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History of Universities

VOLUME XXIX/2
2016
 History of Universities is published bi-annually
Editor:
Mordechai Feingold (California Institute of Technology)
Managing Editor:
Jane Finucane (Trinity College, University of Glamorgan)
Editorial Board:
R. D. Anderson (University of Edinburgh)
L. J. Dorsman (Utrecht University)
Thierry Kouamé (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Mauro Moretti (Università per Stranieri di Siena)
H. de Ridder-Symoens (Ghent)
S. Rothblatt (University of California, Berkeley)
N. G. Siraisi (Hunter College, New York)
A leaflet ‘Notes to OUP Authors’ is available on request from the editor.
To set up a standing order for History of Universities contact Standing Orders, Oxford
University Press, North Kettering Business Park,
Hipwell Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN14 1UA
Email: StandingOrders.uk@oup.com
Tel: 01536 452640
 History of Universities

VOLUME XXIX/2
2016

Special issue

Studies in Seventeenth-Century Scottish

Philosophers and their Philosophy

Guest editor
Alexander Broadie

1
 3
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 Contents

Articles
Introduction: Seventeenth-Century Scottish Philosophers
and their Universities 1
Alexander Broadie
‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good Order’: The
Scottish Universities in the Age of the Covenant, 1638–1649 13
Steven J. Reid
Scottish Masters in Huguenot Academies 42
Marie-Claude Tucker
‘Addicted to Puritanism’: Philosophical and Theological
Relations between Scotland and the United Provinces in the
First Half of the Seventeenth Century 69
Esther Mijers
Scottish Scotism? The Philosophical Theses in the Scottish
Universities, 1610–1630 96
Jean-Pascal Anfray
Disputing Providence in Seventeenth-Century Scottish
Universities: The Conflict between Samuel Rutherford
and the Aberdeen Doctors and its Repercussions 121
Simon J. G. Burton
James Dundas (c.1620–1679) on the Sixth Commandment 143
Alexander Broadie
The Scottish Faculties of Arts and Cartesianism (1650–1700) 166
Giovanni Gellera
‘A Lapsu Corruptus’: Calvinist Doctrines and Seventeenth-
Century Scottish Theses Ethicae 188
Christian Maurer
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/1/2017, SPi

vi Contents
Reviews
William J. Courtenay and Eric D. Goddard, eds. Rotuli
Parisienses. Supplications to the Pope from the University of Paris,
Volume III: 1316–1349, 2 vols. Education and Society in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 44. (Brill: Leyden, 2013).
ISBN 9789004233782 210
Thomas Sullivan, O. S. B.
The Palfrey Notebook: Records of Study in Seventeenth-Century
Cambridge, edited and with an Introduction by C.J. Cook
(The History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies,
Vol. VII, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press and Cambridge
University Library, 2011), xiv+802 pp, 1 illus.
ISBN: 978 184383 666 7 212
Richard Serjeantson
Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626
(Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2014) (St Andrews Studies in
Reformation History), 232 + x pp. ISBN: 9781472415554 221
Nicholas Tyacke
 Articles
Introduction: Seventeenth-Century
Scottish Philosophers and their
Universities
Alexander Broadie

Preliminary Considerations

Seventeenth-century Scottish philosophy is a Cinderella in the context of

the Scottish philosophical tradition. Medieval Scotland was blessed with
the presence of John Duns Scotus, though others should also be borne in
mind, such as Richard of St Victor (Ricardus de Sancto Victore Scotus),
Adam of Dryburgh and Michael Scot. In the fifteenth century, which
witnessed the founding of Scotland’s first three universities, St Andrews,
Glasgow, and King’s College, Aberdeen, many more Scottish philosophers
can be identified, such as Lawrence of Lindores, James Liddell, John
Ireland, and Hector Boece. We know also of many Scottish philosophers
of the sixteenth century, the century of Reformation, including John
Mair, George Lokert, William Manderston, William Cranston, Florens
Volusenus (Florence Wilson), George Buchanan, Andrew Melville, and
Robert Rollock.1
By contrast in the following century, the seventeenth, who were the
Scottish philosophers? There were during those years five universities in
Scotland (the above three plus Edinburgh and Marischal College, Aber-
deen), all of them of course including philosophy in their teaching
cycle of arts disciplines, yet to speak generally, the philosophers have
vanished. And then in the following century, the eighteenth, out of
what most would imagine to have been a cultural darkness, there emerged
the Scottish Enlightenment with its galaxy of philosophers, a team of

1 Many of these are discussed in Alexander Broadie, A History of Scottish Philosophy.

(Edinburgh, 2010).
2 History of Universities
superstars in western high culture. The contrast could not be greater. It
became clear to me recently, while writing a history of Scottish philoso-
phy, that Scotland’s seventeenth-century philosophy has been very
unfairly neglected, including by me.2 The present volume is a step towards
setting the record straight.
One plausible explanation of the neglect at issue is that no Scottish
philosophical genius emerged at that time, no-one on a par with Des-
cartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hobbes, or Locke, no-one therefore likely to
draw people’s attention to Scotland’s community of philosophers. Lack of
a genius would not of itself be evidence that the country was not home to a
rich vibrant philosophical culture but, in the absence of a selling-point
such as a resident genius, the philosophy of seventeenth-century Scotland
must struggle to assert itself in the presence of the major philosophers of
Scotland during the flanking centuries, not to mention the major philo-
sophers of the seventeenth century from France, the Low Countries,
England, Spain, and elsewhere.
It might indeed be thought that the intellectual strength of Scotland’s
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries should have saved the philosophical
culture of the intermediate century from oblivion. For there is an obvious
question to be asked about the manner in which philosophical discussions
and disputes of Scotland’s century of Reformation were taken up and
taken forward by Scots of the following century. And on the other flank
there is likewise an obvious question concerning the extent, if any, to
which the philosophical activities in seventeenth-century Scotland made
more likely, or at least made possible, the achievements of the Scottish
Enlightenment. Perhaps the principal puzzle is why there has been so little
attempt to deal with these two questions.
This volume will provide a good deal of evidence highly pertinent to
the question of the impact of seventeenth-century Scottish philosophy on
the Scottish Enlightenment. But it was never part of the purpose of the
volume that it should propose a teleological history of seventeenth-century
Scottish philosophy. Such a history would select topics on the basis of a
perceived causal influence that those earlier discussions had on the devel-
opment of the discipline in the following century, a principle of selection
which unfortunately implies that seventeenth-century thinking was or was
not of value according as it did or did not inform the discourse of
eighteenth-century philosophers. However, this volume has not been
written with one eye wide-open on the Scottish Enlightenment, but
instead with both eyes focused on the seventeenth century itself. That is

2 Ibid.
 Introduction 3
to say, the contributors to the volume have focused on the perspective of
the seventeenth-century thinkers, on what was important to them, on
their understanding of questions they wanted to answer, including their
understanding of discussions penned by their sixteenth-century predeces-
sors, all of this taken up by the seventeenth-century thinkers as they
pressed forward with the philosophical conversation they inherited from
those forerunners.
The seventeenth-century Scots were not parochial in their interests and
outlook; their philosophy was informed by their wide reading of thinkers
from across Europe, and this knowledge informed their lectures to their
students, who in many cases therefore received up-to-date information on
the cutting edge of European philosophy. In large measure we know about
the content of their teaching because the university graduation ceremonies
included the regent’s presentation to the graduation class of a large
number of philosophical theses that had been dealt with during the four
year teaching cycle. There are about 170 extant sets of theses from the
Scottish universities during the seventeenth century. These constitute only
about one third of the total number of sets of theses philosophicae that were
disputed at graduations during the period, a state of affairs due in small
measure to the fact that as late as the early 1640s Glasgow was pondering
whether it ought to move towards publishing its theses; but nevertheless
their value cannot be gainsaid. In his contribution to this volume Jean-
Pascal Anfray writes of them: ‘The surviving sets of graduation theses
provide the best entry into the philosophical landscape of Scottish uni-
versities in the early seventeenth century’. Indeed they form the best entry
point to the philosophical landscape for the whole century, and most of
the papers in this volume make use of them in a small way or a large.
Among the insights afforded by the theses are some that bear on Scotland’s
relations with its neighbours. One such insight relates to a question that
figures extensively in this volume. Scotland’s Reformation, which came
abruptly in 1560 under the leadership of the Geneva-educated John Knox,
moved quickly to found a Kirk informed by a Reformed orthodox theology
indebted in particular to the writings of John Calvin and especially to his
work on the institution of the Christian religion.3 Not all the Scottish
philosophers of the seventeenth century were members of the Kirk. Some
were Episcopalians, notably the so-called ‘Aberdeen doctors’4 but, as regards

3 Jean Calvin, Institution de la Religion Chrétienne (1541), ed. Olivier Millet (2 vols,

Geneva, 2008).
4 See ‘Disputing providence’ by Simon Burton in this volume; also Steven Reid, ‘The

Philosophy of the “Aberdeen doctors”, c. 1619–1641’, in John McCallum (ed.), Scotland’s

Long Reformation. New Perspectives on Scottish Religion, c. 1500–c. 1660 (Leiden, 2016),
149–78.
4 History of Universities
the regents who were in the Kirk, they knew, were at home with, and
endorsed Reformed orthodoxy, including its doctrines on the Fall, human
corruption, predestination, grace, election, salvation, and free will, all of
these topics rich in philosophical content, and it was hardly if at all possible
for such philosophers to philosophize as if they had not given their assent to
those doctrines, all of them of cosmic significance and of course of interest to
philosophers.
This point has a bearing on Scotland’s philosophical relations to other
countries since, to take one example, to the extent that Scottish philo-
sophers appropriated doctrines of Reformed orthodoxy and saw the world
through its categories, there is reason to suppose that there would be
significant differences between the philosophy of the Scottish universities
and the philosophy of those teachers at Oxford and Cambridge whose
theological ethos is significantly different. How different? is an interesting
question. Though this volume does not give a direct answer, it does
however provide reason to expect that philosophy in Scotland spoke
with a Scottish accent recognizably different from that of many philo-
sophical writings penned by teachers in the two English universities. Here
I only say that it has not yet been possible to answer the question
satisfactorily because so little research has been carried out on the Scottish
material. To take a contrasting case, expectations regarding relations
between the philosophers of Scotland and of the United Provinces will
be quite different from those just described because of the extent of the
doctrinal commitments shared by philosophers in the Scotland and by
many who held posts in the universities of the United Provinces.

