Seizure of College Records by Town Council, 1704

An attempt by staff of Edinburgh University to assert their right to self-government led to the seizure of the University's records by the Town Council of Edinburgh.

On 20 January 1703, a meeting of the Regents and Professors of Edinburgh University, styling themselves the 'Faculty of Philosophy', resolved that the current 'magistrand' class would graduate privately rather than publicly as was usually the case. In order to justify their proceedings, the 'Faculty' evoked 'their undoubted right contained in the charter of erection, and their constant and uninterrupted custom in such cases'. Such a right was highly questionable, and it would have been normal procedure to request permission from the Town council, who had historically taken considerable interest in graduations as a public function.

Sir Alexander Grant (1826-1884), the University's most authoritative historian,interprets this move as a deliberate challenge to the authority of the Town Council, and the Council certainly treated it as such. The Lord Provost, Sir Hugh Cunningham, announced a visitation of the College, to be held on the 15th February 1703. On which day there were assembled in the Library the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Council, bringing with them two

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Assessors ; namely, Sir James Stewart, Lord Advo- cate and a veteran in statesmanship, and Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards a Lord of Session and First Lord Minto; and eight Ministers of the City. The "Masters of the College" were called in, when there appeared the six persons above mentioned as forming the sederunt of "the Faculty," and in addition to them the Professors of Divinity, Hebrew, and Ecclesiastical History. It is observable that the Professors of Botany and Practice of Physic do not seem to have been reckoned among the "Masters."

The Lord Provost ordered the Laws given by the Council of Edinburgh, 1628, to be read, and especially the acts concerning Visitation, 1628 and 1663. He then said that he had seen "an unwar- rantable Act of the Masters of the College, viz. the Professors of Philosophy, Humanity, Mathematics, and Church History, in which they asserted them- selves a Faculty empowered by a charter of erection, etc. ; " and "desired the pretended Act to be read."

The Lord Advocate (having previously con- ferred with the Regents and Professors) here mediated, and asked that the reading of the Act should be deferred, as the Masters were willing to pass from the Act, and to withdraw the protest they had previously made anent the electing of a Commissioner from the College to the General Assembly. 1 And his Lordship offered "to wait

1 The practice had been for the College to elect their Member of Assembly in conjunction with the Town Council. Principal Rule, VOL. I. R

242 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1703.

upon any Committee of the Council, and make such overtures as might regulate such matters in time coming, to the honour of the Council, as patrons, and advantage of the Masters, with their due dependence upon the Council." The Masters were then interrogated individually if they agreed to the overture of the Lord Advocate, and they each severally gave their consent. The Meeting then terminated ; the Lord Advocate agreeing to draw up a statement of the proceedings.

The patrons, to assert their authority, passed an order that Mr. Scott's class should be publicly graduated on the first Tuesday of May, but this order was not obeyed. On the 12th May Mr. Scott petitioned the Council, alleging that many of his class had dispersed into the country, and that "other insuperable difficulties falling in the way of a public graduation in this juncture, the same could not be performed, and craving therefore the Council to allow the said class to be graduated privately, pro hoc vice. 7 ' To this petition the Council assented. But the Regents had in the meantime very much taken the matter into their own hands ; for as many as fourteen of the class had been already privately

however, always conformed with this practice under reservation that compliance with it should not be interpreted as a giving up by the College of its right to elect its own representative. In the interval between the death of Principal Rule and the appointment of Principal Carstares, the Regents being in their aggressive mood, one of them entered a protest against the Town Council's interfering in the election by the College of a Member of Assembly. And to this protest all the Regents and Professors, except one, subscribed their names. This was treated as an act of insubordination by the Town Council.

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graduated, which the Town Council commented on, " expressly inhibiting " such conduct for the future. This little conflict had been wholly unnecessary, for it is evident that private graduation would have been at once agreed to, if civilly asked for. And the result of the whole matter was to put back the growth of the independence of the College for some time to come. The Regents should never have raised a legal issue; but, as it was, the Lord Advocate, a man of great ability and experience, and very well disposed to the College, was called in to pronounce upon the legal aspect of the question, and he, after interposing so as to prevent any un- seemly rupture between the parties, drew up a minute of the Act of Visitation, in which, after citing the charter of James VI., he laid it down that " con- formably thereto, and ever since the erecting of the said College, the Magistrates and Council have had and exercised the only and full government of the said College." There was nothing more to be said on the subject ; the " undoubted right " of the Regents "contained in the charter of erection," and their " constant and uninterrupted custom in such cases," vanished to the winds. Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the absolute powers of the Town Council over the College were declared by legal authority. And not only was this the case, but also what had occurred naturally stirred up a spirit of governing activity in the Town Council. On the 3d May 1 703, when Carstares came to be installed as Principal, he was presented by the Lord Provost

244 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1703.

with a fresh set of rules drawn up in Latin for his guidance. Carstares was too old a statesman either to quarrel with the patrons, or to suffer any deroga- tion from the rights of his position. So with suavity he addressed Sir Hugh Cunningham : "You maybe sure, my Lord, that I would have called for any rule that may concern my post from the Keeper of the Library, but I shall read the paper which your Lordship hath given me; yet, my Lord, I cannot but tell your Lordship and the other worthy magis- trates of the city that are here present, that I look upon myself as coming into this post upon no other terms than what my predecessors did ; and that, as to my part, all affairs relating to this College remain entire." Gradually Carstares acquired a great deal of influence with the Town Council ; and, had he been there a few months earlier to guide his Regents, he would probably have restrained them from their mistaken course of action.

