JAFFRAY, Alexander (1614-73), of Kingswells, Aberdeenshire.

Alexander Jaffray was a member of one of the leading families in the city of Aberdeen: his grandfather and father had represented the burgh in the convention of estates and the Scottish Parliament respectively. Jaffray’s upbringing befitted that of a wealthy merchant’s son. After a succession of schools, he entered Aberdeen University in 1631, aged 17, and the next year he married Jane Dun, the daughter of the principal of Marischal College. Between 1632 and 1635 he was sent on a series of expensive trips designed to perfect his skills as an international trader, visiting London twice and spending long periods in France – the latter jaunts being cut short when he was badly wounded by a drunken soldier in the streets of Paris.11Jaffray Diary, 13-18. During the later 1630s Jaffray became a fashionable figure in Aberdeen, running into debt and (by his own later standards) practising his religion ‘but very seldom and superficially’, although he and his younger brother John subscribed the National Covenant in 1638.12Jaffray Diary, 19, 178; HMC Hamilton, ii. 48.

During the early 1640s, the Jaffray brothers became closely involved in the covenanting movement in Aberdeen, and began their careers within the burgh’s council, where Alexander was bailie in 1643, and John dean of guild in 1644.13Young, Parliament of Scot. i. 375. Their support for the Covenant attracted the personal animosity of local royalists. In July 1643 Sir George Gordon of Haddo attacked and wounded Jaffray in retaliation for proceedings initiated against one of servants for rioting in Aberdeen; and when the marquess of Huntly led a royalist rising in the north-east in the spring of 1644, Haddo took the opportunity to imprison Jaffray for six or seven weeks, not only through personal enmity but also because ‘we were Covenanters’.14Jaffray Diary, 21-2, 177. Jaffray blamed Haddo for the death of his wife, whose demise was ‘hastened’ by the shock of her husband’s violent arrest.15Jaffray Diary, 21. When Montrose’s Irish troops attacked Aberdeen in September 1644, Jaffray joined the local forces mustered to resist them, and when the burgh fell, he fled to Dunottar Castle, only to be captured early in 1645. He was held at Pitcaple House until rescued by the troops marching north under the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*).16Jaffray Diary, 25-6; Aberdeen Council Lttrs. iii, ed. L.B. Taylor (Oxford, 1952), 17.

Jaffray’s sufferings at the hands of the royalists strengthened his zeal for the covenanting cause. His fellow prisoner at Pitcaple was the Aberdeen minister Andrew Cant, and from May 1647, when Jaffray married Cant’s daughter, the two became close allies within the burgh.17Jaffray Diary, 29. In January 1649 Jaffray was chosen as Aberdeen’s commissioner to the Scottish Parliament. This brought him into national politics for the first time. He was involved in moves against the Engagers, who had supported the marquess of Hamilton’s invasion of England in the previous summer.18Government of Scot. under the Covenanters ed. D. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1982), 85, 92, 94, 104. In 1649 and 1650 he joined the earl of Cassillis, Alexander Brodie* of Brodie and others as a commissioner to attend Charles Stuart in Holland, becoming known as one of the ‘refractory’ radicals unwilling to compromise to ensure the return of the monarch to Scotland.19Charles II and Scot. ed. S.R. Gardiner (Edinburgh, 1894), 103; CCSP ii. 51, 57, 65-6, 69; Aberdeen Council Lttrs. iii. 131-2; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 157, 234. Jaffray later claimed that he urged the king ‘not to subscribe to the Covenant, if in his conscience he was not satisfied’, and regretted that Charles had ‘sinfully complied with what we most sinfully pressed upon him’; but in 1650 he apparently accepted the uneasy arrangement, attended the Scottish Parliament once again, and joined the army at Dunbar in September. In the ensuing battle he was wounded four times and brought ‘to the very gates of death’, before being captured.20Jaffray Diary, 32-3; Ancram Corresp. ii. 497; Aberdeen Council Lttrs. iii. 267 (misdated 1656).

