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The second university and the wandering scholars—The fifth Earl Marischal —
His embassy to Denmark — The Keiths and the Church revenues—The response in
Aberdeen to the new demand for education—Futile attempts to reform the older
university— Grant of Church lands to the Earl Marischal—His
foundation-charter of Marischal College—Organisation and early officers—A
university at Fraserburgh—Aberdeen professors in Continental
universities—The grammar-school : Cargill and Wedderburn—Illiteracy of
craftsmen — Lack of schools in rural Aberdeenshire— County families and the
grammar - school : Fight for the Yule holidays—Education in Banff—The witch
mania : Witch-burning in Aberdeen and Banff.
High in the list of public benefactors whose
action had a permanent influence on the social or intellectual life of the
two counties must be placed the fifth Earl Marischal. In the latter part of
the sixteenth century the political leadership of the north-east, from which
the house of Gordon had been ousted by Murray, was to a certain extent
transferred, as we have seen, to that of Keith. The fourth Earl Marischal
had gained much wealth by the practical disendowment of the Church—chiefly
through other than legislative means. His grandson, the fifth earl, had been
a student at King's College, and had passed on to France and to Geneva,
where he had Beza for preceptor. Both Beza and Andrew Melville speak of him
as a talented and accomplished student. After leaving Switzerland he visited
some of the European Courts, and returned to Scotland with scholarly
attainments and a culture far above that generally possessed by the Scottish
nobles of the time. Soon after his accession to the peerage, in 1581, report
was made to the English Government that his revenue was greater than that of
any other earl in Scotland—in this respect also he had taken the place
formerly held by Huntly —and that he was " esteemed honest, religious, and
favouring the best part." When King James, disappointed in his hopes of
marrying the eldest daughter of the King of Denmark, resolved to send an
embassy to woo her sister, he selected as its head the Earl Marischal's
uncle, Lord Altrie, formerly Robert Keith, the second lay abbot or
commendator of Deer, upon whom the abbey lands and revenues were conferred
as a temporal lordship; but not being looked upon with cordiality by the
Privy Council, Altrie declined the delicate mission. It was then intrusted
to the earl himself, who had his Continental experiences and his wealth,
accomplishments, and address to aid him in his task. There were difficulties
and jealousies of many kinds to overcome or overbear, but the mission was
carried out by the earl from his own resources in a style befitting its
royal and national character. This mission was a great event in the north,
and its successful accomplishment placed the Crown in the earl's debt and
improved his political standing. Soon after his return he was rewarded with
the high administrative office of Lieutenant of the North, in the exercise
of which he consolidated the Protestant party, and had the chief hand in
rendering nugatory the victory of Huntly and Erroll at Glenlivet and making
further resistance on their part hopeless. His heavy outlay on the Denmark
mission, in which he was accompanied by an ample retinue, was to be
reimbursed from the revenues of lands at the king's disposal.
When the Marischal estates
were at their maximum, in the time of the fifth earl, it was said that he
could travel from Berwick to Caithness and sleep every night on his own
land. His properties ranged from Haddingtonshire and Linlithgowshire to
Akergill, in Caithness; and in the northeast, besides Dunnottar, Durris, and
others in Kincardineshire, he had Skene, Kintore, Inverugie, and Altrie, in
Aberdeenshire, Troup and Durn in Banff, and Duffus in Moray. Yet he did not
hold his estates and revenues without challenge. When, on the death of Lord
Altrie, the Deer abbey lands passed to the earl, his younger brother, Robert
Keith of Benholm, took forcible possession of the abbe}', and held it for
six weeks. The earl appealed for aid to the city of Aberdeen, of which he
may be said to have been the social and political head, and where he had a
mansion, of which, as the residence fittest for the entertainment of
royalty, the provost and magistrates had obtained the use for the king when
they had him as a guest. The appeal was not made in vain, for the city sent
forty hagbutters to fight the earl's battle with his brother; and as
Marischal obta;ned letters from the king charging his majesty's subjects in
the sheriffdoms of Forfar, Kincardine, Aberdeen, and Banff to assist him,
Keith retired to Fedderet in the same district, where, after a siege of
three days, the brothers came to terms. Marischal did not press" matters to
an extremity, but two or three years later he had to take legal proceedings
against his brother for seizing possession of the family estate in Caithness.
Similar troubles broke out on other occasions, and it is clear that the
younger members of the family were ill pleased at the concentration of all
wealth and power in the hands of the earl. Benholm bore the commendator's
name of Robert Keith, and thought he should have succeeded to the Altrie
lordship.
