and it appears to have finally reinstated him in favour. In 1592, the earl received a parliamentary ratification of his acts as concerned the mission, and was at the same time empowered to recover, from a forfeited estate, the expense he had incurred, stated as amounting to 3156 merks.[1] Up to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the debt was, however, unrecovered,[2] and it is not probable that after that period it was ever paid.
In 1583, the earl was one of the commissioners appointed to superintend the "new erection" or alteration in management of the King's college of Aberdeen; and it is probable that the duties in which he was then engaged, prompted him, ten years afterwards, to perform that act of enlightened munificence, which has perpetuated his name as the founder of Marischal college. The charter of the university was granted by the earl on the 2nd April, 1593; it was approved of by the General Assembly of Dundee on the 24th of the same month, after having been submitted to the examination of a committee, and was ratified by Parliament on the 21st of July following. The college was endowed to maintain a principal, three regent professors, and six bursars. By the foundation, the languages and sciences appointed to be taught, were, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, natural history, geometry, geography, chronology, and astronomy. In opposition to the principle previously pursued, by which each professor conducted a class of students through all the branches of knowledge taught in any university, the subjects taught in Marischal college were divided among separate masters, each of whom adhered to his peculiar branch—an excellent regulation, afterwards departed from, but resumed in the middle of the eighteenth century.[3] Without descending to the particular benefits of this institution, the circumstance that many eminent names are connected with Marischal college, and that its small endowments have cultivated intellects which might have long lain unproductive, are sufficient of themselves to speak to the honour of its noble founder. There are 114 bursaries connected with the college, of the annual value of 1160. About 70 of these are open to competition. Two of them are of the annual value of 30 each, and are adjudged for excellence in mathematics to students who have studied that science for two sessions, and are held for two years. The bursaries range in value from £3 to £15 annually—the smallest paying the full fee of the possessor for the four years during which he remains at the university, and the larger frequently forming for a time the chief support of one or two individuals who would otherwise remain uneducated. They are carefully protected, as the rewards of talent and labour, and held by those who gain them as their right, independently of the authority of the officials of the university. The ancient buildings of the university having fallen into decay, the foundation of a splendid new building, in the Gothic style, from designs by Mr Archibald Simpson, architect, was laid, with masonic honours, by the Duke of Richmond, chancellor of the university, on the 18th of October, 1837. The builder's contract amounted to £21,420, of which sum £15,000, with interest thereon from 1826, was granted by government, the remainder being raised by private subscription. The new buildings were completed in 1842. Several new chairs have been instituted. The average number of students for the last twenty years has been—in arts, 190; in divinity, 120; in law, 35; in medicine, 84.
Within the same year, when Marischal college was founded, we find its patron
- ↑ W Act. Parl , iii. 541.
- ↑ A short relation of the origin of the Keiths in Scotland, with a list of the predecessors of the present earl Marischal of that kingdome, being ane abstract of the history of that noble family, anno Domini, 1690. Aberdeen, x die Aprilis, An. Dom. 1700.
- ↑ For a farther account of this matter, vide the memoir of Alexander Gerard in this collection.
