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GEORGE STRACHAN OF THE MEARNS
Scottish Religious Cultures Historical Perspectives

Series Editors: Scott R. Spurlock and Crawford Gribben

Religion has played a key formational role in the development of Scottish

society shaping cultural norms, defining individual and corporate
identities, and underpinning legal and political institutions. This series
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of the Scots diaspora on the wider world means that the subject has major
significance far outwith Scotland.

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George Mackay Brown and the Scottish Catholic Imagination

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Poor Relief and the Church in Scotland, 1560–1650
John McCallum
Jewish Orthodoxy in Scotland: Rabbi Dr Salis Daiches and Religious Leadership
Hannah Holtschneider
Miracles of Healing: Psychotherapy and Religion in Twentieth-century Scotland
Gavin Miller
George Strachan of the Mearns: Seventeenth-century Orientalist
Tom McInally

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The Scot Afrikaners: Identity Politics and Intertwined Religious Cultures

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Dugald Semple and the Life Reform Movement
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Presbyterianism Re-established: The Presbyteries of Dunblane and Stirling after the
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Andrew Muirhead
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GEORGE STRACHAN OF
THE MEARNS
Seventeenth-century Orientalist

TOM McINALLY
 Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high
editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance.
For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com

© Tom McInally, 2020

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

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The right of Tom McInally to be identified as author of this work has been
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Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
 Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1
1 Heritage 8
2 Exile 19
3 The Humanist Scholar 29
4 To Constantinople 40
5 Aleppo 53
6 Mohammed Çelebi 66
7 The Ḥ usaynābādı̄ Scholiasts 78
8 Strachan’s Library 88
9 The English East India Company 98
10 ‘Stracan our Infernall Phesition’ 113
11 Among Friends 129
12 The Mission at Srinagar 143

Appendix 157
Archives 183
Bibliography 184
Index 193
 Acknowledgements

My interest in George Strachan derived from my doctoral dissertation on

the Scots Colleges abroad. The brief entry in the register of the Pontifical
Scots College in Rome sent me on a programme of research into what, to
me, is his fascinating life story. Much of my initial research drew on the
material gained in the Vatican Archives (ASV), Vatican Library (BAV) and
the Jesuit Archives in Rome (ARSI). This soon led to researching Strachan’s
album amicorum and Della Valle’s journals, for which I drew on the ser-
vices of my good friends in the Special Collections of Aberdeen University
Library. I am in debt to all of the staff of these archives for their help.
Also, I thank my colleagues in the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish
Studies in the University of Aberdeen for the support and encouragement
they gave me, as I researched areas beyond my normal field of study, and
my friend Colin Chapman for his help in correcting the final text. Lastly
my family, particularly my ever tolerant wife, deserves a special thank you
for putting up with my obsession with George Strachan over several years.
 Introduction

Call for a Biography

In 1983 Victor Winstone, the noted writer on the Middle East and member
of the Royal Geographic Society, delivered a paper entitled ‘George
Strachan, 17th Century Orientalist’ at a seminar for Arabian Studies held in
London. He subtitled his paper ‘Plea for a Biographical Study’ (Winstone
1984: 103–9). A noted biographer himself, Winstone described Strachan as
one of the greatest oriental scholars of his time. Although there had been
some investigation into the life of Strachan, notably that by Giorgio Levi
Dellavida, professor of Semitic languages in Rome (Dellavida 1956), and an
early paper by Fr David McRoberts (McRoberts 1952: 110–28) it surprised
Winstone that historians had still to conduct a full study of such a deserv-
ing subject. He felt that the omission was in large part due to the fact that
Strachan had left no record of his travels and, as an earlier researcher had
written, ‘his footsteps [could be] tracked piecemeal, only as the palaeontol-
ogist makes out the intermittent traces of an extinct wader or batrachians
upon the petrified mud of the Eocene’ (Yule 1888: 312).
Research into oriental studies has grown greatly since the work of Johann
Fück (Fück 1955) and in the twenty-first century numerous scholars have
added substantially to the body of work through such noted series as The
History of Oriental Studies, published in Leiden, but there has still been
no new biography of Strachan. The late Professor Bosworth included a
chapter, ten pages long, summarising the most prominent facts known of
Strachan’s life and work (Bosworth 2012). In the period since Winstone
made his plea, however, some further evidence of Strachan’s life has come
to light, but most of what is known derives from accounts given by others
who crossed the Scotsman’s path. Even with this additional knowledge it
is still impossible to provide the full biographical account that Winstone
felt was justified. Nevertheless, a more rounded picture is emerging of this
remarkable man.
George Strachan was a humanist scholar and a member of the European-
wide Republic of Letters during a period when academic institutions were
experiencing significant growth and intellectual dispute was intense on
both religious and philosophical grounds. He made a reputation for
himself writing Latin poetry of considerable quality, but his greatest contri-
bution to early modern scholarship was as an orientalist whose knowledge
of Middle Eastern languages greatly exceeded that of any other European
2 George Strachan of the Mearns

