Maitland Club > Miscellany of the Maitland Club > Volume 3, Parts 1 and 2

390 POPISH PARENTS AND 1701-
teries are required to be particular in giving Lists, not only of all Papists
within their bounds, but of all persons who entertain them, and of the
places where they preach, and hear and say mass ; and in furnishing
the names and designations of all witnesses ; and in respect of the vio-
lence often offered to ministers who dealt with Papists to bring them off
from their errors, the Commission are appointed to apply to the Govern-
ment to protect from injury the ministers who undertake this work.
Notwithstanding the zeal and activity of the Ministers, and the stre-
nuous efforts made by the Society in Scotland for propagating Christian
Knowledge, which was fully organized in the year 1707, the success of
the measures adopted for reclaiming the adherents of the Church of
Rome fell far short of the expectations both of the Church and the
State. — In some parishes in which the Ministers were considered most
faithful, the number of Apostates appears to have greatly exceeded that
of Converts. In 1720, the Presbytery of Lorn represented to the
General Assembly, that three populous districts in Ardnamurchan had
never been reformed from popery, (with the exception of one family,)
though the number of examinable persons was above 700, under the
care of a priest named Mr Robert Gordon ; and in the Braes of Loch-
aber, above 400 persons had been perverted all within ten years, except
four families. In 1722, when Mr Archibald Campbell was called from
Kilmanivaig to Kenmoie, it was represented by the Presbytery of Lorn,
that in the former parish 150 had apostatised a few years before; and
that in Glengary, a pendicle of that parish, containing about 500 exa-