[2] The Society began to establish schools in the Highlands with the aim of reducing Jacobitism and resisting the rise[dubious – discuss] of Roman Catholicism.
[6] A Society rule of 1720 required the teaching of reading and numbers, "but not any Latin or Irish",[7] a common term for Gaelic in both Ireland and Scotland.
In 1741, the SSPCK introduced the Galick and English Vocabulary compiled by the poet Alasdair MacDonald,[8] but in 1753 a rule of the Society forbade children "either in the schoolhouse or when playing about the doors thereof to speak Erse, under pain of being chastised".
[11] It was not until after the final defeat of the Jacobitism at Culloden in 1746 that the Society had begun to consider publishing a Bible in Scottish Gaelic, and it initiated a translation project in 1755.
By the time the New Testament was completed the affairs of the Society had come under the investigation of a Royal Commission for alleged financial mismanagement, and in 1883 the work of revision was suspended, to be resumed some thirteen years later in 1896[citation needed].