Scandal or repentance? John Gordon of Glencat

Abstract

John Gordon of Glencat’s story may be perused for its own human interest, but it is also a story that singularly reveals the conditions and problems facing Scots Catholics in the eighteenth century. John Gordon of Glencat is best known for his Memoirs, a book of apostasy and diatribe against the Scots College Paris which was published in 1733 with a second edition in the following year. In this work, he claimed that he was taken to the Scots College, Paris against his will and kept prisoner there for thirteen years, making his escape after refusing to submit to Unigenitus on what was going to be the day of his ordination to the priesthood. After selling his books to buy lay clothes, he was taken through France in a cart, covered with a blanket, as he was hotly pursued by the ecclesiastical authorities. In this highly unlikely tale, the ‘thirteen years’ stay in the college is contradicted by his own testimony. He left Scots College Paris in August 1730. If he had been thirteen years there, he would have entered in 1717. Yet he wrote that Alexander Smith was Prefect of Studies at the time of his arrival, and Alexander Smith did not arrive in Paris until June 1718. Glencat also stated that he had met his cousin Robert Gordon at Gordon Castle a year and some weeks before going to Paris, but Robert Gordon did not arrive back in Scotland until March 1719. He further recounted that he travelled to Paris in the company of John Farquharson, son of Robert Farquharson of Achriachan, and John Farquharson went to Paris in 1721. The ‘thirteen years’ claim, though appearing in the very title of his book, is clearly false. Elizabeth Harding, whose book will be discussed presently, said that the registers of the college proved that Glencat was admitted on 12 November 1722. William Clapperton accepted this date, conjecturing that John Gordon was the eldest of three received that year. This, however, does not fit all the facts. All three arriving in 1722 were described as very young whereas Glencat was then eighteen. The eldest of the three was