Studies in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Philosophy

Papers 2 to 4 in this volume provide detailed information on the contexts

within which Scotland’s seventeenth-century philosophers were working.
Attention is paid first to the crucial role played by the universities
themselves, and especially to the impact of the rule of the Covenanters
on the universities in which theirs was the dominant voice. It quickly
becomes clear that, for the academic signatories to the National Covenant,
the maintenance of philosophy’s autonomy in the context of university
teaching was in one respect not necessarily a desirable aim, for its main role
was as an instrument at the service of theology.
Steven Reid’s paper is an account of the impact of the Covenanting
movement on the universities in the decade from 1638, the year in which
the National Covenant was launched and in which the Covenanters
initiated a punitive regime of staff purges and visitations, with consequent
 Introduction 5

casualties at St Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, but with an especially

significant impact in Aberdeen where, among others, the six Episcopalian
academics and ministers known collectively as the ‘Aberdeen doctors’ were
all removed from office. By these means the Covenanters demonstrated
that their prime concerns were to ensure both that the students received a
sound education in Reformed orthodox theology and also that there was
an appropriate provision of training for the ministry. Of far less concern to
the Covenanters was the provision within the curriculum of any form of
innovation in the teaching of the arts in general or of philosophy in
particular. One attempt at innovation should be mentioned. Reid shows
that in the latter half of the 1640s, there were the first attempts to
introduce a unified course of philosophy across the Scottish universities,
attempts which ultimately died out just before the Cromwellian occupa-
tion, but which reveal the curriculum being taught at each institution.
There is a limited nod towards ‘methodical’ thinkers including Petrus
Ramus, but the curriculum is for the most part static and lacking innov-
ation. However, Reid also demonstrates that the Covenanters made some
gains, for example, full provision was made for university libraries for the
first time at Glasgow and St Andrews, complete with endowed staff. In
addition, on the credit side, the teaching of basic Latin grammar was
formalized under a ‘master of humanity’ at all the universities in this
period. How far the gains derived from the decade of Covenanting rule
outweighed the manifest losses is a matter of judgement, but it is easy to
argue that the Covenanters’ stilling of contrary voices in the universities
was a grievously retrograde imposition, all the more so given the intellec-
tual brilliance of several of the Aberdeen doctors.
The intimate connection between Scotland’s philosophy and its
Reformed orthodoxy is highlighted likewise by Marie-Claude Tucker in
her discussion of the role that Scottish philosophers played in France’s ten
Huguenot academies, for the main purpose of those academies, a purpose
which could only be a pipe-dream until the Edict of Nantes (1598), was
the formation of pastors for the French Reformed orthodox communities.
The Huguenot academies were modelled on the Geneva Academy, whose
syllabus was shaped by the resolve of the citizens of Geneva to live
according to the evangelical law and the word of God. Geneva trusted
the Scots on doctrinal matters and also on biblical exegesis and the
languages of the bible, so Scots were invited to the Huguenot academies
as teachers in all the disciplines, but crucially in the disciplines just
enumerated. The Scots, as the Genevans knew well, were no less resolved
to live in the manner that most commended itself to the Genevans, and
since they also had a reputation for pedagogical excellence, they were a
perfect solution to the major problem of scarcity of pedagogical manpower
6 History of Universities

that the Huguenots faced from the start. The great wealth of detail that
Tucker presents, regarding the skills of the various Scottish teachers and
their trajectories in France and Scotland, bespeaks an intense period in
the shared high culture of Scotland, Huguenot France, and Reformed
orthodox Geneva. As regards France, Tucker ends with the interesting
suggestion that, along with the five universally recognized Scottish uni-
versities of the seventeenth century, there should perhaps be added a sixth,
namely the ten Huguenot academies, considered as a collectivity, a kind of
overseas campus maintained in large measure by Scotland’s academic
heartlands.
Scots also had a strong presence in the universities of the United
Provinces during the period when they were also most active in the
Huguenot academies, and in her contribution to this volume Esther
Mijers seeks to demonstrate both the range and depth of their involve-
ment and of the benefits gained. She writes of the many benefits that
the Scots received from the Scottish-Dutch relationship, but at the same
time acknowledges that the Dutch benefitted also, and perhaps no less.
One may note, for example, that seven Scots, several of them highly
significant, especially Gilbert Jack, held philosophy professorships in
Dutch universities during the first half of the seventeenth century. The
adherence to Reformed orthodoxy by many Scottish philosophers in the
United Provinces does not imply that there was no place in the United
Provinces for Scottish Episcopalians, far from it. One piece of testimony
to this is the contribution that at least one of the Aberdeen doctors, John
Forbes of Corse, made while in exile. Mijers reports that Forbes was
endorsed by Leiden’s Faculty of Theology, as well as by the Utrecht
theologian Gijsbert Voetius, the hero of Presbyterian orthodoxy and
friend of the Scottish Covenanters, while Forbes’s treatise Instructiones
historico-theologicae de doctrina Christiana was well received by the Dutch
ministers. The larger picture that Mijers presents demonstrates that the
Scots had an immense input into Dutch philosophical life, as teachers of
Dutch students in Scotland and in the United Provinces, as contributors
to philosophical debates with their Dutch colleagues, and finally as what
Mijers terms ‘facilitators within the wider network of the Reformed
universities’. But by the middle of the seventeenth century, partly as a
result of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and of the occupation of
Scotland by Cromwell’s army, Scottish philosophers had ceased to have
the high profile in the United Provinces that they had earlier enjoyed.
I turn now to an overview of the five papers (5 to 9) in this volume that
focus on the detailed philosophical content of the writings of the Scots.
The relations between Scottish and Dutch philosophers is part of a wider
story of Scotland’s academic relations with other European countries
 Introduction 7

during the seventeenth century, relations which reveal the Scots to have
kept pace with the latest philosophical developments in Europe. In this we
must note that they seem to have been just as well acquainted with and as
respectful of Catholic thinkers, such as the Jesuits Petrus Fonseca, his
pupil Luis de Molina, and Francisco Suarez, as with Reformed orthodox
thinkers. I shall start at home with John Duns Scotus.
In 1664 Johannes Caramuel y Lobkowitz affirmed: ‘The school of
Scotus is more numerous than all the other schools taken together’. His
claim, which may well be correct, prompts a question about how the
seventeenth-century Scottish academic scene stands in relation to Scotistic
philosophy. Was it widespread and well-entrenched in the Scottish uni-
versities? Was Reformed orthodox Scotland perhaps home, incredibly, to a
Scotistic school? Jean-Pascal Anfray’s paper in this volume asks whether
there was indeed a Scotistic presence in seventeenth-century Scotland and,
in medieval scholastic style, immediately responds with an objection:
Scotism cannot flourish and develop except in a scholastic context, and
once the Reformation was established in Scotland, the scholastic approach
was replaced by the humanistic, and the university curricula came to
reflect Reformed orthodoxy just as previously it had reflected Roman
Catholic doctrine. In particular, Andrew Melville’s programme of educa-
tional reform involved the promotion of humanism and Ramist logic and
methodology and the demotion of metaphysics (a medieval scholastic
preoccupation).
Thus the objection. But sed contra, despite Melville’s best efforts, scho-
lasticism showed itself remarkably resilient. For within a very short time
after the Reformation scholasticism reappeared as a major feature of the
philosophical education in the universities, as witness the presence, in many
theses philosophicae after 1620, of sections on metaphysics, covering such
topics as individuation, the divine attributes, and the existence of separate
intelligences. The above objection and the sed contra prompt two questions:
first, whether there really are recognizably Scotistic features in university
teaching in early seventeenth-century Scotland; and, if that is answered
in the affirmative, then secondly, whether regents self-consciously defended
these Scotistic features. Anfray’s answers are informed by a list of thirteen
theses, most of them metaphysical but some practical or ethical, that he
draws up and that are all in fact defended by Scotus and are recognizably
Scotistic in character. Granted these theses, the next step is to determine
how far the regents embraced them, and whether they did so sufficiently to
permit the conclusion that Scotism, understanding the term in a broad
sense, exerted an influence on Scottish philosophy.
One obstacle to an affirmative conclusion is, as noted by Anfray, the
fact that a highly characteristic metaphysical thesis of Scotus’, namely that
8 History of Universities

accidents are real beings that therefore do not need to be accidents-

of-some-substance in order to exist, is not accepted in any of the theses.
That it is not is not surprising, given the doctrine’s intimate relation to the
medieval Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, a doctrine that flatly
contradicts the account (or any of the accounts) of the eucharist to be
found in Reformed orthodoxy. Anfray’s response is to acknowledge that
the flat contradiction means that none of the regents was a full-blooded
Scotist—though one of the Aberdeen doctors, James Sibbald of Marischal
College, whose theses philosophicae for 1623, 1625, and 1626 survive,
comes quite close. Nevertheless, this leaves open the possibility of a broader
sense of ‘Scotism’ in which many of the regents were indeed Scotistic.
Anfray’s list of Scotistic theses is invaluable in this context, for the fact
that very many of the surviving theses philosophicae include discussion of
most of Scotus’ central doctrines suggests that in the early seventeenth
century his doctrines in large measure informed philosophical debate within
the Scottish universities.
There is ample evidence that the regents in significant numbers, if also
in varying degrees, endorsed an important swathe of the philosophy of the
medieval schools and produced thereby a scholasticism modulated to a
Reformed orthodox key. It should also be recalled that this Reformed
scholasticism was further enriched by the Scots’ appropriation of concepts
and doctrines especially associated with the Spanish Jesuit fathers Petrus
Fonseca, Luis de Molina, and Francisco Suarez. The territory concerns the
question of the relation between human freedom and God’s knowledge of
our future acts. It is on this problematic relation that Simon Burton
focuses in his contribution to this volume.
Famously, Jesuit thinkers, faced with the tenacious problem of how to
square divine foreknowledge with human freedom, invented or at least
finessed the concept of middle knowledge (scientia media). This was a kind
of knowledge standing between God’s natural knowledge of all possibility
and his free knowledge of actual events. Crucially, middle knowledge was
antecedent to, and therefore independent, of the divine will. This had the
effect of detaching God’s willing from his foreknowledge of human
actions, thus creating space, in the view of its Jesuit proponents, for free
will. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the concept of
middle knowledge became the centre of acrimonious disputes between the
Jesuits and the Dominicans. As a number of scholars have demonstrated,
such disputes also spilled over into the Protestant camp, with the Armin-
ians taking up the Jesuit concept of middle knowledge against the
Reformed doctrines of divine predetermination and premotion, which
were indebted to both Scotist and Dominican sources.
The article by Simon Burton considers the debates over middle know-
ledge that took place, in the context of the Arminian disputes, in Scottish
 Introduction 9
universities in the mid-seventeenth century. It focuses on the important
role of middle knowledge in the thought of Robert Baron and the other
Aberdeen doctors and its connection to their wider uptake of Second
Scholastic metaphysics and ontology. As suggested by their works, as well
as by the variety of theses disputed by their students, this had close
links with their ambitious plans to develop a new, eclectic approach to
philosophy. Unsurprisingly the project, with its irenic and seemingly
Arminian overtones, was viewed with great suspicion by the Scottish
Reformed orthodox. One of its principal opponents was Samuel Ruther-
ford, whose compatibilist metaphysics of freedom drew deeply on Scotist
and late medieval Augustinian tenets. During the period when Covenant-
ers were in the ascendant, Rutherford himself was appointed principal of
St Mary’s College in St Andrews. There he had the opportunity to develop
his own distinctive philosophical and theological curriculum, which was
shaped by anti-Jesuit and anti-Arminian concerns. The ongoing dispute
between Rutherford and the Aberdeen doctors and its multiple after-
shocks, which continued well beyond the formal deposal of the doctors
in 1640 1, thus offer an intriguing window on seventeenth-century
Scottish scholastic culture and its distinctive, often divisive, confessional
overtones.
Among the Scottish philosophers of the period there were some who
were not academics. One such was James Dundas, (c.1620 79), who
matriculated at St Leonard’s College, St Andrews, in 1635 and probably
stayed for the full four-year degree course. He was an elder of the Kirk,
signed the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, and
in 1662 became a judge. During his final months he wrote a book, as yet
unpublished, entitled Idea philosophiae moralis (The Idea of Moral Philoso-
phy).5 It has recently surfaced in the library of Arniston House, and is the
subject of the paper that Alexander Broadie has contributed to this
volume. The book, a 313-page monograph, presents a moral philosophy
that reflects Dundas’s investigations in classical and medieval philosophy
and also in modern scholasticism both of the Catholic and of the
Reformed varieties. At the end of the book are three sections relating to
killing: they are on suicide, duelling and just war. All three make philo-
sophical points of the sort that could be made equally by a secular
humanist, though many accompanying examples in the Idea are taken
from the Bible; the sections also attend to the position of positive law in
relation to those three kinds of acts of killing; and, from a non-religious
perspective, to first-order moral issues such as whether issuing or accepting
a challenge to a duel on account of an insult given or received can be