scholar in the first half of the seventeenth century. He spoke at least eight
European and Eastern languages fluently but it can also be claimed that he
was the first Western scholar to achieve a true understanding of Arabic and
Persian texts free from European misinterpretations.

European Interest in the East

European Christian scholars had possessed an understanding of the lan-
guages and cultures of the East from the times of the Crusades and earlier.
Pope Sylvester II (c. 946–1003) promoted studies of Graeco-Roman sci-
ences through Arabic sources. He was inspired in his own scientific work
by the Islamic educational institution of Cordoba. Western knowledge of
the Muslim world progressed through access to the libraries of Arab Spain.
In the thirteenth century King Alfonso X (‘El Sabio’) of Castile (r. 1252–
84) sponsored scholars to translate Arabic texts into Castilian (Doubleday
2015). In a number of cases these texts had initially been translated into
Hebrew by Jewish scholars. Scientific texts were further translated into
Latin and circulated abroad. Christoph Clavius (1538–1612), a German
Jesuit, used Latin translations of Arabic accounts of Aristotle and Arab
mathematicians and astronomers in his writings citing, among others, Ibn
Rushd, Thābit b. Qurra, Abū Ma’shar, al-Biṭrūjı̄ and al-Farghānı̄ as sources
in his published works (Knobloch 2002: 257–84).
Additional knowledge was gained through the extensive trading that
took place between Italian city states, principally Venice and Genoa, and
the developing Ottoman Empire and Mamluk Egypt. With the fall of
Constantinople in 1453 Western scholars gained access to classical manu-
scripts brought to the West by Greek scholars. These were in a variety of lan-
guages and in addition to works by ancient writers their libraries contained
scholarly texts which shed a better light on the work of Arab scholars. Given
the circuitous routes that such books had taken to reach the West over the
centuries, it was inevitable that unwitting simplifications and errors had
crept into the translations available to Christian scholars. Even if the texts
had been flawless, their mere possession would not have ensured that they
were correctly interpreted: an understanding of the context of the society
and culture in which the language was used was also necessary. For the
most part, prior to the sixteenth century, Western scholars lacked such
knowledge. In addition they rarely had the opportunity to converse with
native speakers of the languages of these texts.
The lack of proficiency in Eastern languages was of concern to more
than the academic community. Commercial ventures of the Western
trading states were burgeoning with the Ottoman Empire and other
Eastern states. It was unusual, however, for merchants to have more than
the limited proficiency in the languages of their trading partners needed
to conduct business. Merchants who traded in the Eastern Mediterranean
and Ottoman lands circumvented the problem by developing a lingua
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­ Introduction 3

