Malcolm MacColl | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Malcolm MacColl by Hubert von Herkomer | |
| Born | 1831 |
| Died | 1907 |
| Occupation(s) | Anglican priest, writer |
| Title | The Reverend |
Malcolm MacColl (27 March 1831 – 5 April 1907)[1] was a Scottish cleric and publicist, noted for his views onIslam and theEastern Question.
MacColl was a nativeScots Gaelic speaker, the son of a poor crofter or labourer inGlenfinnan. His father died when he was still a boy. Despite difficulties, MacColl succeeded in obtaining an education. He claimedJacobite descent, and seems early to have adoptedHigh Church Anglican views. He won a place atTrinity College, Glenalmond, for theScottish Episcopal ministry, and was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1857.
In May 1858 MacColl approachedWilliam Ewart Gladstone in a letter warning him about measures against High Church bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church, also alluding to his own financial circumstances. He tenaciously continued the correspondence, and eventually managed to meet Gladstone. There developed a lifelong friendship and political alliance. Gladstone secured preferment for his protégé, but MacColl never rose high in the Anglican Church. He refused to compromise hisAnglo-Catholic theological views. Gladstone's first piece of assistance was to facilitate the young MacColl's transfer from Scotland to London and theChurch of England.
MacColl was received as a priest of the Church of England in 1859, and then entered on a succession of curacies, inLondon and atAddington, Bucks. He also served between 1864 and 1867 as the Chaplain of the British Embassy inSt. Petersburg, Russia, and Naples.
Despite limited knowledge of foreign languages, MacColl corresponded with continental Roman Catholic dissidents after theFirst Vatican Council:Josip Juraj Strossmayer of Diakova, andIgnaz von Döllinger in Munich. He acted as a discreet intermediary between them and Gladstone. Both Strossmayer and Döllinger were interested in the "Eastern Question" and the ending of Turkish rule in the Balkans. This, as well as similar currents of opinion in the Liberal Party, may have been responsible for MacColl's own interest in combatting Turkish political power during the last three decades of his life. From 1876 onwards, MacColl was an active defender of the Christian inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire, writing a series of vitriolic attacks on theOttoman Empire and its friends in Britain in letters to newspapers, articles in reviews, and publishing several books.
In August 1876, soon after the exposure of the killings of up to 15,000 Bulgarians the previous spring by Circassian irregulars in the Ottoman army, MacColl andHenry Liddon ofSt Paul's Cathedral travelled toVienna andSerbia on a fact-finding tour. During a boat ride on the River Sava, then the frontier betweenSerbia and theOttoman Empire, the two clergymen claimed to have seen an impaled human corpse. Though their testimony could not be independently confirmed, and was challenged by the local British Consul who suggested that the object in question might have been only a bag of beans, MacColl and Liddon used this sighting as proof of the iniquity of Turkish rule in the Balkans. This fitted in with a theme in their sermons that those in Britain (such as Gladstone's arch-opponentBenjamin Disraeli) who did not actively oppose Turkish rule were themselves guilty of its sins.
In his private correspondent with Gladstone after the Bulgarian atrocities, MacColl urged the Liberal leader to denounce the Ottomans and is perhaps partly responsible for the campaigning speeches Gladstone made on the issue in the last months of 1876 and early 1877. After returning to power Gladstone rewarded MacColl with the London living ofSt George Botolph Lane, in 1871, and with a canonry of Ripon in 1884. The latter posting aroused the active opposition ofQueen Victoria who had not forgotten or forgiven MacColl's virulent campaign against the Ottoman Empire in 1876-78 after the 'Bulgarian Agitation'.
The living at Ripon was practically a sinecure. MacColl maintained a large house at Kirby Overblow, south of Harrogate, and continued to devote himself to political pamphleteering and newspaper correspondence, the result of extensive European travel, a wide acquaintance with the leading personages of the day, strong views on ecclesiastical subjects from a high-church standpoint, and particularly on the politics of theEastern Question, the uprising inCrete, then still an Ottoman province, the cause of theArmenians andIslam.
MacColl was on close terms withGeorge I of Greece, and leaders of the Armenian movement. During theGreco-Turkish War of April 1897, he visitedAthens to confer with the King, conveying the monarch's private views both to Gladstone and also to the Prime MinisterLord Salisbury. In the first years of the twentieth century, he was an opponent of the Muslim spokesmenSyed Ameer Ali andHalil Hâlid. He admonished them, arguing for instance that the Ottoman Sultan was not theCaliph of all Muslims.
MacColl died inLondon on 5 April 1907. In his will, he left his library to the Gladstone collection atHawarden.
Most of MacColl's earlier writings centred on the theology. After his arrival in London, he began to publish articles, writing with increasing proficiency. Major works include:
MacColl's research usually relied on BritishBlue Book collections of consular despatches, written up in a prosecutorial style.
In 1904 MacColl married Consuelo Albinia Crompton-Stansfield, daughter of Major-General William Henry Crompton-Stansfield (1835–1888) ofEsholt Hall.[2]
MacColl had a younger brother,Hugh MacColl, who became known as a logician. He had tried to persuade Gladstone to pay for Hugh to be educated at theUniversity of Oxford; but Hugh had refused to become an Anglican priest as Gladstone insisted.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "MacColl, Malcolm".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 205.
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