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land, in the fifteenth century, and even at the beginning of it, were taught, perhaps with more earnestness than we now give to them, as having in hand a high and important duty. Before the Reformation, Andrew Simson taught Latin with success, at the Grammar School at Perth, the same foundation, doubtless, of which the Dunfermlin monks held the patronage three centuries earlier, where he had sometimes three hundred boys under his charge; and, although he boasted that these included sons of the principal nobility and gentry, it is evident that such a number must have consisted in a large proportion of the Burgher and Yeoman class, and a great many who could not be designed for the Church. Even the Act of Parliament of 1496, requiring "all Barons and Freeholders of substance, to put their eldest sons to the schools, fra thai be eight or nine yeris of age, and to remaine at the grammar sculis quhil thai be competentlie fundit and haue perfit Latyne"-is sufficient to prove that there was no lack of such schools for the laity in Scotland before the foundation of our University. In them was taught that comprehensive "grammatica," which embraced a complete education in Roman literature; for Greek was yet a sealed book to western Europe.

The chief difficulty must have arisen from the scarcity of books. But, after all, that was not greater on the eve of the grand invention of printing, than it had been in all ages of the world before. It did not press more heavily upon the Scotchman of the fourteenth century, than it did on the Italian contemporaries of Petrarch and Boccaccio-than it had done upon the people who appreciated the verse of Sophocles, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes, and the philosophy of Plato. How this impediment to instruction was overcome, is for us difficult to understand That it was overcome, we know. Among other means to supply the defect of books, public dictation was, perhaps, the chief, and this explains much of the method of the old Universities, where

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time was given to writing down verbatim the dictata' of the master, which might have been better bestowed, if books had been common, in obtaining a full knowledge of the subject of his lecture.

The scarcity of books had one effect which has not been enough considered. It tended to congregate students in masses. One public library afforded the seeds of learning to multitudes who could not buy books. The teaching of Abelard opened to thousands whom his writings could never reach, the mysteries of a new philosophy. The comparing of opinions, the disputations, the excitement of fellow students, the emulation, even the enthusiasm arising from the mere crowd engaged in one pursuit-made up in part for the want of books, which was one of the causes that compelled the multitude to come together. Universities were infinitely more necessary when books were scarce.

Before the fifteenth century, the Scotch youth, initiated in grammar, could carry his education no higher at home. The course of Philosophy was to be sought at Paris, or some other of the Universities of the continent, or at the English Universities, especially Oxford, (which had risen to prodigious popularity in the thirteenth century). In the following century, the English records are full of passports to Scotch students travelling to Oxford, and more rarely to Cambridge. One of these Scotch students at Oxford in 1383, was Henry Wardlaw, afterwards Bishop of St. Andrews, and the founder of its University."

The increasing estrangement between England and Scotland must have been one main cause of the erection of our Scotch Universities. Another event may have assisted. In the great Papal schism of the fourteenth century, England and Scotland

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took different sides; and, in the Universities which swarmed with Churchmen, the feud ran high; making it uncomfortable for the Scotch to study at the orthodox school of Oxford. In 1382, Richard II. addressed a writ to the Chancellor and Proctors of the University of Oxford, forbidding them to molest the Scotch students, notwithstanding their "damnable adherence" to Robert the antipope, (Clement VII) against the most Holy Father Urban, the supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.'

In 1411 the Bishop of St. Andrews founded his University. Forty years later, the rival see of Glasgow followed; and in 1494 Bishop Elphinstone obtained the Papal constitution for the "studium generale" or University of his Episcopal See. The Pope bestowed the usual privileges of a University (of which Bologna and Paris were the patterns), and licenced masters and doctors, whether ecclesiastical or lay, to teach, study, and confer degrees in Theology, the Canon and the Civil Law, Medicine, and Arts. Such were the simple operative words by which the recognised power of the Head of the Church admitted the new University and its members to the great fellowship of the scholars of Christendom.

