# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gadderar, James

​GADDERAR, JAMES (1655–1733), bishop of Aberdeen, was a younger son of William Gadderar of Cowford, Elginshire, and Margaret Marshall, the heiress of some lands in the same county. He graduated A.M. at Glasgow in 1675, having probably gone south with his eldest brother, Alexander, who from 1674 to 1688 was minister of Girvan, Ayrshire. Licensed in 1681 by the presbytery of Glasgow, he was presented the next year to the parish of Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire (not Kilmaurs as often stated). In 1688, prior to the legal overthrow of prelacy, he and his brother were among the ‘curates’ ‘rabbled’ out of their parishes ‘contra jura omnia divina humanaque’ as he says in the epitaph he placed on his brother's tomb ‘tumultuantibus in apostolicum regimen ecclesiæ conjuratis.’ In 1703 he published at London a translation from the Latin of Sir Thomas Craig's (unpublished) work on the ‘Right of Succession to the Kingdom of England,’ prefixing a ‘Dedication’ to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, and a ‘Preface’ in which, along with an account of Craig's work, he insinuates his own nonjuring politics and dislike of the presbyterians. In 1712 (24 Feb.), ‘at the express desire’ of Rose [q. v.], the deprived bishop of Edinburgh, he was consecrated in London a bishop ​for the Scottish episcopalians, by the nonjuring bishop Hickes [q. v.] and the Scottish bishops Falconer and Archibald Campbell (d. 1744) [q. v.] He continued to reside with the last-mentioned in London, took part in the consecration of the nonjuring bishops Spinckes, Collier, and Brett, and entered enthusiastically into the negotiations made (1716–23), through Arsenius, metropolitan of Thebais, for intercommunion with the Eastern churches. These negotiations, abortive for their immediate purpose, served, says Bishop Keith, to bring about a more intimate acquaintance with Eastern tenets and usages than was then generally possessed in Britain. In 1721 Gadderar came to Scotland as the representative or vicar of Bishop Campbell, whose election as their ordinary by the episcopal clergy of Aberdeen had not been ratified by ‘the college’ of bishops. Both he and Campbell were known to be zealous supporters of ‘the usages’ at the Holy Communion: (1) the mixing water with the wine, (2) commemoration of the faithful departed, (3) invocation of the Holy Ghost in the consecration prayer, and (4) oblation before administration, which had already caused division among the English nonjurors. Lockhart of Carnwath [q. v.], the agent in Scotland of the exiled king, was afraid that if the controversy spread among the Scotch episcopalians the Jacobite cause would suffer; and at a meeting of the Scottish bishops at Edinburgh, which Gadderar attended on his way to Aberdeen, an effort was made to have ‘the usages’ condemned, but Gadderar, while professing his loyalty to James, was firm in his refusal to surrender the rights and interests of his church to any external authority. In Aberdeen he was cordially received, and was soon so strong that (July 1724) an agreement was made and signed between him on the one hand and the ‘college’ bishops on the other, by which three of ‘the usages’ were virtually sanctioned (in the ‘permission’ of the Scottish communion office), and the other, the mixed chalice, was allowed, provided the mixture was not done publicly; and Gadderar was confirmed as bishop of Aberdeen. In the same year he published at Edinburgh the first of the ‘wee bookies,’ a reprint with certain alterations of the communion office of Charles I's ill-fated Scottish liturgy of 1637. In 1725 Bishop Campbell formally yielded to him the see of Aberdeen, and the same year the episcopal clergy of Moray elected him to that see also. He administered both ‘districts,’ where the episcopalians were at that time both numerous and influential, with great vigour and acceptance till his death. He had really been the restorer of the liturgy to the Scottish episcopal church; and it had been his influence which in 1727 secured at the synod of Edinburgh the restoration of diocesan, as distinguished from ‘the college’ episcopacy. He died at Aberdeen in 1733, and was buried in the grave of Bishop Scougall [q. v.] within the parish church of Old Machar. Until the revolution this church had been the cathedral of Aberdeen. On the Sunday following his death his flock made a collection from which his little debts were paid, and the charges of his funeral defrayed. Down to the beginning of the 19th century his name continued a household word among the episcopalian peasants of Aberdeenshire.
J. C.