The holders of the abbey
lands, first the commendator and then the earl, came under the censure of
the Kirk for withholding revenues that should have gone to the " poor
ministers," and in popular belief the appropriation of the Church revenues
marked the beginning of a canker that ended in the destruction of the noble
family of Keith. At this very time, indeed, according to the tradition of a
later day, the countess, a daughter of the Earl of Home, endeavoured to
dissuade her husband from " meddling with the Abbey of Deer," but "fourteen
score chalders of meal and bere were a sore temptation," which he could not
withstand. The tradition goes on to say that Lady Marischal had a strange
vision of monks slowly picking with penknives at the Castle of Dunnottar
until it was reduced to a wreck, its rich contents being cast on the waves
of a tempestuous sea. The dream, which was put on record during the
seventeenth century " Troubles,"1 was held to be premonitory of the falling
fortunes of the Keiths. Their grasping of the lion's share of the Church
spoils exposed them to hostile feeling on the Protestant as well as the
Roman Catholic side, and it is usual to connect with this state of matters
the defiant motto which the fifth earl inscribed on a tower which he built
on the abbey lands and on his college in Aberdeen—"They haif said : Quhat
say thay? Lat thame say."
The history of the
north-eastern counties is further differentiated from that of Scotland as a
whole by the response that was made in Aberdeen to the demand that arose at
the Reformation for the better education of all classes. In the latter part
of the sixteenth century this demand proceeded on the one hand from the
leaders of the Protestant Church who had their quarrel with the greater
landlords, by whom the ecclesiastical endowments had been appropriated, and
on the other from the county families and wealthier burgesses, who had
become alive to the value of education as a passport to employment and
distinction under the new conditions. The foundation of Marischal College,
though secondary in importance to that of the elder university, nevertheless
marks a new stage in the intellectual development and character of these
counties. It must be regarded, however, as a response to a pre-existing
demand, and as only serving in its degree to give force and direction to a
movement already in progress. The partial reform of King's College under
Arbuthnot left it in a condition satisfactory to none of the parties in
Church or State. Andrew Melville, by whom the mantle of Knox had been
inherited, was the great university reformer of the time, and shortly after
he had assumed the principalship of Glasgow he accompanied Principal
Arbuthnot from the General Assembly of 1575 to the district of their common
nativity north of the Tay, discussing the university question, and settling
the principles embodied afterwards in the scheme of reform known as the New
Foundation. Commission after commission was appointed, without leading to
effective reform. One, in 1578, recommended measures for restoring the "
dilapidated " funds of King's College, and another formulated a scheme. As
royal commissioners, Earl Marischal, the Commendator of Deer, and others
asked the General Assembly to "visit" the college and " depute some persons
to take trial of the members thereof that they be qualified to conform to
the new erection." In response to this request the Assembly appointed a
committee, including James Lawson, who had been sub-principal under
Arbuthnot until recalled to Edinburgh as successor to Knox, to consider the
proceedings of the commissioners. The current was running counter to the
Presbyterian party at the time, and nothing having been done by this
committee, partly by reason of its negligence, according to Calderwood, and
partly through the Aberdeen regents ignoring it, another committee was
nominated, before whom the sub-principal (Rait) and the regents were to be
summoned by Mr Peter Blackburn, minister of Aberdeen, to appear at St
Andrews " under pain of disobedience to the Kirk." The Presbyterian party
was dissatisfied with the college, and mention is made of " the hazard of
scholars skailing to St Andrews," which was now dominated by Melville ; but
the king was opposed to the " new erection." Lennox and Arran, now in power,
were equally opposed to the Presbyterian party and polity. Assemblies ceased
for a time to be held, and nothing was done. Another drowsy commission was
appointed in 1584, in which Marischal, who was engaged on such affairs of
State as the Gowrie trial, the measures against the Catholics, and the
embassy to Denmark, had no part. It was in the autumn of 1592, the year of
his appointment as lord-lieutenant, that he received his charter of the
lands and barony of Altrie, including the lands formerly belonging to the
Monastery of Deer, as also the Templar lands of Dunnottar and Fetteresso,
and other properties in Kincardineshire, with a long list of crofts and
annuals that had belonged to the Black and White Friars in Aberdeen, all
resigned by him for new infeftment. University reform, in which he had been
keenly interested ever since his college days, continued to lag and slumber.