5 An edition (along with English translation) is in preparation: see James Dundas, The Idea

of Moral Philosophy, eds. Alexander Broadie & Giovanni Gellera (Edinburgh, forthcoming)
10 History of Universities

justified granted that the resultant killing might make a wife a widow and
a child fatherless. And finally, Christian doctrine is explicitly at issue, as for
example when Dundas focuses on the legitimacy of Christian passivism,
and on the sacrilegious nature of the juridical duel, and, in all the sections,
on the fact that God is the Lord of life—we are not.
Dundas’s manifest openness to sources, no matter their provenance, is
an important feature of his Idea philosophiae moralis and is also typical of
the Scottish philosophers of his day. All the papers in this volume bear
witness to the Scottish regents’ familiarity with a great array of philosoph-
ical texts covering the gamut from the great classical philosophers to the
so-called ‘Moderns’. One who features widely in the theses philosophicae of
the Scottish regents is Descartes, who is first mentioned in the theses of
Andrew Cant (Marischal College, 1654) and whose influence was espe-
cially strong during the two decades or so from the 1670s.
The ideological implications of Descartes’ philosophy prompted
heated controversies across Europe, often leading to official bans and
political interventions. The case of the Scottish universities seems to be
different: whereas opposition to Cartesianism was present among the
teachers of Divinity (and chiefly among Presbyterians, who found them-
selves excluded from university teaching posts from around 1660 to
1690), the Arts Faculties were highly susceptible to Cartesianism and
shared its confidence in the new science and the powers of natural
reason. Scottish Reformed scholasticism endorsed the view that philoso-
phy was a relatively autonomous discipline which could therefore
be developed in relative independence of theology, a view congenial to
Descartes but also rooted in Calvin’s doctrines concerning sola fide
and sola scriptura (‘by faith alone’ and ‘by Scripture alone’). Descartes’s
doctrine known as ‘substance dualism’ sits well with the disciplinary
division of philosophy into (i) metaphysics which deals with minds, and
(ii) physics which deals with material bodies, popular in early modern
scholasticism. The resulting synthesis of Reformed scholasticism and
Cartesianism formed the philosophical framework in which Newtonian-
ism quickly replaced Cartesian physics in the 1690s, and which survived
in the early eighteenth-century curriculum.
These points and arguments, which are developed in detail by Giovanni
Gellera in his contribution to this volume, draw him to the conclusion:
‘The fortune of Cartesianism reveals that the seventeenth-century Scottish
faculties of arts were fairly open and up-to-date places to study and work,
against the oft repeated assumption of backwardness [ . . . ]. The regents
were quick to realize the advantages of Descartes’s philosophy which
became the new reference point in the arts and replaced Aristotle as the
best support of faith’.
 Introduction 11
Although the Reformed orthodox regents were required not to hold
moral philosophical positions incompatible with the doctrines to which
they gave their assent, this does not mean that the moral philosophy
taught in the Scottish universities in the seventeenth century did not
develop as the century wore on. Christian Maurer points out in his
contribution to this volume that Reformed orthodox doctrines were
themselves being interrogated, and interpretations of them were con-
tested, during this time, with an array of alternative plausible readings
available to the regents, a state of affairs bound to have implications for
moral doctrines on which the religious ones impinged. Given that the
religious doctrines concerned the Fall, human corruption, predestination,
grace, election, salvation, and free will, it should not come as a surprise
that they should tend to impact on, and indeed steer the thinking of
philosophers wondering what we should do to achieve happiness, or
wondering relatedly whether we are, from within our own resources,
well enough equipped to live a virtuous life. Maurer notes a certain
softening in attitude regarding especially our depravity and our ability to
achieve moral progress by the exertion of our will, a softening that
assuredly would have been more widely denounced as ‘Arminian heresy’
earlier in the century. Related to this point there is the fact, as noted by
Maurer, that several positions were taken up regarding the worth of moral
philosophy, namely that it is dangerous unless controlled by theology, or is
useless unless pertinent theological considerations are kept in mind, or
that it is, even without the help of theology, useful as helping us towards
the answer to our moral questions and perhaps also towards our moral
improvement. Maurer’s extensive knowledge of the theses philosophicae
underpins his discussion as he tracks the theses on their hesitant way to a
view of post-lapsarian human nature more positive than the view that was
predominant in the earlier part of the century.

Conclusion

Earlier I quoted Caramuel y Lobkowitz’s affirmation, made in 1664: ‘The

school of Scotus is more numerous than all the other schools taken
together’. I do not know whether Scotland was on Caramuel y Lobko-
witz’s mind when he spoke of the numerousness of the School of Scotus,
but Anfray’s paper in this volume provides support for the judgment that
if Caramuel y Lobkowitz had surveyed Scotland’s universities he may
indeed have detected a School of Scotus, even though a school faithful
to Reformed orthodoxy. The fact that an early generation of Reformed
orthodox philosophers could study and give their assent to so much of the
12 History of Universities
philosophy of a man profoundly identified with medieval Roman Catholic
scholasticism bespeaks an impressive open-mindedness of the Scottish
regents in their search for philosophical truth. The same point can be
made in terms of the impact of Descartes’s philosophy, which was already
being taught by the Scottish regents in 1654 and which was still an
important part of their repertoire of ideas at the end of the seventeenth
century even if by then they had in general transferred their preferences in
experimental natural philosophy from Descartes to Newton. Their open-
ness to new ideas, and also indeed the high quality of their teaching, may
be measured by the numbers of Scottish philosophers who were invited to
teach in the universities of continental Europe and in the Huguenot
academies. As the Scottish texts are assembled,6 and increasingly pon-
dered, and as the roles of Scottish philosophers within the academies of
Europe become better chronicled, it is increasingly clear that seventeenth-
century Scottish philosophy is a success story.
School of Humanities (History)
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
Scotland

6 For example, Alexander Broadie & Steven J. Reid (eds), Philosophical Discourse in

Seventeenth-Century Scotland: Key Texts (Woodbridge, forthcoming).

 ‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good
Order’: The Scottish Universities in the
Age of the Covenant, 1638–1649
Steven J. Reid

Introduction

Of the many gaps in our understanding of the history of Scotland’s

universities, the seventeenth century looms the largest. The details of the
foundations of Scotland’s first five universities—St Andrews (founded
1410-13), Glasgow (1451), King’s College Aberdeen (1495), Edinburgh
(1583), and Marischal College Aberdeen (1592)—have been explored in
depth, and their fortunes through the renaissance and reformation have
been rehearsed and analysed.1 Yet with the exception of David Stevenson’s
study of King’s College between 1560 and 1641, only basic narrative
sketches exist for each university from the reign of Charles I until the onset

1 For overviews of Scottish higher education in the late medieval and early modern

period, see: Isla Woodman, ‘Education and Episcopacy: The Universities of Scotland in
the Fifteenth Century’ (PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2011); Steven J. Reid,
Humanism and Calvinism: Andrew Melville and the Universities of Scotland, 1560–1625
(Aldershot, 2011). For the foundations of individual institutions see: (St Andrews) Ronald
G. Cant, The University of St Andrews: A Short History (St Andrews, 2002), 3–50; Annie
I. Dunlop (ed.), Acta Facultatis Artium Sanctiandree (Edinburgh, 1964); Ronald G. Cant,
The College of St Salvator: Its Foundation and Development (Edinburgh, 1950); John Herkless
& Robert Kerr Hannay, The College of St Leonard (Edinburgh, 1905); D.W.D. Shaw (ed.),
In Divers Manners: A St Mary’s Miscellany (St Andrews, 1990); (Glasgow) John Durkan &
James Kirk, The University of Glasgow, 1451–1577 (Glasgow, 1977); (Aberdeen) Leslie
Macfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland, 1431–1514: The Struggle for
Order (Aberdeen, 1985); (Edinburgh) Michael Lynch, ‘The origins of Edinburgh’s “toun
college”: a revision article’. Innes Review, 33 (1982), 3–14; (Marischal College); George
D. Henderson, The Founding of Marischal College (Aberdeen, 1947); Steven J. Reid, ‘Aberd-
een’s “toun college”: Marischal College, 1593–1623’, Innes Review, 58 (2007), 173–95.
14 History of Universities
of the Enlightenment.2 These outlines provide little in the way of explan-
ation as to how the universities collectively negotiated the chaos of the
Covenanting Revolution and the ensuing British Civil Wars, the Restor-
ation and the Glorious Revolution; how they managed their interaction
with a constantly shifting central and royal government; or—perhaps
most crucially—how the bitter internecine disputes between Presbyterian
and Episcopalian factions within the Scottish church played out in an
academic context.
More substantial research has been carried out regarding intellectual
developments in the same period, although the prevailing picture is one of
extreme morbidity and stagnation. This view was first established in
Christine Shepherd’s work on philosophical teaching in seventeenth-
century Scotland, where she argued that the narrow focus in the univer-
sities on Aristotelian scholasticism until the 1660s (when the ideas of René
Descartes first appeared in Scotland) and the complete lack of engagement
with Newtonian physics until the 1690s meant that there was no real
evolution or innovation in teaching until the Enlightenment.3
Yet to suggest that a continued adherence to Aristotle and his works
somehow constituted a failing in Scottish higher education, because it
collectively failed to anticipate the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolu-
tion, is a notion that has been readily challenged in recent work. Aaron
Denlinger, Alasdair Raffe, and Giovanni Gellera have all argued that the
nuanced discourses within what Gellera terms ‘Scottish Reformed Scho-
lasticism’ embraced the latest trends in Reformed theology, where there

2 David Stevenson, King’s College, Aberdeen, 1560–1641: From Protestant Reformation to

Covenanting Revolution (Aberdeen, 1990). The University of Edinburgh has been best
served in terms of general histories, each of which provide a full narrative of the seventeenth
century: Thomas Craufurd, History of the University of Edinburgh from 1580 to 1646
(Edinburgh, 1808); Alexander Bower, The History of the University of Edinburgh (3 vols,
Edinburgh, 1817–30); Andrew Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh from its
Foundation, ed. David Laing, with a memoir of the author by Cosmo Innes (2 vols,
Edinburgh, 1862); Alexander George Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh During
its First Three Hundred Years (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1884); David B. Horn, A Short History of
the University of Edinburgh, 1556–1889 (Edinburgh, 1967); Robert D. Anderson, Michael
Lynch & Nicholas Phillipson, The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History (Edin-
burgh, 2003). For the history of St Andrews in the seventeenth century, see Cant, University
of St Andrews, 51–99; for Glasgow, see James Coutts, A History of the University of Glasgow
from its Foundation in 1451 to 1909 (Glasgow, 1909), 49–161); J.D. Mackie, The
University of Glasgow, 1451–1951: A Short History (Glasgow, 1954), 78–152; for university
life at Aberdeen, see Colin A. McLaren, Aberdeen Students, 1600–1860 (Aberdeen, 2005),
4–65.
3 Christine M. Shepherd, ‘Philosophy and Science in the Arts Curriculum of the

