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CRAWFORD, DAVID, of
Drumsoy, near Glasgow, historiographer to queen Anne, was born in 1665,
and educated to the bar. Having abandoned professional pursuits in a
great measure, for the sake of studying Scottish antiquities and
history, he was appointed historiographer royal for Scotland by queen
Anne, to whom he was probably recommended by his being a zealous tory
and Jacobite. His political prepossessions, which, as usual, extended to
a keen zeal in behalf of queen Mary, induced him in 1706 to publish, at
London, his well-known work, entitled "Memoirs of the affairs of
Scotland, containing a full and impartial account of the revolution in
that kingdom, begun in 1567, faithfully compiled from an authentic
MS." The avowed purpose of this publication was to furnish an
antidote to the pernicious tendency of Buchanan’s history. The
substance of the work, he says he derived from an ancient MS. presented
to him by Sir James Baird of Saughtonhall, and which seemed to have been
composed by a contemporary of the events described. In executing the
task which he had imposed upon himself, the learned editor appears to
have acted after the manner of a good partizan. In order that his work
might the more perfectly meet the calumnies of Buchanan, he expunged
from it every passage which told in behalf of the views taken by that
writer, and introduced others instead from the contemporary tory
writers. The work was reprinted by Goodall in 1767, and still continues
to be a popular narrative of the events of the four Regencies. In
1804, Mr Malcolm Laing, author of the History of Scotland during the
seventeenth century, having obtained possession of the original MS. used
by Crawford, published it, with a preface, denouncing the
historiographer-royal as a rank impostor, inasmuch as he had set off
that as a work of authority which had been vitiated for party purposes
by his own hand. The same view has been taken of Mr Crawford’s
character by Mr Thomas Thomson, in the preface to a new print of the MS.
for the use of the Bannatyne Club, which appeared in 1825, under the
title of "The History and life of king James the sext." With
deference to these writers, it may be suggested, in Crawford’s defence,
that his work was never pretended to be a faithful transcript of the
original MS except on the title page, where it is so stated by the
bookseller ad captandum, in obvious contradiction of the
statement made by the editor within. The work comes forth with the
character of a special pleading avowed upon the face of it; and those
who depended upon such a refacciamento as upon a faithful
contemporary chronicle, after the account given of it in the editor’s
preface, had only to blame their own simplicity. The truth is, Crawford’s
Memoirs, when fully considered with a regard to the ideas prevalent
respecting the purity of historical narrative at the beginning of the
last century, will only appear an imposture to an opposite partizan.
Crawford died in 1726. |
