Malcolm MacColl

Who was Malcolm MacColl?

Malcolm MacColl, British clergyman and publicist, was the son of a poor Scottish crofter or labourer in Glenfinnan who died when his son was still a boy. Despite this difficult beginning, MacColl's intellectual exertions enabled himself - and his younger brother Hugh - to succeed in obtaining an education of sorts. MacColl claimed Jacobite descent and seems to have espoused High Anglican theological beliefs from a very early age. His native language was Scots Gaelic.

MacColl won a place at Trinity College, Glenalmond, for the Scottish Episcopal ministry. He was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1857. In May 1858 he approached William Ewart Gladstone in a letter warning him about measures against High Church bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but also alluded to his own extremely precarious financial circumstances.**

MacColl tenaciously refused to let this correspondence die and eventually managed to meet Gladstone. From this slender beginning there developed a lifelong friendship and political alliance. Throughout the rest of MacColl's life, Gladstone secured preferment, most of it fairly modest, for his protégé. However MacColl never rose very high in the Anglican Church, mainly, no doubt, because of his refusal to compromise his Anglo-Catholic theological views. Gladstone's first piece of assistance was to facilitate the young MacColl's transfer from Scotland to London and the Church of England. MacColl was received as a priest of the Church of England in 1859, and then entered on a succession of curacies in the Church of England, in London and at Addington, Bucks. He also served between 1864 and 1867 as the Chaplain of the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Naples.