Scottish Universities in the 17th Century’ (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1975);
Christine M. Shepherd, ‘Newtonianism in the Scottish universities in the seventeenth
century’, in R.H. Campbell & Andrew S. Skinner (eds), The Origins and Nature of the
Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1982), 56–85.
 ‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good Order’ 15
was a revived and augmented use of Aristotelian logic as Calvinist theolo-
gians developed their own form of ‘Reformed Orthodoxy’ in the first half
of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, the limited engagement with
Cartesianism, the works of ‘systematic’ authors such as Bartholomew
Keckermann and Johannes Alsted, and other innovative but ultimately
fruitless philosophical movements shows that Scotland sampled some of
the broader intellectual trends in evidence across Europe, even if it did not
fully absorb them into regular teaching.4
This article focusses on the involvement of the Covenanters in higher
education in the decade after the promulgation of the National Covenant,
firstly by examining the extant (and often fragmentary) evidence relating
to purges at the universities in the early years of the regime, and then by
assessing their use of commissions of visitation in the decade after 1638 to
reform arts and philosophical teaching. In doing so, it aims to examine one
of the major lacunae in our understanding of seventeenth-century higher
education, as to date there has been no attempt to investigate the collective
fortunes of the universities in this period, and whether their individual
experience at the hands of the regime differed.5 It also aims to further
challenge the view that the Covenanters’ continued focus on Aristotelian
scholasticism is evidence of intellectual stasis. It is true that in the two
years following the outbreak of the Covenanting Revolution in 1638 the
immediate priority of the Covenanters was to remove dissident elements
from higher education. They aggressively pursued this aim in a series of

4 Giovanni Gellera, Natural Philosophy in the Graduation Theses of the Scottish Univer-

sities of the First Half of the Seventeenth Century (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2011);
Giovanni Gellera, ‘Calvinist metaphysics and the Eucharist in the early seventeenth
century’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 21/6 (2013), 1091–1110; Giovanni
Gellera, 'The philosophy of Robert Forbes: a Scottish scholastic response to Cartesianism’,
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 11 (2013), 191–211; Giovanni Gellera, ‘The reception of
Descartes in the seventeenth-century Scottish universities: metaphysics and natural phil-
osophy (1650–1680)’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 13 (2015), 179–201; Aaron
C. Denlinger, ‘Men of Gallio’s naughty faith?’: The Aberdeen doctors on Reformed and
Lutheran concord’, Church History and Religious Culture, 92/1 (2012), 57–83; Aaron
C. Denlinger, ‘Swimming with the Reformed tide: John Forbes of Corse (1593–1648)
on double predestination and particular redemption’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 66/1
(2015), 67–89; Alasdair Raffe, ‘Intellectual change before the Enlightenment: Scotland, the
Netherlands and the reception of Cartesian thought, 1650–1700’, Scottish Historical
Review, 94 (2015), 24–47; Steven J. Reid, ‘Reformed scholasticism, proto-empiricism
and the intellectual “long reformation” in Scotland: the philosophy of the “Aberdeen
Doctors”, c.1619–c.1641’, in John McCallum (ed.), Scotland’s Long Reformation: New
Perspectives on Scottish Religion, c.1500–1600 (Leiden and Boston, 2016), 149–178.
5 The standard survey of the decade remains David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution,

1637–1644: The Triumph of the Covenanters (Newton Abbot, 1973); David Stevenson,
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (Edinburgh, 1977; rev. ed.
2003), but see now also Laura M. Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: Covenanted
Scotland, 1637–1651 (Oxford, 2016).
16 History of Universities
purges that had little consideration for the effect it would have on the
quality of teaching in the short term. This action had the greatest impact
on King’s College in Aberdeen, where the ecumenical group of ministers
and academics known as the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’ were summarily removed
from office. Once this initial wave of repression had passed, the Coven-
anters advanced several plans for reform of teaching, particularly at
St Andrews and Glasgow in the early 1640s, which in most regards
(particularly in terms of finance) prioritized support for the teaching of
theology over philosophy. That said, the arts course advocated by the
Covenanting regime blended the traditional focus on Aristotle with a
novel range of subjects that had a ‘practical’ bent, such as arithmetic and
anatomy, and (perhaps as one would expect) fostered a deep commitment
to Protestant religion and piety among the students. A short-lived com-
mission tasked with creating a single printed course in arts and philosophy
in the latter half of the 1640s tried to extend the Covenanters’ specific
brand of teaching to all the universities. Although this commission was
ultimately unsuccessful, evidence submitted to it shows that by 1647 the
arts curriculum across Scotland was virtually the ‘uniformitie in Doctrine
and good Order’ that the commission had been tasked with achieving.6
The Covenanters’ extensive use of Aristotelian logic equipped students
with the intellectual tools to understand the complexities of systematic
Reformed theology and to challenge and combat Catholic doctrine wher-
ever they encountered it. It also taught them to be effective and systematic
preachers, able to convey complex information in a clear and direct
manner. Rather than suggesting intellectual failure on the part of the
Covenanters or passive acceptance of old forms of teaching, this particular
curriculum was consciously retained by them and specifically tailored to
their prime aim of catechizing and training men for the reformed ministry.

The Establishment of Control: Purges at the Scottish

Universities, 1638–1640

From the moment that the General Assembly was reconvened in Glasgow
on 21 November 1638, after a hiatus of more than two decades, one of
their priorities was to exert control over Scotland’s universities. In their
third session, which met on 23 November, Archibald Johnston of

6 The quotation comes from the final sentence of the ‘Overtures for advancement of

Learning, and good Order in Grammar Schools and Colledges’, promulgated at the General
Assembly on 7 February 1645. For copies in the universities’ records, see Aberdeen
University Library [AUL], MS K36, 75; St Andrews University Library [StAUL]
UYSL156 (‘Pringle’s Book’), 229–230; UYUC110/Z/1/21.
 ‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good Order’ 17
Warriston produced five volumes of records containing the proceedings
of the General Assembly from 1560 to 1590. In the closing sessions on
17–18 November, the Covenanters claimed precedent from acts passed in
1565, 1567, and 1595 to assert their right to try ‘the Principall, Regents,
and professours within Colledges, and Masters, and Doctors of Schooles
[ . . . ] concerning the soundnesse of their judgment in matters of Religion,
their abilitie, for discharge of their calling, and the honesty of their
conversation’.7
Armed with this suitably vague and ominous remit, the assembly made
visitation of the universities a standing item of business between 1638
and 1649, with near-annual visitations at Aberdeen, Glasgow, and St
Andrews.8 Only Edinburgh was exempt from this continual scrutiny, as
by 1638 it was already firmly under Covenanter control. The principal
John Adamson and the professor of divinity Andrew Ramsay had been
involved in radical religious politics since as early as 1617, and at the 1638
assembly they both sat on the committees that examined the validity of the
High Commission and Charles I’s attempted liturgical reforms.9 They
went on to play a leading role in the early Covenanting movement, and
although two of the university regents, John Brown and Robert Rankine,
were deposed for refusing to sign the Covenant, under Adamson and
Ramsay’s supervision Edinburgh was left free from Assembly scrutiny
until 1648.10
The immediate aim of the Covenanters in the aftermath of the 1638
assembly was to ensure that all university staff conformed to their views
and to purge those who did not. Between 1638 and 1640 their prime
focus in this regard was the universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow.
The two colleges at Aberdeen—King’s College in Old Aberdeen, and
Marischal College in New Aberdeen—were home by the second quarter
of the seventeenth century to a group of academics and ministers known as
the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’.11 Their collective religious outlook could be

7 Alexander Peterkin, Records of the Kirk of Scotland, Containing the Acts and Proceedings

of the General Assemblies (Edinburgh, 1838), 34.

8 Details for these commissions are found in the ‘Index of Unprinted Acts’ for each of

the assemblies (see, for example, Peterkin, Records of the Kirk of Scotland, 46–7).
9 John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel

Rutherford (Cambridge, 1997), 34.

10 Craufurd, History of the University of Edinburgh, 133; Stuart Handley, ‘Adamson, John

(1576–1651?)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Available: http://

www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/143; Vaughan T. Wells, ‘Ramsay, Andrew (1574–1659)’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/
view/article/23074. Adamson in particular was regularly involved in the commissions of visit-
ation to other universities.
11 The ‘Doctors’ are traditionally defined as those who signed the ‘Generall Demands’ of

1638—the academics John Forbes of Corse, Robert Baron, and Principal William Leslie,
18 History of Universities
characterised as ‘eirenic’, in so far as they felt that neither the theological
positions of the royal government nor the Covenanters were wrong in
themselves, and that there was latitude for how the church and its
ceremonies were organized, provided that Protestants recognised the
shared essential tenets of their faith and stood united against Catholi-
cism.12 The ‘Doctors’ provided the only sustained intellectual opposition
to the Covenanters. John Forbes of Corse, the professor of divinity at
King’s College, wrote ‘A Peaceable Warning’ that advised the Scottish
people to be wary of blindly following the Covenanters, which circulated
in manuscript in early 1638 and was printed in a revised and slightly less
incendiary version later that year.13 The Covenanting ministers Alexander
Henderson, David Dickson, and Andrew Cant came to Aberdeen to
engage in a series of private debates with the ‘Doctors’ in July 1638, but
the ‘Doctors’ made this a matter of public record by outlining their
objections in a published set of Generall Demands concerning the Late
Covenant, which generated a series of ‘Answers’, ‘Replies’ and ‘Duplies’
between the two sides before the pamphlet war ended abruptly with no
definitive conclusion.14 These minor exchanges were the sum total of the
resistance put up by the ‘Doctors’. Even so, the Covenanting regime could
not allow them to continue in their positions at Aberdeen, not least as they
had access to their very own printing press via the publisher Edward
Raban, who produced a wide range of texts for the academic community
in the town.15
Although the University of Glasgow sent four commissioners to repre-
sent it at the General Assembly in November 1638, there was a suspicion
that as at Aberdeen ‘ther wer sundrye unsownde members ther, who had

and the three local ministers Alexander Scroggie, Alexander Ross, and James Sibbald. The
only full-length study of the Doctors remains Donald Macmillan, The Aberdeen Doctors
(London, 1909). See also J.D. Ogilvie, ‘The Aberdeen Doctors and the National Coven-
ant’, Papers of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 11 (1912–20), 73–86; D. Stewart, ‘The
Aberdeen Doctors and the Covenanters’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 22
(1984), 35–44.
12 Stevenson, King’s College, Aberdeen, 106–7; Denlinger, ‘Men of Gallio’s naughty

faith?’.
13 John Forbes, A Peaceable Warning, to the Subjects in Scotland (Aberdeen, 1638);

Stevenson, King’s College, Aberdeen, 108.

