Alexander Cameron (priest)

Fr. Alexander Cameron SJ
Genuflecting on the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans
Scottish Priest, Missionary, Military Chaplain
Born	1701 Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland
Died	19 October 1746 Gravesend, Kent, England
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Feast	19th October
Patronage	Difficult Conversions, Military Chaplains, New Evangelisation, Scottish Highlands

Alexander Cameron of Lochiel, S.J. (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Sandaidh, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn) (1701 – 19 October 1746) was a Scottish nobleman and outlawed Roman Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus. He is currently being promoted by the Knights of St Columba for Canonization as a Saint and a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church.

Alexander Cameron was born into the Highland Scottish nobility (Scottish Gaelic: flath) at Achnacarry Castle (Scottish Gaelic: Achadh na Cairidh) in Lochaber and was the third son of John Cameron of Lochiel, the 18th Chief (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Iall, Mac Dhòmhnaill Dubh) of Clan Cameron (Scottish Gaelic: Clann Camshròn). After being fostered within the clan and raised by relatives in nearby Glen Dessary, Alexander travelled in both Catholic Europe and the British West Indies. While employed as "an honourary gentleman of the bedchamber" to Prince James Francis Edward Stuart and Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska at the House of Stuart government in exile in the Palazzo Muti in Rome, he converted from the High Church and Non-Juring Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism.

Following his Jesuit formation, Cameron was first ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and then ordered by the Society of Jesus to return to his native district. While living in a summer shieling (Scottish Gaelic: Àirigh) with two fellow priests in Glen Cannich, Fr. Cameron ran a highly successful but very dangerous ministry throughout both Lochaber and Strathglass, often under extremely harsh weather conditions, as an outlawed "heather priest" for the strictly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland. After the raising of Prince Charles Edward Stuart's standard at Glenfinnan (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Fhionnain), Fr. Cameron served as a military chaplain to the regiment of the Jacobite Army commanded by his elder brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, for the rest of the Uprising of 1745.

After the Battle of Culloden (Scottish Gaelic: Blàr Chùil Lodair), Fr. Cameron was captured by the British Army near Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Mòrar), Lochaber. He died of torture and the other hardships of his imprisonment while being held in inhumane conditions and without trial aboard a Royal Navy prison hulk anchored in the Thames River. As Fr. Alexander Cameron's death in odium fidei qualifies under Canon Law as Martyrdom, his Cause for Roman Catholic Sainthood is currently being advanced by the Knights of St Columba.

Early life

Achnacarry Castle

Alexander Cameron was born in September 1701 at Achnacarry Castle. He was son of John Cameron, Tanist of Lochiel. Alexander Cameron's mother, Lady Isobel Campbell of Lochnell, came from a mainly Jacobite cadet branch of Clan Campbell. She was the younger sister of Sir Donald Campbell of Lochnell, who commanded one of the Independent Highland Companies in the service of the Whig-single party state in the 1745 rising, only to become important to Scottish Gaelic literature after it ended. Sir Donald was listed in Scottish national poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's 1751 anti-Whig and anti-Campbell satire poem An Airc ("The Ark") as an honourable man who was to be welcomed aboard the new Ark as a true Jacobite at heart, during the second Great Flood prophesied to imminently strike all upon Clan Campbell's lands. Two of Alexander's other maternal uncles converted to Catholicism and one of them, Fr. Colin Campbell, became an admired leader among his fellow outlawed Roman Catholic priests of the Highlands.

Alexander was the younger brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who would later become the Chief of Clan Cameron and lead the Clan's regiment in the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. Even though the Cameron family of Lochiel all appeared on the surface to be Presbyterians and belonged officially to "the Kirk by Law Established", Alexander Cameron was raised within a staunchly Non-Juring and High Church Episcopalian family, which strongly opposed both the House of Hanover and the Whig single party state.

