While the belated traveller was thus shut out, the inhabitants within might be passing their hours till bed-time comfortably enough, whether in the privacy of their domiciles, or in more or less noisy loitering and locomotion among the streets and wynds. If it were clear moonlight or starlight, the wynds, and especially the stately length of the High Street, would be radiantly distinct, and locomotion in them would be easy. But even in the darkest nights the townsmen were not reduced to actual groping through their town, if ennui, or whim, or business, or neighbourly conviviality determined them to be out of doors. Not only would they carry torches and lanterns with them for their own behoof, especially if they had to find their way down narrow closes to their homes; not only were there the gratuitous oil-lights or candlelights from the windows of the fore-tenements in the streets and wynds, sending down some glimmer into the streets and wynds themselves; but, by public regulation, the tenants of the fore-stair houses in the principal thoroughfares were bound to hang out, during certain hours of the evening, lamps for the guidance of those that might be passing. One has to remember, however, that people in those days kept very early hours. By ten o’clock every night Auld Reekie was mostly asleep. By that hour, accordingly, the house-lights, with some exceptions, had ceased to twinkle; and from that hour, save for bands of late roysterers here and there at close-mouths, and for the appointed night-watches on guard at the different ports, or making an occasional round with drum and whistle, silence and darkness reigned till dawn.
The Provost of Edinburgh in 1561 was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a well-known laird of the great kin of the Angus Douglases. He had held the office continuously by annual election since 1553, with only two years of break. The four Bailies under him, answering to the Aldermen of an English town, were David Forster, Robert Ker, Alexander Home, and Allan Dickson, all merchant-burgesses. It would be possible, I believe, even at this distance of time, to give the names of as many as 1000 or 1500 other persons of the population, with particulars about not a few of them. In a town of such a size all the principal inhabitants must have been perfectly well acquainted with each other, and must have been known, by figure and physiognomy at least, to the rest of the community. We will name at present but one other inhabitant of the Edinburgh of 1561, who must have been about the best known of all. This was John Knox, the chief minister of the town, and the stated preacher, always on Sundays and often on week-days, in the great Church of St. Giles. His house, or the house of which he occupied a portion, if not then that very conspicuous projecting house of three storeys in the Nether Bow which visitors to Edinburgh now go to see as having been his, was certainly somewhere in that neighbourhood. From this point of what we have called the lower piazza of the High Street there is a direct view upwards to St. Giles’s Church, about 300 yards distant; and the walk in the other direction, down the Canongate, to Holyrood Abbey and Palace, is perhaps about twice as much. Divide a half-mile of sloping street into three equal parts, and Knox’s residence in Edinburgh, the house in which he sat on the day of young Queen Mary’s return among her Scottish subjects in August 1561, is to be imagined as just one-third down such a slope from the great Church of St. Giles, with the other two-thirds descending thence continuously, houses on both sides, to the Palace in which Mary had taken up her abode. Mary and Knox were to meet ere long.
ROBERT ROLLOCK AND THE BEGINNINGS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY[[2]]
The University of Edinburgh dates its existence from the year 1582, when James VI. was sixteen years of age and had been for fifteen years King of Scotland. Till that time there had been but three universities in Scotland,—that of St. Andrews (1413), that of Glasgow (1454), and that of King’s College, Aberdeen (1494). The want of a university in the metropolis had been long felt. Especially after the Reformation, people residing in or near Edinburgh had begun to think it a hardship that they had to send their sons over to St. Andrews, or away to Glasgow, or as far off as Aberdeen, to complete their education. Why should not Edinburgh have a university for itself? The Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh were particularly zealous in the project; and, as far back as the reign of Mary, they had, with the Queen’s sanction, taken some steps towards carrying the project into effect. They had fixed on the site of the intended new College. It was the site on which the University now stands, but was then a kind of suburb of gardens and straggling buildings, partly old church edifices, known by the name of St. Mary in the Fields, or, more shortly, Kirk o’ Field. They had purchased a certain right of property here; and here, accordingly, amid the old tenements that have been long swept away, as well as in the gardens and bits of green field which covered what is now the thoroughfare of South Bridge Street, we are to fancy the Edinburgh magistrates and ministers of Queen Mary’s reign, and perhaps John Knox himself, pottering about sometimes in their afternoon walks, looking at this and that, and anticipating the College that was to be established. But years passed on, and there were difficulties in the way. Funds were wanting, and there was strenuous opposition from the already existing universities; and, before any college-building could arise on the site of Kirk o’ Field, that site had been made unexpectedly memorable by one of the ghastliest of deeds. It was close to what is now the south side of the University quadrangle that there stood the fatal tenement in which Darnley was lodged on his return from Glasgow when he was recovering from the small-pox, and the explosion of which by gunpowder, on the night between the 9th and 10th of February 1567, hurled his corpse and that of his servant over the adjacent town-wall, and left Mary a