Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott Part 20

Yours affectionately,

NORFOLK.

_J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.C. to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, E.M._

Bedford Hotel, Brighton: March 6, '71.

Dear Henry,--[After mentioning the enclosure of a rough draft of memorandum made in 1870, and of the clause he had proposed to Mr. Gladstone (Footnote: In 1870 Mr. Hope-Scott had proposed to Mr. Gladstone the following _clause_ with reference to the Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Act:--

'Before all courts, in all questions affecting the rights or property of any religious body not established by law, or of the members of the same as such, it shall be sufficient to prove the existence 'de facto' of any ecclesiastical arrangement material to the inquiry, and no evidence shall be required of the manner in which, or of the persons by whom, such arrangement may have been originally made.') with reference to the Eccl.

t.i.tles Bill:--]

These I now send you, and, with them, a letter which you wrote to me last July showing how the matter then stood. In connection with this letter, I send you likewise a print of my statement made and circulated before the committee met in 1867, and given in evidence by me before that committee. A reference to it will show that the view which your letter attributes to Lord O'Hagan is certainly not correct as regards England, though there are some circ.u.mstances in Ireland which make it more applicable there. As the bill is now to go to a Select Committee of the Commons, there seems a fair chance of getting a favourable alteration, and it is certainly well worth the attempt. As I wrote to you last summer, the _clause_ I proposed would be of the greatest practical value, and might save some amount of feeling among Protestants by letting them fire away at the Papal authority; but if it cannot be got, the words 'and all a.s.sumption, &c., is wholly void' should either go out, or the whole of that recital be qualified so as to mean _legal and coercive_, not merely spiritual, jurisdiction, &c.

I am sorry to add to the number of your labours for the Church, but at present I am not able to take the field myself; and as you are at any rate to be in London this week, you may take the opportunity of moving in the matter.

Yrs affly,

James R. Hope-Scott

Remember J. V. Harting in case of need.

His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, E.M.

The whole subject has belonged to the domain of history since the Repeal pa.s.sed under Mr. Gladstone's administration in 1871. Still, I am unwilling to dismiss it without quoting the wise and powerful words with which Mr.

Hope-Scott concludes the 'Statement' of 1867, several times referred to:--

No Act of Parliament can cause direct hardship to the subject while the Ministers of the Crown, the judges, the magistrates, and the public concur in disregarding it; but it is one thing to be secure by the law, and another to be secure only by a general contempt of the law. In the latter case a gust of popular excitement, such as occurred in 1850-1, or the interest or prejudice of an individual, or the scruples of a single official, or of a single judge, might at any time turn this dormant Act into a real instrument of oppression; and therefore the grievance of the Roman Catholics is this, and it is essentially a practical one, that, whatever their present immunity may be, they are not, and, as the law stands, they never can be, secure of its continuance. From this it follows, that in all matters to which the Act may be applied, Roman Catholics find it necessary to take the same precautions, and resort to the same expedients, as if its application were certain. In short, they are under the constant sense that a penal statute is at the door, and that it depends upon little more than accident whether it shall come in or not: and thus, if the apprehension of evil be, as it certainly is, an evil in itself, the mere existence of the Act is a practical hardship, and there can be no remedy short of its repeal. [Footnote: _Minutes of Evidence_ (J. R Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.O.), p. 26.]

(5) It appears from Mr. Hope-Scott's papers that, in May 1869, he was giving his weight to the opposition against the _Scottish Education Bill_, as a measure, in its original form, based on the principle of Presbyterian ascendency, and was advocating a denominational system in the interests of Catholicity.

(6) The Parliamentary committee on _Conventual and Monastic Inst.i.tutions_ (originally designed by its mover, Mr. Newdegate, to inquire into the '_existence, characters, and increase_' of those inst.i.tutions, but restricted, on a motion of Mr. Gladstone's, to inquire into '_the state of the law_' respecting them) held its sittings May 17 to July 25, 1870, and Mr. Hope-Scott's attention seems to have been much occupied with the subject. During the earlier stages of the affair he was at Hyeres, but his correspondence shows how carefully he was kept informed of what pa.s.sed. A letter to him from the Duke of Norfolk (dated Norfolk House, April 21, 1870) gives an idea of the line Mr. Hope-Scott had taken: 'I was very glad to receive your letter' (the Duke writes). 'It had great weight with our committee to-day, and we decided to ask Government for nothing, but to resist inquiry in any form.'

