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Written by Peter Mander
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April 13th, 2005, marked the 310th anniversary of the death of Bishop James Drummond. He was the priest at Aucherarder and Muthill before becoming Bishop of Brechin in 1684 - consecrated on Christmas Day in the Chapel of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
 When the Revolution came to Scotland in 1689, and Presbyterians replaced Episcopalians as the Church of Scotland, he conducted his last service in the diocese of Brechin on April 14th 1689 and came to Cruden Bay. For the final six years of his life he lived at Slains Castle with the Earl and Countess of Erroll. The Earl had married his relative, Lady Anne Drummond.
In those six years he greatly interested himself in all that went on in Cruden and was a tower of strength to the priest, William Dunbar, and the congregation of the Church. At Cruden at this time there were no Presbyterians and William Dunbar continued his Episcopalian ministry in the Parish Church until the failure of the first Jacobite Rising, twenty years after Bishop Drummond’s death.The Bishop gave the church a silver communion chalice – which is still used at Communion services in the Presbyterian Church – and he built the Bishop’s Bridge over the Water of Cruden to make it easier for people to reach the Church. He was a man of great culture and his library of 360 books (an enormous number for someone to have at that time) was bequeathed to the Earl of Erroll and remained in the Castle until the break up of the Slains Estate in 1918. It was then sold to Glasgow Corporation. The Bishop is buried within the Church of Scotland Parish Church, although the site of his grave is no longer known. The present church was built on the site of the one he knew eighty years after his death and the grave marker disappeared in the rebuilding.
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Parish History 