The river below Glendessary House, Lochaber

Shortly after his birth, Alexander Cameron was given by his father in fosterage, as was traditional practice among Irish and Scottish clans, to be raised by relatives at nearby Glendessary House. At the same time, Alexander's immediate family ties were not severed and remained very close. He would still have been a very young child when his father led the Clan during the Jacobite rising of 1715 and also that of 1719, and was only 12-years old when his father, who had always had a particular affection for him, left Scotland for what would become permanent exile in France, while Alexander's mother, Lady Isobel, remained behind at Achnacarry Castle. For this reason as well as the senile dementia of his grandfather, the famed Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, Alexander's eldest brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, led Clan Cameron as de facto Chief.

During the 1754 trial of John Cameron of Fassifern, Donald Cameron of Clunes testified that Alexander Cameron had been left a bond of 8,000 merks by his father. Clunes further testified, "That John MacIngveg (Scottish Gaelic: Iain mac Aonghas Beag), wadsetter of Glendessarie (sic), was foster-father to the said Alexander Cameron; that is, after Alexander was weaned, he was sent to Glendessarie House, to be brought up there until he should be fit for Schools. That upon that occasion, according to the customs of the country, Glendessarie set apsrt thirty cows, and Lochiel, the father, the like number, and they were all kept at Glendessarie, and the produce of these cows is intended to be for Stock to the infant when he sets up in the world; and he knows that when Alexander came to be fit to go to school, he was sent to the schools at Glendessarie's expense; and that when he went abroad, that stock was disposed of, and the price given to Alexander, and that it amounted to £150 Sterling and upwards."

In addition to being taught almost from birth how to live off the land, how to withstand cold and other hardships, and how to always follow the code of conduct demanded of a Scottish clan chief, Cameron was also educated by tutors. He later attended a boarding school at St. Ninian's near Stirling. He was later described as multilingual and, in addition to his native Scottish Gaelic language, also spoke and wrote Ecclesiastical Latin, English, French, and Italian.

As a young man, Cameron travelled to the British West Indies to visit the Colony of Jamaica, where the plantations his eldest brother had purchased as an investment were managed by their youngest brother, Ewan Cameron. Alexander had been sent to Jamaica on family business to, "scrape together moneys", but he later recalled that his tour of this, "most beautiful of countreys", (sic) did not give him the happiness he sought and he accordingly returned to Scotland. He then briefly served in the French Royal Army, where he was granted an officer's rank. According to his biographer Monsignor Thomas Wynne, "In which regiment of the army Alexander served, and where he travelled, is not recorded. His experiences of the rawness of barrack-room life would be a practical preparation for what lay ahead of him. He would find himself very much at home among his fellow soldiers in the future when he was to serve in the Prince Charles army."

It is known that around 1727, Alexander Cameron had what is believed to have been an emotional reunion with his exiled father in France.

Conversion to Catholicism

Palazzo Muti, Rome.

After this, Alexander Cameron travelled on a Grand Tour throughout Europe. After arriving in the Papal States, Alexander Cameron stayed at the Palazzo Muti in Rome, the home and the government in exile of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, who was known to Whigs as "The Old Pretender" and to Jacobites as, "The King over the Water." Through the influence of his uncle, Alan Cameron, Alexander Cameron was granted a position as an honorary gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince. He would have joined both his Royal master and Maria Clementina Sobieska, the Queen in exile, at formal Roman Feasts, which would also have involved attending the Tridentine Mass when it was accompanied by the liturgical polyphony of Palestrina, Tomas Luis de Vittoria, and many other great composers like them. These experiences are believed to have had an enormous influence upon his future spiritual development.

During his time in Rome, Alexander Cameron converted to Catholicism. According to Dom. Odo Blundell, Alexander's conversion was heavily influenced by Fr. John Farqhuarson, S.J. and his uncle Alan Cameron, a fellow household servant of the Prince who had played a great part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. According to Mgr. Thomas Wynne, however, in a letter to his brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, Alexander Cameron attributes his conversion solely to the influence of their uncle Allan Cameron.

Alexander Cameron further stated that he had expressed his desire to convert to the King and Queen in exile, who were overjoyed and immediately arranged for their household servant's instruction and reception into the Catholic Church. According to his biographer Monsignor Thomas Wynne, the name of the priest who instructed the future Jesuit, as well as the precise location and date of Alexander Cameron's reception into the Roman Catholic Church are still unknown.

