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Professor William Douglas
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A Note on Professor William Douglas from Scottish Notes and Queries, May 1934, Vol. XII, No. 5:
William Douglas, Professor of Divinity at King's College, 1644–1666, has been most unfortunate in his biographers. The printed notices about him are remarkably full of errors and misunderstandings. He is confused with his namesake of Aboyne, or with the great Robert Douglas, the Covenanting leader. He is given the wrong father and the wrong wife. And so on. It is extremely difficult to be wholly accurate in tracking down details in family histories, but in this case, some facts are to hand, which appeared to have escaped the eye of the searchers.
Douglas belonged to a very celebrated family which provided no fewer than seven provosts for the town of Elgin from the year 1488. They were the Douglases of Pittendreich, a house which produced the 7th Earl of Angus and the 4th Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland. The history of the family may be traced in the Douglas Book, Shaw’s History of the Province of Moray, and Douglas’s Lord Provosts of Elgin. William Douglas’s uncle was Alexander Douglas, Minister of Keith and Elgin, who became Bishop of Moray in 1602 and died in 1623. Shaw goes astray as to the identity of this uncle; but there is an interesting Life of him by Wodrow amongst the manuscripts in Glasgow University Library.
The professor’s father was George Douglas, 3rd son of Alexander Douglas, Provost of Elgin. He was minister of Cullen and constant moderator of his Presbytery from 1606 until relieved on account of infirmity in 1625. He had formerly been minister at Dallas, is frequently mentioned in the Cullen Town Council Minutes, and in the proceedings of the Presbytery, was made a Burgess of Aberdeen in 1628, and seems to have died at an advanced age in 1641.
His eldest son was Alexander Douglas, M.D., Provost of Banff, as is proved by a document in the Charter Room of Cullen House to which reference was recently made in these pages (S.N. & Q.,
Aug., 1933). William Douglas himself tells us in the Dedication of his Vindiciae Veritatis that he was a younger brother of this Dr. Alexander Douglas.
William Douglas entered King’s College in 1615. His signature duly appears in the Matriculation list. His regent was Patrick Guthrie, who at that date had been teaching in the College for about twenty years, having latterly been Sub-Principal, but who, in 1619, the year in which Douglas graduated, was presented to a parish. Douglas may have studied Theology under John Forbes who began to teach in 1620. He certainly entered upon his trials before the Presbytery of Cullen (later called Fordyce) on January 29, 1623. The minutes of this Presbytery begin at the close of 1622 and are extremely tattered and fragmentary but William Douglas’s name can be identified at various dates in 1623 and until July, 1624.
In 1627 he was already minister of the Parish of Forgue in the Presbytery of Turriff. His tombstone in St. Machar’s Churchyard states that he was sixteen years in this place before his appointment to King’s College in 1643–44. The records of the Presbytery of Turriff are wanting before 1642, but in the minutes of the Presbytery of Cullen there is a record of a meeting on May 10, 1627 to elect a teacher for the important Grammar School of Banff, and on this occasion delegates were present from the Presbytery of Turriff,
one of them being William Douglas. Scott’s Fasti gives the date of his admission to Forgue as 1628, which is clearly too late. His predecessor, James Hay, had ceased to be minister at Forgue at some date in 1626, according to the Banff Hornings (Vol. 1624–8, pp. 52, 58).
Douglas was selected for the Divinity Chair in October, 1643, and examined and admitted in January, 1644.
— G. D. Henderson
Notes from a family tree:
Rev/Prof/Master William
Douglas
b. c.1600 prob. Elgin,
co.Moray, Scotland; grew up
in Cullen where f. minister;
matric King’s College 1615
(sign. matriculation list)
under Reg’t Patrick Guthrie,
who taught there 20+ yrs;
graduated 1619; poss.
studied theology under Dr.
John Forbes who began
1620; entered Presbytery of
Cullen (later Fordyce) 20
Jan 1623; name appears on
tattered records ’til 1624; 15
Dec 1624 “William
Dowglas, porter [ass’t to the
Sacrist] of the New College
Aberdeen [Marischal] is
admitted burgess, exgratia.”
10 May 1627 delegate “from
Presb of Turrif ” to elect
new teacher for Grammar
School of Ban ; 1627
minister Parish of Forgue in
Presbytery of Turri ; “appt
by General Assembly in
place of Dr. [John] Forbes.”
Tombstone states at Forgue
16 yrs bef appt Prof. of Div.
Marischal; selected for chair
Oct 1643; examined &
admitted Jan 1644;
Professor 1643/44-1666;
grandson, John Dunlop,
bequeathed his library to
Marishal College; d. 30 Jan
1666, Aberdeen; bur. St.
Machar kirkyard, Old
Aberdeen.
m. Elizabeth Ross
prob. of Clan Ross of Balnagown Castle(1), m. bef.
1628 based on b. of son
James; bur. St. Macher
Comment:
1. Probability
unlikely, in my opinion. W.H.S.D.
See also:
• Bishops
of Moray
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Source
Sources for this article include:
Scottish Notes and Queries, May 1934, Vol. XII, No. 5
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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