Seignelay Colbert de Castlehill (1735-1811) A Bishop Between Scottish Enlightenment and Counter-Revolution

This book brings together its contributors to study the figure of Seignelay Colbert de Castlehill, born in Inverness on 13th August 1735 into a Presbyterian family and who died in London, an anti-Concordant bishop and leader of the ‘Little Church’ on 15th July 1811. Vicar general of Loménie de Brienne in Toulouse, frequenting the Parisian salons, he was the guide of the economist Adam Smith in Toulouse and in the Southwest, from Bordeaux to Montpellier, from March 1764 to October 1765. In 1782, he was elevated to the episcopal see of Rodez and became president of the provincial assembly of Haute-Guyenne. As a representative of the clergy of Rouergue in 1789, he was one of the French bishops who rallied to the Third Estate, allowing the Estates-General to become the National Assembly. He has however escaped the prosopography of the French Revolution, as well as Scottish historiography.

Introduction; Alain Alcouffe.- Part I: From Inverness to Rodez, 1735-1781.- Cuthbert of Castlehill: A View from Inverness; Jennifer Morag Henderson.- How to Cultivate Sociable Virtues on the Grand Tour; Hiroki Ueno.- Colbert of Castlehill and the Toulouse Diocesan Assiette, 1764-1781; Gilbert Larguier.- An Eighteenth-Century Man Envisaged: An Analysis of a Moral Treatise by Seignelay Colbert de Castlehill; Timothy R. Day.- Part II: From Rodez to Versailles.- Colbert of Castlehill's Social Thinking from his Work on the Begging Committee; Jean-Baptiste Masméjan.- Colbert and Debertier: The Test of the Revolution; Bernard Fixes.- Part III: The Return to Britain.- The Overseas Emigration Network of the Bishop of Rodez Colbert of Castlehill: A Network Woven in Occitania and the Sorbonne; Patrick Ferté.- The London Exile: Bishop Colbert of Castlehill and the French Bishops in London, 1791-1814; Dominic Aidan Bellenger.- The Pastoral Correspondence of Mgr Seignelay Colbert, 1789-1810; Marie-Paule Biron.- Part IV: Colbert of Castlehill and Three Contemporaries.- Colbert de Castlehill, Raynal and the Provincial Assembly of Haute-Guyenne: The Bishop and the Abbot, from Reform Ideas to the Clash of Ideas; Gilles Bancarel.- Comparison Between the Bishop of Rodez, S. Colbert de Castlehill, a Figure Ignored by Historians, and Abbé Sieyès, Icon of the Revolution; Christine Faure.- Loménie de Brienne, Barère and Colbert de Castlehill, or how Patriotism is a Toulouse Affair; Maïté Bouyssy.- Epilogue: A Farewell to Colbert of Castlehill; Andrew Moore.

Alain Alcouffe is Emeritus Professor of Economics at University Toulouse Capitole, France.