CAMPOMANES AND THE SCOTS

hristopher Storrs’ article about Spain’s economic reformer Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes (Vol 20.4) rang a bell. Surely someone of that surname helped Scotland’s John Geddes to exchange the old Catholic seminary in Madrid for a new one at Valladolid? by Bishop Maurice Taylor (a former rector) confirmed it. The two men developed a mutual respect, although the Spaniard asked early on whether Geddes ‘imagined he had nothing else to think of but his College’. By August 1770 negotiations were well in hand. Geddes wrote home asking for a master and twelve boys, the highland ones ‘not to come off with the Itch’. They took possession of the former Jesuit college of San Ambrosio (a room for every student was luxury unheard