(7) To services like these, in which he was the trusted counsellor of those who were acting for Catholicity in general, might be added ill.u.s.trations of the many instances in which Mr. Hope-Scott's legal knowledge and experience were applied to the business affairs of priests on the missions, or of convents, if such cases were not, from their own nature, uninteresting except to those immediately concerned, and implying also the same confidence that belongs to other privileged communications. The words of a valuable letter, from which I have more than once quoted, are here in point: [Footnote: Lady Georgiana Fullerton to Lady H. K.] 'What I always admired in him was his patient charity--not so much the alms he gave, considerable as they were, but the manner in which, busy as he was, and often exhausted by his professional labours, he gave time and attention to all sorts of cases of distress and perplexity, or of importance to religion. "Consult Mr. Hope," was the advice given to numberless persons who had no claim whatever upon him but that of needing what no one else could so well give. One of the t.i.tles of our Blessed Lady, "Auxilium Christianorum," might in one sense have been applied to him.' Under this head of charity may well be included his undertaking, at the cost of time so precious to himself, the guardianships of bereaved families, of which a list has been given in a former chapter (p. 130).

2. Of Mr. Hope-Scott's pecuniary charities in England (in the Catholic part of his life) I am not able to give a special account; but I may mention one characteristic trait, that he felt it his duty to do more for Westminster than other places, because it was there that he earned his money; following the excellent principle of helping, in the first instance, the locality in which Almighty G.o.d has placed one. Accordingly, at Westminster he gave ground for Catholic _Poor Schools_, with property endowment of 50_l_. per annum; and gave great a.s.sistance to the _Filles de Marie_, a community of religious ladies so employed in the Horseferry Road, in the same district.

A large proportion of his private benefactions seem to have been of a description especially in keeping with his tender and thoughtful mind, such as giving a mother the means of going to visit a daughter whom she had reluctantly allowed to enter a convent; enabling sick priests to go abroad for their health; setting up a poor schoolmistress with the means of purchasing a school; paying the expenses of a funeral; and so on.

Like all men either wealthy or reputed to be so, he was continually importuned with pet.i.tions for pecuniary aid, sometimes asked for by way of gift, sometimes as loans. To particularise such in any recognisable manner would of course be impossible, for fear of wounding the feelings of persons who were the objects of his kindness; but, avoiding this as well as I can, I may say that there were instances in which Mr. Hope-Scott cleared people out of overwhelming difficulties by gifts of lavish generosity--hundreds of pounds, and in some cases as much as 1,000_l_. I could produce an example of the former in which the prompt liberality shown was only equalled by the delicacy and forbearance; for it may easily be supposed that the difficulties thus relieved were not always free from blame on the part of those involved in them. Seldom, perhaps, can it be otherwise; but what would happen if all charity were measured by the deserts of the recipient?

What may have been the actual amount of Mr. Hope-Scott's charities during his life it would be very hard to conjecture; but this much I can state, on the testimony of one who knew the fact from his own personal knowledge, that in twelve or thirteen years (from 1859 or thereabouts) he gave away, in charity of some form or other, not less than 40,000_l_. It is right to observe that, quite towards the close, as he was retiring from his profession, there was a great diminution in his charitable expenditure; for, instead of the ample, though merely professional, income he had enjoyed for a great part of his life, he had become, relatively speaking, a person with very limited means. Believing it still to be his duty to provide for his 'son and heir,' and for his other children, of course he had no longer the power of doing all that he had done under circ.u.mstances altogether different.

Missions on the Border; Galashiels, Kelso, &c.

Mr. Hope-Scott's zeal for the support of Catholicity was naturally felt most by places near him in the Highlands or on the Border, where he built churches and schools, and aided struggling missions. Of those on the Border, the most important was the Church of Our Lady and St. Andrew at _Galashiels_, which, as a manufacturing town, has a large Catholic population. True to his organising genius, he intended it should be a centre for smaller out-missions around it, as _Selkirk, Jedburgh, Kelso, &c._ It was completed gradually, and the following extract from a letter of his to Father Newman (dated Abbotsford, December 30, 1857) shows, in a pleasing and simple manner, the heart which Mr. Hope-Scott threw into the work he was offering to Almighty G.o.d:--