Marischal being now in power
and having ample means at his disposal, resolved to found and endow a new
university (the terms Gymnasium, Academia, and Collegium are also used in
his foundation-charter) in accordance with the principles and scheme which
he had recommended to the Church and Government. The charter, which is dated
Apri' 2, 1593—six months after the grant of the Friars' and other lands—sets
forth, though not in the terms that were applicable to the state of
education in Bishop Elphinstone's time, that in many places in the north of
Scotland the means for obtaining a liberal and Christian education either
did not exist or were neglected, so that few "have been trained in the
humane arts, through whose exertions and zeal the Church might flourish, the
country become illustrious, and the commonwealth be more and more enlarged,"
wherefore, following the example of kings, princes, nobles, and bishops who
had erected colleges "to be abodes sacred to the Muses and, as i^ were,
nurseries where young men might receive a godly and liberal education in
letters and in arts," he desired to found :n Aberdeen " a public Gymnasium
in the buildings formerly belonging to the Franciscans (the transference of
which to this use seemed most opportune and convenient) where young men
might be thoroughly trained and instructed in the humane arts, philosophy,
and a purer piety, under the charge of competent and learned teachers."1
Besides the buildings of the Franciscans the properties formerly belonging
to the Preaching and Carmelite Friars in Aberdeen were given in perpetuity
as an endowment for the new college, and the charter lays down rules for the
appointment of officers, prescribes the curriculum and method of graduation,
forbids the residence of women within the walls, and provides for the
maintenance of discipline and for periodical visitations by the Chancellor,
the Rector, and the Dean of Faculty. The curriculum is almost identical with
that set forth in the foundation of Edinburgh University and in Melville's
schemes of reform for the other colleges, but Marischal College had the
priority in professors who confined themselves to particular branches, so
that, in the language of the charter, the students rising step by step might
have teachers worthy of their talents and of the subjects of study. This
method, however, was after a time departed from in favour of the alternative
system of regents, each of whom taught the same students for three or 'four
£ears in all the branches. In regard to discipline the most distinctive
provision is one designed to checkmate " the cunning of Satan " in
endeavouring " to lead away youth from the profession of the Gospel back to
the darkness of Popery," and requiring that before the Principal at
entrance, before the Rector at matriculation, and before the Dean of Faculty
at graduation, and once at least every year, the student should profess
acceptance of the Confession of Faith. Marischal College was thus to be a
strictly Protestant institution. It began with a Faculty of Arts alone, and
with three regents as compared with the four at King's College, with six
bursars as against twelve, with a lower scale of emoluments, and with
greatly inferior buildings. To obviate risks which had been made manifest by
what had occurred at King's College, the earl, who was Chancellor of his
university, retained in his own hands and for his heirs the power of
nominating all its members, but the admission of professors was to be in the
hands of the Chancellor, Rector, and Dean, the Principal of King's College,
and the Ministers of Aberdeen, Fetteresso, and Deer —the Principal to have a
vote in the election of Regents and the three Regents a single vote in the
election of Principal. The charter was immediately approved and confirmed by
the General Assembly and by Parliament, and the town, which took an active
interest in the scheme, repurchased and conveyed to the earl for the purpose
of his university the Franciscan buildings and lands which it had previously
sold. Among several entries in the town's accounts with reference to the
foundation of Marischal College is an item of ^80 for the expenses of the
bishop, minister, and town clerk in going to Edinburgh on business connected
with it, and one of for printing Latin verses by Thomas Cargill "in
commendation of my Lord Marischal for erecting the new college in Aberdeen."
The first Principal was
Robert Howie, one of the city ministers, and on his removal to St Andrews as
Principal of St Mary's College, after Melville, he was succeeded by Gilbert
Gray, one of the earliest alumni of Edinburgh. Andrew Aedie, who had resided
in Danzig and was a member of a prominent Aberdeen family engaged in the
Polish trade now rising in importance, was third Principal, his immediate
successor for a short time being William Forbes, who had been a professor in
the college and was afterwards first Bishop of Edinburgh. Dr Patrick Dun,
who came after Forbes, was the first lay Principal, and though, according to
the severe standard of his Puritan and Quaker son-in-law, Alexander Jaffray,
he was "unfit for training up youths" and gave "no good example," his name
stands out in Aberdeen history as that of the benefactor who bequeathed "the
town and lands of Ferryhill" to the provost, magistrates, and community for
the maintenance of four teachers at the grammar-school. The early regents or
professors were often, perhaps usually, young men who had recently
graduated, and many of whom retired from their work in the college to become
parish ministers. Among them was Thomas Reid, afterwards L»n Secretary to
King James, and Adam Reid his brother, who was promoted from the regency to
be minister of Methlic, William Forbes and Patrick Dun afterwards
Principals, Peter Blackburn son of the bishop, William Wedderburn brother of
the better known David Wedderburn, master of the grammar-school, and William
Aedie who succeeded Wedderburn in the professorship of Greek. As Marischal
College throve, a fourth regent was soon provided for, and benefactions
poured in— 6000 merks from Dr Duncan Liddel1 for the professorship of
mathematics, with the lands of Pitmedden for bursaries, as also his books
and mathematical instruments; 4000 merks from Dr James Cargill for
bursaries; 6000 from Patrick Copland for a professorship of divinity, and
the same sum from Secretary Reid for a librarian, together with his valuable
library. These are examples of the many benefactions that augmented the
efficiency of the younger college as years went on; and it prospered
likewise in reputation and the number of its students. King's College at
last obtained its reformed constitution in 1597, but the cloud overshadowing
it did not yet disappear. David Rait, who served half a century as regent,
sub-principal, and principal, holding the last-mentioned office from 1592 to
1632, seems to have been an obstacle to the adaptation of the college to the
spirit and requirements of the time. Marischal College had the support of
the zealous Protestant party, and it prospered all the more by reason of the
lethargy at King's.
