ST. MARY'S COLLEGE, BLAIRS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 4, 11 November 1892, Page 6

ST. MARY'S COLLEGE, BLAIRS.

(Edinburgh Catholic Herald.") The estate of Blairs is situated amid beautiful surroundings in the parish of Marycalier, Kincardineshire, having for its northern boundary the river Dee. It extends to about 1010 acres, and the rent roll amounts to about £1000. It is easy of access, being only six miles south-west of Aberdeen, from which omnibuses run daily, and two miles from Cults Bail way Station. Its first known possessors were the Knights Templars, who received the whole parish of Maryculter as an estate from William the Lion in 1167. This military Order continu»d in possession of the estates until about 1320, when the Order having been suppressed by the Pope, King Robert the Bruce handed them over to tne rival Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, now called the Knights of Malta, who retained them till tbey were finally disposed of to the Menzies fami'y, the Irvines of K.nkcausie, and the Collione previous to 1518, when the Knights left the parish altogether. From the Knights of 8t JohD, then, the estate of Blairs wa?, along with other landed property, by charier, bearing date 15th July 1535, acquired by Gilbert Menzie?, then laird of Findcn, and Provost of Aberdeen, into the possession of whose family tbe estate of Pitfoddels subsequently passed by the marriage of his eldest son, Thomas, with the heiress to that proper. y. For a limited time, about the end of the sixteenth century, Blairs appears to have been in the possession of a family bearing the name of Harvey, but it reverted ioto the bauds of tbe Menzies family, who continued to hold it down to 1827, when John Menzies, the la9t of the race, who died at EJinburgh a widower, in 1843, at tbe advanced age of 87 years, conveyed the mansion house and lands of Blairs to the Catholic bishops of Scotland for the purpose of establishing a college "to educate and train for the priesthood those who may feel themselvts called on to dedicate themselves to Gjd and the salvation of souls as clergymen on tbe Scottish Mission." The mansion hoase was an exceedingly plain and unattractive building, erected in thi early part of the o-ntury by the late Mr Meizies, and beautifully situated about a hundred yards distant from tbe Deeeido road. Extensive structural alterations were carried out in, and additions made to, the house, and it was formally opened as St Mary's College on 2nd June, 1829. Bishop Paterson, a naive of Enzie, whose death occurred with

tragic suddenness in Dundee in 1831 in the vestry of a church then immediately after be had preached, was a great friend oC Mr Meniiet, and it was chiefly through his instrumentality that tbe two Oatholio seminaries, which bad previously existed at Aquborties, near Inverurle, and at Lismore, an island near Oban (the latter being for Highland students), were united into one respectable college at Blairs, which, it may be noted, was, until quite recently, when a new college wu opened at Glasgow, the only established college in conneotion with the Catholic Church in Scotland. Blairs has a peculiar interest as the home of many relict of prereformation times. As may be supposed, the house of Mentis*, inch a Btronghold of the faith, was often made tbe custodian of Oatholio property in the troubled times that followed the downfall of the Ohurcb. Perhaps the gem of the Blairs collection it a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, one of three genuine paintings of the Queen in her execution dress, another of which is in tbe royal collection at Windsor Castle. The late Mr Charles Elphinstone Dalrymple, who was an expert in the subject, considered the Blairs picture the better of the two; indeed, be thought the Windsor picture was a mere elaborated copy from the other. Subsequent infoimation bears out Mr Dairy m pie's conjecture. Bey Charles Gordon, a piiest who died in Aberdeen in 1855, perfectly remembered that while be wat a student at Douai, about 1788 or 1789, King George 111. sent an artist over to college there who painted a copy of the portrait now in Blair* for Windsor Castle. The copy, it may be added, is regarded as bting altogether an inferior production. The Blairs pictnre, which «v exhibited at the Arcb»ological Exhibition in Aberdeen in 1859, at the Stuart Exhibition in 1880, and in the Stuart collection at tbe recent International Exhibition in Glasgow, was originally the property of Joannes Kennedy and Elizabeth Ourle, the Queea'a two maids of honour who attended her on the scaffold, and it was bequeathed to tbe Scots College of Douai by Mrs Curie's son, who waa long superior of that institution. Oa the breaking out of the French Revolution it was taken out of its frame, rolled up, and concealed in the chimney of tbe refectory, the fireplace being built up. The whole community —superiors and students— assisted in concealing it. In 1814, 21 years later, it was deposited in tbe English Benedictine Convent of Paris, until it waa brought to Blairs by Bishop Paterson. The picture, which has been minutely described by Mr George Sham, director of tbe National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, in his " Authentio Portraits of Mary Queen of Scots," displays a whole length, life-iise standing figure of the Queen, holding a crucifix in the right hand, and in the left hand a prayer book bound in vellum, with one finger between its leaves ; the ribbons intended to fasten tne bojk are blue. She is dressed in a black dress trimmed with dark brown fur, and she wears a large ruff and a white cap, while a long white veil bangs from her shoulder to tbe ground. On tha right of the figure is a representation in small figures showing the Q leen kneeling at the block, her neck bleeding from a blow of the axe, which the executioner is to let fall again, Behind the scaffold stand the Earls of. Kent and Shrewsbury, and behind tbe large figure of tbe Queen stand the two maids of honour, lamenting tbe fate of their mistress. Tbe history of St Mary's College, Blairs, forms a very interesting chapter in the annals of the Catholics of the North. Its chief interest centres in the fact that ib is one of the few spotß in the Northeast corner of Scotland where the Catholic Church has held its own, in some form or other, in unbroken line since its foundation. Tbe fact is due to the allegiance to the Church of the great family of Manzies, whose heroic struggle during many generations kept tbe Church intact, until the time when religious tolerance no mure demauded tbe sacrifice of the individual for his faiib. The family, it is true, completely vanished, but their history is continued in tbe college which the last of tbe race endowed at Blairs.