Fraser helped to plan Bishop Nicolson's visitation in 1701.2 Prefect Ballentine had reported that 'in the province of Ross, the Catholic faith is professed by some among the Clan Munro'.3 Robert Munro's parents are not thought to have been among these, however.4 Local church records indicate that he was brought up a Protestant, the Presbytery of Inverness later declaring 'Robert Munro, seminarie priest, to be excommunicated for obstincie, defection and apostacie'.5