Of the zeal for higher
education prevailing at this period, we have a singular illustration in the
erection and temporary existence of a legally constituted university at the
little seaport of Faithlie, beside the headland of the ancient Taixali. In
1592 Sir Alexander Fraser obtained a charter of novodamus of the lands of
Philorth, by which Faithlie was erected into a burgh of barony to be called
the burgh and port of Fraser or Fraserburgh, power being granted to build in
it a college or colleges and to establish a university having all the
privileges and immunities granted to any university in the kingdom. The
powers thus conferred were immediately brought into exercise, and an Act of
Parliament of 1597 recites that Sir Alexander Fraser, having at great
expense begun to erect college buildings, ought to be helped and supported
in his undertaking, and gives the sanction of the king and three Estates to
a grant to the college of the parsonages, vicarages, prebendaries,
chaplainries, altarages, teinds, and other ecclesiastical revenues of the
parishes of Philorth, Tyrie, Crimond, and Rathen, on condition that the
masters of the college should serve the kirks or, with advice of the patron,
provide sufficient men for this purpose. Charles Ferme or Fairholme, who had
been one of the earliest students in the University of Edinburgh, and soon
after his graduation had become a regent there, was appointed minister of
Fraserburgh and head of its college. For colleagues, under the Act of
Parliament, he had John Gordon, minister of Crimond, son of the Laird of
Lesmoir; Duncan Davidson, minister of Rathen and previously a regent in
King's College ; and John Howesoun, minister of Tyrie. There is no specific
record of how the work of the college proceeded, and it came to an untimely
end in 1605, when the Principal and seventeen other zealous Presbyterian
ministers were denounced and imprisoned by the Privy Council for holding the
forbidden Assembly in Aberdeen. Ferme survived his liberation till 1617, but
of the college there is no further record except that a portion of the
buildings remained standing for 200 years, a memorial of the educational
zeal of a former day. The University of Fraserburgh, framed on the same
model as Marischal College and the " new foundation" of King's, but without
their resources, could have few attractions to offer to students from a
distance.
While, however, the
foundation of the second university in Aberdeen must be regarded as a
cardinal event in the intellectual history of the north-east of Scotland, an
examination of facts and dates makes it clear that before Marischal College
came into existence, and while the facilities for general education even in
its elementary stages were still very meagre, these counties were recruiting
the ranks of learning to an extent that must be regarded as remarkable and
perhaps unique. The Aberdeen scholars, who are conspicuous by the eminence
of a few of them, and still more by their numbers, belong almost exclusively
at this period to the ranks of the comparatively wealthy, including some
notable accessions from among the burgesses. The starting of the second
university has accordingly to be viewed as a response to a pre-existing
demand for education, and not as the cause of this intellectual activity.
It was just before the time
of King James that John Skene, a son of James Skene of Wester Corse and
Ramore, incurred punishment at the Song - School along with a Lumsden (of
Cushnie) cousin, and fought in the interest of the master of the grammar -
school in a quarrel at St Nicholas' Church. A student of King's College when
it was at its lowest ebb, and a graduate of St Andrews, he became for a time
a regent in St Mary's College, and travelled in the Scandinavian countries
and Eastern Europe, where he saw at Cracow " a great multitude of
Scotchmen." Next he appears as a successful advocate in Edinburgh, and
ultimately as Lord Advocate and Clerk Register. King James demurred to his
being appointed a member of the Earl Marischal's embassy to Denmark, but
gave in to Sir James Balfour's irresistible argument " that he was best
acquainted with the conditions of the Germans and could make them long
harangues in Latin," and was a "good, true, stout man like a Dutchman."
Skene was also ambassador to the States-General, and one of the
commissioners for the projected union of the kingdoms in the wake of the
union of the Crowns. His literary works are still of importance in relation
to the history of Scotland. " He was the first," says Dr Hill Burton,1 " in
any systematic way to collect the Acts of Parliament and other native laws
of his own country"; and his treatise, ' De Verborum Signifi-catione,' is
described by Dr W. F. Skene "as a most useful work, invaluable to the
student of ancient Scottish history, and a monument of his learning and
industry." Skene had several brothers who were men of learning and
distinction. One was commissary of St Andrews and Dean of the Faculty of
Arts; a second was an alumnus of Maris and advocate in Edinburgh ; a third,
Dr Gilbert Skene, was professor of medicine in King's College, author of a
tract on the plague, and in the latter part of his career settled in
Edinburgh and was physician to the king. Sir John Skene's son was President
of the Court of Session. In former days all learning had been concentrated
in the Church, but new avenues to professional employment were opened up
when the practice of law and medicine passed into secular hands. The Skenes
were numerous, and many of them entered the learned professions, while
others went into the trade with Poland, in which Aberdeen for more than a
century took an active part.
