Return to Traquair

In July 2022 a small leather-bound manuscript volume with brass clasps turned up in a London auction house, with the sale catalogue revealing that it bore the bookplate of Charles Stuart, 4^th Earl of Traquair, dated 1708. Fortunately, Catherine Maxwell Stuart, 21^st Lady of Traquair, was the successful bidder, and the volume is now preserved in the archives at Traquair. How and when it strayed from Traquair, and where it has been kept in the intervening years, remain a mystery. Happily, it is still in perfect condition.

In addition to notes made in 1639 by John Stuart, 1^st Earl of Traquair, detailing his correspondence with the main political figures in Scotland in the service of King Charles I, it contains records of Roman Catholic baptisms, marriages and confirmations conducted by Rev. William Wallace, Traquair’s resident chaplain – in total 286 baptisms, 1820 – 1852, 7 marriages, 1827 – 1846, and 24 confirmations, all dated 20 May 1849.

We are grateful to William Wallace for his assiduous recordkeeping. Almost all his baptisms give the mother’s maiden name and the child’s place and date of birth as well as the place and date of baptism and a note of the naming sponsors. His recording of marriages is detailed, too. (Unfortunately, some baptisms towards the end of the date range, recorded by a different priest, are less complete).

The volume furnishes us with a snapshot spanning three decades, pre- and post-Emancipation, of the Catholic population of Scotland as it records families which made arduous journeys across the length and breadth of the country to have their children baptised at Traquair – one even from Kirkwall, Orkney. Some people were even prepared to cross the border for a Traquair baptism – there are several entries from Northumberland and Newcastle recorded.

By the first half of the 19^th century Traquair House was recognised as the only Catholic stronghold in Scotland. In the 1820s it was reported to Propaganda in Rome that, of the Scottish nobility, only the 7^th Earl of Traquair remained true to the faith and that he was the only nobleman who still maintained, entirely at his own expense, a resident chaplain to attend to the spiritual and pastoral needs of his family and servants and the neighbouring Catholic community.

William Wallace was born at Kinnoir near Huntly in Aberdeenshire in 1767. He was ordained in 1798 at the Scots College at Valladolid in Spain, where he was also a professor from 1816 to 1818. He returned to Scotland, spending four years in Edinburgh before settling at Traquair in 1822. This is where he spent the rest of his life, serving both the 7^th and 8^th Earls as well as the small local Catholic community – and, of course, welcoming a steady stream of Catholic families from far and wide.

He also travelled throughout the Scottish Borders filled with missionary zeal and was particularly moved by the plight of a small community of Catholic labourers in Hawick, thirty miles from Traquair. He was so touched by their lack of spiritual guidance that he resolved to build a church for them in the town. Having raised sufficient funds, and having invested all his own savings, his ambition was realized when the Church of St. Mary’s and St. David’s, with a capacity of four hundred, was consecrated in 1844 – the altar, seating, pulpit and large silver bell having been paid for by the 8^th Earl of Traquair who held him in such high esteem.