James Bain (minister)

The 7th Earl of Seafield.

Churchyard and mausolea adjacent to the church (left) and outside the churchyard (right)

Mausolea outside the churchyard (left) and adjacent to the church (right)

Bain became well-known for his campaigns against the proprietor of the Seafield Estates (1884–1911), Rt. Hon. Caroline, Countess Dowager of Seafield, widow of John Ogilvy-Grant, 7th Earl of Seafield; and more generally against the predominating influence of the Estate in public affairs in Strathspey. In 1885 he sued Lady Seafield, attempting to prevent her from building the second Grant Mausoleum in Duthil Old Parish Church and Churchyard, but lost the case.[9]

In 1887 he again sued Lady Seafield, seeking—again unsuccessfully—to cancel or reduce the contract by which the Estate gained from the Church the land on which the second mausoleum was sited.[10]

Throughout his ministry in Duthil, he challenged the Estate to bring the Manse of the established Church into a habitable condition for himself and his family, eventually winning this case in the Court of Session in 1894.[11] Bain held that the Manse was insanitary because of its proximity to an insanitary churchyard; he said the churchyard was insanitary because it was too shallow and too full and because it hosted an insanitary Mausoleum; and the mausolea were insanitary because they held coffins unburied, retained above ground. Only with regard to the Manse did he find official support.[12]

James Cameron, Balnacruie, Tullochgribban, known as 'The Duthil Author' and a supporter of the Estate, was publicly critical of Rev. James Bain. Cameron published a pamphlet, 'A challenge to prove the True Historic Church of Scotland' which contained the following accusations against James Bain:[13]

Need it be observed here what were the circumstances that more immediately led to the shipwreck, so to speak, of this congregation? This at the time had been fully known over all the north, yea, over the whole kingdom. The great strife, quarrels and litigations in connection with the glebe, the new Mausoleum, the Manse, the churchyard, the porch, the fighting at its door, the rotten smells, above all, the hole-ing of the graves with a crowbar, which made many men and women run wild, the coffins which were in the graves holed and broken through. … What or who caused all this is not a question with any person. The whole affair had been so very wild and heathenish in its nature that any detailed account thereof cannot be given. … Strife and contention is the work of the “evil spirit”, whoever is guilty of it. I feel altogether compelled from a conscientious point of view to ask what respect or sympathy did Mr Bain show to the Countess Dowager of Seafield in her sad and heavy bereavement - lost her only dear husband and her only dear son, noblemen who were famous as good and noble proprietors, and representatives of a most famous clan, as well as unspeakable loss to their estates and people?'

The Napier Commission, officially the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands, was a royal commission and public inquiry into the condition of crofters and cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. At its hearings at Kingussie, October 1883, James Bain gave evidence attacking the policies of the Seafield Estates as oppressive of the tenantry.[14]

In 1887 James Bain intervened in the proceedings of the parish of Cromdale, where the congregation were divided as to which candidate they should elect as their new minister. Stating his case in the Presbytery of Abernethy, the Synod of Moray and to the civil Court of Session, he successfully defended the right of the majority of ordinary members to elect the minister they choose.[15] In his speech at one hearing, reported in the 'Elgin Courant and Courier', he took up the language of 'the masses; and 'the classes' then popularised by the Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone M.P.:[16]

The Cromdale case had been all along one of the classes against the masses - a way of carrying on matters still too prevalent in Strathspey, where the classes had their parasites to back and support them. ... It is not for any selfish or aggressive object that I am moving in these matters. It is to bring the mighty and the powerful to repentance and to get them to do justice. I think it is far more my duty to attack the high and mighty than to attack the poor and the simple. If you get the high and the mighty to do what is right, they will be setting a good example. ... Some people would yet boldly act on the principle that might was right. So long as it was the poor that suffered it did not matter, ... while the classes well knew that the parasites were at their back to do as the classes would wish it done. ... Be that as it may, the people of Cromdale were ready to prove that ... the Presbytery of Abernethy - were the very parties who, if they had not robbed, had “jockeyed” them out of their legal rights in connection with a matter more precious far to them than gold, namely, the sacred right secured to them by law of electing and settling among them the minister of their choice. But the Presbytery of Abernethy thought proper to be actors art and part with the classes, ... to defeat the pious aims and wishes of these poor suffering people.

Elected for a number of terms to the Duthil School Board and also to the neighbouring Cromdale School Board, on the Duthil Board James Bain attempted to widen access to primary education by advocating support for side-schools additional to the Parish Schools of Duthil and Deshar. [17] On the Cromdale Board, he supported moves to develop secondary education at Grantown Grammar School to allow students from Grantown-on-Spey and area to obtain university entrance qualifications.[18]