Presbyterian Strathspey in the Jacobite Era

Frank D. Bardgett is an independent Church History Researcher living in Strathspey, Scotland, and has retired from the ministry of the Church of Scotland. A graduate of Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, in 1987 he was awarded a Ph.D. by Edinburgh University for his thesis ‘Faith, Families and Factions: the Scottish Reformation in Angus and the Mearns’. Interested in the interaction between the Christian faith and wider society, he seeks general themes from study of particular places, incidents and people. Publications include ‘The Tell Scotland Movement’s decision to sponsor the 1955 All-Scotland Crusade’ (Scottish Church History 54.1, 2025), ‘Church Dedications in Badenoch and Strathspey Revisited’ (Scottish Church History 50.2, 2021), Scotland’s Evangelist: D. P. Thomson (Handsel Press, 2010), ‘D.P. Thomson and the Orkney Expedition: a Tell Scotland case study’ (Scottish Church History 40.1, 2010), North Coast Diaries (Birlinn, 2006), Devoted Service Rendered: The Lay Missionaries of the Church of Scotland (Saint Andrew Press, 2002), and a contributor of ‘Home Misson’ in the volume Scottish Life and Society: Religion in The Compendium of Scottish Ethnology (John Donald / Birlinn, 2006), in recent years he has produced a series of self-funded local books on Church of Scotland ministers and ministries in Highland parishes associated with the earls of Seafield / lairds of Grant. Published articles on this theme include ‘ “Craving Baptism to a child” in eighteenth-century Abernethy and Kincardine’ (Scottish Church History 54.2, 2025), ‘Loyalty and Dissent: Improvement and Clearance in Strathspey after 1853’ (Northern Scotland 12.1, 2021), ‘The Reformation in Moray: Precursors and Initiation’ (Scottish Historical Studies 41.1, 2021), ‘The Reformation in Moray and Mr Robert Pont’ (Scottish Historical Studies 39.1, 2019), and ‘The “Strathspey Spring” of the 1880s and 1890s and the Parish of Cromdale’ (Scottish Church History 44.1, 2015).

This meticulous book is an important regional study of the intersections between Jacobites and Presbyterianism.

• AcknowledgementsConventionsAbbreviationsMap1. Introduction: Faith, Families and Loyalties in the Central Highlands2. Strathspey and the Revolution of 1688-93. The Parishes of the Grants of Grant, 1690-17454. The Missionary Periphery (1): Strathavon and the Dukes of Gordon, 1690-17455. The Missionary Periphery (2): Badenoch and Clans Macpherson and Mackintosh,1690-17456. Resisting the 1745 Rebellion, Supporting the Rising7. 1745-6: a Test of Loyalties8. Conclusions: Culture, Religion, Policy and PowerBibliography