Donald Corbet, Kinlochbervie

Rev Alex. Macrae wrote the following concerning Mr Corbet in his book Kinlochbervie, Being the story and traditions of a remote Highland parish and its people.

Mr. Donald Corbet, who succeeded [Thomas Fraser], was a remarkable man. A native of Ross-shire, he was for many years a teacher before entering the ministry. He was appointed parochial schoolmaster of Ardnamurchan in 1830, a position which he held till 1843. At his appointment the Presbytery recorded that they found him “in all respects duly qualified to teach the several branches required of him.”

He was a warm supporter of the Evangelical party in the church, and as the Ten Years’ Conflict proceeded, he became involved locally in the heated controversy that prevailed. Mr. Corbet acted as Session Clerk of the parish. A Mr. Neil MacPhail was employed as a teacher within the parish, and certain charges were lodged against him before the Session. He appealed to the Presbytery, who acquitted him on all the charges, and ordered those who made them to be suspended from church ordinances. Mr. Corbet was summoned before the Presbytery for his part in the matter, but for two years he failed to obey the citations of the court. Eventually he appeared, and was rebuked for his conduct in the case. The fact was that he, being a pronounced evangelical and the members of Presbytery being predominantly moderate, was made to suffer for his principles and for his unguarded tongue at the same time. He had qualified for the ministry and was a probationer of the church at the Disruption. In July 1843 he was declared by the Presbytery to be no longer a preacher of the Church of Scotland.

In the early fifties Mr. Corbet came to Sutherland, and was employed as supply in Strathy and Halladale. The charge had been vacant since 1843. The majority of the communicants and more than half the adherents were strongly opposed to him. The opposition first favoured Mr. Colin Sinclair, afterwards of Invergordon, a native of the parish. The division was so strong that a Commission of the Assembly was sent to make peace. The controversy went on for years, Mr. Corbet’s friends refusing to consider any other, and his opponents refusing to give in. His opponents then favoured Mr. William Fraser, Lochgilphead, and another trial of strength took place. When Mr. Fraser, Kinlochbervie, died, Mr. Corbet got a unanimous call, which he cordially accepted. He was a thoughtful and studious man. He collected and carefully wrote accounts of religious life in the Highlands. The Rev. Dr. Andrew Bonar published one of his MSS, under the title of ” Strange Footprints of our King.”

He was a spare slightly built man, tidily and smartly dressed, gentlemanly in bearing, speech and habits. He wore a silk hat and carried a yellow stick, the recognised pastor’s staff and symbol of the evangelicals, whose party the other side called “Creidimh a bhata bhuidhe” or ” The faith of the yellow staff.”

He was a systematic worker. He did not go from house to house, but held diets of catechising, as they were called, in each little township weekly. To these all the people were supposed to gather to be catechised. He visited the sick and the aged, but not such as were able to attend the regular ordinances of the church. He had a rare knowledge of herbal and other medical remedies, which proved most useful in a district without a doctor.

As a preacher he was passionately earnest and evangelistic. In his absorbed apprehension of the spiritual and eternal, he frequently forgot the swift passage of time. On one occasion in Strath Halladale he preached from 6.30 on Sabbath evening till 1 o’clock on Monday morning! On a communion Sabbath evening in his own pulpit he preached from 6.30 till 10.45, when a well known character of the period, Doll a Chollector, shouted out “Shut up, you babler, and let the people home.”

In May, 1880 he had a paralytic stroke from which he never recovered. He passed away in June in the presence of his two sisters who had served him with loving devotion thoughout his ministry. Mr. George Sutherland, who was Ladies’ School teacher at Fannagmore, was also present, and was a source of strength and comfort to the sorrowing sisters, is now senior minister of Bruan.

He had made all arrangements for the Communion, which was then held in June. Mr. Duncan MacGregor of Ferintosh, and Mr. John MacKay of Althaharra had promised to assist. These arrangements were carried out by the sisters, who were guided and supported by Mr. Sutherland.

His tombstone records his people’s high esteem and estimate of him.

Erected by his Congregation
to the Memory of

Revd. DONALD CORBETT,

Minister of the Free Church, Kinlochbervie,
for 16 years.

A servant of Jesus Christ, sound in the faith, full of zeal for the truth, faithful as a reprover of sin and preacher of the Gospel. Brought under gracious influences from his youth, a man of unspotted life, a mind well-informed and studious, in his habits, well-versed in the doctrines of grace and Christian experience, he sacrificed position and prospects for the crown rights of the Redeemer in 1843, to which he firmly adhered to the end. His abundant labours and trials ended, he departed in peace on 31st day of May, 1880, aged 75.

“The memory of the just is blessed. “-Prov. x, 9.

Source: Kinlochbervie, Being the story and traditions of a remote Highland parish and its people, Alexander Macrae, 102pp.,Tongue. 

 

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REV. DONALD CORBET, KINLOCHBERVIE

From: The Free Church Monthly Record, December 1, 1880, p.300.

Mr. Corbet was not much known in the public work of the Church; but he was a man of thorough culture, of good scholarship, of great and varied information on all kinds of subjects, especially on the history of Highland families, and those eminent men in the North who witnessed and suffered for the cause of truth in the era before the Revolution, when prelacy was in the ascendant, and sought to overthrow the civil and religious liberties of Scotland.