franca based largely on Italian, which came to be used by Muslim as well

as Christian traders (see Chapter 5). However, Christian traders were
left at a disadvantage in their dealings with the state authorities, where it
was essential to have a deeper understanding not only of the languages
but of the protocol to be observed at oriental courts. The Venetians rec-
ognised the danger their deficiency in this regard represented for their
mercantile interests when they were engaged in negotiating contracts
with the Ottoman sultans. They were concerned that the dragomans they
were forced to use as interpreters and intermediaries were not willing to
present arguments as forcefully as a Venetian would. In his report to the
Venetian signoria (governing body) in 1576, the bailo (Venetian ambas-
sador) in Constantinople, Antonio Tiepolo, complained that the drago-
mans, who were Turkish subjects, were afraid to express the Venetian
position robustly in their negotiations with the court officials (Albèri 1839:
185). In addition, the bailo suspected that the dragomans were prepared to
interpret terms of negotiation to their own financial advantage (Gürkan
2015: 110–12). In light of these concerns, in the late sixteenth century
the signoria agreed to shoulder the expense of establishing a Turkish and
Arabic language school in their trading depot in Constantinople. The
facility was set up to train interpreters whom they could trust to conduct
diplomatic and commercial negotiations (Lucchetta 1989: 19–40). This
commercial enterprise can be considered as a serious effort by a Western
power to establish a permanent facility providing practical education in
Eastern languages using native speakers. The attempt, however, failed.
Linguistic proficiency was only part of the training needed and it took
years of familiarisation to understand the customs and politics of the
Ottoman court. The bailo’s term of office was limited to two years and
very few members of the Venetian nobility were willing to spend the time
needed to acquire an in-depth knowledge of Ottoman society, knowing
that it would require them to be away from Venice for the greater part of
their careers. The school’s failure was due primarily to a lack of qualified
interested candidates (Lucchetta 1989: 25–6).
Other Christian nations were slow to realise the disadvantages of neglect-
ing their Eastern neighbours’ languages. Early interpretations of Arabic
texts by the scholars of Western universities, all of which were Church
institutions, were hindered by their refusal to view favourably any writings
inspired by the ‘false religion’ of Islam. In Spain the Inquisition confiscated
Arabic books in its efforts to eradicate signs of the country’s Islamic past.
Western study of the Qur’an was carried out with the purpose of discred-
iting its contents and not as a means of learning Arabic. The first Latin
translation made by Robert of Ketton in 1142–3 was full of inaccuracies
and remained the only one available for over three centuries. It led gen-
erations of Western scholars to have at best an incomplete and at worst an
erroneous understanding of this text (Burman 1998: 703–32). Among the
false ideas Western religious scholars held was that Islam was a religion of
4 George Strachan of the Mearns

lust, citing polygamy and the seclusion of women as proof (Norman 1960:
118–25).
The first Western attempt to understand the Qur’anic text rather than
denigrate it was commissioned by Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo in 1518. It was
undertaken by two converts from Islam, Juan Gabriel and Leo Africanus,
but was never published. By circulating in manuscript form it was available
only to a limited number of readers and was not used for teaching the
Arabic language. There is no evidence that the cardinal read the transla-
tion he had commissioned. Although an acknowledged scholar, his interest
was in the Cabbala and his proficiency in Eastern languages did not extend
to learning Arabic (Martin 1992: 157).
Later, through the work of Protestant reformers, attitudes to learning
Arabic began to change but at the time George Strachan was a student
in Europe the study of Islamic Arabic texts was severely circumscribed
(Hamilton 2001: 169–82). These failures prevented Christian scholars from
participating in a thorough academic discussion of the religion, philosophy
or culture of the Middle East.
This refusal to engage fully with the work of Eastern scholars became
increasingly dangerous throughout the sixteenth century due to the growing
power of the Muslim states. When Sultan Selim I conquered Mamluk Egypt
and incorporated it into his empire in 1517, the Ottomans became the
principal Muslim power in the Middle East. The sultan became the caliph
of all Sunni Muslims and protector of the holy sites of Mecca, Medina and
Jerusalem. Even before this considerable expansion of their power, the
Ottoman sultans posed a significant military threat to Christian Europe.
Later, under Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire was extended further
by territorial gains in Europe and the Christian kingdoms of the Caucasus.
Successive popes encouraged European countries most at risk to form defen-
sive leagues and exhorted all Christians (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant)
to provide aid to fellow Christians under attack by Muslim armies.
Due to the importance of its trade with the East, which earned it the
soubriquet of ‘the Turk’s Courtesan’, the Venetian Republic normally
remained outside such leagues and therefore was often treated with disdain
by the main body of Christendom (Dursteler 2006: 5). However, in the mid-
sixteenth century it was forced to join with other Western powers against
the Ottomans in a series of wars which met with mixed success. When a
peace treaty was agreed in 1573, Venice withdrew from all military leagues
and adopted a position of armed neutrality with the Ottoman Empire
(Valerio 1679: 2). A number of other nations, influenced by the degree
to which their territories were at threat from Ottoman conquest, with-
held support from the leagues and followed the diplomatic route taken by
Venice (Agoston 2007: 75–103). This inaugurated a lengthy period of peace
between the Most Serene Republic (La Serenissima) and the Sublime Porte
(Âsitâne-yi Sa’âdet) which lasted until 1645 and allowed commercial and
diplomatic contacts between them to flourish.
­ Introduction 5