There is nothing here of endowments or of Colleges. By what may be called the public University law, all masters and doctors were entitled, and even bound to read,' that is, to teach, in their several faculties, for a limited time after obtaining their degrees, in the University where they graduated. That was the only provision for teaching by the ancient constitution of the Universities of all Europe; and the constitution and early practice of Bishop Elphinstone's mother University of Glasgow were not different. But the primitive liberty of teaching, and of choosing masters, had some manifest disadvantages, which induced first the Italian, and afterwards other foreign Universities, to exchange the free competition

Rotuli Scot. II., 45.
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of reading' graduates receiving a small fee from each student, for a limited number of salaried teachers. This new system was followed by Bishop Elphinstone, and he engrafted upon the papal erection of the University, ten years after its date, a full collegiate body,' sufficiently endowed, for teaching the several faculties, and for the service of the church which he founded in immediate connection with his University. The endowment of the College was all obtained by the Bishop's own means or influence. The young King made a small donation in aid of the new fabric, when he passed by in one of his pilgrimages to Saint Duthace; but it does not appear that he assisted the foundation otherwise, except by consenting to the annexation of the Hospital of St. Germains, and allowing the new University to bear his name.

The papal erection declared the Bishop er officio Chancellor of the University. No provision was made for the appointment of the only other University high officer, the Rector; his election being left to the common University law which placed it in the votes of the general body of the University. In like manner, the election of Proctors by the nations, according to the ancient and uniform practice of Universities, is taken for granted, not prescribed.

The Rector of the University, if a stranger, or the Official, if the Rector was himself a member of the College, with the advice of four masters chosen by the four nations of the University, had the duty of yearly visitation of the College.

The persons composing the College were elected in such a manner, that, though the Rector of the University and the Proctors of the four nations had voices, the real power lay with the chief members of the College.

The obtainer of the Papal and Royal privileges for the Univer

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sity, himself the founder and endower of the College and its Church, Bishop William Elphinstone, has left a name to be reverenced above every other in the latter days of the ancient Scotch Church. His biographer, Boece, sufficiently zealous, and living so near in time and situation that he could not be uninformed, has given only a general account of his descent "ex veteri Elpinstonorum familia ;" and the same silence might be thought allowable now, were it not for the mis-statements of later writers. There is no doubt that he was, like so many well educated men of his time, the offspring of a churchman, who could not legally marry, but whose connection and family, in violation of his vows, were then tolerated by society, and almost sanctioned by the practice of the highest of his order.' His father was William Elphinstone, rector of Kirkmichael, and archdeacon of Teviotdale, whom there is better reason than tradition for believing to have been of a branch of the baronial house which was ennobled as Lords Elphinstone, and enriched with the Lordship of Kildrummy by James IV.2 He is asserted by Keith, following Crawfurd, to have died in 1486, "after he had the comfort of seeing his son Bishop of Aberdeen." If we are to rely on the same authorities, William Elphinstone (the Bishop) was born in 1437,3 educated at the pædagogium and University of Glasgow, and only, at the mature age of twenty-four, received his degree of

'Crawford and Keith have covered this disgrace under the convenient and pious fiction that the Bishop's father took orders "after he became a widower."-Officers of State-Catalogue of Sc. Bishops.

'Elphinstone went abroad at the expense of an uncle, Lawrence, who lived at Glasgow. Boece tells us that the Bishop was very bountiful in gifts to the family unde ei origo, and raised many Elphinstones to opulence (p. 69.) Andrew Elphinstone of Selmys, who was undoubtedly a son or very near kinsman of the chief family, had two brothers, named Lawrence and Nicholas. In 1499,

Andrew of Selmys resigned the lands of Glak
which he held of the Bishop, in favour of his
brother Nicholas and the heirs male of his
body, whom failing, to his own heirs male,
whom all failing, to return to the Church at
Aberdeen.-Boece, Vit. Episc.-Reg. Mag.
Sig., and Morton Charters at Dalmahoy.

Crawfurd cites no authority for the date
of his birth, and is probably wrong. Boece
says he was in his 83rd year when he died :
the Epistolare of Bishop Dunbar states that
he was in his 84th. Regist. Episc., vol. II.,
P.
249.

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