Thomas Innes (historian)

Thomas Innes (1662 – 28 January 1744) was a Scottish Roman Catholic priest and historian. He studied at the Scots College, (Paris), of which he became vice-principal. He was the author of two learned works,Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain (1729), and Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, 80 to 818 (published 1853).

The second son of James Innes, and younger brother of Lewis Innes, he was born at Drumgask in the parish of Aboyne, Aberdeenshire. In 1677 he was sent to Paris, and studied at the College of Navarre. He entered the Scots College on 12 January 1681, but still attended the College of Navarre.

On 26 May 1684 he received the clerical tonsure; on 10 March 1691 was promoted to the priesthood, and afterwards spent a few months at Notre Dame des Vertus, a seminary of the Oratorians near Paris. Returning to the Scots College in 1692, he assisted the principal, his elder brother Lewis, in arranging the records of the church of Glasgow, which had been deposited partly in that college and partly in the Carthusian monastery at Paris by Archbishop James Beaton. In 1694 he graduated M.A. at Paris, and in 1695 matriculated in the German nation. After officiating as a priest for two years in the parish of Magnay in the diocese of Paris, he went again to the Scots College in 1697.

In the spring of 1698 he returned to Scotland, and officiated for three years at Inveravon, Banffshire, as a priest of the Scottish mission. In October 1701 he returned to Paris, and became prefect of studies in the Scots College, and also mission agent. There he spent twenty more years. His friendship with Charles Rollin, Jacques-Joseph Duguet, and Jean Santeul led to his being suspected of Jansenism. In 1720 his brother Lewis, in what may be a formal letter to the vicar-general of the Bishop of Apt, contradicted a report that Thomas had concurred in an appeal to a general council against the condemnation of Pasquier Quesnel's ‘Moral Reflections’ by Pope Clement XI.

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