The “Lex Adversus Scotos Catholicos”: A Jacobite Manuscript in Williamsburg, VA
By: Claire Cunningham
Tags: William And Mary, High School, Features, Latin, Neo Latin

The “Lex Adversus Scotos Catholicos”: A Jacobite Manuscript in Williamsburg, VA

James II of England by Henri Gascar (image from Wikimedia Commons).

“Roma in Italia est.” Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. The early stages of learning the Latin language for high school students are generally quite predictable: endless leaning towers of flashcards, Simon Dicit, and charts upon charts of declensions and conjugations. For Samuel Meyer, however, the tale is not so commonplace. In his Latin 2 class at Stanford Online High School, he happened upon a historical mystery and, then, a significant discovery: the Lex Adversus Scotos Catholicos, a rare and important Latin document from the Jacobite exile court in France.

It all started when Meyer’s Latin teacher at Stanford Online High School, Tom Hendrickson (a frequent contributor to In Medias Res) heard tell of a stash of unpublished Latin manuscripts at The College of William and Mary. The Pullen Collection was collected by an alumnus of the school and donated to William and Mary in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and has items that mostly relate to King William III and Queen Mary II of England, including documents and correspondence written and signed by them. Many of these documents are in Latin. The collection is still in the process of digitization (with more planned for the future), and in large part because the Pullen Collection is so substantive, no systematic study of the Latin documents had yet been made.

The collection was of special interest to Hendrickson because, though a Classicist by training, he had recently become more and more engaged with early modern Latin works. They are often regretfully neglected because they exist in a kind of scholarly no man’s land: most classicists don’t read them because they’re written too late, and specialists in early modern history or literature don’t read them because they’re in Latin. Hendrickson saw a chance to fold these overlooked documents into his curriculum for his Latin II students, thinking that the opportunity to work meaningfully with original documents might prove motivation enough to tackle such a challenging project.

Hendrickson was then introduced to Jay Gaidmore, the Marian and Alan McLeod Director of Special Collections at William & Mary. Gaidmore gave Hendrickson a tour of the collection, and subsequently eagerly agreed to digitize some of the documents for use in Hendrickson’s class. The Special Collections department has a history of opening its collections to younger students, hosting more than 50 classes per semester that give students an opportunity to touch, see, and explore rare books and primary sources. Most of these students are undergraduates of course, but tours are also given to K-12 classes as much as possible. Gaidmore had never embarked upon a project quite like this, however.

The manuscripts, mostly from the 1690s and early 1700s, were promptly scanned and divvied up amongst the students in Hendrickson’s Latin II class. In the fall semester, they were to make a transcription of their document, and in the spring a translation. The scans were a a treasure trove — students found letters describing military misadventures, assassination attempts, and several other items of real interest. The gem in the bunch, however, was that given to Samuel Meyer: a document entitled Nuperrima Principis Orangii Lex Adversus Scotos Catholicos.

It was not immediately evident what the document was, so Hendrickson reached out to Thomas J. McSweeney, Robert and Elizabeth Scott Research Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. McSweeney found it strange that the document referred to itself as a “senatus consultum,” and indeed had never heard of any kind of Scottish legal text that was referred to with such a classical title. Initially, he thought that it may have been something issued on the advice of the high court judges, who were known as “senators” in early modern Scotland. He also made a very important observation concerning an oddity in the title. Namely, that it refers to William III of England as the “Prince of Orange.” At the time the document was written in 1700, that title would have been defunct, as William had been named King of England and Scotland two years prior.

Two months later and after much research, Samuel Meyer discovered this was a Latin version of an Act of Scottish Parliament from the year 1700 that limited the rights of Catholics. As far as he could tell, this is the only extant copy of the document in Latin, and it is strange that one was needed at all. Why would a law passed in Scotland need a translation into a dead language? It was McSweeney who made the connection in the end: this was a Jacobite copy of the statute, and it was written in Latin because it was not intended to be read by a Scot.

William III by Gottfried Keller (image from Wikimedia Commons).

This would explain why William is referred to as the “Prince of Orange”: the person who made this translation didn’t think William was the true king of Scotland. King James II (also James VII of Scotland), who William and Mary had deposed, was still alive in 1700. According to McSweeney’s hypothesis, this document was written by someone who thought James, not William, was the legitimate king.

Some pieces of evidence supporting this theory were found in the document itself. Firstly, while the text of the law refers to Catholics as papistae, the document’s editorialized title referred to Catholics rather as Catholici. Given the fact that James II was ousted in major part due to his Catholicism, and that his supporters were largely Catholic, this would track. Furthermore, the suppression of Catholicism is exactly the kind of thing that James II’s court in exile would be keeping tabs on, which explains the need for a Jacobite version of the document. A Latin translation of the document, McSweeney posits, might have been produced for or by other international audiences, such as Catholic rulers like the Pope or the King of France. It was almost certainly not meant for mass distribution, as it was handwritten rather than printed.

“My best guess,” McSweeney says, “is that this was a document created at James II’s exiled court in France to try to garner support for James’ restoration to the throne. James was Catholic and regularly sought support from Catholic monarchs and the pope. I wouldn’t be surprised if this text was translated into Latin to form part of a dossier that was supposed to be sent to, say, the pope, to essentially say, ‘Look at what William is doing to Catholics! I need money to retake the throne and stop this!’”

If this is a document made by the exile court of James II, it’s a rare document indeed. The archive of James’ exile court was destroyed during the French Revolution, so surviving documents are exceedingly rare.

“I think I actually jumped out of my chair when it hit me that this was probably a Jacobite document,” said McSweeney. Hendrickson couldn’t quite believe it was real: “I kept expecting we would either find out that we were wrong, or that someone else had already discovered it. But the more we found out about the document and the times, the more everything pointed to a rare (unique, as far as we know) Latin translation made by or for the exiled James II and/or his supporters. And, at least so far, I can’t find any mention of it elsewhere.”

Thus far, these thoughts are hypotheses. Hendrickson and McSweeney both hope to consult with expert on the period, and Hendrickson plans to rifle through the rest of the Pullen Collection in order to see if he can find any more documents of its kind that might support the theory. But COVID-19 restrictions have essentially meant that any further exploration into this wonderful discovery has been halted for the indefinite future.

And mysteries do still remain. For instance, the Latin terminology of the document does not seem to match other English and Scottish legal documents, and there are differences between the text in Latin and the text of the Act as it survives in English. The question that seems to linger most for those involved, though, is how the document got from James’ supporters in France to Williamsburg, VA (which ironically, McSweeney notes, is a town named after the very man this document was hoping to delegitimize). Perhaps, sometime in a world post-COVID, Samuel Meyer will be able to take up the investigation once more. If anything is to be learned from this archival adventure, it’s that the next generation of Latinists have much to offer for the future of the discipline–especially with the right creative guidance — and that early modern Latin has unsuspected depths worth plumbing.