Another eminent Aberdeenshire
lawyer and writer on jurisprudence was William Barclay, professor of civil
law at Pont-a-Mousson and Angers, reputedly one of the most learned men of
the age. Another William Barclay, a brother of the Laird of Towie-Barclay,
born about 1570, studied under Lipsius at Louvain, was Professor of Humanity
at Paris, returned to Scotland as a physician, and wrote, besides Latin
verse, a panegyric on tobacco, and two poetical pieces, ' Callirhoe,
commonly called the Well of Spa, or the Nymphe of Aberdene resuscitat,' and
' Apobaterium, or Last Farewell to Aberdene'—on the occasion of his return
to France to settle at Nantes.
In the galaxy of Aberdeen
scholars the brightest star is Dr Arthur Johnston. A younger son of the head
of the old Aberdeenshire landed family of Johnston of Caskieben, and related
through his mother to Lord Forbes and the Earl Marischal, he acquired the
rudiments of Latin at Kintore, passed into Aberdeen, and in 1599 is found
entered as a Master of Arts in the books of the Casimir College of
Heidelberg, at which seat of learning he was in 1601 a professor of
philosophy.1 Proceeding to Sedan in 1603 with Walter Donaldson, who had been
his fellow-student and teaching colleague at Heidelberg, Johnston was for a
few years professor of logic and metaphysics there, and on the promotion of
Donaldson to the principalship succeeded him in the chair of physics. An
excursion to Padua, where he received the degree of doctor of medicine,
formed an interlude in his Sedan career, which latterly was enlivened by the
presence of Andrew Melville, the exiled Presbyterian leader, whose release
from the Tower of London in 1611 on the solicitation of the Huguenot Duke of
Bouillon, the founder and patron of the University of Sedan, may have been
really due to the two Aberdonians with whom he became associated as a
colleague in the closing years of his eventful life. Johnston had returned
to Aberdeen by 1622, when he received the freedom of the city as an honorary
burgess; but in his later years, while his family resided in Aberdeen, much
of his time was spent in London, where he attended King James as physician,
held the appointment of physician-in-ordinary to Charles I., and took his
place among the fashionable and learned society of the time. Before he left
Sedan his fame as a Latin poet had spread through all the learned world. His
version of the Psalms in Latin verse—undertaken, it is said, at the instance
of Archbishop Laud—was extolled to the undue disparagement of that of
Buchanan, who was the victim of many antipathies. Controversy on the
respective merits of the two versions had been raging for a century before
it evoked the famous 'Vindication' of Buchanan by Thomas Ruddiman, the
eighteenth century Latinist and critic, himself among the most notable
products of north-eastern scholarship. To the ' Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum'—a
brilliant collection of Scoto-Latin song, published in two volumes by Blaeu
of Amsterdam for Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet—Johnston was the most
extensive contributor. His younger brother, Dr William Johnston, was also a
professor at Sedan, and afterwards first occupant of the chair of
mathematics in Marischal College. Of the Crimond branch of the same family,
and of a slightly older generation, was Professor John Johnston of King's
College, Helmstadt, and Geneva, and colleague of Melville at St Andrews.
Robert Gordon of Straloch, geographer, antiquary, and poet, is said to have
been the first graduate of Marischal College (1597), his chief work,
belonging to a late period of his life, being the Atlas—partly from his own
surveys—published by Blaeu of Amsterdam at the instance of Scot, and
including the map of the two counties which, as collated by Dr Joseph
Robertson with other drawings by Gordon and his son the parson of Rothiemay,
is a historically valuable delineation of the two counties. Along with his
map Gordon contributed in Latin a ' Description of the Sheriffdoms of
Aberdeen and Banff,' at once vivid and exact.1
Several of the wandering
Aberdeen scholars were zealous Roman Catholics, and did their best to lead a
reaction against the ecclesiastical revolution. Some of these we have
already met with. James Gordon, son of one Earl of Huntly and brother of
another, taught languages and divinity in Rome, Paris, and Bordeaux. Another
James Gordon, distinguished as " Lesmorasus," was Principal of the Jesuit
Colleges of Toulouse and Bordeaux. George Con, of the family of Con of
Auchry, in Buchan, was a scholar and author as well as Catholic
"trafficker," and died suddenly when he was about to receive a cardinal's
hat. Fathers Tyrie and Hay, likewise sons of Aberdeenshire county families,
were Jesuit controversialists of similar mould. Another Jesuit, Thomas
Dempster, the very type of wandering scholar, made his start at Aberdeen,
took Cambridge by the way, and was a teacher successively in a dozen
different colleges of France, Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries, and the
author of various controversial and historical works, the latter tinged with
inventive imagination.