widow. With other thoughts, therefore, than of the intended seat of learning, for the uses of which the ground had been partly purchased when this tragedy blackened it, must the citizens of Edinburgh for many a year afterwards have sauntered hereabouts in the evenings. But shocks of the kind are transient; and, when, in the quieter though still agitated days of King James, certain liberal citizens began to move anew for the foundation of the much-needed university,—chief among whom were Mr. James Lawson, Knox’s successor as minister of Edinburgh, Mr. William Little, afterwards Lord Provost, and his brother, Mr. Clement Little, an Edinburgh lawyer,—there was no dream of any other site for it than that which had been already chosen. With creditable quickness the Town Council proceeded to convert the long-cherished design into a reality. Masons and carpenters were set to work; and, what with the patching-up of old buildings already on the ground, what with the erection of frugal additions, a kind of make-shift beginning of a College was at last knocked together. A charter from King James, dated “Stirling, 14th April 1582,” made all right. It empowered the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of Edinburgh to found and gradually complete within the city what should be to all intents and purposes a true University, or Studium Generale. King James, as has been said, was then still in his boyhood. His unhappy mother was in the fourteenth year of her captivity in England.
A material fabric for lodging the University of Edinburgh having been thus roughly provided, all that was further necessary was to procure teachers. There are now between thirty and forty chairs in the University of Edinburgh; but it is not to be imagined that the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh had to make that number of appointments in 1582 in order that their new College might begin operations. They were content with a much smaller equipment. They merely looked about for one qualified man to begin with; and, when they had got him, they could consider the institution fairly launched. This may require a little explanation.
The Charter of the new College contained provisions for its being eventually a university of complete dimensions, with not only a General Faculty or Faculty of Arts (then usually called the Faculty of Philosophy), but also the three special or professional Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine. But, though the Magistrates and Town Council looked forward, no doubt, to the attainment of this perfection by the University at some time or other, they were not so ambitious at first, and, indeed, had to accommodate their aims to the meagreness of their means. They thought that, if they succeeded in founding the general faculty, or Faculty of Arts, the most important part of their work would be done, and the rest might gradually follow. They gave all their attention at first, therefore, to the one Faculty of Arts. To set up this Faculty alone would, according to recent ideas of what is essential to its equipment, require at least seven appointments. Since 1858 the professorships of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, and Rhetoric and English Literature have been, as it were, the Seven Golden Candlesticks of the Arts Faculty in the University of Edinburgh,—the seven chairs in that faculty privileged coequally above the rest in the curriculum for graduation. In those old days, however, there was no notion that even as many as seven separate candlesticks were needed. Latin was pre-eminent as the sine qua non for all the rest. It was the language in which all the formal instruction within every university was then given, and with which, so far as concerned the power of understanding it, speaking it, and to some extent writing it, all students were supposed to be acquainted before they commenced their university course. Further, in the other subjects, which were all taught through this medium of Latin, there was no such division of labour as at present. Mathematics and Natural Philosophy had not then attained such dimensions in the world of knowledge, nor were Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric so extricated from Logic and Metaphysics, nor was proficiency in any or all of those subjects deemed so incompatible with a competent knowledge of Greek, but that one and the same professor could be expected to take students through the whole series of studies by himself. Now it would be but a sad jumble of superficialities that would result from such a system of individual professorships of everything; but in those days the totum scibile had not come to be so monstrous or heterogeneous an aggregate but that it might be supposed capable of being carried with tolerable compactness under one able man’s hat, and of being taught by such a man more or less effectively by means of a series of established Latin text-books. The supposition, though absurd enough even then, was the less absurd because the subjects were made to follow each other in a regular order through a university course of four years. The professor began in his first year with the simpler subjects, and then carried the same students, in their second, third, and fourth years, through the more difficult subjects, until, at the end of the fourth year, he had fitted them for their graduation, or, as it was called, their “laureation,” in Arts. By this method, it will be seen, the number of Arts professors in every university required to be but four at the most,—each professor making his four years’ round with the same students till he had seen them made Masters of Arts, and then returning to receive a new class of freshmen or entrants with whom to repeat his round. In fact, in each of the already established universities of Scotland there were four such principal Arts professors, or Philosophy professors. In some universities, it is true, there were special professors in addition, relieving the general professors of particular kinds of work; but the four general or circulating professors were the essential complement of the Arts Faculty. They were called “regents,” by way of distinction.