I hope that ten days or so will render [the church] fit for use in a rough way; and I hope it will be so used, and that I shall not be hurried in the decorative part, which I cannot afford to do handsomely at present, and which I think will be done better when we have become used to the interior, and have observed what is to be brought out and what concealed. The sh.e.l.l I am well pleased with. It is ma.s.sive and lofty, no side aisles, but chapels between b.u.t.tresses--and no altar-screen--more like a good college chapel than a parish church. The whole plan, however, has not been carried out, so the proportions cannot be fairly judged of. Some day perhaps I may finish it, or some one else instead; and to keep us in mind that more is to do, we have a rough temporary work at the west end (not really west), with square sash windows of a repulsive aspect.[Footnote: There are readers who will be glad of the preservation of the following dates connected with Galashiels Church. The plans were completed July 1, 1856; first payment, November 1856; last account rendered, February 1858; the church was opened on Candlemas Day, February 2, 1858, by Bishop Gillis; finished finally in 1872, and opened in August 1873.]

Mr. Hope-Scott lived to finish it, and the work, I have heard, can hardly have cost him less than 10,000_l_. He also gave to the Jesuit Fathers at Galashiels a library of books, chiefly on civil and canon law, in value about 500_l_. The last cheque he signed with his failing hand was one for 900_l_. in discharge of the last debt on Galashiels Church. The mission at Galashiels was held at first by the Oblate Fathers, but from the end of July 1863 by the Jesuits.[Footnote: There is a letter of Father Jos.

Johnson, Provincial S. J., to Mr, Hope-Scott, dated February 24, 1859, from which it appears that the Society, in consequence of the many demands upon them, were unable to accept the mission of Galashiels at that time.] The following letter (worthy of preservation also because of the writer) will show that Mr. Hope-Scott had wished, almost immediately on finding himself a Catholic, to have a Jesuit Father at _Abbotsford_:--_The Pere de Ravignan, S.J. to J. R. Hope, Esq., Q.G._

Voici, Monsieur, ce que le T. R. P. General, m'ecrit de sa maison de Rome le 10 Juin:

'Je desire bien que M. Hope sache combien j'ai ete console a la bonne nouvelle.--Jamais je ne l'avois...o...b..ie--il m'avoit inspire tant d'interet!'

Pour ne point oublier non plus, je vous demande la permission de vous dire ici que le R. P. Provincial d'Angleterre a accueilli, avec le plus grand desir de vous satisfaire, la priere que vous avez bien voulu me communiquer, d'etablir un de nos Peres chez vous en ecosse. Le P.

Etheridge, provincial actuel, doit arriver demain a Londres.

Ce matin nous etions tous heureux pres de cet autel. Benissons le Seigneur de tant de graces.

Veuillez agreer toutes mes tendres et profondes sympathies in Xto Jesu.

X. DE RAVIGNAN, S.J.

Londres: 16 Juin 1851.

The chapel at _Selkirk_, dedicated to Our Lady and St. Joseph, was a purchase of Mr. Hope-Scott's.

The mission of _Kelso_, where he built the Church of the Immaculate Conception, would furnish many instructive pages for a history of the re- settlement of the Catholic Church in those very desolate regions. A letter of the Rev. Patrick Taggart,[Footnote: Compare page 193 of this volume.] to Mr. Hope-Scott, dated Hawick, September 3, 1853, contains some details which, in connection with later events at Kelso, are full of interest. They show how deeply felt is the spiritual isolation of such localities, and how unexpectedly great is the number of Catholics often to be found in them, left to themselves. Father Taggart first speaks of the great kindness which he had received from Sir George and Lady Douglas, of Springwood Park, near Kelso, and then goes on to say:--

Lady Douglas is a genuine Catholic, just as a daughter of old Catholic Spain should be. Her sister is staying with her just now.... I think they do not like the idea of attending Divine service in a public hall. I told them that Father Cooke would be delighted to afford them any a.s.sistance in his power under present circ.u.mstances. I also told them that I thought that, if possible, a small church would be built at Kelso in the meantime; and that the time was not far distant when perhaps the Bishop would be able to give to Kelso a resident priest. This news so delighted them that they could not find words to express their joy.... I do not know of any part of this district that is at present more dest.i.tute of the ministrations of a priest than Kelso and its environs. The mission extends twenty miles north- east of Kelso--that is, forty miles from Galashiels and from Hawick; and there is not a village in that, I might almost say, immense tract of country that does not contain its ten and twenty poor Irish Catholics. I attended Kelso, once in the month, for nearly five years, and I am the first priest who offered up the Holy Sacrifice of the Ma.s.s at Kelso since the days of the so-called Reformation. I therefore know its geography and its wants....