From the burgess ranks came
Dr Walter Donaldson, friend and colleague of Arthur Johnston, lecturer on
moral philosophy at Heidelberg, professor at Sedan, and Principal of the
university there. Gilbert Jack, another product of the city, an orphan
committed by his mother to the care of Thomas Cargill, master of the
Grammar-School, but a student of St Andrews, passed to the Continent,
studied and lectured on philosophy at Helmstadt and elsewhere, and was
professor of metaphysics at Leyden, where he graduated in medicine: he wrote
several medical treatises, attained wide fame among the scholars of the
time, and declined an invitation to fill the chair of civil history at
Oxford. Alexander Anderson, the eminent mathematician and physicist of
Paris, was of an Aberdeen burgess family; and Dr Duncan Liddel, also a
burgess's son, may be regarded as another typical Aberdeen scholar. Born in
1561, and educated at King's College, Liddel sailed at eighteen in one of
the Aberdeen ships trading to Danzig, and passed to Frankfort-on-Oder,
wrhere he came under the influence of Dr John Craig, afterwards physician to
James VI., studied medicine, and taught mathematics and philosophy. From
Frankfort he passed on to Rostock and Helm-stadt. Devoting special attention
to astronomy, then a very progressive science, he lectured on the various
theories, and made the acquaintance and incurred the disfavour of Tycho
Brahe. At Helmstadt he headed the medical school, and was first physician to
the Court of Brunswick. After his continental experience, which included
travel in various countries, Liddel returned to Aberdeen, and became one of
the great benefactors of its higher education.
The teacher of all the
Aberdonians who attained distinction in the last two decades of the
sixteenth century was Thomas Cargill, master of the grammar-school, who with
his brother Dr James Cargill, a medical practitioner of local celebrity, was
a son of Thomas Cargill, " merchant burgess of Aberdeen." Cargill's
successor, who had been one of his pupils, was David Wedderburn, also the
son of a burgess. Arthur Johnston in one of his poems, after enumerating
certain of the citizen families, introduces the ranks of-learning associated
with citizenship by asking "Why refer to you, O Liddel! or the Cargill
brothers, or Wedderburn, a match for both ? "1 As a writer of Latin verse
Wedderburn is second only to Johnston. Though a successful teacher, he had
to apply for an increase of stipend to enable him to live in some measure as
other scholars in other professions," and part of the duties of his office
under the arrangement then come to was to " compose in Latin, both in prose
and verse," as required by the authorities in connection with public
affairs. Besides being a contributor to the ' Delitise Poetarum Scotorum,'
he was, like Vaus, his predecessor of a century before, the author of a
Latin Grammar, and the town council on several occasions voted him sums of
money to defray his expenses in going to Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Glasgow
to oppose a renewal of the monopoly in favour of Alexander Hume's grammar,
and to procure the approbation of the Council and Church for his own work.
The Hume monopoly was similarly objected to in Glasgow. Wedderburn's
elementary grammar in English was an innovation that became immediately
popular, and though Parliament refused it the monopoly, the Convention of
Royal Burghs requested that it should be used in the burgh schools. Humanity
was taught by Wedderburn to the " high class " of Marischal College on the
death of Principal Gray, and for a short time he held the appointment of
Grammarian or Humanist at King's College; but these university appointments
were not permanently compatible with his onerous duties as head of the
school. After forty years' service the town council granted him a retiring
pension of 200 merks a-year, in respect that he had served the burgh so long
" with common applause both of the council and community."
But while the rise of
Marischal College was a response to the growing demand for education, and
education in its intermediate stage was efficiently attended to at the
grammar-school, much still remained to be done at the lower steps of the
educational ladder. Nowhere indeed till after several generations had come
and gone was full effect given to the famous
n
PREVAILING ILLITERACY.
recommendation of the First
Book of Discipline, drawn up by Knox in 1560, and subscribed by the lords
and the Kirk, that there should be a schoolmaster able at least to teach the
grammar and Latin tongue in every parish of any importance, and that in
rural parishes the reader or minister should take care of the youth of the
parish, and see to its elementary and religious instruction. In 1563, as
again in 1577, the General Assembly appointed a commission for planting
schools in Banffshire and other northern counties, but complaints of the
neglect of education from lack of sufficient provision for the support of a
qualified schoolmaster long continued to be made.