Oliver Cromwell’s* victory at Dunbar had a profound effect on Jaffray. As he later described it, he ‘that day got again, as it were, a new take of my life for this end, to hold it upon a new account, of the Lord, and for him’.21Jaffray Diary, 37. While in prison, he had ‘frequent conference’ with Cromwell, his son-in-law Charles Fleetwood*, and the Independent minister Dr John Owen*, who hoped Jaffray might be useful in negotiations with the radical Covenanters of the Western Association.22Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 370. As a result of these theological discussions, Jaffray became convinced of ‘the sinful mistake of the good men of this nation’ in following the Presbyterian system and investing it, and the Covenants, with divine authority. These ‘mistakes of the will and mind of God’ had clouded the fact that Presbyterianism was ‘very far from being the only way to Christ’, instead being merely ‘a human invention’.23Jaffray Diary, 38-9, 45. Jaffray was released in an exchange of prisoners in January 1651.24Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 388. By the autumn of that year his new opinions were becoming well known. He discussed religion with his former political associate, Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston, on a number of occasions, proposing that ‘some things in the Covenant … [were] unlawful to swear to’, and leaving Wariston to conclude ‘I fear his conversing with their people has shaken him’.25Wariston Diary, ii. 147-8. Private discussions were followed by public statements, in which Jaffray and a small group of supporters in Aberdeen questioned the Covenant and advocated congregationalism, alienating (among others) his father-in-law, Andrew Cant. In May 1652 Jaffray and his friends made their final break, formally renouncing Presbyterianism.26Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 26-7, 59-60. This ‘conversion’ was personally liberating, but socially devastating. The city council at Aberdeen had originally welcomed Jaffray’s good standing with the conquerors, calling on him to negotiate with the advancing English army, and re-electing him provost in October 1651; but they were shocked by his increasingly unorthodox religious views.27Extracts from the Council Reg. of Aberdeen, 1643-1747 (Edinburgh, 1872), 122-3, 125-6; Aberdeen Council Lttrs. iii. 169-70, 243; Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 15, 31, 355-6. Jaffray was forced to stand down as provost in March 1652 and thereafter his official involvement in the burgh was minimal.28Mems. Provosts of Aberdeen, ed. Munro, 164-5.

Jaffray’s renunciation of Presbyterianism was a matter of conscience; but his enemies accused him of ‘insinuating himself’ with the English authorities, through his status as a ‘convert’.29Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 356. Such slurs were difficult to rebut, as Jaffray was indeed in discussion with the leaders of the commonwealth government, who were keen to involve him in the civil administration of Scotland. In March 1652 he was asked to become the new director of the chancery (or chancellery) and keeper of the great seal in Scotland.30Jaffray Diary, 51. After deliberating, he decided in favour of ‘taking their employment and engagement’ in June.31Wariston Diary, ii. 171; Nicoll, Diary, 95. The two offices assured Jaffray’s position within Cromwellian Scotland. Although he had to relinquish the keepership in favour of Samuel Disbrowe* in 1655, he held the office of director of chancery until the Restoration, fending off attempts by the previous director, Sir John Scott of Scottstarvet, and the holder of the reversion, Sir William Ker, to wrest it from him.32CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 361; TSP vii. 421. Jaffray was also happy to accept a place in the Nominated Assembly, as one of five members selected for Scotland.33Nicoll, Diary, 109, 111-2. He arrived at Westminster on 5 July 1653, and remained in London until 6 February 1654.34Jaffray Diary, 51; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 27 June 1653. He is recorded as having been appointed to three committees in July (for the propriety of levying tithes, for Scottish affairs, and for trade and corporations), and these would seem to reflect his main political interests as a religious radical, a Scot, and a merchant.35CJ vii. 286a, 286b, 287a. His view of the Assembly’s proceedings was equivocal - ‘I can say little of any good we did at that Parliament’, he later reported, ‘yet it was on the hearts of some there to have done good for promoting the kingdom of Christ’. Jaffray was among the MPs who opposed the dissolution of the Assembly in December, ‘being not satisfied with the reasons thereof’, and had to be ejected, along with 30 other die-hards.36Jaffray Diary, 51-2. Despite his recalcitrance, he returned to Scotland with one considerable benefit, as the English council had agreed to pay him £1,500 to cover debts he had contracted while attending Charles Stuart in 1650 – leaving his fellow commissioners to continue to lobby for their share for several years to come.37Jaffray Diary, 51; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 353, 382; 1655-6, pp. 296-7; 1656-7, pp. 10-11.