During this period of peace, the Roman Catholic Church recognised

its need for greater understanding of Eastern languages and cultures.
The Church’s missionary activity had developed greatly in the East and it
became essential that recruits to the missions be given relevant training in
the languages and cultures of the ever-increasing number of new countries
in which the Church worked. In order to meet this requirement, in 1610
Pope Paul V decreed that a number of monasteries and convents in Italy
should become centres of instruction and research into Eastern languages.
Despite the mandatory nature of the pope’s decree, only the Order of the
Caracciolini embraced it with any enthusiasm, having been running such
a school in Rome since 1595. The papal remit to the new schools was that
they should gain mastery of Turkish and Arabic, in recognition of their
being the languages of the most dangerous enemy of Christendom, but
also of Persian and the languages of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast
Asia, Japan and China. The missionaries were to be taught the languages
they needed, together with the ability to refute Islamic texts in order to
gain converts (Zwartjes 2012: 185–242).
The new missionaries were needed to follow the expansion of the trading
empires established by the Portuguese and Spanish (Bernardini 2011: 265–
81). Following the initial exploratory voyages of Vasco da Gama at the end
of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese had traded east of the Cape of
Good Hope for nearly one hundred years without serious European com-
petition. Spain’s arrival in the Far East in the mid-sixteenth century to trade
with Japan and the Philippines did not create a rivalry, at least in theory.
When the two kingdoms were united under King Philip II/I of Spain and
Portugal in 1580, a degree of cooperation between the two colonial powers
was expected. The papacy saw the potential for the establishment of mis-
sions throughout the region which, in addition to the advances being made
in the New World, allowed Rome to view its work as that of a universal
(Catholic) church.

Tracing George Strachan

It was against this background that the Scotsman George Strachan began to
apply his talents to gain an understanding of Eastern languages. In order to
learn from native speakers and gain access to literature unobtainable in the
West, he undertook an extensive journey throughout much of the Middle
East. As a youth, he had a wanderlust coupled with a fondness and natural
ability for learning languages. The papal exhortation to European scholars
to gain a better understanding of Eastern languages would have been all
that was necessary to inspire the man from the Mearns to engage in serious
research. In 1613 George Strachan set off on what can be viewed as a pil-
grimage through the Ottoman, Persian and Mughal Empires. While on his
peregrinations he collected important books in Arabic, Turkish and Persian
which had been hitherto unknown, unavailable or poorly understood in
6 George Strachan of the Mearns

the West. He studied them, often under the tutelage of eminent Islamic
scholars, gaining an unequalled understanding which he endeavoured to
share through his translations. He added extensive annotations and glosses
to the texts which gave nuanced explanations of difficult passages. It was
always his intention to make this knowledge available to Western scholars
as he showed by sending much of his library westwards to Rome. By doing
so, he provided European scholars with the means not only of develop-
ing a greater understanding of the subtleties of the languages but also of
gaining a deeper insight into those Eastern societies through their cultures
of science, philosophy and religion.
He achieved the monumental goal of collecting, translating and inter-
preting these books while engaged on extensive travels. He took advan-
tage of opportunities afforded by Western travellers returning home to
send both letters to his friends and his growing library to Rome. He never
returned to Europe, although initially it was his intention to do so, but
through his actions many of the volumes that he had accumulated were
safely preserved in the libraries of the teaching convents and used for the
benefit of both seasoned scholars and students. Some of his books have
since been lost but many have survived in European archives. The range of
subjects and Strachan’s explanations of the texts demonstrate his pre-emi-
nence among his contemporaries as a scholar of oriental languages. Also,
when considering the efforts he made to acquire his library, the modern
researcher cannot fail to be impressed by the heroic nature of Strachan’s
journeys in the East.
Despite the availability of this material, the Scotsman remains a shadowy
figure. The historiography relating to Strachan is extremely limited.
The only non-contemporary biography is the slim volume which Giorgio
Dellavida wrote at the request of the Third Spalding Club. The work was
commissioned in the 1930s but was published nearly twenty years later.
The long gestation period was due in part to the disruption caused by the
Second World War but also to the difficulty the author faced in unearth-
ing relevant material on his subject. In his introduction Dellavida com-
mented on the paucity of information available and the limits which this
had placed on his research. The work is, however, extremely valuable.
The author, as well as providing an outline of the then known aspects of
Strachan’s life, has produced the most comprehensive catalogue extant of
Strachan’s library including the locations of the books and an assessment
of the importance of the works as Arabic and Persian texts. Unfortunately
none of his Turkish texts which are known to have existed have survived.
As Dellavida discovered, no individual archive or contemporary account
throws much light on Strachan. Any research requires examination of a
wide range of sources. For much of his life, George Strachan appears to be
nearly invisible. Many of his details are known only from his involvement
in the lives of others. As a humanist he wrote a great deal, including a con-
siderable quantity of poetry, but little of what survives is about Strachan.
­ Introduction 7