The grasping policy of the
nobles and gentry obstructed the execution of the great design formulated by
Knox, and, in a typical district of central Aberdeenshire a century after
these dates, more than half the parishes in the Presbytery of Alford were
still without a school.1 From the complaints of the General Assembly as to
the decay of schools and the neglect of education, especially in upland
parts, no exception can be claimed on behalf of these counties, and even in
what may be called the middle class the art of writing was not generally
possessed. Surprise is indeed excited by the number of written contracts of
this period that are signed by the new class of notaries-public on behalf of
the parties to the agreement. Not only is this seen in such cases as that of
a contract of multures between John Leslie of Wardes and the town of
Inverurie in 1600, where fifteen out of sixteen burgesses sign "with our
hands at the pen led by the notary because we cannot write ourselves"; but
even in Aberdeen the same inability to write is evidenced in a document of
much importance in the history of the municipality, namely, the decree
arbitral, or " Common Indenture," by which in 1587 the settlement was
reached of a prolonged conflict between the town council and the craft
burgesses. This deed, which fixed the terms on which craftsmen were to be
admitted, defined their trading privileges and those of the merchant
burgesses respectively, and provided that the craftsmen should have
representatives among the auditors of the town's accounts, was signed by the
craftsmen representatives according to the usual formula, " with our hands
at the pen led by the notaries." The art of writing, it therefore appears,
was not generally possessed even in Aberdeen by the employers of artisan
labour at this period. The notaries who played so
useful a part in the execution of deeds were numerous all over the country,
finding employment not only in towns and populous places but in rural
districts without any nucleus of population. They performed a service to the
public which in earlier times had been discharged by the clergy, and their
art was much in request now that the era of loans and wadsets was in
progress, while penmanship was still an accomplishment of the few.
The master of the
Grammar-School exercised control over all elementary and intermediate
teaching except that imparted at the music-school. In 1586, on the complaint
of Cargill, John Cumming, a notary, was prohibited from holding a school and
abstracting children from the principal school without the master's licence
and tolerance; and in 1594 David Kanzie was similarly prevented from giving
instruction in " oratory poetry, and sic as belangis to that liberal
science." Such restrictions were not peculiar to the northeast, but were
generally imposed in favour of the burgh schools of Scotland. They were put
in force in Aberdeen, partly, as would appear, to save the interests of the
master of the Grammar-School, who was ill remunerated, and whom we find at
different times applying for augmentation of fees or of stipend. The
authorities did not always turn a deaf ear to the demands made upon them.
Thus in 15S3 John Phinevin, " teacher of the young children," applied for a
schoolroom or money to pay the rent of one, and the Dean of Guild was
ordered to give him the yearly feu-duty of a derelict property in the
Schoolhill. We even hear of some little provision being made for the
education of girls, as John Thomson and his wife, with another female
teacher, are in 1598 authorised to teach "maiden bairns," but "to have no
man teacher under them." In the autumn of 1607 an Englishman named Edward
Diggens arrived in Aberdeen, with testimonials from Glasgow, Dumfries, and
other places, and applied for a licence to teach writing and arithmetic for
three months, the poor to be taught gratuitously, and no one to pay " except
they be profited." The offer was accepted, but only on the grudging
condition of the teaching being strictly limited to writing and arithmetic,
and that the scholars exceed the age of ten years. In 1612 there was a
writing-school, having for its master Gilbert Leslie, who also held the
ecclesiastical office of "reader"; and in 1625 an "English school" was
included with the grammar-school and the music-school in a visitation
appointed by the town council In rural Aberdeenshire some of the readers may
have been efficient and zealous teachers of youth. Dr Arthur Johnston
records that it was at Kintore that he became a nurseling of the muses and
learned as a stripling to speak Latin words. This must have been about the
beginning of the tenth decade of the sixteenth century, when John Chalmers
was reader at Kintore. Johnston's brother, John Johnston of Caskieben (now
Keithhall), as senior magistrate of Invermie, was instrumental with his two
colleagues in the magistracy, members of the family of Leslie, in
establishing a grammar-school on the basis of the "common good" of the
township, but on the appointment of the second teacher in the following year
it became a parochial as well as burgh school. Generally speaking, no
provision whatever existed in rural parts for higher instruction. This was
provided at the Grammar-School in Aberdeen, the master of which received a
fixed quarterly fee for teaching the sons of burgesses, but was allowed to
make his own terms or charge a higher fee for boys from the county.1 That
the Grammar-School drew a large number of its scholars from the landed
families of Aberdeenshire comes prominently into view in connection with a
long struggle for the immemorial Christmas holidays. To the stand made by
the new clergy at the Reformation against observance of "the superstitious
time of Yule" the boys never gave in, and year by year, with swords and even
firearms, they continued to "take" the school and hold it as if against a
siege—a process known in the English schools of a much later day as "
barring out." The rebellion became an annual event, and the impatience of
youth led occasionally to its breaking out days or even weeks before
Christmas. An insurrection of more than ordinary magnitude occurred at the
beginning of December 1612, in which the boys of the song-school and
writing-school were associated with those of the grammar-school, and it is
of some historical importance as preserving the names and parentage of a
number of the youths receiving education in Aberdeen. The insurgents took
possession of the song-school and held it for two days, until the town
council, after consultation with the bishop and city ministers, ordered the
ringleaders to be apprehended by force. Twenty-one of the scholars were
brought before the magistrates, only one of them being the son of a burgess.