PATRICK TAGGART.

Accordingly, a church was built for Kelso at the expense of Mr. Hope-Scott.

It could hardly have been finished more than a year or two, when, on the night of August 6-7, 1856, it was attacked by a Protestant mob, set fire to, and burned to the ground, with the schoolhouse and dwelling-house adjoining, including books, vestments, and furniture, the property of Mr.

Hope-Scott. Four of the ringleaders were put on their trial on November 10.

In charging the jury, otherwise fairly enough, 'the Lord Justice-Clerk remarked that, as to whether it were necessary that Mr. Hope-Scott should build the Roman Catholic chapel at Kelso or not, the jury might have very considerable doubts, as it appeared that the priest did not live there, but some miles distant at Jedburgh; but that was a matter which the prisoners had nothing to do with, as every one was at liberty to build such a place of worship if he chose; neither did it matter whether the attack upon the chapel was made in consequence of any attempts to proselytise Protestants to the Catholic faith. In going over the evidence, his lordship said he could have wished that Mrs. Byrne, the schoolmistress, had given timely notice to the police of what she had heard as to the resolution to fire the chapel, as that would have been a better course than quitting the chapel.

However, they could not blame the poor woman; and _perhaps, being a Catholic, she might not like to make an appeal to the police_.' (Quoted from the report in the 'Scottish Press,' November 11, 1856. [Footnote: I italicise the last sentence, which at first sight gives a curious idea of the practical equality of legal protection existing for Catholics at the time; though probably all that was intended to be conveyed is the strange impression that Catholics might entertain a scruple about appealing to the police.--R. O.])

The jury's verdict would surprise any unprejudiced reader who studies the evidence. They found the charge of wilful fire-raising not proven against the prisoners, but found three of them guilty of mobbing and rioting, but, in respect of their previous good conduct, recommended them to mercy. The three got off with eighteen months' imprisonment and hard labour. I quote the following remarks on the affair generally, and on the Lord Justice- Clerk's charge, from an article in the 'Scotsman,' republished by the 'Northern Times' of November 15, 1856: [Footnote: I have not met with any _letter_ of Mr. Hope-Scott's to the _Scotsman_, but this article is probably from his pen.--R. O.]--

In the town of Kelso there is, it seems, a more or less considerable colony of Irish; and it needs scarcely be said that the mixture of that element with the border material does not work together for the promotion of harmony and good order. At St. James's Fair, held at Kelso on 5th August last, a Scotch butcher-boy quarrelled and fought with an Irish mugger.

Scotch and Irish rallied round these champions of the two countries, and in the melee which ensued, a young Scotchman was unhappily and barbarously killed. The Kelso crowd, in very natural rage, burned the muggers' camp, threw their carts into the Tweed, and drove them from the neighbourhood of the town. But there remained the resident Irish of the town, and it seems to have been deemed fitting to hold them guilty as art and part. It is not clear that any of them were in the fight--at least, no person among them was charged with the murder; but there is a short cut through all these difficulties. Most Irishmen are Roman Catholics--Kelso has a Roman Catholic chapel--let it be burned. Accordingly, after considerable talk and preparation (which seems to have included getting drunk), a mob a.s.sembled the next evening, and did burn the chapel with perfect ease and effect....

Some mystery may dwell in readers' minds as to how such an affair could be arranged and completed without any one but the rioters themselves having any voice thereanent. And the mystery is not quite cleared away by the evidence. The woman that lived under the chapel heard, on the day of the fair and the fight (i.e. the day before the incendiarism), that the chapel was to be burned, and slept out of her house, so as not to be in the way; coming back the next day she heard the same rumour, and left again at night--when it happened as she had been foretold. But though other witnesses, some of whom had witnessed the burning, testified that the design had been talked about all day, the chief magistrate mentions in his evidence that he 'had not had the slightest expectation of a disturbance;'

the superintendent of police was in the same state of information, and the police constable 'had not taken any alarm.' All this, however, is of little consequence, seeing that when the alarm was taken, there was no result but that of disturbing two or three people who might as well have gone to bed.