Accounts of him written by his contemporaries, although numerous, are

rarely long, and each of these commentators has been able to describe only
a small part of his career. Any researcher is obliged to piece together the
narrative of George Strachan’s life from a large number of disparate sources
with little direct input from the man himself. The account which emerges
is one where knowledge of the history of the archives involved becomes as
important as the biography of Strachan that can be deduced from them.
There are, in total, seven major sources of information on Strachan.
One has already been mentioned: the collection of books which he sent
to Europe. A second is the album amicorum (book of friends) (SCA,
CB/57/12) which Strachan used as a young scholar. A third can be found
in references contained in Jesuit correspondence between Scotland and
Rome which is kept in the Jesuit archives in Rome (ARSI) and the Vatican
archives (ASV). His own writings – poems, book dedications and a few
surviving letters, which provide a tantalising picture of the man although
regrettably one of limited scope – constitute a fourth important archive
(Leask 1910: 338–46). Thomas Dempster of Muiresk, who described
himself as a close friend of Strachan, included an account of his fellow
Catholic and his humanist writings in Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum, a
set of biographies of prominent Scots, published posthumously in Bologna
in 1627. Another source of information is provided by the Italian noble-
man Pietro Della Valle, who in his published letters gives an account of
the life of Strachan in the Middle East having befriended the Scotsman in
Persia (Della Valle 1664). The last source archive of consequence is that of
the English East India Company for which Strachan worked in Persia and
possibly India (Calendar of State Papers 1857).
The varied nature of these sources also has a bearing on the reliability to
be placed on the details of the story being told. Commentators, even when
they are being honest, may have been influenced by feelings of friendship
or enmity. This can be seen in the different descriptions of the character
of the man given by Della Valle and some of the officials of the English
East India Company. In reading their accounts it is clear that factual errors
in aspects of Strachan’s life have been made, since contradictions exist.
Identification of the true version of events is often impossible and the
temptation to stray from argument to speculation is a constant danger for
any researcher. There is, however, a distinction to be made between specu-
lation and reasoned interpretation of the known facts. The writer hopes
he has managed to maintain this distinction in describing Strachan’s life.
Although the multiplicity of sources is undoubtedly frustrating it does have
the advantage of providing a more textured description of the man. One
conclusion can be arrived at with certainty: Strachan’s achievements are
such that they can only be explained as the work of someone with extraor-
dinary ability and a remarkable personality. His many friends have testified
to these qualities but it is appropriate to begin an account of the man and
his life with the little that Strachan has said about himself.
 Chapter one

Heritage

Of Royal Descent
In his printed poems Strachan gives his name as Georgius Strachanus
Merniensis Scotus – George Strachan of the Mearns, Scot. This scant infor-
mation is supplemented by the family coat of arms on the cover of his
album amicorum and by the comments written inside by his friends, profes-
sors and fellow students. From these it can be shown that Strachan was born
c. 1572, the youngest of three sons of Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton
(d. c. 1600) and Isobel Keith (c. 1543–August 1595). Sir Alexander was
the 12th Strachan of Thornton. George’s mother was the daughter of
William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal, and through his lineage Strachan and
his siblings were direct descendants of King James I of Scotland (Balfour
1904: 46–7). Throughout his life Strachan placed great importance on
his social status and, no matter how impecunious were the straits in which
he found himself, he always expected to be treated with the respect due
to a gentleman of noble descent. All parts of his extended family were
nobility and gentry, holding lands which stretched from Strathdon in the
north-east of Scotland to Dundee in the east. Dunottar Castle, the seat of
the Earl Marischal, George’s grandfather, is less than fifteen miles from
the Strachans’ family home, Thornton Castle. The Thornton estate lies
in the rich farmlands of the Howe of the Mearns between the small towns
of Laurencekirk and Fettercairn (Balfour 1904: 122).
In the late sixteenth century Scottish nobility and gentry were divided
by religious confession. In 1591, when George was still a young man, there
were sixteen ‘Papists and discontented Erles and Lordes’ and only eight
‘Protestants and [those] well affected to the course of England’ of similar
status. Those nobility and gentry of inferior rank to earls and lords showed
an opposite balance, with records for 1592 stating: ‘Protestants 28, Papists
13, neutral, suspect or doubtful 6, minors 9’ (Rogers 1873: 62–3). Strachan
of Thornton was strongly Catholic. George’s maternal grandfather, the
Earl Marischal, was one of twelve peers chosen by Queen Mary in 1560,
while still queen of France, to act in her absence as a governing council for
Scotland following the death of her mother, Mary of Guise. George’s eldest
brother, Robert, was his father’s heir and stood to inherit all of the family
lands. Robert married Sarah Douglas, daughter of the Earl of Angus, in
1586 and shortly afterwards they had a son, Alexander (Balfour 1904: 122).
­ Heritage 9