On these, and on many other kindred topics relating chiefly to the Northern Highlands, he left a mass of manuscript containing most interesting and well-authenticated facts, which will form very valuable materials for local or general history at some future time, when the hour and the man to write it will appear on the scene. His memory was wonderfully retentive, and, like Hugh Miller in this respect, what he read, or was told him, if it had any interest or value, he never forgot. He was, moreover, a well-read and sound divine, thoroughly imbued with the theology of Calvin and the Puritans, of whom his special favourites were Owen and Howe; a man of deep and genuine piety, of fervent zeal, and unwearied in labour in the service of his Master.

He was born in the parish of Killearnan, on the 3rd April 1805. His elementary education and religious training were carried on under the care of his father, who was for fifty years teacher of a side school at Croft-na-crich, in said parish, and supported by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge in the Highlands and Islands. The father was a very godly man, and by his character as well as by his teaching exerted great moral and spiritual influence, and was held in high esteem in his day.

After this preliminary teaching at his father’s school, the subject of our notice went to the parish school, five miles away, to learn some Latin and Greek. Here he studied for two or three years, walking ten miles every day, wet or dry, with cheerful alacrity.

His school education was completed by two years’ attendance at the Royal Academy, Inverness, then in the heyday of its fame. He took the Arts course at King’s College, Aberdeen, and, it is said, passed through all the classes there with distinction and honour. When he had finished his literary course, he was elected parish schoolmaster of Ardnamurchan, in the year 1832. He held this situation till the Disruption, acting not only as teacher of the young, but as religious and spiritual instructor of young and old in that outlying and at that time dark and neglected region. During those years he completed his course at the Divinity Hall in Edinburgh.

At the memorable Disruption he was ready for license, though he still held the school, and, like many other brave and noble men at that time, he had the honour of being ejected from it. But his ejection added to his fame, for your Highlander is both loyal and chivalrous; and when the pupils saw their teacher turned out of his school by oppression, they resolved to stand by him at all hazards, with the cordial sanction of their parents. A friendly farmer offered his barn, and there, with prayer and thanksgiving, the ejected school was reopened with full numbers. And the impression of that day abides with many still. They speak of the flitting to the barn and the first school day being more like a prayer-meeting than a school. In the close of 1843 he was licensed by the Presbytery of Inverary; and during twenty years he laboured as a probationer in all parts of the Highlands, from the Mull of Cantyre to Cape Wrath, and from the Butt of Lewis to Tarbat-ness, doing noble and valuable service to the cause of Christ in districts lying in the gloom of ignorance and spiritual death—a service, alas! often little thought of and ill requited.

In 1864 he was called to the pastoral charge of Kinlochbervie, in the Presbytery of Tongue; and here, when he was no longer young, he wrought for sixteen years in the Master’s service with fervent zeal, assiduity, and faithfulness, among a people widely scattered through the Reay Forest, or living in fishing villages or rural hamlets along the bold and romantic promontories that indent the coast-line in that region, and give it an aspect of picturesque grandeur that rivals, if it does not excel the far-famed Trosachs. His labours were very acceptable to his people at large, and there is every reason to believe much blessed in the conversion of souls. His wide district would range from thirty to forty miles in extent; yet over this wide area would the lithe, agile, muscular man—now beyond sixty, remember—walk from village to village, and from house to house, and visit all his people once a year. This is an achievement which should make some of us ashamed!

His life was a laborious and troublous one in many ways; but his greatest trouble and that which hastened his end came at the close. Kinlochbervie forms part of the civil parish of Eddrachillis, which, as to superficial area, is larger than many southern counties. In the Kinlochbervie section of it the Establishment has a quoad sacra church, but no people, save one or two besides officials. It happened that after the so-called Abolition of Patronage Act in 1874, this quoad sacra church became vacant. The factor of the duke, who is a very formidable power here, in league with one who had lately become a renegade from Free Church principles, formed a scheme to get Mr. Corbet with his congregation to enter in and take possession of the said quoad sacra church, and manse, and glebe, assuring them that they would be as free to hold their Free Church principles in their new position as the winds which blew around their storm-beaten shores, and there would be nothing to pay. Many of the congregation, under the potential pressure of the factor, and the milder persuasion of his ally, favoured the scheme, and signed a paper giving their consent to it. With this document the wily conspirators approached the minister, but here they found they had to deal with a man of a very different spirit from some whom it is needless to name. He repelled and repudiated their scheme with righteous indignation, he stood immovably to his principles, and by his brave and manly integrity the scheme of the factor was dashed in pieces.

This rude collision with high-handed oppression—this assault on his principles and the effort to seduce his people away from him, while he triumphed over it, gave such a shock to his nervous system as manifestly hastened his death. He was never the same man as before. He became subject to fits of fainting, which grew more severe as they recurred. During last winter he was very feeble, but continued his work less or more till the end of April. On the 5th May he wrote me, requesting that I would assist him at his communion on the 27th June, but before that time came round he had joined the communion of the Church above.

Rev. M. MacGregor, Ferintosh