What nobody is sure about.’

Dean Gregory married Lady Mary Grey, the youngest daughter of Henry Grey, Duke of Kent (whose title died with him). She had much sorrow in her married life, as all her sons turned out badly, and if the people of her own day were as frank in their views about the dean and his wife, as one writer was in the beginning of this century, she must have felt her responsibility. ‘He had three sons,’ says this nameless chronicler, ‘who being by their mother connected with the English aristocracy, took to horses and dogs, and soon died out.’ Probably it was in his very gentleness that the kind old dean failed towards his sons, for he had such a horror of distress, that he could not bring it upon his children, however much they deserved it. They were a great scandal, and were, too, if one comes to think of it, the only failure in their father’s life. As a parent he is highly extolled by an anonymous writer, and, this in itself is touching enough, showing that his love was of the sort that disappointment cannot kill, and that in their very weakness he did not give them up. Possibly life did teach him to mistrust his sons, for he left his valuable library, in the event of none of his children following a learned calling, to his nephew, Dr James Gregory of Edinburgh. The will was badly worded, so that Professor James Gregory’s claim had to be disregarded, but the books were at all events not seized by his sons’ creditors, and they remained in the custody of Christ Church, and may now be found in the uppermost chamber of the closely locked Wake archives.

David Gregory’s character was one which was much considered and criticised. Some of his contemporaries would allow him no good point, while others pronounced eulogies on his every action. One such eulogy, written with no great literary skill, was perhaps the work of an intimate acquaintance, stung into reply by the many attacks upon the memory of his friend. Of his social character this unknown biographer writes, ‘That cheerful, easy affability for which he was so remarkably distinguished, gained him the love and affection of all around him, which contributed very considerably to his institutions taking root so readily, and in so short a time flourishing so successfully: abroad he conducted himself with that dignity which his situation as governor of a great college necessarily required; though, under his own roof, he stripped himself of it all, and became, to everyone indiscriminately, the easy and familiar companion: he conducted himself in short, throughout, in such an admirable manner, that he was not only loved and esteemed, but honoured and respected; and as he was in his life most sincerely valued, so was he in his death truly and universally lamented.’

There is no doubt that Gregory was a popular dean. He was, like so many of the Deans of Christ Church, a Westminster student, and his appointment, moreover, was all the more acceptable because he came immediately after Dr Conybeare, the only non-Christ-Church man that has ever held that office.

In his days the whole university was rather unillumined, and Christ Church was no exception. Lord Shelburne, referring only to his own college, says it was very low, and as a proof of his statement adds that ‘no one who was there in my time has made much figure either as a public man or man of letters.’ But Gregory did his work well as far as in him lay; he died in 1767 at a ripe old age, in much honour, in much affection, and now lies buried beside his wife in Christ Church Cathedral.

CHAPTER VI
JAMES GREGORIE, 1666–1742; CHARLES GREGORIE, 1681–1754; DAVID GREGORIE, 1712–1765

‘The City of the Scarlet Gown’—Andrew Lang.

At Kinairdy on the 29th of April 1666 a fifth son was born to David Gregorie. This was James, of whom probably because he was only one among many, there is no individual record till his name occurs in the list of the graduates in Arts in the Edinburgh University in May 1685. The likelihood is that his early education was given him by his father, who, notwithstanding his work as an amateur physician, found time to superintend the studies of his children. Little is known of their college friends, but Archibald Pitcairne, who afterwards became the Professor of Medicine, first in Edinburgh and then in Leyden, was constantly with them, and many happy vacations spent at Kinairdy were made merrier by his society.

Shortly after James Gregorie graduated, and when he was certainly not more than twenty, he was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy in St Andrews. In his teaching he was able and thorough, if not brilliant. Like his elder brother, he was much in advance of his age, and like him too was giving expression to the Newtonian Philosophy before it had been ‘as much as heard of’ in Cambridge. There is extant a thesis by this Professor James Gregorie dedicated to Viscount Tarbat, in which after a list of scholars, candidates for the degree of A.M., there follow twenty-five propositions, most of which are a compendium of Newton’s Principia. The other three relate to Logic, and the abuse of it in the Aristotelian and Cartesian Philosophy. His definition of logic is ‘the art of making a proper use of things granted in order to find what is sought,’ This was published in 1690.

Professor Gregorie occupied the Chair of Philosophy at St Andrews until the Revolution, but then his love for the discrowned king compelled him to resign. He could not bring himself to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, and thus for a few years he was without any settled work. Happily for him, however, David his elder brother was in 1692, by the influence of Sir Isaac Newton, made Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, thus leaving a vacancy in the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh. He, too, had been somewhat under a cloud because of his love for the Stuarts, and although his greatness had prevented the party which was in power from ejecting him from his post, yet his life had been made sufficiently uncomfortable for him.