14 Published in two collected editions: Generall demands concerning the late covenant

(Edinburgh, 1638); and The Answers of some brethren of the ministrie to the replies of the
ministers and professors of Divinitie in Aberdeen . . . also Duplies . . . concerning the late Coven-
ant (Edinburgh, 1638).
15 For examples, see Peter J. Anderson, Notes on Academic Theses with Bibliography of

Duncan Liddel ([Aberdeen], 1912); J.F. Kellas Johnstone, Bibliographia Aberdonensis

(2 vols, Aberdeen, 1929–30).
 ‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good Order’ 19
shewd but small affectione to the Covenant’.16 Gordon also noted else-
where in his History of Scots Affairs that at Glasgow ‘some of the regents
refoosed for to subscrybe it, and other members of that Universitye tooke
it with interpretationes and limitationes, destructive (as is reported) to the
very foundatione therof ’.17 There is limited evidence to suggest that
one of the regents, Patrick Maxwell, left the university as a result of the
pressure to conform,18 but the main concern at Glasgow was Dr John
Strang, who had been principal since 1626. Strang had received an
English-style doctorate of divinity at St Andrews in 1617, and although
he had denounced Charles I’s attempt to impose the Canons of 1636 and
the Prayer Book of 1637, he had endorsed the Covenant only ‘so farr as
that Confession was not prejudiciall to the King's authority, the office of
Episcopall government it self, and that power which is given to bishops by
lawfull Assemblies and Parliaments’.19 He was persuaded to sign in July
1638, and forced to recant his objections at the November assembly, but
came to support the royalist side after Charles withdrew the need for
adherence to the Canons and Prayer Book. He walked out of the assembly
at the same time as the King’s Commissioner, Lord Hamilton, only to
return as the university commissioner. In that latter capacity he continued
to submit supplications on the university’s behalf, and on 28 August
1639 he made a direct appeal ‘that meanes may be used for the florishing
and increasing of the said Universitie, and furnishing it with a competent
number of Professors, namely of Theologie, and their manteinance’,
which resulted in the 1640 commission of visitation.20 While Strang
clearly welcomed the possibility of intervention by the Assembly in

16 James Gordon, History of Scots Affairs, from MDCXXXVII to MDCXLI, ed.

J. Robertson & G. Grub (3 vols, Aberdeen, 1841), ii. 162.

17 Ibid. i. 51–2.
18 The list of staff for the university given on the elevation of the regent Robert Mayine,

or Maine, to professor of medicine at the college on 25 October 1637 notes that the other
regents were John Rae, William Wilkie, and Patrick Maxwell. David Monro was elevated
from the master of the humanity class to fill the vacant regency position and William
Hamilton, a theology student, was appointed to take his place. The appointment of David
Dickson as professor of theology on 27 February 1640 was witnessed by the same list of
regents except for Maxwell, whose replacement, John Dickson, was appointed in December
1639 (another appointee, David Forsyth, was made in February 1640 but does not appear
again in the records). See Joseph Robertson & Cosmo Innes (eds), Munimenta Alme
Universitatis Glasguensis: Records of the University of Glasgow from its Foundation till 1727
(4 vols, Glasgow, 1854), iii. 379–82.
19 For his arguments against the Covenant, see NLS, Wodrow Folio XXXI, item

ii; The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, ed. David Laing (3 vols, Edinburgh,
1841–2), i. 67.
20 Robertson & Innes (eds), Munimenta Alme Universitatis Glasguensis, ii. 450–2.
20 History of Universities
Glasgow’s affairs, his relationship with the Covenanters remained an
uneasy one.21
Commissions were thus appointed to attend Glasgow and King’s Col-
lege, to send any who refused to conform to the next Assembly at Edin-
burgh in July 1639, and to report their findings there.22 The visitation to
Aberdeen was given an added veneer of legitimacy, and deeply complicated,
by a decades-long dispute at King’s College over whether the Nova Funda-
tio, an envisaged Protestant refoundation of the college that had been
forcibly suppressed by James VI after his escape from the Ruthven Raiders
in 1583, took precedence over the original ‘Old Foundation’ established by
Bishops William Elphinstone and Gavin Dunbar, which had been re-
established (with some minor changes) by Patrick Forbes of Corse, bishop
of Aberdeen from 1619 to 1635.23 After Forbes’s death, rival factions
supporting the ‘New’ and ‘Old’ foundations had supplicated the royal
government to intervene on their behalf, and despite a bewildering array
of rectorial and governmental visitations no clear settlement had been
reached by 1638. The ‘Doctors’ were urged by Charles I to attend the
General Assembly of November 1638, but refused to do so, ostensibly on
grounds of ill health. John Lundie, the grammarian at King’s College and a
supporter of the Covenant, was nominated to go in their stead. Although
Lundie was expressly told not to interact with the assembly’s proceedings,
he used his commission to give a supplication to the assembly asking for
visitation of the college as his stipend as professor of humanity had been
removed by Bishop Patrick Forbes and applied to posts on the ‘Old
Foundation’. Lundie had unwittingly played into the hands of the regime,
which immediately organized a visitation for April of the following year.
By March 1639 hostilities between the Covenanters and royalists were
ready to escalate into open warfare. The earl of Montrose marched
towards Aberdeen in the second half of the month under cover of the
commission of visitation to King’s College, but in reality to secure
Aberdeen and the surrounding area for the regime against the earl of
Huntly.24 The panic caused by Montrose’s advance caused all the staff and

21 Stuart Handley, ‘Strang, John (1583/4–1654)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography (Oxford, 2009). Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26632.

22 Gordon (History of Scots Affairs, ii. 163) notes that at the 1638 assembly a commission

was granted to visit St Andrews too.

23 For the narrative which follows on events in Aberdeen (except where noted), see

Stevenson, King’s College, Aberdeen, 94–123; Cosmo Innes (ed.), Fasti Aberdonenses: Selec-
tions from the Records of the University and King’s College of Aberdeen, 1494–1854 (Aberdeen,
1854), 285–310, 405–20; AUL, MS K36, 18–66.
24 The town would ultimately be taken by the Covenanters on 30 March 1639, and over

the three months that followed would change hands several times. See Stevenson, The
Scottish Revolution, 138–48.
 ‘Ane Uniformitie in Doctrine and good Order’ 21
students to flee the college.25 Robert Baron, who had been appointed as
the inaugural professor of divinity at Marischal College in 1625, sailed
from Aberdeen to London on 28 March as part of this exodus, but died
from the ‘gravell’ on his return at Berwick.26 The majority of the other
staff returned in time for the visitation which met on 11 April, but
Principal William Leslie and Alexander Scroggie the younger, the son of
the ‘Doctor’ of the same name, were deposed for non-attendance.27 The
rest of the college was forced to subscribe the Covenant. The cantor
Gilbert Ross and the canonist James Sandilands were also deposed as
their offices (originally part of the ‘Old Foundation’) were seen as incom-
patible with teaching in a modern Protestant university.28 William Guild,
who had initially supported the ‘Doctors’ but then had subscribed the
Covenant, was left in charge of the college as rector, and then elevated to
principal.29 Although he was seen as a moderate in his religious sensibil-
ities, the Covenanters clearly felt that through him the college was safely
under their control, as after 1640 the college was left to its own devices for
several years.
The Covenanters’ main target was of course John Forbes, whom as their
most high-profile intellectual opponent they hoped to pressure into
subscription. Due to the ongoing military chaos in and around Aberdeen,
Forbes was allowed to teach until he appeared before a further visitation
committee which met briefly in King’s College on 7-8 July 1640.30
Despite being threatened with punitive fines for not subscribing the
Covenant, Forbes continued to refuse to sign. The commission passed
his case and the business of the visitation over to the assembly scheduled to
meet in Aberdeen later that month, while banning him from teaching.31
His continued refusal to subscribe ultimately led to his deposition on 21
April of the following year, at which point he was forced to leave the

25 There is a gap in the Senate minutes from 27 December 1638 to 13 October 1639,

corresponding with this flight. See AUL, MS K36, 51–2.

26 Ian M. Thompson, ‘Baron, Robert (c.1596–1639)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography (Oxford, 2004). Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1498; Letters

and Journals of Robert Baillie, i. 185.
27 AUL, MS K36, pp. 52–53, 59.
28 Sandilands was ingeniously able to gain a reprieve from the General Assembly later

that year, on the grounds that the teaching of Canon Law was still necessary as Scottish
marriage and property law were still governed by canon decrees. He then demitted this
office and became the professor of Civil Law. See AUL, MS K36, 57, 61; John Spalding,
Memorialls of the Troubles in Scotland and England A.D. 1624–A.D. 1645, ed. John Stuart
(2 vols, Aberdeen, 1850–1), i. 166, 187–8, 241; Gordon, History of Scots Affairs, iii. 49.
29 He was also chosen as commissioner to the General Assembly on 23 June 1640. AUL,

MS K36, 58–60.
30 For full details, see Denlinger, ‘Swimming with the Reformed tide’.
31 Spalding, Memorialls of the Troubles, i. 300–1.
22 History of Universities
college for good.32 With him came the end of the period of intellectual
innovation and excitement seen in Aberdeen under the ‘Doctors’, all too
briefly glimpsed in a record of the curriculum taught in Aberdeen in 1641
and which featured authors including Bartholomew Keckermann and
Johannes Alsted.33
Out of the two colleges at Aberdeen, King’s undoubtedly occupied most
of the Covenanter’s attentions. However, the General Assembly which
met at Aberdeen in the summer of 1640 also sent a separate commission
of visitation to meet at Marischal College, which briefly convened on
5 August 1640.34 The minutes of the visitation committee—which
included the Earl Marischal, William Mure of Rowallan, Robert Baillie,
and a range of local Aberdeen officials and elders—are sparse, perhaps
because the staff at the college had proven themselves amenable to sup-
porting the Covenant. With the death of Robert Baron in the preceding
year, the main representative of the ‘Doctors’ at Marischal College had
been removed, and the visitors could find little fault with the faith and
learning of Principal Patrick Dun and the three regents of the college,
except to exhort them ‘to continew faithfuliee and diligentlie and in these
dangerous tymes to go befoir utheris amongis whome they leived in ane
maner of good example’.35 However, they did advocate that by 1 March
1641 all staff and students should have the Covenant explained to them
and be given a chance to sign it, with a register kept of all those who signed
and those who did not, suggesting that the process of ideological conform-
ity to the Covenant at Marischal was still far from complete in 1640.
While Aberdeen and Glasgow bore the brunt of inquisition by the
assembly, the University of St Andrews did not escape unscathed. The
English Service Book had apparently been used in services at the New
College (also known as St Mary’s) in the town ‘for some yeares or tyme
before . . . without quarrell’, and the masters and regents in St Andrews
had also initially condemned the Covenant, but only in writing and not in
print, so their objections were ‘not to be seen commonly’.36 By summer
1638 the principals of each of the colleges at St Andrews—Robert Howie,

32 Ibid, ii. 17–18. 33 Reid, ‘Reformed scholasticism’.

34 For the minutes, see AUL, MS M91 (Marischal College Visitation Papers, 1636–
1717), item 2. These are not printed in Peter J. Anderson, Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae
Aberdonensis: Selections from the Records of the Marischal College and University, MDXCIII–
MDCCCLX (3 vols, Aberdeen, 1889–98).
35 The three regents are named as John Rae, Alexander Whyte, and William Dun (the

commission also ordered the Earl Marischal to appoint a fourth regent as soon as possible).
However, only Rae (MA 1625) is on record elsewhere as a regent in the 1630s; no note of
the other two regents is recorded, though an ‘Alexander White’ (Bajan, 1646) is recorded as
a regent in the 1650s. (Anderson, Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae Aberdonensis, ii. 34, 36).
36 Gordon, History of Scots Affairs, i. 6, 51.
Another random document with
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 — Se taas ei kuulu teille, sanoi hän, samalla tavattomasti
punastuen.

Veri kuohahti päähäni. Mutta silloin tuli Kemppainen konttoriin.

— Agiteeraamassako Kemppainenkin on ollut? kysyin hetken

kuluttua.

— Jaoin maisteri Asplundin pyynnöstä vaalilippuja muutamiin

taloihin, kun hänellä ei itsellään ollut aikaa, oli vastaus.

— Mutta nythän on konttoriaika.

— Muissa puuhissa nyt kaikki muutkin näkyvät olevan.

— Te molemmat saatte kuitenkin olla työssänne. Niin kauvan kun

minä olen tässä talossa, lienee minulla myös jotain sanottavaakin
täällä.

— Kun tässä tietäisi ketä milloinkin on toteltava. Asplundiakin

olemme luulleet isännäksi.

Tehkää liikkeesen kuulumattomat työt vapaina aikoinanne, mutta

työaika pysykää paikoillanne. Ken ei siihen suostu, olkoon pois
kokonaan, sanoin ja poistuin konttorista.