In the later 1650s, Jaffray was again pre-occupied with his search for religious enlightenment. He favoured toleration, referring to the Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist churches as containing ‘the truly godly’.38Jaffray Diary, 46. In July 1654, in discussions with Wariston, he praised Baptists as ‘good men’, but denied he was one.39Wariston Diary, ii. 288n. Indeed, his own allegiances were once again shifting. It was only in the spring of 1657 that Jaffray began to see a way out of his spiritual labyrinth. After a period of intense meditation, he concluded ‘that out of such darkness, our Lord can bring light’, and on 30 May, ‘I did, this day, more solemnly engage myself to the Lord than ever before’.40Jaffray Diary, 64, 66. From then on, he could not bring himself to attend his children’s baptisms (although he allowed his wife to have them baptised) and he refused to take Holy Communion. The summer of 1658 saw his first positive steps towards the Quakers, seeking out ‘professors’ of both sexes, and referring to ‘my light’ as the touchstone of his actions.41Jaffray Diary, 104-33. This deeply personal battle was probably influenced by Jaffray’s separation from his fellow Congregationalists. In May 1657 he admitted that he was not a member of any ‘gathered church’ in the Edinburgh area, and from the summer he appears to have rejected formal religion of any stamp.42Jaffray Diary, 97.

Jaffray was also becoming increasingly politically isolated during this period. On his return to Scotland in February 1654 he at first divided his time between Aberdeen (where his business interests still lay) and Edinburgh, but by the end of 1656 he and his family moved permanently to the capital, ‘seeing I could usually get my affairs in the north dispatched by another’, and his contacts with Aberdeen withered away.43Jaffray Diary, 53. In the Edinburgh administration, Jaffray was never an ally of General George Monck*, who may have scotched his inclusion in the new Scottish council (as proposed in April 1655). Monck certainly supported rival claimants to the office of director of chancery later in the decade; and it may be significant that although Jaffray was considered for appointment as a judge in early 1659, he was not chosen.44Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XXVII, f. 70v; TSP vii. 421; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 386. By the end of 1659 Jaffray and Monck were completely estranged, and Jaffray was even concerned that visiting the general was something ‘which my light serves me not to do’.45Jaffray Diary, 133. By contrast, Jaffray made great efforts to keep up his personal connections with the Protester faction in the Kirk. In 1653 he had tried to persuade Brodie to attend the Nominated Assembly, and in 1655 he advised him to go to London in person to sort out the money owed to the 1650 commissioners.46Brodie Diary, 63, 77. In 1654 he warned Wariston on separate occasions that the ‘English [were] very angry at our meetings and testimonies’; that the protector was ‘getting more hard impressions of me’; and that Disbrowe and others in the Scottish government were no longer to be trusted.47Wariston Diary, ii. 212-3, 288. In January 1656 Wariston learned from Jaffray (via Sir James Stewart) of the protector’s decision on the appointment of ministers in Scotland.48Wariston Diary, iii. 24. Neither Brodie nor Wariston could respond with other than bad grace to Jaffray’s friendly advances, but this did not prevent him from using his influence with the English to their advantage. In February 1657 the Resolutioner agent James Sharp reported that John Owen’s information on the division within the Kirk was derived from Jaffray, who had promoted the Protesters as ‘the better men’.49Consultations ed. Stephen, i. 366.

Having lost the support of the Protesters, Monck and the Aberdeen council, Jaffray was not in a position to ride out the Restoration of Charles Stuart. In September 1660 he was committed to the tolbooth in Edinburgh.50Nicoll, Diary, 301. He was released in January 1661, and in September 1662 fined £2,000 under the act of indemnity.51Jaffray Diary, 149; Acts Parl. Scot. vii. 425. During the early 1660s Jaffray finally embraced the Quaker faith, confiding to his diary that ‘I do verily find and believe there is light appearing from, and holden forth at this time, by these despised people’.52Jaffray Diary, 149. As a result, he was finally disowned by Brodie, who called his ‘discourse of forms’ a ‘casting loose of all order and ordinances’ and went on to summarise his views with disdain: ‘Mr Jaffray was fallen into many errors … the scripture is not judge, but the spirit is in us; and the scripture must be tried by the spirit, because scripture is liable to several interpretations: he thought the Quaker the only true Christian’.53Brodie Diary, 263, 307. Jaffray was prosecuted by the court of high commission in 1664, and in 1669 he was imprisoned in the tolbooth at Banff for his ‘persuasion and keeping of meetings with Quakers’, being released only on signing a bond for good behaviour.54Regs. PC Scot. 1669-72, pp. 68-9, 640. Jaffray died in 1673, all but four of his 18 children having predeceased him. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Alexander, and a younger son, Andrew, later became known as a prominent Quaker.55Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 376; Oxford DNB.