It will be obvious now that, though the newly-founded University of Edinburgh required at least four Philosophy professors or regents before even its Arts Faculty could be considered fully equipped, yet one regent was enough to start with. All that was necessary was that one fit professor should be ready to receive the first set of students that should present themselves. For the first year this single professor could do the whole of the University work; and only when he had carried his students through the first year of their course, and had to pass on to the second year with them, would it be necessary to appoint a second regent, to follow him with the new set of students who would then come to the University doors. The third regent might be appointed the year after that, and the fourth not till a year later.
All this the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh, anxious for the success of the new institution, but bound to be careful of expenses, had calculated beforehand. It was, of course, a most serious question with them who should be the first regent. No one could tell how much depended on that. A bad appointment might wreck the University at the outset.
Fortunately, through the recommendation of that same Mr. James Lawson, Knox’s successor in the ministry of Edinburgh, who had already had so much to do with the founding of the University, the Magistrates and Town Council selected a man whose appointment neither the City nor the University had any cause afterwards to regret. This was Mr. Robert Rollock,—the Rev. Robert Rollock would be now the designation,—then one of the Philosophy professors in the University of St. Andrews. He was a Stirlingshire man by birth, had been educated at St. Andrews, was twenty-eight years of age, and had already won good opinions among those who knew him. A deputation having been sent to St. Andrews to invite him to the new post, he came to Edinburgh in September 1583 to offer himself for inspection; and on the 14th of that month an agreement was signed between him and the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council. Rollock, on his part, agreed to “enter to the Colledge newly foundit within the burgh,” and to “exerce the office of the Regent of the said Colledge, in instructioun, governament, and correctioun of the youth and persones whilk sall be committed to his chairge,” faithfully attending always to the rules and injunctions to be given him by the Provost, Bailies, and Council; “for the whilkis causis” they, on their part, “binds and oblesis thame and their successoris thankfullie to content and pay to the said Mr. Robert the soume of fortie pundis usual money of this realme, at twa termis in the yeir, Candlemes and Lammes, be twa equall portionis, and sall susteine him and are servand in their ordinar expensis.... Attour [i.e. moreover] the said Mr. Robert sall repare and have, for his labouris to be takin in instructing everie bairne repairing to the said Colledge, yearly, as followis: to wit, fra the bairnes inhabitants of the said burgh, fortie schillings, and fra the bairnes of uthers, nocht inhabitants therein, three pundis, or mair as the bairnes parentis please to bestow of their liberalitie.” Further prospects of remuneration and promotion were held forth to Mr. Rollock, and there was every disposition to make him comfortable.
An original portrait of Rollock now hangs in the Senate Hall of Edinburgh University. It is but a poor specimen of the painter’s art, and it does not suggest that Mr. Rollock can have been an Apollo. It exhibits, however, a very distinct physiognomy,—a physiognomy so distinct, so unlike anybody’s else, that, were Mr. Rollock to reappear any afternoon now in the Canongate or in Princes Street, there would be no difficulty in recognising him. The complexion, as the portrait tells us, and as we learn from a contemporary biographic sketch of him, was ruddy, or ruddy with a mixture of white (colore rubido cui candor quidam admistus); and the hair and beard,—both cut short, so as to give a character of round compactness to the head,—were of reddish hue (comâ subrufâ). The biographic sketch, which is by one who knew him well, adds that he was of middle stature and of rather weakly health, and bears testimony to his piety, conscientiousness, peaceful disposition, and pleasant sociability.