Kuulin naurua jälkeeni, josta yhä enemmän harmistuin. Jonkun

aikaa puodissa oltuani palasin konttoriin, tarkoituksessa puhua heille
tyynemmin ja asiallisemmin. Muistui mieleeni miten paljon rouva
Nurhosen aikana itsekin käytin vapautta, ja halusin äskeisen
kiivauteni vaikutuksia lieventää. Mutta he olivat molemmat
poistuneet. Tästä minun suuttumukseni taas kohosi, sillä tiesin
seuraavana päivänä joutuvani asiasta selontekoihin.
 Kun sittemmin menin vaalipaikalle, oli kiihotus siellä täydessä
vauhdissaan. Ovilla ja käytävillä seisoi miehiä lippujaan tarjoillen,
eteisessä koetettiin vielä mieliä muuttaa ja tunnettuja vastapuoleen
miehiä tuskin tervehdittiin. Omain miesten kanssa supateltiin
kaikellaisia vaalijuttuja, missä vaarallinen korva vaan vältettiin.

Vaaliajan loppupuolella kerääntyivät suuret joukot uteliaita

tuloksesta tietoa odottamaan, joukossa myöskin Nurhonen ja
Kemppainen. En ollut heitä huomaavinani.

Kun toimitus oli loppunut, äänet laskettu ja yleisö tulosta

kuulemaan kutsuttu, kohosi jännitys korkeimmilleen. Oli kuin
jokainen odottaisi häntä koskevaa tärkeätä oikeuden päätöstä.
Vaalin toimittaja lukee tuloksen ja useat kirjoittavat äänimääriä
muistikirjoihinsa. Kauppaseuran lista on voittanut suurellaisella
enemmistöllä muuten, paitsi että postinhoitajan sijalle on valituksi
tullut lehtori Renfors. Eräät sekalistat ovat tämän muutoksen
aikaansaaneet.

Yleisö poistuu, toiset nauraen ja ilkkuen, toiset noloina ja ilkeitä

sanasutkauksia viskellen. Ulkona kadulla seisotaan vielä suurissa
ryhmissä, sitten hajotaan kukin omille teilleen kuin suuren tehtaan
työväki päivätyönsä päätyttyä.

Vaalin lopputulokseen on ratkaisevasti vaikuttanut niitten

käsityöläisten kateus, jotka eivät olleet yleisen kokouksen listalla. He
vaikuttivat kauppaseuran listan hyväksi estääksensä
ammattikilpailijainsa pääsemästä huomatumpaan asemaan kuin
missä itsekään olivat.

Muitten mukana menin sinäkin iltana Seurahuoneelle, jonne

joukolla saapui kaupungin herroja, etupäässä voittaneen listan
miehiä. Myöskin Kemppainen ja Nurhonen tulivat sinne. He liikkuivat
tottumattoman epävarmuudella ja näyttivät olevan erimielisiä
valittavasta istuinpaikasta. Kemppainen, jota tällaisissa
miesseuroissa ei vielä näihinkään aikoihin ollut näkynyt, halusi
piiloisaa paikkaa, jonkalaisen he sitten valitsivatkin.

Kumma kyllä, en ollenkaan jakanut seuralaisteni äänekästä iloa

vaalin tuloksesta. Niin suuresti kuin vastakkainen tulos minua olisi
harmittanutkin, tuntui sittenkin kun ei nytkään kaikki olisi käynyt
parhaalla tavalla. Lisäksi vaivasi minua tieto Kemppaisen ja
Nurhosen läsnäolosta, vaikkeivät he edes samassa huoneessakaan
istuneet. Kenellekään hyvästiä sanomatta läksin hetimiten pois,
ajatuksissani ihmetellen mitenkä ja mistä syystä niin suuresti
innostuin vaalissa työskentelemään. Eihän minulle tämän kaupungin
asiat mitään kuulu, päättelin. Järjestäkööt juomakauppansa ja muut
kysymyksensä miten parhaaksi näkevät ne, jotka itse saavat
vaikutuksiakin kokea.

Kävellessäni kulin Löfbergin matalalla olevan asunnon ohi ja näin

siellä väet istuvan hauskassa teenjuonnissa.

Vaikka oli jo myöhäinen iltahetki, en voinut olla sisään

poikkeamatta. Heidän seurastaan hengähti sellainen iloinen,
elinhaluinen tuulahdus, että tuntui kuin astuisi toiseen maailmaan. Ja
kuitenkin puhuivat hekin päivän vaalista, kertoellen kuulemiaan
naurettavia yksityistapauksia, jotka täti Löfbergiä suuresti huvittivat.

— Onnea nyt voittajille!

-— Jopa tekin joudatte meitä muistamaan!

— Ettekä ole edes voittokemuissa!

 Kysymyksiä ja huudahtuksia sateli sellaisella nopeudella, ettei
niihin ollut yrittämistäkään vastata. Enkä minä kiiruhtanut mitään
sanomaankaan.

— Kas kun on ylpeä, ettei enää mitään puhukkaan, jatkoi rouva

Löfberg.

Eikö ole syytäkin, sanoin viimein.

— Älkää kehuko, sanoi rouva, me ylenkatsotut ja halveksitut

naiset sittenkin ollaan vaalin tulos ratkaistu.

Hän ja vanhimmat tyttärensä olivat myöskin innostuneet vaalista ja

keränneet eräiltä kaupungin naisilta valtakirjojakin. Mutta he eivät
äänestäneet kummallakaan yleisellä listalla, vaan laittoivat oman
sellaisen, jonka vaikutuksesta Renfors tuli valituksi.

— Hänestäkö teidän ylpeytenne? kysyin.

— Ennen hän kun tuo postimestari rutale. Renfors ainakin estää

ihmisiä nukkumasta. Sitäpaitse olemme me naiset tottelevaisia
käskylle rakastaa vihamiehiäänkin. — Mutta tiedättekö ketä muita
me äänestimme?

— Kuinka sen tietäisin, sanoin, vaikka vaalin tuloksen julkaisun

kuulleena heti arvasin tarkoituksensa.

— Me äänestimme myöskin teitä ja Asplundia.

— Teidän puolueesenne sulkeutuu siis kaikellaiset eri ainekset.

— Me vastustamme kaikkea valtaa ja harrastamme eri

mielipiteitten edustusoikeutta.
 — No, kyllähän te Renforsissa saitte hyvän edustajan.

— Niin, nauroi hän, en minäkään usko että hän olisi meidän

tavalla menetellyt.

— Hän sai kyllä tulla valituksi, sanoin. Pääasia on ettei hän saanut
lisää miehiä riveihinsä.

— Mutta tiedättekö mitä tästä seuraa, jatkoi rouva teeskennellyllä

vakavuudella. Nyt perustetaan suuri yhtiökauppa, eikä kauppiailta
enää osteta minkäänlaista tavaraa.

— Lehtori Renfors tulee kai sen hoitajaksi.

— No, ei suinkaan. Mutta esimerkiksi Asplund ja Nurhoset.

— Silloin ei ole hätää.

— Niin te sanotte, mutta toista ajattelette.

Ja sitten he kaikki sanoivat minun kalpenevan tästä uutisesta,

saivat minun siten hämilleni ja väittämänsä kalpenemisen sijasta
punastumaan, josta yleinen iloisuus vaan lisääntyi.

Lopulta ruvettiin asioista vakavastikin puhumaan.

— Hauska tuoksahdus tuo oli, sanoi rouva, kun kerran osoitettiin

eloa täälläkin. Mutta niin tavattoman paljon halpamaisuutta ja
pikkumaisuutta oli taas suurten sanain takana. Kansalainen sai nyt
kerran suun täydeltä puhua uusista aatteista ja ajan vaatimuksista,
aivan kuin se niitäkin hyväksyisi. Kaikessa näkyi
pikkukaupunkimainen kunnian ja vallan himo. Kun uudet aatteet ja
oikea kansanvaltaisuus kerran täälläkin saavat jalan sijaa ja kansa ja
työväki heräävät itsetietoisuuteen, niin nämä johtajat tulevat olemaan
ensimäisiä vastustajain riveissä. He edustavat ylimyspuolueellista
harvain valtaa, vaikka taistelussa kilpailijaansa rahavaltaa vastaan
käyttävät kaikkia käytettävinä olevia apukeinoja. Minä en ollenkaan
jaksa käsittää siinä mitään aatteellista eroa, kenen puodista viinat
ostetaan. Ne ovat samoja ja päihdyttävät samalla tavalla, ostipa ne
mistä tahansa. Koko yhtiökauppakysymys on kunnallisen politiikan
saivartelumuotoja, joka oikeata raittiusaatetta johdattaa vaan
ahdasmieliseen lahkolaisuuteen ja siten helposti loihtii esiin
utukuvan, joka luullaan saavutetuksi päämaaliksi, vaikkei itse
asiassa olla työtä vielä kunnollisesti aloitettukaan.

— Teillähän on täysin hyväksyttävät mielipiteet, sanoin nauraen.

— Niin, kyllä kai ne teille nyt soveltuvat. Mutta siinä luulossa minä
olenkin että rammat ja raajarikot ovat pasuunatut sotaretkelle, jonka
hyöty on hyvin epäiltävää lajia. Innostettakoon ihmisiä suurempiin
vaatimuksiin, niin vaikutus on pysyväisempää. Mutta sitä nämä
herrat eivät tahdo, sillä he pelkäävät samalla omaa valtaansa. Olen
aivan varma etteivät nämä kansan kasvattajat suinkaan tahtoisi
väkijuomia kokonaan poistettaviksi, sillä he kaikkein vähimmän
haluavat rakkaista iltatoteistaan luopua.

Rouva Löfberg alkoi jo tapansa mukaan innostua. Mutta samassa

tuli palvelustyttö viinitarjottimineen huoneesen. Kaikki pyrskähdimme
nauramaan.

— Hyvälle se lasi viiniäkin joskus maistuu, jatkoi hän, ja yhtäläistä

se on, olipa se ostettu Nurholasta tahi Renforsin yhtiökaupasta.

Nauraen otimme lasimme ja jatkoimme keskustelua.

 Ette suinkaan noilla totia juovilla kansan kasvattajilla kuitenkaan
Renforsia tarkoita? kysyin.

— Häntä ja kaikkia muita. Renfors on suuri tekopyhä niinkuin

kaikki, joilla Jumala on joka sormen päässä. Minun mielestäni hän
hyvin saattaa raittiusluennolta palattuaan käskeä kotonaan
keittämään totivettä.

— Ja kuitenkin te äänestätte häntä valtuuskuntaan, sanoin

kaikkien ja varsinkin itse rouvan nauraessa omille liioitteluilleen.

— Minä ihailin sitä rohkeata ja voimakasta tapaa, jolla hän

asiaansa Kansalaisessa ajoi. Näki, että se oli nyt hän eikä papin
kisälli, joka lehteen kirjoitti. Se oli vallan toisenlaista kuin Asplundin
nuoralla tanssiminen. Uusi Aika oli nyt kerran Kansalaisen kanssa
samaa mieltä, sen se sanoikin, mutta siinä välissä souti ja huopasi.
Kuta enemmän Asplund näihin pikkuasioihin takertuu, sitä
heikommaksi muuttuu hänen kokonaisuutensa. Hänkään ei enää
uskalla vaatia koko askelta. Nyt hän nähtävästi mieltyi myöskin
lehtorien listan kansanvaltaisuuteen. Mokomaankin. Nämä
käsityöläismestarit eivät suinkaan kansanvaltaisuutta edusta. Mutta
Asplundikaan ei uskaltanut vaatia yhtään varsinaista työmiestä
valittavaksi, niinkuin olisi pitänyt tehdä. Täällä puhutaan ja
pauhataan kauppiaspuolueesta ja lehtoripuolueesta, aivan kuin ne
mitään puolueita olisivat. Ne molemmat muodostuvat vielä yhteiseksi
ylimyspuolueeksi, silloin kun oikea vapaamielinen
kansanvaltaisuuskysymys saa täällä jalansijaa. Ei, Asplundikaan ei
ole se mies, joka Uudesta Ajasta tekisi puhtaasti aatteellisen,
olojamme puhdistavan ja aina korkealle tähtäävän lehden.

