He was born in
Edinburgh, the son of James Drummond of
Strageath on 25 August 1805. His father appears to have been an advocate, living at the then new and desirable address of 51,
Queen Street in
Edinburgh's New Town. He attended the
High School in Edinburgh and studied Divinity at the
University of Edinburgh and then
Worcester College, Oxford, graduating with a BA from the
University of Oxford in 1830. He was ordained as a deacon in the
Church of England in 1830, and served as a curate in
Compton Greenfield, Gloucestershire, 1830-32. He was ordained as priest in January 1832. In 1832, he returned to Edinburgh to take over
Old St Paul's on Carrubbers Close in the
Old Town. In 1837 he moved to the then-new Holy Trinity Church (now Rhema Scotland) on the west edge of
Dean Bridge, serving the expanding Episcopal Church in Edinburgh (which always had a high percentage of English inhabitants). Drummond appears highly affected by the
Oxford Movement of 1840. In October 1842 his religious views came to a head in a series of open letters to Bishop
Charles Terrot (perhaps fuelled by the impending doom of his church structure). The conclusion of this was a growing schism, causing Drummond to resign from the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was then encouraged to set up a parallel church that claimed allegiance to the Church of England and continued the bulk of the previous Episcopal customs, but with more freedom of prayer outwith the church setting. This was thereafter known as the English Church in Edinburgh. This split was parallel to, but technically separate from, the more famous split in the Church of Scotland, generally termed the
Disruption of 1843. Drummond's lead formed a pattern which several other Scottish Episcopalian Churches followed. Drummond's new church was St Thomas's English Episcopal Chapel on Rutland Place/Rutland Street (at the west end of
Princes Street), a location which was described as "annoyingly close" to the established Episcopal
Church of St John the Evangelist, Edinburgh, sitting more or less opposite the entrance to the pre-existing church. St Thomas's was designed by
David Cousin, and, curiously building was begun in 1842, indicating a pre-emption of the entire schism, and indicating that the series of letters to Bishop Terrot were merely to formalise an already concluded decision. The first call to a public meeting to establish a new church appears in the
Caledonian Mercury newspaper on 27 October 1842, predating much of the debate between Drummond and Terrot. Drummond's address at this time is shown as 4 Bruntsfield Place. Despite bringing in an Englishman, Richard Hibbs, as his curate around 1852, this did not go well and Hibbs created a further split in 1854 to create a separate Episcopal Church (
St Vincent's Chapel, Edinburgh) on St Vincent Place in the
New Town (completed as Christ's English Episcopal Chapel in 1857). Hibbs was replaced by
Valentine Faithfull. Drummond was a keen and early amateur photographer, being in both the
Edinburgh Photographic Society (1861) and Photographic Society of Scotland. He presented a new portable photographic tent to the latter in 1862 and served as their vice president from 1864 to 1867. In 1868 he was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being
John Hutton Balfour. This appears to for one of 16 photographs exhibited by Drummond in 1864, demonstrating a tour of
Killin,
St Fillans and Loch Earn earlier that year. In later life he lived at 6 Montpelier, a
tenement flat in the
Bruntsfield district of Edinburgh. He retired in 1875, aged 70. He died on 9 June 1877 while in
Pitlochry,
Perthshire but was returned to Edinburgh for burial in
Duddingston Churchyard. The grave lies on the south wall towards the south-west. yard ==Publications==