SMITH, YOUNG, AND SCRYMGEOUR MSS.
Thomas Smith, in his Vitæ Illustrium, gives extracts from a so-called Ephemeris of Sir Peter Young, but which Sir Peter compiled during the latter years of his life. Thomas Hearne says, in a note to the Appendix to Leland's Collectanea, that he had had the use of some of Smith's MSS. This Ephemeris of Sir Peter Young may be worth the publishing if it can be found: can any of your readers say whether it is among Smith's or Hearne's MSS., or if it be preserved elsewhere? Peter Young, and his brother Alexander, were pupils of Theodore Beza, having been educated chiefly at the expense of their maternal uncle Henry Scrymgeour, to whose valuable library Peter succeeded. It was brought to Scotland by Alexander about the year 1573 or 1574, and was landed at Dundee. It was especially rich in Greek MSS.; and Dr. Irvine, in his "Dissertation on the Literary History of Scotland," prefixed to his Lives of the Scottish Poets, says of these MSS. and library, "and the man who is so fortunate as to redeem them from obscurity, shall assuredly be thought to have merited well from the republic of letters." It is much to be feared, however, that as to the MSS. this good fortune awaits no man; for Sir Peter Young seems to have given them to his fifth son, Patrick Young, the eminent Greek scholar, who was librarian to Prince Henry, and, after his death, to the king, and to Charles I. Patrick Young's house was unfortunately burned, and in it perished many MSS. belonging to himself and to others. If Scrymgeour's MSS. escaped the fire, they are to be sought for in the remnant of Patrick Young's collection, wherever that went, or in the King's Library, of which a considerable part was preserved. Young's house was burned in 1636, and he is supposed to have carried off a large number of MSS. from the royal library, after the king's death in 1649. If therefore Scrymgeour's MSS. were among these, it is possible that they may yet be traced, for they would be sold with Young's own, after his death in 1652. This occurred on the 7th of September, rather suddenly, and he left no will, and probably gave no directions about his MSS. and library, which were sold sub hastâ, probably within a few months after his death, and with them any of the MSS. which he may have taken from the King's Library, or may have had in his possession belonging to others. Smith says that he had seen a large catalogue of MSS. written in Young's own hand. Is this catalogue extant? Patrick Young left two daughters, co-heiresses: the elder married to John Atwood, Esq.; the younger, to Sir Samuel Bowes, Kt. A daughter of the former gave to a church in Essex a Bible which had belonged to Charles I.; but she knew so little of her grandfather's history that she described him as Patrick Young, Esq., library keeper to the king, quite unconscious that he had been rector of two livings, and a canon and treasurer of St. Paul's. Perhaps, after all, the designation was not so incorrect, for though he held so many preferments, he never was in priest's orders, and sometimes was not altogether free from suspicion of not being a member of the Church of England at all, except as a recipient of its dues, and of course, a deacon in its orders.
But it may be worthy of note, as affording another clue by which, perchance, to trace some of Scrymgeour's MSS., that Sir Thomas Bowes, Kt., who was Sir Symonds D'Ewes's literary executor, employed Patrick Young to value a collection of coins, &c., among which he recognised a number that had belonged to the king's cabinet, and which Sir Symonds had purchased from Hugh Peters, by whom they had been purloined. Young taxed Peters with having taken books, and MSS. also, which the other denied, with the exception of two or three, but was not believed. I do not know what relation Sir Thomas Bowes was to Sir Samuel, who married Young's second daughter, nor to Paul Bowes, who edited D'Ewes's Journals in 1682. It is quite possible that some of Scrymgeour's MSS. may have fallen into D'Ewes's hands, may have come down, and be recognisable by some mark.
As to Scrymgeour's books, it is probable that they were deposited in Peter Young's house of Easter Seatoun, near to Arbroath, of which he obtained possession about 1580, and which remained with his descendants for about ninety years, when his great-grandson sold it, and purchased the castle and part of the lands of Aldbar. That any very fine library was removed thither is not probable, especially any bearing Henry
Scrymgeour's name; and for this reason, that Thomas Ruddiman was tutor to David Young, and was resident at Aldbar, and would hardly have failed to notice, or to record, the existence of any so remarkable a library as Scrymgeour's, or even of Sir Peter Young's, who was himself an ardent collector of books, as appears from some of his letters to Sir Patrick Vans (recte Vaux) which I have seen, and as might be inferred from his literary tastes and pursuits. There is perhaps reason to believe that Sir Peter's library did not descend in his family beyond his eldest son, Sir James Young, who made an attempt to deprive the sons of his first marriage (the elder of whom died in infancy) of their right of succession to their grandfather's estates, secured to them under their father's marriage contract, and which attempt was defeated by their uncle, Dr. John Young, Dean of Winchester (sixth son of Sir Peter), who acquired from Lord Ramsay, eldest son of the Earl of Dalhousie, part of the barony of Baledmouth in Fife. Dean Young founded a school at St. Andrew's, on the site of which is now built Dr. Bell's Madras College.
Sir Peter Young the elder, knighted in 1605, has been sometimes confounded with his third son, Peter, who received his knighthood at the hands of Gustavus Adolphus, on the occasion of that king being invested with the Order of the Garter.
Another fine library (Andrew Melville's) was brought into Scotland about the same time as Scrymgeour's; and it is creditable to the statesmen of James's reign that there was an order in the Scotch exchequer, that books imported into Scotland should be free from custom. A note of this order is preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum; but my reference to the number is not at hand.
De Camera.