With the succession thus secured to the next generation, as a younger son
George had little prospect of significant financial benefit from his family
and would have been expected to make his own fortune.
Few career choices of appropriate social status were open to junior
members of the minor nobility. Often younger sons took up positions
at court, entered the officer corps of the army (when a standing army
existed) or were ordained into the Church. None of these was a realistic
option in Scotland for a Catholic in the late sixteenth century. Even obtain-
ing a higher education was difficult for those who did not subscribe to
the Calvinist Confession of Faith. Initially King’s College, Aberdeen, was
tolerant of non-conformists and allowed them to matriculate but it was
impossible for them to graduate. However, George Strachan’s name does
not appear in the college records (Anderson 1893). Like most well-born
Catholics in Scotland, George’s early education would have been provided
by a private tutor at home or in the house of some relative or family friend.
From 1581 Jesuit missionaries were lodged with many of the Catholic nobil-
ity in Scotland and, as well as carrying out their priestly duties, they acted
as tutors to the families of their hosts. In the north-east of Scotland they
are known to have stayed in the Castles of Huntly, Strathbogie, Slaines and
Letterfourie (O’Neill and Domínguez 2001: 1259–62). A report by Lord
Burghley, William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth of England’s Lord Privy Seal, in
1590 stated:
all the Northern part of the Kingdom, including the shires of
Inverness, Caithness, Sutherland, and Aberdeen, with Moray, and the
Sherrifdoms of Buchan, of Angus, of Wigton, and of Nithsdale, were
either wholly, or for the greater part, commanded mostly by noblemen
who secretly adhered to that faith (Catholicism), and directed in their
movements by Jesuits and Priests, who were concealed in various parts
of the country, especially in Angus. (Gordon 1869: iii)
The Jesuits stationed in these houses would have been known to the
Strachan family and have been willing to accept young George as a pupil.
Following his initial schooling in Latin grammar, George’s parents decided
that he should go to France for his higher education. The exact date of
his leaving is unknown but there are indications that it was about 1588,
when George was aged sixteen, and about the same time as Robert’s son,
Alexander, was born. The arrival of the infant may have been the catalyst
for the decision to educate the young man abroad. The family’s choice of
Paris as Strachan’s place of study is the clearest indication of the date of
1588 being correct. Scots Catholics who wanted to take a course of higher
studies had little option but to travel to mainland Europe and enrol at a
college in a Catholic country. One of the most popular among Scottish
students was the Northern College, one of a group of Catholic institutions
of higher education at Braunsberg in Livonia (now Braniewo in north-east
Poland) (Bender 1868: 15–16). It was established in 1578 by the authority
10 George Strachan of the Mearns

