James Campbell (minister)

Rev James Campbell

Rev James Campbell (1789-1861), born in Carsphairn, Kirkcudbrightshire to William Campbell and Agnes, née Riggs, was a Scottish clergyman and established Church of Scotland parish minister of Traquair in Peeblesshire.

Career

After studying at the University of Glasgow, Campbell was tutor to the family of Robert Nutter Campbell of Kailzie, and to the Hart family of Castlemilk, with whom he travelled extensively throughout continental Europe. In 1820, he was ordained to Traquair parish, serving there for forty-one years until his death, after which his son-in-law, Rev Jardine Wallace, took over as his successor.

Letters from continental Europe

Rev Campbell's invaluable contribution to Scottish history is the unique series of letters he wrote to his father and family. This correspondence, reposited in Dumfries and currently being digitised and transcribed by the Carsphairn Heritage Initiative charity, describes Campbell's travels to France, Italy, Spain and Holland with the Hart family, detailing their flight from France to Spain during the return to power of Napoleon in France, and discusses his search for a suitable parish and writing of sermons on his return to Edinburgh, 1812–1817.

Toulouse, c. March/April 1815

Before you read this you will have learnt from the papers that Bonaparte lucky as ever entered Paris on the 21st. His first business was to dissolve both Chambers of Parliament; Louis is fled into Picardy with a small guard only and to the eternal disgrace of the French character attended only by two Marshals McDonald and Suchet I think there is little doubt that we shall have a civil war but when one observes narrowly the depravity of French morals thy can scarcely make themselves believe that they have either courage or virtue to engage in it. It is quite amusing to observe with what versatility they change sides. […]. The allies will undoubtedly again muster their invulnerable arms to drive the despot from the throne he has once more polluted. You will undoubtedly ask what I am doing at Toulouse. I leave it tomorrow. But I am in perfect safety here. The Duke of Angouleme with his army at Nimes covers the South and South West of France and the people are all exasperated to the highest degree against the tyrant. Conscious however that Bordeaux will meet his vengeance in the very earliest moment, we have no courage to go to embark there. We leave the ladies in perfect safety and Montgomery and I go into Spain to remain there for a month or two to see how matters turn out. […]

Leghorn (Livorno), 23 September 1815

[...] Leghorn is, of course, a commercial town, and of course contains an amalgamation of all the different races of all the different voices of man. Then whose should I seek for national character or national manner. Shall I examine the turbaned and petticoated Turk, the bearded and knavish Jew, the monkey-mannered Frenchman, the dull and plodding Dutchman, or the money and king, business faced Britons? But you ask me have these driven the Italian from his home, and entirely usurped his place? Not so. We do not exactly witness the same things here as more roaming travellers are called upon to describe in the more uncivilised parts of the globe. We see instead slaves dragging their eternal chains along the streets, but these are not slaves torn from their torrid climates and condemned for no faults of theirs to minister to the grandeur of their makers, they are the slaves of crime, and if I may be allowed the expression, carry the gallows chained to their legs. Here the starkest crimes are never punished by death but with bondage but I know not if this has reduced the instances of deserving death. One thing I know, for I have strongly felt it, the numbers of these wretches makes the heart groan for the depravity of mankind, while if they were buried in the earth or made to herd together, our hearts would bleed more seldom. Whether this would be any advantage, I leave to you and your clergyman to dispute. One thing is that a slave is often happier in his slavery than in his freedom, for the former he has constant employment and regular pay, in the latter he is often threatened with the death of poverty.[...]

Account of the parish

In the mid-1840s, James Campbell contributed a particularly detailed account of his parish in the Peeblesshire section of the New Statistical Account of Scotland.

Family

James Campbell, son of William Campbell and Agnes, née Riggs, was married to Mary, daughter of Matthew Combe, a Leith brewer. James' daughter Agnes Mary married the latter's successor, Rev Jardine Wallace (1834-1910), editor of Poetical Works of Thomas Aird.

Rev George Campbell (1827-1904)

Rev George Campbell Jubilee (unknown newspaper)

James Campbell's son, Rev George Campbell (1827-1904), was the parish minister of Eastwood on the outskirts of Glasgow between 1853 and 1904. George Campbell was privately educated, after which he attended Edinburgh University. During his youth on Tweedside, he was at Abbotsford whilst Sir Walter Scott was still alive, although the two never met since Scott was on the Continent at the time. Like his father, Campbell travelled extensively as a student on the Continent and during the early years of his ministry. This included a trip to Russia along with the Rev Dr Norman Macleod.