The guardianship of the town is confided to one county policeman, who must be a tumultuous sort of person himself, since he seems to require a 'superintendent' to keep him in order. The said superintendent, when he did know what was going on, first tried a little moral suasion, with the result usual in such cases: 'I cautioned them against proceedings of that kind, and advised them to go to their homes--they disregarded me.' His disposable force, condensed in the person of the 'police constable,' took the same course. '_We_ warned them'--the answer was a volley of stones. 'We retired, and went to all the magistrates.' 'By the time we got back the chapel was completely destroyed.' It would be unreasonable to blame the superintendent and his 'force' for not successfully fighting several hundred men, although we do think they might have done more as to identifying the ringleaders: the real blame lies with the authorities, who appear to have failed to provide decently adequate means for preserving the public peace. The use of a local police force must be measured, not by what it detects and punishes, but by what it prevents, or may reasonably be supposed to prevent....

So wide-spread is [the feeling that Roman Catholic chapels are somehow an intrusion and an offence] that it would almost appear as if the very bench were not placed above its influence. The Lord Justice-Clerk made some very sound and strong remarks on the nature of the outrage; but he added: 'Whether it was necessary on the part of Mr. Hope-Scott to build this chapel--which it scarcely seemed to be, seeing the priest did not live there, but at Jedburgh--or whether it was a prudent proceeding to attempt, by the erection of this chapel, to win converts to the Roman Catholic faith--was of no importance here.' Since it was of no importance, the expressed doubt and the implied censure had, we very humbly think, have been better avoided.... Though there had not been a single Roman Catholic in or near Jedburgh, Mr. Hope-Scott had a perfect moral as well as legal right to spend his money in building a chapel, without either having it burned down by a mob, or himself pointed at from the bench. As a matter of fact, however, there does appear to have been a congregation as well as a chapel. The Lord Justice-Clerk was pleased to add that the Roman Catholic school attached to the chapel 'could not but have been of the utmost use;'

and we could thence infer that, Roman Catholic children having parents, there must have been use also for the chapel. The fact relied on, of the priest 'living at Jedburgh,' is evidence, we should think, not of a want of hearers, but of a want of funds to pay two priests. But look where we should be landed, on this hand or on that, if others than those that choose to provide the money are to decide where church-building is 'necessary' or is 'prudent.' The extreme chapel-attendance of Episcopalians in the county of Roxburgh was shown by the census to be 454; and for the accommodation of that number the county contains five chapels. Four of them might be p.r.o.nounced not 'necessary,' and all of them not 'prudent.' Or, to go from the country of the rioters to that of the rioted upon. In our humble opinion, seven-eighths of the churches belonging to the Establishment in Ireland are utterly unnecessary, and every one of them very imprudent.

Such, too, is notoriously the opinion of all but a fraction of the population among whom, and out of whose funds, these churches are built and maintained. The late lamented Roman Catholic chapel at Kelso was immeasurably less unnecessary and offensive than these; for not only had it a congregation, but was paid for only by those that used it or approved of it. Of course, the Lord Justice-Clerk did not mean that his opinion or that of any other man as to the chapel being unnecessary was any justification of the outrage--his lordship said the contrary very impressively; but his remark, though not what is called a fortunate one, is useful as indicating, in however faint and refined shape and degree, the feeling which on such topics is apt to lead us all more or less astray.

MISSIONS IN THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS: MOIDART.

The purchase by Mr. Hope-Scott of the estate at Lochshiel, in the wilds of Moidart, his 'Highland Paraguay,' as Cardinal Manning calls it, in an old letter to him (January 28, 1856), was attended, as I have already hinted (p. 150), by some noteworthy circ.u.mstances. In the first place, the condition of the Catholic remnant in the Highlands is, perhaps, little known even to Catholic readers. An interesting letter to Mr. Hope-Scott, dated October 12, 1854, from the Rev. D. Macdonald, in charge of the mission of Fortwilliam, furnishes a statistical table, from which it appears that in 1851, in the Highlands and insular districts within the range of his knowledge, there was but one single school, where, to do justice, considering the scattered population, there ought to have been twenty-six. The people were so miserably poor, that out of thirteen missions, only one could afford their priest 50_l_. per annum; one, 35_l_.; three, 30_l_.; and the rest, ranging from 25_l_.

down to as low as 12_l_. per annum. Of course the priests could not subsist on these incomes without some other aid, and this was obtained by taking small farms, from which they endeavoured to eke out a living.