In a letter sent from Boulogne in 1730, Alexander Cameron wrote his brother Donald to explain his reasons for converting :

″I doubt not that a piece of extraordinary news, as that of my being converted to the Catholick Faith, and quitting of the religion in which I was bred up, and educat, will at first surprise you and my Relations. I should be sorrie ever to do anything wherby I would run the risque of incurring the displeasure of a Brother whome I so much love and esteeme; but in an affaire of so great Consequence as this is, and wherupon alone my eetemall Salvation depends, my first duty is to God."

Cameron's letters indicate that he understood his family would be upset with his religious conversion, but explained, "The missfortoune of such as have been borne in protestante Countreys is that they heard and knowe all that can be invented or said against the Catholick Religion (which upon examination they would soon finde to be calumny) but they never have occasion to know what can be said for them..."

He only asked that they would still remain in contact with him,

"For my parte I'm fully resolved, with God's grace, to spend all the time that He will be pleased to allow me in this world in His Service, and endeavour, as much as I can to make up the time I have misspent, it is true my past life hase been wilde, but God's mercie is greate, and is readier to grant us pardon that we are to asked it. I have seen most of the splendoure and riches of this World, and have had occasion to be in some of its most beautifull Countreys but never could find out real happiness or contentment in it: and I thank God for it, I only now can say that, I have founde reall riches in possessing nothing. I have no check of conscience and if I could with all this flatter myselfe that my Brothers and Relations had the same regard for me as formerly, my happiness would be compleate; if they have not God forgive them, I do. If I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you and liveing in the same Countrey with you, let me have the satisfaction, at a distance, of being loved by you as one Brother ought to be by an other; if we never are to meet let me at least have the pleasure of corresponding with you, and heareing from you. I have no other favoure nowe to aske of you and my Relations but the continuance of your love and affections to me as formerly; for money I neither want any at present, or ever will put you to any trouble upon that account."

At the end of the same letter, Alexander Cameron issued instructions to his brother about who within the family was to be given his arms, as giving all one's personal weapons away to male relatives is customary for Gaels who were choosing to enter the clergy or monastic life.

In another letter, Alexander Cameron tells Donald why he thinks that the Clan Cameron should revert to Catholicism and laments that both their clan and dynasty had left the Catholic Church in Scotland. He reminded Donald that their ancestor, the 15th-century Chief, Eòghann Beag mac Ailein Cameron, had built seven Catholic churches throughout Lochaber as an act of penance. Cameron also condemned what he called the secularist tendency among many members of the Protestant faiths to leave religion only to their ministers, rather than the laity seeking to serve God themselves or seeking religious truth in the world around them.

Alexander Cameron travelled to Douai in 1730. In a 1731 Italian language petition to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus and which still survives, Cameron explained that he had applied to the Scots College in Douai to be allowed to enter the novitiate in Tournai, but had been told that there was difficulty in admitting him. There was already another Scottish novice studying in Tournai and the Scots College could not afford to pay 300 florins a year for another. Reminding the Superior General that he had recently done so for an Irish novice, Cameron asked that the local Jesuit Provincial be ordered to admit him gratis. Cameron also requested, as he was already somewhat older than the usual Jesuit postulant, that he be exempted from teaching after completing his theology studies, as he was also anxious to instead be sent home to serve in the Scottish mission.

Priestly Ministry

The Jesuit Church in Tournai where Fr. Alexander Cameron made his vows in 1736

Alexander Cameron entered the Society of Jesus at Tournai on 30 September 1734 and took his first vows there on 1 October 1736. He then studied theology for four years at Douai and did his tertianship for seven months at Armentières. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1740, and returned to Scotland in June 1741.

According to Fr. Cameron's biographer Fr. Thomas Wynne, "It is hard to imagine that the arrival of his brother Alexander was any more more welcome to Lochiel than that of the Young Pretender four years later... the contemporary Whig writer's judgment ( concerning the Clan's boast of steady Protestantism since the Reformation) that, 'Popish priests ... [were] surprised at their resolution on this point', has a particular relevance to the family's only Catholic clergyman."

