There are a few things at St Margaret’s that remain more or less unchanged. One of them is the Liturgy. In the Liturgy there are many things that don’t change and that is something that many people find comforting. In this very transient world, which is full of chop and change, Liturgical worship is something that gives us constancy in our lives and can be very consoling. I think that that is the particular flag that we fly at St Margaret’s. The traditional Scottish Liturgy with its attendant liturgical actions which have roots going back centuries.
Recently, I delivered a talk at St John’s Crown Terrace to celebrate their 175th Anniversary. St Margaret’s, as you are all well aware, came out of St John’s due to the incredible visionary mission of Fr John Comper in the 1860’s. Fr John at that point was Rector of St John’s. The congregation of St John’s had been gathered in the 1690’s and early 1700’s by Fr George Garden who had been the minister of St Nicholas East Church, which had previously been domiciled in the Sanctuary and Chancel of St Nicholas Kirk. Episcopalians were extruded from the Church of Scotland from 1689 onwards because of the so-called Glorious Revolution of William and Mary. Removal of Episcopalian clergy from the Church of Scotland took many years to achieve. Ninian Comper erected the St Nicholas Chapel in the 1880’s to remind us of this link with the past. In fact we have gone full circle, as St Nicholas Chapel is the only Ecclesiastical building dedicated to St Nicholas, Patron of Aberdeen, still open weekly in the city for Christian Worship.
I am writing this letter on the train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen on the May holiday after having spent the whole day in the National Records of Scotland research rooms looking at material from Aberdeen in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. I was looking at letters which were being sent under the hand of Fr Patrick Dunbreck, who was chaplain to the Earl Marischal, whose house was in the Castlegate, roughly at the top of where Marischal Street now is. Dunbreck, at one point, was looking after the congregation which became St John’s.
At King’s College Special Collection they possess an English Prayer Book of 1706 which had been given to Fr Patrick by an English well-wisher. It was given just at the time of Queen Anne Stuart’s Toleration of Episcopal worship being permitted in 1712, provided Episcopal clergy swore allegiance to the current monarch. The letters, which I was reading in Edinburgh were those that Fr Patrick had sent to Bishop Archibald Campbell in London; they were about using the Prayerbook.
In fact, concurrent with this, copies of the Scottish Prayerbook of 1637 had also been re-printed by the Earl of Winton, and were being distributed about the place roughly at the same time.
Anyway poor old Patrick started using the English Service and became very much at the brunt of bad feeling by some fellow citizens. The Town Council of Aberdeen got upset with him. Even some Roman Catholics did too, because some of them thought that they were going to get Episcopalian converts and instead here was this priest offering liturgical worship. Mind you, to be fair, Roman Catholics at this time were also under persecution.
In a letter to Bishop Campbell (who was later Bishop of Aberdeen 1721-1724) Dunbreck wrote that he had had a bad time…. And this is what I read from his letter to London… “I have been mightily fatigued this past Lenten Season, but God has wonderfully enabled me to go theron with the devotions of it to the great comfort of my own soul and the comfort and edification of my hearers.”
Dunbreck’s use of the Prayerbook kept some Episcopalians from going over to Rome according to a relation of a gentlemen who was visiting Dunbreck. His relation, a devout Roman Catholic, had mentioned the Toleration Act being passed but that there nothing similar being offered for those of the Roman Faith. The Bill encouraged the use of ‘English worship’. The gentleman’s relation had castigated Dunbreck by saying “God forgive Mr Dunbreck he has a great Account to make to God Almighty!”
In another letter, I read that Dunbreck held William Forbes, the Principal of the Marischal College in 1618 in great respect and was trying to locate a manuscript belonging to Forbes. Forbes had said that “Prayers for the dead were Lawful.” Forbes’ predecessor Andrew Aedie, Principal of the Marischal College 1615, was so gall’d by this. Aedie, who was a rigid Calvinist… “ appeal’d Forbes to Public Dispute.” “It was to be debated in Latine in the New Church of Aberdeen” i.e. St Nicholas.
Apparently Aedie’s wife (like Pilate’s Wife) had a dream the night before and dreamt that Forbes and her husband were coming out of the new church door together and that Forbes beat off his hat. It would be one of those broad beamed hats! In the morning, in bed, she told him of the dream and begged him not to go. Aedie, thrawn, would not listen to his wife’s counsel.
“Forbes worsted him but mock’d him and triumph’d over him and his ignorance and the ignorance of the Calvinists.” Although he had a wife and children Aedie forsook all and went off to England. Forbes succeeded him in 1618. Forbes went on to be the first Bishop of Edinburgh.
Dunbreck commented… “I have so great regard for the memory of that pious and learn’d man, that the least relick of him is precious to me.”
Dunbreck, still obviously getting badly treated by fellow citizens wrote…. “On Easter Day put on a scarf (he went out for a walk) to see if I can recover dignities and decency which alas scandalously overthrown here by our Doctors and others, I shall forbear to give instances they are too scandalous!”…… That is what some of our clergy had to put up with to defend and pass on Episcopal Faith, Liturgy and Doctrine.
Liturgy is about people finding their identity and that is what we have to offer. In the past many got out there and got on with it!
At St Margaret’s we are descendants in Faith of that tradition that so many suffered and were persecuted for. Fr John Comper picked up the importance of our ‘native tradition’. This is what makes us what we are. Anglo-Catholicism in the 19th Century clothed (i.e. put vestments on) the ‘naked’ Scots theological, liturgical and spiritual tradition. This is what we have to offer to our contemporary Church and Society.
So then for us. Let’s get out there and get on with it.
Remember Corpus Christi on the 4th June. There is a Mass and Procession of the Blessed Sacrament at 7.30pm. The Most Holy Sacrament of Our Saviour’s Body and Blood, instituted the night before his Passion, is the only tangible real gift that Christ left us.
“Do this…as oft as ye shall…in remembrance of me.”