After a "distinguished career" at the University of Edinburgh, Campbell went to Rosneath as an assistant clergyman to Rev Robert Story, the father of the Principal of Glasgow University, and in that parish was the driving force behind the erection of a chapel at Craigrownie which later functioned as a parish church. In 1853 he was ordained to Eastwood, the parish he served for more than five decades until his death. In his time a new manse, church, and parish school were erected.> At his induction, Sir John and Lady Matilda Maxwell, George Campbell's patrons, treated him to a "sumptuous banquet" at the Star Hotel, Glasgow, in the presence of numerous clergymen, the service having been conducted by the Rev Andrew Watson of the Abbey, Paisley. Months after his induction, Campbell advertised for a parish schoolmaster for the growing district, "competent to teach all the branches of an English Education, together with Latin and Greek, and at least one Modern Language." A "maximum Salary" was offered for the strenuous position, to which were added duties as the parish's Session Clerk. In 1855, not long after he had started out as a minister, thieves forcibly broke into Eastwood manse and stole a large amount of silver plate and other items, including silver sacramental cups belonging to the church.

In 1865, George Campbell was a co-founder of the Church Service Society, whose purpose it was to study the liturgies of the Christian church and to prepare and publish forms of prayer for public worship and services for the administration of the sacraments in the Church of Scotland, and its members included high-ranking Scottish clergymen. Rev Campbell was the society's treasurer. From 1868 to 1888 he was clerk of Presbytery in Paisley. This demanding duty involved mediating in controversial cases, such as when a zealous minister complained bitterly that a Roman Catholic school was using books of "decidedly Popish character, containing passages of a kind grossly idolatrous, with superstitions historically false, most revolting to the feelings and principles of Protestants, and strongly calculated to prejudice and mislead the infant mind...". During Campbell's ministry, the parish, on the outskirts of Glasgow, grew significantly. Through his energy, several chapels were erected and endowed in Pollokshaws and surroundings. He was active on all public Boards in the parish, and greatly encouraged education via the School Board.

Shortly before Rev Campbell's death, in 1903, a festive dinner was given at Windsor Hall, Glasgow, to celebrate the long-standing minister's jubilee, presided by Dr Robert Stirling Maxwell, MP, and attended, inter alia, by the eminent principal of Glasgow university, Robert Herbert Story, whose father Robert had been parish minister of Rosneath in the period when Campbell had been an assistant prior to his ordination, and the Right Rev John Gillespie (moderator), who said it was “gratifying to find a better spirit prevailing among the different churches compared with the time when their guest was ordained.” Also present was the liturgical scholar Thomas Leishman, of the Church Service Society. At a congregational “conversatione” in Pollokshaws in connection with the jubilee, Rev Campbell was presented with a silver salver and a cheque for £500.

Rev George Campbell is known for his contribution to the parish history of the corner of Glasgow where he spent fifty-one years of his life. The title of his book, Eastwood: notes on the ecclesiastical antiquities of the parish, is confusing insofar as it is mainly a history of the area, named after long-since-vanished wood, from early Celtic Christianisation until the 19th century, and less about the relics and ancient monuments we normally associate with the term “antiquities”. Although these artefacts are mentioned, too, most of the book constitutes a tribute to the many clergymen who served the district over the centuries. Using sources such as Kirk Session records, Campbell does not hesitate to mention negative aspects of Christianity such as stories of witches and the ensuing trials and hangings. As someone who lived in a period when people of modest origin, like Campbell's minister father James before him, were dependent, beside the Kirk, on the support of baronets if they wanted to enter the ministry, and in doing so, become respected middle class citizens, Campbell does not forget to pay homage to his patrons Sir John and Lady Matilda Maxwell. As a token of appreciation, he tactfully describes in detail the contribution the Maxwell family made to the Pollok/Eastwood district. When Sir John Maxwell of Pollok died in 1865, Rev Campbell held the Presbyterian funeral service at the baronet's mansion, Pollok House.

George's son (Rev James Campbell's grandson) was the Very Rev James Montgomery Campbell, minister of Dumfries, who became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1928.