— Tehän olette Granbergin kanssa samaa mieltä Asplundin

sopivaisuudesta sanomalehtimieheksi, vaikka syyt vähän eroavat.
 Rouva Löfberg muuttui vakavaksi, kun hän jatkoi:

— Jaa, se Granbergin asia on hyvin ikävä. Hän tahtoisi lehden

ajamaan vaan yksinomaan hänen pikkuasioitaan, ja silloin se
muuttuisi vielä Kansalaistakin mitättömämmäksi. Hän on nyt saanut
Asplundista tässä asiassa vastustajan itselleen, mutta kuitenkin on
lehti hänen vaikutuksestaan viime aikoina takertunut kaikkiin
kunnallisiin pikkuasioihin ja syrjäyttänyt korkeamman ja
kohottavamman puolen. Ennen kirjoitti Asplund uusista henkisistä
virtauksista, nyt ovat punssikaupat, sataman korjaukset ja muut
sellaiset suurina kysymyksinä. Hän on laskeutunut.

— Hän tahtoo aatteita sovelluttaa käytäntöön.

— Ikävätä, jos ne käytännössä eivät jotain kadunkorjausasiata

suurempia, lehden pitää olla näitten olojen yläpuolella.

Tässä seurassa yleisen tavan mukaan tein vastaväitteitä.

— On paikkakunnan lehdellä myös paikallis-kunnallinenkin

tehtävänsä, sanoin.

— Se puoli pitäisi olla sivuasiana. Siksi, huokasi hän, onkin kovin

ikävää, jos Granberg nyt pääsee lehdestä määräämään. Asplundista
olisi sentään vielä toivoa, ja hän on vakuutukselleen rehellinen ja
toimii parhaan ymmärryksensä mukaan.

Rouva Löfbergillä oli tietoja Granbergin aikeista lehden suhteen.

Hän koettelee saada toisenmielisiä jäseniä johtokuntaan ja sitten
erottaa Asplundin, sanoi rouva.

— Ainakin minun paikkani jää täytettäväksi, vastasin.

 Tästä siirtyi keskustelu meidän Nurholan miesten seonneisiin
väleihin ja minun nykyiseen asemaani ympäristössäni. Kuten aina
ennenkin tässä seurassa, muutuin avomieliseksi, kerroin tapahtumat
välillämme ja sisäiset ristiriitaisuudet itsessäni sellaisella
luottamuksella kuin omalle äidilleni, omassa kodissani näitä
kertoilisin.

— Kun suoraan tunnustan, sanoin, niin en minä suinkaan kunnia-

asianani juomakaupan jatkamista pidä. Varsin kernaasti voisin siitä
luopuakin. Mutta kun Asplundin vaatimus on tullut näin äkkiä ja sen
käytännöllisiä tuloksia punnitsematta, niin häntä täytyy vastustaa
siinäkin pelossa, että hän mahdollisesti vaatii meidän liikkeemme
muittenkin periaatteittensa uhriksi. En ollenkaan ihmettelisi, jos hän
eräänä päivänä huomaisi tuollaisen kertomanne yhtiökaupan
ainoaksi hyväksyttäväksi, ja silloin hänen omatuntonsa taas
pakottaisi hänet vaatimaan koko meidän liikkeemme lopettamista.

— Kylläpä tekin liiottelette, sanoi rouva. Kun tästä ennätetään

tasaantua, niin kaikki muuttuu hyväksi ja ennalleen. Älkää te ottako
asioita niin raskaasti ja antako alakuloisuudelle valtaa itsessänne.

Ennalleen muuttumista minä epäilin. Sanoin Asplundilla jo pitkät

ajat olleen vastenmielisyyttä kauppiasalaa kohtaan ja siitä sen
vähitellen kehittyneen minuakin vastaan.

— Lisäksi on hänessä toinenkin ihminen, joka katsoo

velvollisuudekseen auttaa Nurhosia ja liikkeen nykyisestä
omistuksesta huolimatta pitää hän heillä olevan etuoikeuden sen
asioihin. Ja Nurhosten mielestä olen minä nyt, kun pojat alkavat olla
miehiä, ehdottomasti liikaa talossa.
 — Osoittakaa te vaan hyvää tahtoa välien ennalleen
saattamisessa ja oikein selittäkää Asplundille asiat ja mielentilanne,
niin kyllä hän kaikki ymmärtää, sanoi rouva. Hän puhui tyynesti,
sydämellisellä osanotolla, vapaana siitä rohkeasta liioittelusta, joka
oli hänen luonteensa ominaisuus innostuessaan.

— Käsittäähän Asplund, jatkoi hän, ettei liike enää ole Nurhosten

enempää kun teidän muittenkaan. Tehän sen olette tehneet siksi
mikä se nyt on, ja teillä siinä siis täytyy olla enin sanomista. Nurhoset
ovat kokemattomia nuorukaisia, eivät he vielä kykenisikään sen
hoitoon. Mutta onhan heillä siltä tilaisuus olla liikkeen palveluksessa.

— Isännän asemassa ei voi olla useampia kuin yksi.

— Siinä pysytte te. Asplund on vaikutuksille herkkä ja hyvää

tarkoittava luonne. Hän saa nykyään tietonsa yksipuolisina.
Lähestykää häntä avomielisenä ja luottamuksella, ja kaikki käy
niinkuin sanoin.

— Heitä on toisella puolella monta vaikuttajaa, ja he ovat

alituisessa yhteydessä Asplundin kanssa.

— Kyllä järjellinen puhe häneen vaikuttaa paremmin kuin

ymmärtämättömien ihmisten lörpötykset.

— Periaatteet ja velvollisuudet ovat järkeä pyhemmät.

— Ne voi yhdistää.

— Niin voi helposti ajatella, mutta käytännössä on vaikea tätä

toteuttaa. Ja kiero väli lamauttaa työinnon ja tekee toiminnan
koneelliseksi. Kun kaikkialla näkee tyytymättömyyttä, muuttuu elämä
kiusallisen ikäväksi. Omat apulaisetkin, esim. Kemppainen —
 — Kemppainen! Mitä te hänestäkin välitätte. Ymmärtäähän hänet.

— Ei hän kuitenkaan Miiaa saa, sekaantui eräs talon neideistä

puheesen.

Naurahdimme.

— Mutta hän tekee parhaansa lopulta onnistuakseen, ja katsoo

sen menestymisen ehdoksi ynseän mielen pitämisen minua kohtaan.
Sillä tavoin luulee hän pysyvänsä hyvissä väleissä Nurhosten
kanssa, melkein urheana sankarina.

— Älkää te sellaisista välittäkö. Kaikkialla maailmassa on ihmisillä

vastoinkäymisensä, mutta ne pitää voittaa, hillitä itsensä ja säilyttää
tyytyväinen luonteensa. Sitäpaitse on teillä ymmärtäväinen Helander
puolellanne.

— Hän on kyllästynyt kaikkiin meidän asioihimme, ja haluaisi

päästä niistä erilleen.

Rouva Löfberg jatkoi lohdutustaan. Puheli kuin äiti pojalleen. Minä

lausuin epäilyksiä hänen hyväuskoisuutensa mahdollisuudesta,
mutta mielessäni myönsin hänen olevan paljon oikeassakin. Minussa
heräsi hiljainen toivo siitä, että asiat todellakin voisivat muodostua
niinkin kuin hän uskoi. Ja se toivo virkistytti mieltäni. Sillä tähän
kaupunkiin ja tähän ympäristöön tunsin itseni monesta syystä siksi
kiintyneeksi, siksi kotiutuneeksi, etten eroani surumielettä voinut
ajatella.

— Älkää oleksiko paljoa yksinänne, sanoi hän, siinä saa

raskasmielisyys vallan. Seurustelkaa te yhä vielä nuorten kanssa ja
antakaa kunta-hirviönkin vähemmän vaikuttaa itseenne. Alkakaa
muitten nuorten mukana taas hiihtää ja retkeillä, siinä raskas mieli
häviää.

Nuoret kertoivat heillä jo olevan suunniteltuna maallakäynti retken,

kun on tullut näin hyvät ajokelit. Oli päätetty tulla tähän samaan
taloon, jossa nyt vietän kesääni.

Osanottajatkin olivat he jo ajatelleet.

— Yksinänikö minun on ajettava? kysyin nauraen.

— Hilma Raivan retkelle pääsy riippuu teistä, vastattiin.

XIII.

Heinäkuun 15 p.

Tänään alotin päiväni asettumalla rantakivelle istumaan matalassa

ruohikossa sakeana viliseviä kalanpoikasia katselemaan. Oli tyyni ja
lämmin päivä, ja kalaset putkahtelivat lokerosta lokeroon, lirputtivat
häntäänsä, poistuivat, palasivat takaisin ja olivat niin tyytyväisen ja
pelottoman näköisiä, kuin ei heitä koskaan vaara uhkaisikaan.

Minun kävi sääli noita kalanpoikaisraukkoja, sillä ahnaskitainen

hauki piilotteli kaislistossa, sopivassa hetkessä heihin hyökätäkseen.
Mutta sitä eivät pienet kalaset ajattele, vaan jatkavat viehättävää
puikkeloimistaan, pahimman raatelijan hauenkin poikasen kesyssä
leikissä mukana ollen.

Itsensä säilyttämisen vaisto näillä pienillä kaloilla kuitenkin jo on.

Kun liikun rannalla, niin pakenevat, vaan kun hiljaa istun, palaavat he
uudelleen. Tahi kun hauki sekaansa karkaa, niin hypähtävät, pakoon
uivat, vaan pian taas takaisin tulevat. Hauin kitaan on silloin
varmaankin joku heistä hävinnyt, mutta sitä ei huomata eikä siitä sen
enempää välitetä. Ja leikki ja ruuan murusten etsiminen alkaa
uudestaan.
 Aivan kuin ihmiselämässä.

Leikkikää, kalanpoikaset, pian teillekin rannikko tulee liian

matalaksi, ja te syöksytte syvään veteen satoine vaaroineen. Te
olette silloin isompia, teistä on hyötyä suurempien, väkevämpien
vatsoille, silloin on teillä väijyjä joka kiven takana, kamala koukku
jokaisessa makupalassa, sadat solmut ja silmukat salmien vesissä.
Vaara joka puolella.

Mutta parempaa kohtaloa te ette ole ansainneetkaan. Itsehän te

heikommillenne samalla tavoin teette, kuinka siis voisi parempi
kohtalo olla oma osanne. Kun tulette suuriksi ja voimakkaiksi, ette
pienempiänne tekään armahda. Ja siksi on teidän omakin olemassa
olonne vaan väliaste toisten olemukselle.

Näin filosofeerasin minä puoliääneen rantakivellä, pikku Ainon

istuessa vierelläni ja silmät suurina kuunnellessa puheitani.

— Kalat ovat pahoja kun syövät toisiaan, sanoi hän.

— No, se on kuinka sen ottaa. Mutta älä sinä sellaisia ajattele.