Writing in 1746, Rev. Alexander MacBean, the Church of Scotland minister of Inverness (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Nis), alleged, "The Camerons boast of their being Protestant, and Lochiel hindered the priest his brother to preach among them, when he told them he would bring them from their villainous habit of thieving, if he would allow them to preach, and say Mass among them. His answer was that the people of Glengarry, Knoidart, Arisaig, etc, who were professed papists, were greater thieves than his people, and if he would bring these to be honest and industrious, he would then consider his proposal as to the Camerons, and till he would bring that good work to a bearing, he forbad him to meddle with his people."

According to Mgr. Thomas Wynne, however, "there is no doubt about the sincere love and affection that existed between the brothers", and that the decision not to assign Fr. Cameron to his native district is far more likely to have been made by their uncle, Bishop Hugh MacDonald, the Vicar Apostolic of the Highland District for the illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland.

Even reports from anti-Catholic sources confirm that Fr. Alexander Cameron was very successful as a missionary in the country of Clan Chisholm and Clan Fraser. For example, in a 27 April 1743 report from Dingwall (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Pheofharain) to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, local Presbyterian ministers noted that Fr. Cameron, who "hath lately settled in the part of Strathglass that pertains to Lord Lovet, and is employed as a Poppish Missionary in that neighbourhood and Glenstrathfarrar, and trafficks with great success; and he hath great advantage by his connection with the inhabitants of Lochaber, which gives the people in these quarters where he is employed occasion to suppose that is in his power to protect them and their cattle from the invasions of the people of that country, or to avenge himself upon them by their means, by which the few Protestants that are there are most discouraged and kept in perpetual terror; several arguments and methods said to be used by him would more become a country where Popery had the advantage of law in its favour than places that are under a Protestant Government, by which all means find that a greater number have been perverted to Popery in these parts within the last few months than thirty years before."

Glen Cannich. River between Loch Mullardoch (far right) and Loch Carrie

Fr. Cameron lived with and shared the Apostolate with two fellow Jesuits whom he had first met and befriended as fellow seminarians in Douai: Fr. John Farqhuarson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Iain, an-tAthair Iain Mac Fhearchair), a veteran "heather priest" who often travelled disguised in a kilt and tartan hose to evade capture by the priest hunters and who remains a folk hero in local Scottish folklore, and Fr. Charles Farqhuarson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Teàrlach, an t-Athair Teàrlach Mac Fhearchair), Maighstir Iain's brother. According to Colin Chisholm and Dom Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, the three priests' residence and secret Mass house was inside a cave known as (Scottish Gaelic: Glaic na h'eirbhe), which was located underneath the cliff of a big boulder at Brae of Craskie, near Beauly (Scottish Gaelic: A' Mhanachainn) in Glen Cannich (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Chanaich).

According to Monsignor Thomas Wynne, "It was in the nature of a summer shieling (Scottish Gaelic: Àirigh), a command center for monitoring the traditional activities of cattle reivers; as such it combined a civilising role with the building up of a Catholic mission outside Cameron territory in a way which must have reassured Lochiel on both counts."

This secret cave dwelling commanded a wide view of the surrounding landscape, which further allowed the three Jesuits to keep watch for priest hunters or posses of redcoats coming to arrest them. The cave at Brae of Craskie accordingly remained the centre of the Catholic mission in Lochaber at the time, where Fr. Cameron and the two brothers secretly ministered to the local Catholics and, whenever possible, they secretly visited the covert "Mass houses" at Fasnakyle, Crochail, Strathfarrar (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Farair), and at Balanahaun.

Whenever it was not possible for the three priests to safely leave Glen Cannich, their parishioners would come to the cave at Brae of Craskie for Mass, the sacraments, and, especially, for the illegal Catholic baptisms of their children. A natural cup stone known as (Scottish Gaelic: Clach a Bhaistidh) was used by the three priests as a baptismal font.

