almoner to the queen-mother, Mary of Este, an office he had previously held while she was queen-consort. On 23 Dec. 1713 he was admitted almoner to her son, the Chevalier de St. George, resigned the office of principal of the Scots College in the same year, and in 1714 was appointed lord almoner. He appears to have acted as a sort of confidential secretary, and repeated allusions to him are scattered through the printed volume of the ‘Stuart Papers.’ In the beginning of 1718 he was set aside from his office, but within a few years he was again in confidential communication with his master. He was trusted in the important business of securing Bishop Atterbury's papers, which after the bishop's death were deposited in the Scots College. He died at Paris on 23 Jan. 1738.
Innes probably compiled ‘The Life of James II, King of England, &c., collected out of Memoirs writ of his own hand,’ 2 vols., London, 1816, 4to, edited by James Stanier Clarke [q. v.], who attributed the authorship to the younger brother, Thomas Innes. It is certain that the original memoirs written by James II were deposited in the Scots College under the special care of Lewis Innes [see under James II, infra].
[Memoirs by George Grub, LL.D., prefixed to Thomas Innes's Hist. of Scotland, 1853, and his Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland, 1879; Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii. 418; Life of James II (Clarke), pref. p. xix; Chalmers's Life of Ruddiman, p. 201; Stothert's Catholic Mission in Scotland, pp. 248, 249; Michel's Les Écossais en France, ii. 303, 319, 328 n., 531.]
INNES, THOMAS (1662–1744), historian and antiquary, second son of James Innes, and younger brother of Lewis Innes [q. v.], was born in 1662 at Drumgask in the parish of Aboyne, Aberdeenshire. In 1677 he was sent to Paris, and studied at the college of Navarre. He entered the Scots College on 12 Jan. 1681, but still attended the college of Navarre. On 26 May 1684 he received the clerical tonsure; on 10 March 1691 was promoted to the priesthood, and afterwards spent a few months at Notre Dame des Vertus, a seminary of the Oratorians near Paris. Returning to the Scots College in 1692, he assisted the principal, his elder brother Lewis, in arranging the records of the church of Glasgow, which had been deposited partly in that college and partly in the Carthusian monastery at Paris by Archbishop James Beaton. In 1694 he graduated M.A. at Paris, and in 1695 was matriculated in the German nation. After officiating as a priest for two years in the parish of Magnay in the diocese of Paris, he went again to the Scots College in 1697. In the spring of 1698 he returned to his native country, and officiated for three years at Inveravon, Banffshire, as a priest of the Scottish mission. In October 1701 he returned to Paris, and became prefect of studies in the Scots College, and also mission agent. There he spent twenty years, occupied in the quiet discharge of his duties and in literary pursuits. His intimacy with Rollin, Duguet, and Santeul led to his being suspected of Jansenism. In 1720 his brother Lewis, in what appears to be a formal letter to the vicar-general of the Bishop of Apt, contradicted a report that Thomas had concurred in an appeal to a general council against the condemnation of Quesnel's ‘Moral Reflections’ by Pope Clement XI. ‘There is,’ remarks his biographer, Dr. Grub, ‘no appearance of Jansenism in his historical works, though they mark clearly his decided opposition to ultramontanism.’ After a long absence he again visited Scotland in order to collect materials for his ‘Essay’ and his ‘History.’ In the winter of 1724 he was at Edinburgh, pursuing his researches in the Advocates' Library. In December 1727 he was appointed vice-principal of the Scots College at Paris, where he died on 28 Jan. 1744.
The results of Innes's laborious researches in Scottish history and antiquities were liberally communicated to all scholars who sought his assistance. Atterbury and Ruddiman appear to have been equally attracted by him, and Bishop Robert Keith was greatly indebted to him for materials incorporated in the ‘Catalogue of Scottish Bishops.’
His works are: 1. ‘A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain or Scotland. Containing an Account of the Romans, of the Britains betwixt the Walls, of the Caledonians or Picts, and particularly of the Scots. With an Appendix of ancient manuscript pieces,’ 2 vols., London, 1729; reprinted, with a Memoir by George Grub, LL.D., in vol. viii. of ‘The Historians of Scotland,’ Edinburgh, 1879, 8vo. This work elicited an anonymous volume of ‘Remarks’ [by George Waddel], Edinburgh, 1733, and ‘The Roman Account of Britain and Ireland, by Alexander Taitt,’ 1741. Both these replies are reprinted in ‘Scotia Rediviva,’ 1826, vol. i., and in ‘Tracts illustrative of the Antiquities of Scotland,’ 1836, vol. i. Innes's fame mainly rests upon this ‘Critical Essay.’ ‘Authors [such as Pinkerton and Chalmers] who agree in nothing else have united to build on the foundations which Innes laid, and to extol his learning and accuracy, his candour and sagacity’ (Spalding Club Miscellany, vol. ii.