of Pope Gregory XIII specifically for the education of Catholics from the
Protestant countries of northern Europe. Students from Scandinavia as well
as Scotland studied there. A group of Scottish Jesuits had helped set up and
staff the university and in 1580 one of their number, Robert Abercrombie,
recruited its first Scottish students and escorted them to Braunsberg. The
college remained a centre of higher education for Scots until 1626, when
the Swedish army of Gustavus IV Adolphus overran Braunsberg during the
Thirty Years’ War and closed the city’s Catholic institutions. For more than
four decades prior to this catastrophe, the Northern College educated
Scots Catholics (Fischer 1902: 298–9).
Even with this facility available to them, Scots petitioned the pope for a
college exclusively for themselves. With the political and financial patron-
age of Mary, Queen of Scots, they succeeded in setting up the queen’s
new college in Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine with a Scottish Jesuit, William
Crichton, as its rector. Following Mary’s execution in 1587, the queen’s
uncles, the duke and the cardinal of Lorraine, continued to fund the
college but in 1588, when they were assassinated, the college was forced
to close and its students disperse to complete their studies elsewhere.
Although it is reasonable to assume that George Strachan set out for France
with the intention of studying at the Scots College in Pont-à-Mousson,
there is no record of him in the college register (Anderson 1906). If he
had left home earlier than 1588, he would have been able to enrol: if later,
his family would have known of the closure of the college and would have
advised him to go to the Northern College in Braunsberg. This indicates a
likely date of 1588 or 1589 for Strachan’s departure from Scotland.
Like other young Catholics seeking an education abroad, it would have
been necessary for Strachan to keep his journey secret from the authori-
ties of the State and Kirk. The Penal Laws forbade studying at Catholic
colleges, and families who sent their sons abroad for this purpose were
heavily fined if discovered (Hebermann 1913: ‘Penal Laws’). Such jour-
neys required careful planning and students travelling abroad normally
did so in small groups led by a Jesuit missionary, an older family member
or trusted friend. When possible their first destination in France was Paris
which had long been a centre for Scots in Europe and had a substantial
expatriate community. There they would have been able to call on the
most senior member of the Scottish Catholic community in exile, James
Beaton. Beaton was the last pre-Reformation archbishop of Glasgow and
in 1560 had been forced to leave Scotland by the anti-Catholic laws passed
that year by the Reformation Parliament. When Queen Mary left France for
Scotland in 1561, she appointed Beaton as her ambassador to the court of
her brother-in-law, Charles IX. Beaton held the position of Scottish ambas-
sador to the French court until his death in 1603. Following his mother’s
execution, King James VI continued to use the archbishop in this capacity
at the courts of the succeeding French kings, Henri III and Henri IV. The
archbishop was well placed to offer information and advice on the affairs of
­ Heritage 11

France to his visiting countrymen. He would also have been able to inform
Strachan’s party of the situation in Pont-à-Mousson, having been involved
in the establishment of the college, and he was also in a position to recom-
mend alternative facilities available for study in Paris. There was no Scots
College in Paris at that time. The long desired college was established in
1603 and its creation became possible only on the death of Archbishop
Beaton using the bequest he made of his house and estate. There were,
however, other opportunities for Scots to study in the city.

Educated by Jesuits
During the second half of the sixteenth century, the Society of Jesus had
gained the reputation of being an excellent provider of higher education.
Jesuits were much sought after by the Church and civic authorities to set up
and run academic colleges. The value placed on their skill as educators did
not, however, overcome the distrust with which they were viewed in France.
The source of this distrust was the allegiance that they held to the pope.
Relations between the Gallican Church and the papacy were often strained.
However, Scottish Jesuits were not subject to the same level of animosity as
others in their Society, due in large part to the high regard in which the
Queen of Scots was held in France. Expressions of sympathy which fol-
lowed her execution were extended to all Scottish Catholics, even Jesuits.
The long alliance between the two countries had ensured a favourable
sentiment for Scots but the queen’s imprisonment and the manner of her
eventual execution strongly reinforced it. Mary was a queen of France as
well as of Scotland. The Parisian public reacted to her death with revulsion
and fury. The English ambassadors, Sir Edward Stafford and Sir William
Wade, reported to Queen Elizabeth that when news of Mary’s execution
arrived in Paris neither of them dared venture onto the streets for fear of
being attacked by the mob (Black 1959: 388).
Particularly strong Scottish Jesuit connections had developed with one
of the numerous colleges in Paris. The Jesuit College (later known as Lycée
Louis-le-Grand) had been endowed by the Bishop of Claremont, William
du Prat, and was commonly known as Claremont College. On founding his
college in 1563, Bishop William had appointed a Scottish Jesuit, Edmund
Hay, as its first rector. Hay was succeeded by another Scot, John Tyrie, and
the college continued to be run by Scots for much of the remainder of the
century. Both Hay and Tyrie were colleagues of Robert Abercrombie and
had been involved, along with him and William Crichton, the rector of the
queen’s college in Pont-à-Mousson, in starting up the colleges in Braunsberg.
Throughout its early history, although it had not been established for them,
Claremont College accepted Scots as students. When George Strachan and
his party arrived in Paris and presented themselves to Beaton, it would have
been natural for the archbishop to introduce them to the then principal
of the college, Edmund Hay. Early student records for Claremont College
Visit https://ebookgate.com today to explore
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