manent residence abroad, probably, if we may judge from slight circumstances, along with the exiled monarch James II. His words are—"Though an honourable gentleman of my own country, and another learned English gentleman, were so kind as to revise the language, and to alter such exotic words or expressions as it was natural should drop from me, I doubt not but the English reader will still meet in this essay with too many marks of my native language and foreign education." But the most interesting, and indeed the principal notice which we have been able to obtain of this individual, is from the diary of the industrious Wodrow for the year 1724, where we find the laborious antiquary worming his way through libraries in search of materials. It may be remarked, that the work on the Early History of the Church of Scotland, which is mentioned by Wodrow as the subject on which he was engaged, was intended as a second part to the "Critical Essay," but has, unfortunately for our information on a very interesting subject, not been given to the world. The passage we refer to is as follows:—
"There is one father Innes, a priest, brother to father Innes of the Scottish college at Paris, who has been at Edinburgh all this winter, and mostly in the Advocates' library, in the hours when open, looking books and MSS. He is not engaged in politics as far as can be guessed; and is a monkish, bookish person, who meddles with nothing but literature. I saw him at Edinburgh. He is upon a design to write an account of the first settlement of Christianity in Scotland, as Mr Ruddiman informs me, and pretends to show that Scotland was Christianized at first from Rome; and thinks to answer our ordinary arguments against this from the difference between the keeping of easter from the custom of Rome; and pretends to prove that there were many variations as to the day of easter even at Rome, and that the usages in Scotland, pretended to be from the Greek church, are very agreeable to the Romish customs that he thinks were used by the popes, about the time that (he) gives account of our differences as to easter.
"This father Innes, in a conversation with my informer, * * *[1] made an observation which I fear is too true. In conversation with the company, who were all protestants, he said he did not know what to make of those who had departed from the catholic church; that as far as he could observe generally, they were leaving the foundations of Christianity, and scarce deserved the name of Christians. He heard that there were departures and great looseness in Holland. That as he came through England, he found most of the bishops there gone off from their articles, and gone into Doctor .Clerk's scheme. That the dissenters were many of them falling much in with the same method, and coming near them. That he was glad to find his countrymen in Scotland not tainted in the. great doctrine of the Trinity, and sound."[2]
From the period when we find him rummaging in the Advocates' library, we know nothing of Innes, until the publication of his essay in 1729, when he appears to have been in London, and makes an apology for verbal inaccuracies, on the ground that he writes "to keep pace with the press." He seems previously to this event to have performed an extensive "bibliographical tour,?" as the manuscripts he quotes are dispersed through various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the continent
A running sketch of the state of the knowledge of early Scottish history previously to the appearance of this work, may not be unacceptable to those who have not paid particular attention to that subject, as explanatory of the obstacles which the author had to overcome. It is well known that Scotland had a full
