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

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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.

But now things were changed. Feeling was no longer hot and bitter, and James succeeded to his chair in 1692, with a prospect of a long and quiet tenure of it. At the time of his election the College revenues were low, and he had to accept the chair on a diminished salary of nine hundred merks, or £50 sterling, in addition to the students’ fees. In the end Gregorie certainly got his money’s worth out of the university, for he retired at fifty-nine, owing to age and infirmity, and then lived for seventeen years, during which time Colin Maclaurin, who had been made joint-professor with him, got no salary. His case was indeed a piteous one, and Sir Isaac Newton made him a yearly allowance of £20, towards providing for him, ‘till Mr Gregorie’s place became void.’ The entries in the Records of Marischal College, Aberdeen, concerning Maclaurin’s conduct there, or rather not there, are quaint.

December 23, 1724.—On consideration that M’Laurine has been abroad and not attended to his charge for near thir three years the Council appoint Mr Daniel Gordon, one of the regents “who had formerly taught Mathematicks at the University of St Andrews” to teach the class during the current session.’

January 20, 1725.—M’Laurine having returned a Committee is appointed to confer with him anent: 1st, his going away without Liberty from the Counsell. 2nd, His being so long absent from his charge.’

April 27, 1725.—M’Laurine appears before the Council, expresses regret, and is reponed.’

January 12, 1726.—The Council, learning “by the Publict News Prints” that M’Laurine has been admitted conjunct professor with Mr James Gregorie in the University of Edinburgh, declare his office vacant.’

It is a question whether there were not times when Colin Maclaurin thought that the safe salary which he would have enjoyed at Marischal College might have been preferable to his Edinburgh post, notwithstanding the greater intercourse which he now had with the world of science, but if so, there was no turning back.

Professor Gregorie married on the 4th September 1698, Barbara, a daughter of Charles Oliphant of Langton, and a sister of his brother David’s wife. A great gloom was cast upon their home life by the early death of one of his daughters. She had an unhappy love affair, and is said to have died of a broken heart. Whether this was so or not, her story furnished the subject of Mallet’s ballad, ‘William and Margaret.’

‘Twas at the silent solemn hour,
When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost,
And stood at William’s feet.
Her face was like an April morn,
Clad in a wintry cloud:
And clay cold was her lily hand
That held her sable shroud.
So shall the fairest face appear
When youth and years are flown,
Such is the robe that kings must wear
When death has reft their crown.
Her bloom was like the springing flower
That sips the silver dew,
The rose was budded in her cheek,
Just opening to the view.
But love had, like the canker worm,
Consumed her early prime:
The rose grew pale, and left her cheek;
She died before her time.
Awake, she cried, thy true love calls,
Come from her midnight grave;
Now let thy pity hear the maid
Thy love refused to save.
This is the dumb and dreary hour
When injured ghosts complain;
Now yawning graves give up their dead
To haunt the faithless swain.
Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
Thy pledge and broken oath;
And give me back my maiden vow,
And give me back my troth.
Why did you promise love to me
And not that promise keep?
Why did you swear mine eyes were bright
Yet leave those eyes to weep?
How could you say my face was fair
And yet that face forsake?
How could you win my virgin heart
Yet leave that heart to break?
Why did you say my lip was sweet
And made the scarlet pale?
And why did I, young witless maid,
Believe the flattering tale?
That face alas no more is fair,
These lips no longer red;
Dark are my eyes, now closed in death,
And every charm is fled.
The hungry worm my sister is;
This winding sheet I wear;
And cold and weary lasts our night
Till that last morn appear.
But hark the cock has warned me hence,
A long and last adieu!
Come see, false man, how low she lies
Who dy’d for love of you.
The lark sung loud, the morning smiled
With beams of rosy red:
Pale William shook in every limb
And raving left his bed.
He hyed him to the fatal place,
Where Margaret’s body lay;
And stretched him on the grass green turf
That wrapt her breathless clay.
And thrice he called on Margaret’s name
And thrice he wept full sore,
Then laid his cheek to her cold grave
And word spake never more.’

The author of this poem was not only a M’Gregor, but like the Gregories, a M’Gregor of Roro, and though he had changed his name, as did so many members of that unfortunate clan, the tradition was always kept up in his family.

Charles Gregorie, a half brother of Professor James, who was for a time Snell Exhibitioner at Balliol, was created by Queen Anne in 1707 Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews, which chair he held for thirty-two years until such time as his son could be appointed in his stead. He was quiet, studious, and able, but little is known of him.

David Gregorie, who succeeded him, does not bear quite so gentle a character, but he was a much abler man and one who could make his personality felt wherever he went.

After his own schooldays were over, he became tutor to the sons of the Duke of Gordon with whom he was connected through his grandmother. In this way he passed several years of his life before he was appointed to the Mathematical Chair. As a professor he was very popular, and if he tried to extend his influence beyond his class-room, he meant nothing but kindness. This was not always understood. One of his students wrote an autobiography, in which he described the ardour with which Mr Gregorie insisted that he should attend the services at the church—ardour for which Mr. Stockdale was not grateful and to requite which he put the professor’s name into his ‘immortal’ autobiography as that of a bigot, who had compelled him to attend the kirk. Thomas Reid, when studying his cousin’s character and especially his whiggery and Presbyterianism, so curiously unlike the rest of his family, remembered that he, like himself, was descended from the second wife of David Gregorie of Kinairdy, and had inherited her principles both in religion and politics.

There is another incident in his life more likely to recall those of his connections who bore the name of M’Gregor, and the record of it seems odd enough and old-world enough in our eyes. The report is that of a lawsuit which the professor had against Mr Wemyss of Lathockar. Gregorie, it seems, who loved sport, was ‘hunting for partridges’ over the broad meadowlands of Leuchars. He was accompanied by a man called Baird, who carried a second gun for Professor Gregorie. Suddenly Mr Wemyss sprang upon this man and seizing his gun refused to return it. The professor was furious—Baird was carrying a second gun for him, he was no common fowler, no higgler from whom a gun could rightly be taken; but Mr Wemyss was obdurate and went away with the gun, and nine-tenths of the law in his favour. And now there was no possible remedy but the courts, and in due course, the matter came up before the Sheriff. Gregorie claimed the restitution of his gun, and damages for the way in which he had been treated. As regards his first request, his claim was granted, but on the second point the judgment was not so favourable for—is it possible?—there was a doubt in the Sheriffs mind as to whether Gregorie himself had a right to be shooting over the grounds of Leuchars. It had ceased to be a question only concerning Baird, and in the end, the Professor of Mathematics in St Andrew’s University was refused damages on the ground that he himself was poaching![4] The owner of Leuchars was a minor, and as one of his tutors Professor Gregorie had never doubted his right to shoot over the estate, but he went back to St Andrew’s with new ideas on the limitations of his privilege.

4.Robert Fergusson the poet, wrote a poem in the Scots dialect, on the death of this Professor David Gregorie.

His life ended in 1765, when he was only fifty-three. He published one book, which was a Compendium of Algebra—an excellent text-book, said Thomas Reid his cousin, and then added a description of the professor which if not very interesting is still a portrait, drawn from life: ‘a well-bred, sensible gentleman, and much esteemed as a laborious and excellent teacher.’

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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