Fr. Cameron caught what is believed to have been pneumonia and almost died at this residence due to its coldness, but still refused to retreat to Beaufort Castle because he considered it his priestly duty to minister to the people of Glen Cannich throughout the winter. Lord Lovat, himself a Catholic, wrote to Lochiel, begging him to order his brother to the castle, where Lovat would "furnish him with all the conveniences of Life". Lovat further pleaded with Lochiel, saying, "I beg you to use your endeavours to get an order from his superiors to make him remove to a milder climate; they cannot in honor and conscience refuse it, for he has done already more good to his Church than any ten of his profession has done these ten years past, except your uncle (Bishop Hugh MacDonald) who is so famous for making converts." Fr. Cameron still refused to go.

Lord Lovat frequently provided supplies for Cameron and the other local priests at the Mass-houses that Lovat provided in Crochail and Strathfarrar. However, in the summer of 1744, the Presbytery of Inverness announced that they had forced Lovat to close them down.

Shortly before the Jacobite rising of 1745, Fr. John informed his two colleagues that a posse sent by the Chief of Clan Chisholm was on the way to arrest them. Fr John suggested, "Let us go to meet them then, and save them the trouble of coming all this way for us." Frs. Alexander and Charles declined this suggestion and, seeking to buy time for his fellow priests to escape, Fr John walked towards the posse, met them, and surrendered to them at a field known as (Scottish Gaelic: Achadh beulath an tuim).

In a September 1744 meeting, the Presbytery announced the recent arrest of Fr. John Farqhuarson at Brae of Craskie and the flight of Frs. Alexander Cameron and Charles Farqhuarson from Clan Fraser's territory.

The Rising

In 1745, Fr. Alexander Cameron enlisted as a military chaplain to Donald Cameron of Lochiel's Regiment of the Jacobite Army. The regiment had three chaplains (a Presbyterian minister, a Non-juring Episcopalian clergyman, and a Catholic).

For the many dispossessed and exiled Catholic members of both the Gaelic nobility of Ireland and Ireland's former Old English gentry who fought in the French Royal Army Irish Brigade alongside the Jacobite Army, only the House of Stuart's restoration over the whole of the British Isles could achieve their goals. The Irish sought Catholic Emancipation, the Attainder of the nouveau riche Whig and Anglo-Irish landlord class and the reversal of the land confiscations, and the fully devolved government of Ireland promised in 1689 by King James II & VII.

For Highland Scots Jacobites, their motivations were very similar; putting a permanent end to the Whig policies of coercive Anglicisation enforced by corporal punishment in the schools, the religious persecution of Scottish Catholics and Episcopalians, and, in particular, the Whig Party's 1707 abolition of the Parliament of Scotland in favor of centralizing government power in London.

For this reason, Scottish Gaelic literary scholar John Lorne Campbell has written in his groundbreaking 1933 volume Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, "the Rising of 1745 was the natural reaction of the Jacobite clans and their sympathisers in the Highlands against what had been, since the coming of William of Orange in 1690, a calculated genocidal campaign against the religion of many and the language of all Highlanders." At the same time, many Highland Jacobites would have been content with achieving Scottish independence under the House of Stuart and had to be pressured by the Prince to invade England and seek to implement regime change in the whole of the British Empire.

On the evening before the Battle of Culloden, Fr. Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass on the battlefield for the Catholics of his regiment, while wearing a tartan chasuble.

Capture and death

After the catastrophic defeat and no quarter given to the Jacobite Army at Culloden, Fr. Cameron fled to his native Lochaber seeking to escape arrest by government troops. Instead of fleeing to France with Prince Charles and his brother, Fr. Cameron remained behind in Lochaber. Meanwhile, due to the "arbitrary and malicious violence" that accompanied the pacification campaign waged by government forces in the Highlands, the aftermath of Culloden is still referred to in the Highlands and Islands as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging").

What is worse, according to John Lorne Campbell, "Lochaber suffered more from Hanoverian reprisals and plundering than any other part of the Highlands." Furthermore, government troops scoured the Highlands following Culloden in search of Roman Catholic priests. Moreover, it was common practice for government soldiers to threaten to burn every Catholic homestead and confiscate all locally owned cattle and sheep unless any local priests were either given up or surrendered themselves.