The results of this continued to appear in exhibi- tions of authority on the part of the Town Council. On the 1 2th May 1703 they passed an order that all diplomas of graduation must have the Town's Seal appended to them in a white iron box. The Primar, with three or four of the Regents, were to sign the diploma, and the Librarian was not to exact above £4 (Scots) as a fee, while poor Students were to have the diploma gratis. All certificates of graduation were to make honourable mention of the Town Council as patrons !

In October of the same year they issued a

WlLrJLIAM CarSTARES,

1704.] THE COLLEGE RECORDS SEIZED. 245

vexatious order to the effect that as some of the Masters or Regents of the College had "never extracted or taken out their Acts of Admission," they were to have no more salary paid them until they should have done so.

And in 1704 they proceeded to a still more arbitrary act of authority in ordering the College Records to be seized 1 on the ground of certain alleged inaccuracies, which seem very trifling ; the real blot in the eyes of the Town Council being, that "In the 19th page it is observed that the word Faculty is then first assumed, and without warrant,

1 At first the order was that the book be " trans sumed n with a view to its being corrected ; Carstares, on behalf of himself and the Regents, craved, " with all submission," to have it recorded that it was not with their will that the book was delivered up. He was told that the book was only wanted for correction. But next year (1705) the Town Council " appointed the book belonging to the College of Edin- burgh, entitled Register of the University of Edinburgh^ to be put up in the charter-house ; and ordained their clerk to write at the end of it, that the same was condemned as informal, and in many ways vitiated." It was kept by the Town Council thenceforward, but was produced, by the order of the Court of Session, at the great case of the Town Council versus the University in 1825-29. And now it was the fate of this luckless Record to perish in obscurity. It became part of the u process " in the lawsuit, and as such ought still to be in the Register House, where the other documents of the process lie, or else it should have been restored to the keeping of the Town Council. But we find it noted that the book was borrowed by Messrs. Cran- stoun and Anderson, law agents for the Senatus, and never returned. And the writer of these pages on applying to Messrs. J. and F. Anderson, lineal successors to Messrs. Cranstoun and Anderson, and occupying the same premises, found it hopeless to inquire after a MS. volume received by their predecessors more than half a century before. Masses of documents had, in the meantime, been carted away and reduced to pulp by the papermaker. Such was the fate of this book ; a few extracts, suited to the purposes of the defendants in the lawsuit, were printed, and these remain, but the "Old College Record" from 1645 t0 J 703 would surely have contained racy entries and perhaps valuable hints, and its loss must be deplored.

246 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY. [1704.

or any former practice, inserted in October 1686. And although the College had been now one hundred years standing before the said time, no record bears the word ' Faculty/ " This word " Faculty " was evidently as a red rag to the Town Council, and their anger at it made them forget that in 1668, eighteen years prior to the obnoxious entry, they had themselves endorsed a set of regulations, one of which bore that theses for graduation " must be revised and cognosced upon by the whole Faculty." They forgot also that " the Faculty " of the College of Edinburgh had been distinctly recog- nised in a letter under the Great Seal of William III. (1694), in which the words occur "as shall seem expedient to the said College or its Faculty " (dictae academise vel facultati suae expediens visum fuerit). 1 And still more did they forget their own declaration in 1685 (see above, p. 223), that the College of this City was "from the original erec- tion and foundation thereof erected as a University." It was now made clear that the ordinary rights of a University were denied to be inherent in the College of Edinburgh, and at the same time that College was humiliated by being deprived of its Records.

Thus what may be called the first period of this history drew to its close under unpleasant circum- stances the results of a rupture between the teachers of the College and their patrons the Town Council.

1 This form of expression was doubtless used at the instance of Carstares, who had previously been in correspondence with Dr. Rule, and of course had learned from him to style the Principal and Regents of the College " the Faculty" as their proper official designation.

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In itself this rupture was a sign of the growing strength of the College. The Regents and Pro- fessors doubtless thought themselves justified in claiming an independence equal to that enjoyed by the Senatus of any of the older Universities, on a level with which the College of Edinburgh had been repeatedly placed. But they were imprudent in stepping forward to assert their position without ascertaining, by legal advice, what it really was. They ignored the tremendous powers given to the Town Council by the charter of James VI. And hence they brought upon themselves the humiliation which has been related. The wisdom of Carstares soon restored happier relations, and there set in a halcyon period, which lasted, with hardly a cloud, for more than a century. After that the University, having grown exceedingly strong, again thought that it could throw off the government of the Town Council, but, as we shall see, with as bad success as the Regents met with in 1 703.