The others were sons of country gentlemen of the families of Gordon (Lesmoir,
Cluny, and Tillygreig), Irvine, Innes, Forbes, Cumming (Culter), Johnston,
Chalmer (Balnacraig), Seton, Fraser, Meldrum, Ogilvie, Norie, Cru-ckshank,
and Farquharson (Invercauld). Country families, it thus appears, were
numerously represented among the pupils of David Wedderburn. The
handicraftsmen of the time, as we have seen, were generally unable to write,
but the merchant burgesses could not carry on their transactions without
some knowledge of letters and arithmetic, and here we have evidence of a
general demand for education among the ruling classes in the country. One
son of a craftsman who had been at the school a few years before was William
Guild, afterwards principal of the older university, and son of the Matthew
Guild, armourer, who rebelled against the attempted suppression of the time-honoured
pageants and processions.
In Banff there was a
grammar-school in pre-Reformation days, but of the part which it played in
northern education prior to about the end of the first quarter of the
seventeenth century there is no definite record. Its master is found from
time to time acting as a notary or witness to legal documents. A new
departure took place in 1585, when there is a charter of Bishop Cunningham
providing anew that a grammar-school be established and continued in the
burgh of Banff, with a rector, pious and moral and skilled in the Greek and
Latin tongues : his presentation was to rest with the town council, and his
collation with the Bishop of Aberdeen. By this charter the bishop set apart
tithes to the value of about £745 Scots for his salary.
But it is to Aberdeen that we
must look as almost exclusively the seat and source of the education that
made the north-east so potent a factor in the thought and action of the new
age; and yet even at this very time when the northern city was providing
itself with its second university, and sending its scholars all over Europe,
we are confronted in its local annals by one of the pages least creditable
to the shrewdness and common-sense of its ruling class. For once the
Aber-donians responded too readily to southern example and leading. While
martyrdom for conscience' sake is unknown m the history of Aberdeen, the
records of the city are unhappily stained by a number of executions for the
imaginary crime of witchcraft. The zeal of James VI. against witches
infected the ministers and local authorities in different parts of Scotland,
and there were numerous accusations, trials, and burnings, chiefly of
hysterical and eccentric women, for supposed "sorcery, enchantment, and
devilish practices." The witch mania, which had been rampant in the south
and west of Scotland, manifested itself in Aberdeen in the closing years of
the sixteenth century. In 1597 no fewer than twenty-four of its victims were
burned to death in the city— a dismal passage in the local retrospect,
though it has to be read in the light of the fact that the alleged witches
put to death in Scotland from first to last number about 4000, and that
witch-burning was a folly of the time in which many countries were
concerned. Under commissions from the king, the sheriffs, provost, and
baillies of Aberdeen issued orders to the ministers and elders to give
information as to any suspected persons in their parishes. A few of the
ministers and sessions answered to the call with lists of names. The
minister of Lumphanan gave up seven of his parishioners, and the parson of
Kincardine four. In Crornar, and in Dyce and Fintray, the kirk-sessions met
and resolved to transmit names; but as regards the greater part of
Aberdeenshire there is no record of action by ministers or sessions. The
supposed witches were accused of raising storms, stopping mills, making cows
cease to give milk, afflicting with illness persons who had offended them,
assuming the shape of four-footed animals, and taking part in a midnight
devils' dance at the market-cross of Aberdeen. In the Dean of Guild's
accounts there are particulars of the outlays on different kinds of fuel for
the executions, the executioner's fees, the "trailing" through the streets
of one poor victim who had committed suicide in prison, and the burning on
the cheek of four suspected witches who were banished. The Dean himself
received a vote of thanks and of money for the " extraordinary pains" he had
taken " on the burning of the great number of witches burnt this year," and
for other services. The mania ran its course and became discredited, but
occasional executions for witchcraft continued through the seventeenth
century, and even so enlightened a man as Bishop Patrick Forbes favoured the
extermination of witches by violent means. In 1630 the town council resolved
to apply to the Lords of the Privy Council for a commission for apprehending
some women denounced by a Marion Hardie; and the Guild accounts of rather
earlier date contain items "for a barrow to carry the cripple witches,"
"disbursed for entertaining the witches," for writing the "dittays" against
them, and for the clerk to a previous commission. "Scourgers to bury the
witch " receive remuneration, and there is a payment for "towis to harle her
throw the town." At Banff, about the same period, John Philp was burned to
death for the crime of witchcraft. Questions of witchcraft, sorcery, and
charming long continued to exercise the ecclesiastical authorities, but the
crop of witches was henceforth more abundant in other parts of Scotland than
in Aberdeenshire,' where their repression at the stake had fallen into
desuetude long before the last Scottish burning for this crime, which took
place at Dornoch in 1722. In the early years of the seventeenth century—as
if in revulsion from the mania—several persons were subjected to discipline
by the kirk-session of Aberdeen for accusing their neighbours of witchcraft. |