In early to mid July 1746, Fr. Cameron was captured by one Captain McNiel at Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Mòrar), and was handed over to Royal Navy officer Captain John Fergussone of Inverurie (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Uaraidh), whose ship was then cruising off the island of Raasay (Scottish Gaelic: Ratharsair). Captain Fergussone is an officer who remains notorious for unnecessary cruelty to his Jacobite prisoners, aboard HMS Furnace, where Fr. Cameron was later joined by Fr. James Grant, Lord Lovat, the Chief of Clan MacKinnon, and many other priests.

The reports collected by Non-juring Scottish Episcopal Church Bishop Robert Forbes from surviving prisoners attest that Captain Fergussone particularly "brutalised" Fr. Cameron by placing him in iron chains among the ropes and cables of the Furnace as the ship cruised up and down the west coast of Scotland picking up both real and imagined Jacobites. This behavior was not only motivated by anti-Catholicism, as Captain Fergussone treated Non-juring Protestant clergymen who were prisoners aboard the Furnace with the same deliberate and unnecessary cruelty. Furthermore, according to historian John S. Gibson, "Captain John Fergussone was an Aberdeenshire man with an Aberdeenshire man's antipathy towards Highlanders."

According to Monsignor Thomas Wynne, as HMS Furnace sailed around the North of Scotland via Inverness towards London, each prisoner was to be given 1/2 lbs. as a daily food ration. Due to severe overcrowding, however, even this ration of food was often not given. Furthermore, an epidemic of typhus broke out in the hold and many prisoners succumbed to the disease or the deliberate starvation before the ship ever reached the River Thames, "When a prisoner died, word was passed to the crew, and the poor unfortunate man was carried on deck, and unceremoniously dumped over the side into the sea like so much refuse. There were occasions when sailors came hurriedly into the hell-hole of the ship's hold to retrieve corpses, and in their anxiety not to have to repeat this too often, they also removed prisoners who were in their death throes, but not yet dead, and threw them overboard with the skeletal-like corpses of their comrades."

Fr. Cameron became seriously ill as a result of the conditions of his imprisonment. By the time HMS Furnace finally reached the Thames and anchored off the coast of Gravesend as a prison hulk for those too ill to be transferred elsewhere or transported to the West Indies for sale into indentured servitude, Fr. Cameron was already near death. By this time, an estimated 900 real and suspected Jacobites were imprisoned aboard the Furnace and the other prison hulks anchored in the Thames, under similarly inhumane conditions. After seeing the report of a doctor whom he had assigned to visit the prisoners aboard HMS Furnace, Lord Albemarle, who had replaced the Duke of Cumberland as British Army Commander in Chief for Scotland, ordered that Fr. Cameron be taken ashore for proper medical treatment; but Captain Fergussone refused to obey unless the orders were first cosigned by the Duke of Newcastle. Other friends of the priest then attempted to deliver proper bedding and "other necessities" to the Furnace, but Captain Fergussone, "swore if they offered to put them on board he would sink them and their boat directly."

After Captain Fergussone grudgingly allowed Fr. John Farquarson to board HMS Furnace to minister to his dying fellow priest, an emaciated Fr. Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass while Fr. John Farquharson served him at the altar. Soon after, Fr. Alexander Cameron died, after first receiving Holy Communion and the Last Rites, and with Fr. Farquarson by his side on 19 October 1746. Fr. Cameron's remains were taken ashore and buried in the nearest graveyard to the ship; the Church of England cemetery attached to St George's Church, Gravesend, which also holds the grave of Pocahontas.

The news soon reached his fellow Jesuits at Douai and, on 2 January, 1747, Fr. Crookshank wrote to Fr. Franz Retz, the General of the Society of Jesus, "I have lately received news of the wretched and afflicted state of our mission. We have lost that fine missionary and religious, Fr. Alex. Cameron, who was captured in June last and put in chains in a man-of-war where he bore all kinds of insults and cruelty with unconquerable patience and Christian fortitude and where he contracted a deadly disease. He was finally taken to the fort of Tilbury (sic) where he died last month (sic). Frs. John and Charles Farquarson are imprisoned in the same place."