Mene tuonne toisten kanssa leikkimään, sanoin maantiellä teuhaavia
mökin lapsia osoittaen.

— Tuleeko setäkin? kysyi hän.

— Ei, lapsukaiseni, setä on vanha, leikkinsä jo leikkinyt.

— Leikkikö setä silloin paljon, kun setä oli pieni?

— Leikki, leikki.

— Onko hyvä paljo leikkiä?

 — On, Ainoni. Nuorena pitää leikkiä ja olla iloinen. Kun kasvaa
isoksi ja tulee vanhaksi, niin leikit muuttuvat tosiksi.

— Miksei voi vanhanakin leikkiä?

— Silloin on niin paljon muita huolia. Silloin pitää tehdä työtä, että
te pikku Ainot saatte aikanne iloita.

— Ketä varten setä tekee työtä?

— Voi lapseni, kun minä sen tietäisinkin. Sedällä ei ole ketään,

jonka vuoksi hän elää, ja siksi setä näin syrjään vetäytynyt onkin.

— Miksi setä on yksinään?

— Ei ole toveria.

— Kun Aino tulee isoksi, niin Aino tulee sedän toveriksi.

— Rakas lapsi! Silloin sedällä on kyynärä hyveä maata, pari

pappien sanoa, kolme lukkarin lukua, kerta kellon helkähystä. Setä
on silloin jo kuollut.

— Kuka sedän hautaa?

— En tiedä, hyvä Aino, vastasin, ja samalla tuli kyyneleet silmiini.

Hän katsoi minua kummeksuen.

— Onko Aino paha sedälle? kysyi hän sitten kuin peloissaan.

Otin hänet syliini ja suutelin hänen valkoista tukkaansa.

— Sinä olet pikkuinen enkeli, ikävä vaan että sinustakin täytyy

erota.
 Hän kietoi pienet kätensä kaulaani ja vakuutti ettei koskaan päästä
setää lähtemään. Mutta silloin kuului läheisestä salmesta
tervehdyshuudahdus. Ukko Raiva ja Hilma saapuivat sieltä
soutuveneellä. Pikku Aino ujostui ja juoksi sisälle.

Otin onkeni rannalta ja nousin heidän veneesensä. Heillä oli eväät

mukanansa ja me soudimme eräälle yksinäiselle saarelle. Kun
olimme muutaman ahvenisen onkineet, me armotta ne perkasimme,
keitimme kalakeittoa ja söimme päivällisemme kauniissa
siimeksessä, äskeisten tunnelmaini minuakaan ollenkaan
häiritsemättä. Kesäinen luonto virkistytä mieltä, olimme iloisia, ja
melkein leikimme kuin mökin lapset äsken tanhualla. Oli kuin ukko
Raivakin olisi parisen vuosikymmentä nuorentunut. Minusta hävisi
kaikki raskasmieliset ajatukset, melkeinpä unohdin nykyisen
asemani ja olin kuin ennen aikaan Löfbergiläisten veneretkellä.

Kiipesin Hilman kanssa saarella olevalle korkealle mäelle, ja

ihailimme sieltä mahtavaa näköalaa. Näkyi rehevässä
kasvullisuudessa olevia saaria, kiemurtelevia salmia ja laajoja
selänteitä. Näkyi myös läheinen kaupunki.

Näköala muutti ajatukset todellisuuteen ja saattoi rintaan

kaihomielisyyttä. Nykyisyys avautui eteeni ja minä tunsin seisovan!
kuin entisyyteni haudalla. Aloin Hilmalle kertoella aamupäiväistä
keskusteluani pikku Ainon kanssa. "Kuka sedän hautaa", toistin
ääneeni, aivan kuin ajatuksissani.

Hilma muuttui vakavaksi, melkein sanattomaksi. Enkä minäkään

sen enempää tätä keskustelua jatkanut. Uneutimme itsemme,
piirtelimme maata käteen sattuneella puun oksalla, mutta kuitenkin
luulen meidän toisemme ymmärtäneen, vaikka ääneti istuimme.
Emmekä me paikoiltamme liikahtaneet ennenkuin ukko Raivan ääni
alhaalta kutsui Hilmaa kahvin keittoon, hänellä kun oli tuli jo valmiina.

— Niin, sanoi viimein Hilma noustessamme ja lähteissämme,

eihän kaikki tässä maailmassa mene niinkuin sitä nuorena kuvittelee.
Mutta elämän kohtaloihin tulee mukautua ja tyytyä. Jos yksi
vesikupla särkyy, pitää toinen puhaltaa sijaan. Jos yksi elämän
päämaali pirstautuu, on muodostettava itsellensä toinen ja
suunnattava pyrkimyksensä sitä kohti.

— Ihminen on nuori vaan kerran, vastasin, vaan yhden kerran

mahdollinen uraansa alkamaan. Kun minäkin kymmenisen vuotta
sitten jätin tämän kaupungin, luulin vielä toisessa paikkakunnassa
voivani alottaa uuden, kokemuksiini perustuvan elämän. Mutta
mitään sellaista ei oloni sen jälkeen ole ollut.

— Ihminen ei tule koskaan liian vanhaksi innostumaan ja jotain

yrittämään. Muistelehan vaan täti Löfbergiä. Sinä et ole nähtävästi
vielä vapautunut siitä pettymyksen katkeruudesta, jolla täältä lähdit.

— En luule niin. Se oli sekin aika vaan elämän tavallista kulkua.

Meille käy kuin kaloille vedessä, joita Ainon kanssa katselimme: yksi
ja toinen häviää, mutta yleinen hyörinä ja puikkelehtiminen jatkuu
keskeytymättä. Yksilö vaan voi joutua kaiken elämän ulkopuolelle.

— Se riippuu hänestä itsestään.

— Kenties, vastasin verkalleen.

Olimme ennättäneet ales, ja puhelumme keskeytyi. Kun leikkien

olimme lähteneet ja vakavina palasimme, näytti se ukko Raivaa
hämmästyttävän. Hän katsoi meihin pitkään ja kysyvästi.
 Illalla soudin minä heidän veneensä kaupunkiin asti, ja palasin
maantietä kävellen tänne asuntooni. Murrosmäkeä ales
laskeutuessani istuunnuin kivelle maantien viereen ja vaivuin
muistelmiini. Kulin ajatuksissani alusta loppuun erään sunnuntain,
jolloin olimme maalle ajaneet, ja joka päivä paljon vaikutti minun
kohtalooni.

Se oli vähän jälkeen tuon kiivaan valtuusmiesvaalin. Minä ajoin

Hilman kanssa. Meillä oli edellisinä päivinä ollut pari kokousta, joista
Hilma mielellään halusi yksityistietoja, ja joita minä suurella
avomielisyydellä hänelle kerroin. Välimme oli yleiseenkin avonainen,
kuten Löfbergiläisten kesken aina, mutta varsinkaan nyt en minä
kuulemiani enkä omia mietelmiäni vähimmälläkään tavalla salannut.
Koko menomatkan ja palatessakin aina tähän mäkeen asti olivat
samat asiat meillä keskustelun aiheena.

Granberg oli pitänyt sanomalehtiyhtiön johtokunnan kokouksen,

joka oli tapahtunut peräti tyynesti ja virallisesti. Päätettiin
vuosikokouksen aika ja laadittiin lehdelle seuraavan vuoden
menoarvio, samallainen kuin entinenkin. Ei sanaakaan lausuttu
lehden menettelytavasta eikä muutenkaan viime aikain tapahtumista
puhuttu. Mutta selvään huomasi Granbergilla jotain olevan tekeillä.

Sen sijaan ei meidän ja Nurhoslaisten kokous pysynyt yhtä

tyynenä, vaikka alku näyttikin lupaavalta. Täti Löfbergin neuvot ja
vakuutukset asiain hyvin järjestymisestä olivat minuun vaikuttaneet.
Olisin ollut sovitteluihin suostuvainen, vaikkapa juomakaupan
lakkautukseenkin, jos keskenäinen luottamus ja hyvä suhde vaan
olisi ollut pelastettavissa. Myöskin Asplund oli hillitty, mutta hyvin
vakava, melkein surumielinen. Rouva Nurhosta edusti
kokouksessamme John.
 Ensiksi ilmoitti Asplund että John ja Selim nyt olisivat tilaisuudessa
ottamaan yhtiössä vielä avonaisena olevan viidennen osan, kun
kippari Saira on suostunut heille lainaamaan tähän tarvittavat 10,000
markkaa. Helander selitti ettei mainittua osuutta enää voida tällä
summalla saada, vaan että se maksaisi viidennen osan liikkeen
nykyisestä arvosta.

Mutta emmehän mekään ole enempää maksaneet, sanoi Asplund,

ja
Nurhosille on tämä osuus alkujaan luvattu.

— Heille on luvattu oikeus päästä osakkaaksi, mutta hinnan tulee

olla liikkeen arvon mukainen. Silloin, monta vuotta sitten, kun yhtiö
perustettiin, olisi hinta ollut 10,000 markkaa. Suottako me siis tässä
oltaisiin vuosikausia rimpuiltu vekseleissä, kerjätty takausmiehiä,
kiinnitetty rahojamme ilman mitään hyötyä, itse vaan maksaen niistä
kalliita korkoja. Meidän voitto-osuutemme on jätetty liikkeesen ja
pitäisi siellä löytymän, sanoi Helander.

— Nyt on parempi ostaa minun osuuteni kuin uusia osia ajatella,

sanoin.

— Ja minun, yhtyi Helander.

— Teillä on omat selityksenne, vastasi Asplund miettivänä.

Nurhonen kysyi paljoko minun osuuteni maksaisi?

— Neljännen osan liikkeen nykyisestä kirjanpitoarvosta, vastasin.

— Kylläpä te tahtoisitte hyötyä.

— En enempää kuin minkä muutkin ovat hyötyneet, vastasin.

 Kun sitten ryhdyttiin kokouksen varsinaisesta asiasta puhumaan,
esitti Asplund vaatimuksensa täsmällisin sanoin. Hän tahtoi kaiken
juomatavarankaupan lakkautettavaksi, koska hänen vakuutuksensa
ei sallinut hänen olevan tämän tavaran kauppiaana, sitten tahtoi hän
Nurhosille oikeutta päästä viidenneksi yhtiömieheksi 10,000 markalla
ja viimeksi, koska hän oli yhtiöön ruvennut ja sen perustamisen
yleiseenkin ymmärtänyt Nurhosten vuoksi tapahtuneen, että Selim
otetaan liikkeen palvelukseen.

— Tämä olisi hyvä senkin vuoksi, sanoi hän, kun Saarela

nähtävästi hankkii eroaan, että olisi useampia asioihin perehtyneitä
miehiä talossa.

— Hankin eroani? toistin minä kysyvästi.

— Niin, me olemme kuulleet viimeisen matkasi tarkoittaneen

paikan hankintaa itsellesi.

— Te kuulette enemmän kuin itse tiedänkään, sanoin. Ennenkuin

voin hankkia itselleni uutta tointa, täytyy minun päästä tästä
vapaaksi.

— Minä toivoisin edelleen voitavan olla yhdessä, vastasi Asplund.

Sinun pitäisi vaan antaa enemmän valtaa sisälliselle ihmisellesi.

— Heitä nyt nuo moraalisaarnat toiseen kertaan, keskeytti

Helander.
Onko vielä muita vaatimuksia?

— Ei ole. Sen vaan voisin lisätä että juomakaupan

lakkauttamisesta luultavasti olisi taloudellistakin hyötyä, koska siten
saataisiin se suuri ostajakunta, joka nyt on kauppiaihin suuttunut, ja