Catholics in Scotland and Ireland, c.1640–c.1745

The situation for Catholics in Scotland between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries was bleak, though perhaps not entirely so: established communities continued to exist in Banffshire and Aberdeenshire and there was continuity — indeed, as we shall see, remarkable growth — in the Highland mission; a few Scots abroad were converted from time to time, attracted, perhaps, by the glamour of Continental Catholicism on display in Paris or Rome; some were persuaded that, although the first, Knoxian, Reformation might have been a necessity, the second, Presbyterian and Covenanting variant was not.