John Adamson (1576–1651?)

John Adamson (1576–1651) was Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1623 until 1652.

Biography

Adamson graduated MA from Edinburgh University under Charles Ferme in July 1597. The following January, he was made Regent of Philosophy, taking two classes through to graduation in 1600 and 1604. He resigned in 1604 to become Minister of Haddington, moving in 1609 to the Presbytery of Liberton near Edinburgh. In 1606 he married Marion Auchmoutie, and had two children. By 1616 he was a member of the Aberdeen Assembly, where he, with two others, was tasked to develop a form of liturgy and a catechism for the Church. In 1617 he was leader of the College Regents that disputed before King James VI at Stirling, and a year later he collected all the Latin and Greek greetings to the King on his arrival in Scotland, and published them as The Muses Welcome to the High and Mighty Prince James (1618). He produced a similar work with the visit of Charles I to Scotland, entitled Eisodia musarum Edinensium in Caroli Regis, Musarum Tutani, ingressu in Scotiam (1633). With the expulsion of Robert Boyd, Adamson was assumed Principal of the University of Edinburgh in 1623. Adamson was an eminent scholar and produced many works. He wrote the Latin catalogue for the books bequeathed to the University library by William Drummond of Hawthornden in 1627, and also produced a Latin Catechism for students in that same year. Famously, he bequeathed George Buchanan's skull to the University.

Relationships

Son of James Adamson (d. 1617), provost of Perth, grandson of Dr. Patrick Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew's; his younger brother, Henry Adamson, was a poet and historian.

Publications

• The Muses Welcome to the High and Mighty Prince James (1618)
• Traveller's Joy, to which is added The Ark (1623)
• Auctarium Bibliothecï Edinburgenï, sive Catalogus Librorum quos Gulielmus Drummond ab Hawthornden, Bibliothecï (1627)
• Eisodia musarum Edinensium in Caroli Regis, Musarum Tutani, ingressu in Scotiamï (1633)
• Dioptra Gloriï Divinï(1637)
• Methodus Religionis Christianï Catecheticaï(1637)

It is believed that he collected the Latin poems of Andrew Melville, issued as Viri clarissimi A. Melvini Mvsï(1620)

Sources

• Sir Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its First Three Hundred Years, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884)
• Stuart Handley, 'Adamson, John (1576-1651?)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)[[1], accessed 16 July 2010]