According to Monsignor Thomas Wynne, "I contacted the Gravesend Historical Society and asked if it was possible for someone to investigate if there were any records of the burial-places where the Jacobites who had died in the hulks on the Thames were interred. I am very grateful to Tony Larkin, the president of the Society, who accepted this impossible challenge and did a lot of research that, unfortunately, failed to reveal any definite information. The time lapse was too great. However, he was able to tell me that this particular area of Kent was bitterly anti-Catholic and anti-Jacobite at that time, and any priests who died in the area were buried as unknown, even although their names may have been known. There are several graves of that time still existing marked unknown. Is it possible that one of these graves may be the grave of Fr. Cameron, S.J.?"

Veneration and Roman Catholic Sainthood Cause

A fragment of the tartan chasuble worn by Fr. Alexander Cameron as he offered Mass on the night before the Battle of Culloden is still preserved as a relic by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles at the Manse of St Columba's Cathedral in Oban. As of 2011, the relic, which has been donated to the Diocese following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by Angus John Campbell, 20th hereditary Captain of Dunstaffnage Castle, was on loan to the Clan Cameron Museum at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber.

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Beauly.

Furthermore, the natural cup stone known as (Scottish Gaelic: Clach a Bhaistidh) and used by the three Jesuits to perform secret Catholic baptisms in the cave at Glen Cannich is now preserved as a relic by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen at St Mary and St. Bean's Roman Catholic Church at Marydale, Beauly, Glen Cannich, which was built following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, completed in 1866, and solemnly consecrated in 1868.

Fr. Cameron also appears in a 1927-1929 tapestry commissioned by John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute entitled The Prayer for Victory, Prestonpans 1745 by William Skeoch Cummings. The tapestry depicts the Cameron Regiment of the Jacobite Army kneeling in prayer before the Battle of Prestonpans. Fr. Cameron is shown genuflecting in the left, but the tapestry is incorrect to show the priest armed with a flintlock pistol. In reality, Gaels who chose to enter the clergy or monastic life would first give their weapons away to male relatives, as Fr. Cameron announced in the extant letter which announces his conversion to his older brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel.

In 2011, after decades of careful research, Monsignor Thomas Wynne, a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles long assigned to St. Margaret's Church in Roybridge (Scottish Gaelic: Drochaid Ruaidh), Lochaber, published the first book-length biography of Fr. Alexander Cameron, "The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J.".

In 2020, the Knights of St Columba at the University of Glasgow launched a campaign to canonize Fr. Cameron, "with the hope that he will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession." They erected a small petition book at their altar of St. Joseph in the University Catholic Chapel, Turnbull Hall. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for Canonisation in the Roman Catholic Church that there is a Cult of Devotion to the saint.

The Knights have made and distributed prayer cards for Fr. Cameron. It reads:

O God, who will that every nation and people be converted unto you, you gave us Father Alexander Cameron as a preacher of the gospel, so that Scotland may once again love the Faith entire and true.

May his example of humble ministry in the midst of greater danger stir up in us a zeal for the Gospel. May his capturing, enduring of torture, suffering and death be an example witness to the one true faith, so that by imitating his courage we might surrender to the Divine Will.

Through his intercession, hear our petitions for the conversion of Scotland and for the conversion of our own hearts, so that brought to closer unity with you, we may more faithfully contemplate the truth and show forth the fruits of that contemplation.

Father Alexander, please pray for this particular intention.

Heavenly Father, grant that Father Alexander may be deemed worthy of canonisation, so that we may merit from his intercession, for the glory of your Church, the praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the evangelisation of our nation. Amen.

See also

Scottish Protestant Martyrs

• Patrick Hamilton (martyr)
• George Wishart
• List of Protestant martyrs of the Scottish Reformation

Catholic Martyrs

• Irish Catholic Martyrs
• Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
• List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation
• Saint John Ogilvie
• John Black (martyr)
• George Douglas (martyr)
• William Gibson (martyr)
• John Ingram (martyr)
• Patrick Primrose
• Hugh Barclay of Ladyland, David Graham, Laird of Fintry, Spanish blanks plot

Further reading

Books

• Thomas Wynne (2011), The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J, Print Smith, Fort William, Scotland

Periodicals

• "Rev. John Farquharson, Priest of Strathglass", by Colin Chisholm, The Celtic Magazine, Volume 7 1882, pp. 141-146.