HENRYSON, or HENDERSON, Robert, a poet of the fifteenth century, is described as having- been chief schoolmaster of Dunfermline, and this is almost the only particular of his life that is sufficiently ascertained. According to one writer, he was a notary public, as well as a schoolmaster; and another is inclined to identify him with Henryson of Fordell, the father of James Henryson who was king's advocate and justice clerk, and who perished in the fatal battle of Flodden. This very dubious account seems to have originated with Sir Robert Douglas; who avers that Robert Henryson appears to have been a person of distinction in the reign of James the Third, and that he was the father of the king's advocate. Douglas refers to a certain charter, granted by the abbot of Dunfermline in 1478, where Robert Henryson subscribes as a witness;[1] but in this charter he certainly appears without any particular distinction, as he merely attests it in the character of a notary public. A later writer is still more inaccurate when he pretends that the same witness is described as Robert Henryson of Fordell;"[2] in this and other two charters which occur in the Chartulary of Dunfermline, he is described as a notary public, without any other addition.[3] That the notary public, the schoolmaster of Dunfermline, and the proprietor of Fordell, were one and the same individual, is by no means to be admitted upon such slender and defective evidence. Henryson, or, according to its more modern and less correct form, Henderson, was not at that period an uncommon surname. It is not however improbable that the schoolmaster may have exercised the profession of a notary. While the canon law prevailed in Scotland, this profession was generally exercised by ecclesiastics, and some vestiges of the ancient practice are still to be traced; every notary designates himself a clerk of a particular diocese; and by the act of 1584, which under the penalty of deprivation prohibited the clergy from following the profession of the law, they still retained the power of making testaments; so that we continue to admit the rule of the canon law, which sustains a will attested by the parish priest and two or three witnesses.[4] If therefore Henryson was a notary, it is highly probable that he was also an ecclesiastic, and if he was an ecclesiastic, he could not well leave any legitimate offspring. The poet, in one of his works, describes himself as "ane man of age;" and from Sir Francis Kinaston we learn that "being very old he died of a diarrhas or fluxe." With respect to the period of his decease, it is at least certain that he died before Dunbar, who in his Lament, printed in the year 1508, commemorates him among other departed poets:
"In Dunfermling he hes tane Broun,
With gude Mr Robert Hennsoun."
The compositions of Henryson evince a poetical fancy, and, for the period when he lived, an elegant simplicity of taste. He has carefully avoided that cumbrous and vitiated diction which began to prevail among the Scottish as well as the English poets. To his power of poetical conception he unites no inconsiderable skill in versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth orthography, might often be mistaken for those of a much more modern poet. His principal work is the collection of Fables, thirteen in number, which are written in a pleasing manner, and are frequently distinguished by their arch simplicity; but in compositions of this nature, brevity is a quality which may be considered
- ↑ Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, p. 518.
- ↑ Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. i. p. 88.
- ↑ Chartulary of Dunfermline, f. 64 a. Robert Hemyson is a witness to other two charters which occur in the same record, f. 63. a. b. His only mark of distinction is that of being designated Magister, while the names of several other witnesses appear without this title. He had perhaps taken the degree of master of arts.
- ↑ Decretal. Gregorii IX. lib. iii. tit. xxvi. cap. x.
