David Hume of Godscroft

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David Hume or Home of Godscroft (1558–1629) was a Scottish historian and political theorist, poet and controversialist, a major intellectual figure in Jacobean Scotland. It has been said that "Hume marks the culmination of the Scottish humanist tradition."[1]

Confusion is possible with David Hume or Home, Scottish minister at Duras in France, a contemporary: they had quite different views on the union with England.[2]

Life

He was the second son of Sir David Hume or Home, 7th Lord of

Calvinist wife in Mary Johnston of Elphinstone.[3][4] He studied at Dunbar grammar school, under Andrew Simson. He then entered the University of St Andrews in 1578, and after a course of study there travelled on the continent. From France he went on to Geneva, intending to travel to Italy.[5][6]

Hume was recalled to

James VI withdrew his confidence from the Ruthven Lords, to remain in the north of Scotland.[5]

During the exile of the Ruthven party at Newcastle, Hume was in London, ostensibly studying, but actively interesting himself in Angus and his cause. The Lords, with Hume, returned to Scotland in 1585, and between that date and 1588, when Angus died.[5]

In later life Hume devoted himself to literature on his property of Gowkscroft, a farming hamlet 2 miles to the north of

Abbey St. Bathans, in the Lammermuir Hills, Berwickshire, which he renamed Godscroft, and styled himself Theagrius when he figured as a Latin poet.[5]

Works

Political and religious writings

Hume supported his patron Angus's policy in a series of letters (preserved in the History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus) on the doctrine of obedience to princes. A discussion of a sermon on the same theme by the

Rev. John Craig is the subject of Conference betwixt the Erle of Angus and Mr. David Hume, which is printed in David Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland.[5] Hume contests in this dialogue, based on actual conversation, the political theories of Jean Bodin and Adam Blackwood.[7]

In 1605 a

De Unione Insulæ Britanniæ, a study in how to effect the closer political union of Scotland and England. The first part Tractatus I. was published in London (1605).[5] In terms of the Jacobean debate on the Union, Hume went further than anyone else in looking to a unified "British society" to result from the Union of the Crowns of 1603.[8]

On the relative values of

presbytery, Hume was a persistent polemicist in discussing the theme: first with James Law, bishop of Orkney, from 1608 to 1611; and secondly, in 1613, with William Cowper, bishop of Galloway. He was also responsible about the same time for De Episcopatu, 1 May 1609, Patricio Simsono, to Patrick Simson. Hume's other major Latin prose writings are his unpublished attack on William Camden for his depreciatory view of Scotland, written in 1617—Cambdenia; id est, Examen nonnullorum a Gulielmo Cambreno in "Britannia,"—and a work dedicated to Charles I (Paris, 1626), entitled Apologia Basilica; seu Machiavelli Ingenium Examinatum, in libro quem inscripsit Princeps.[5]

Neo-Latin poetry

Hume wrote Latin poems when very young, and received the commendation of

Presbyterians, among whom Hume was prominent, and as a close a follower as Buchanan had. In the end he showed dislike for the "angry" Buchanan, who had a quite different view of the Douglas family.[9]

Hume's Daphn-Amaryllis was a celebration of Anglo-Scottish union, printed in Edinburgh and London editions, in 1603–5.

lion rampant (harking back to the time of James III of Scotland).[13]

The Lusus Poetici (1605) were ultimately incorporated in Arthur Johnston's Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum (1637). When Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales died, Hume wrote a memorial tribute entitled Henrici Principis Justa, and in 1617 he welcomed the king back to Scotland in his Regi suo Gratulatio. His collected Latin poems were twice issued in Paris, in 1632 and 1639, the second time with additions under the care of his son James, and with the title: Davidis Humii Wedderburnensis Poemata Omnia. Accessere ad finem Unio Britannica et Prœlium ad Lipsiam soluta oratione.[5]

Family history

Hume was a partisan panegyricist of the Douglas family. He is also said to have "plundered Scottish history for exemplars" within the Douglases, and with the aim of encouraging military services to the king.[14] Arthur Williamson has argued that "Scots wrote histories of great families as general histories of Scotland".[15] A grandson of Alison Douglas, herself a granddaughter of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus, Hume has as his main patron William Douglas, 11th Earl of Angus, later the 1st Marquess of Douglas.[5][16]

Hume's History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus was printed at Edinburgh in 1644 by Evan Tyler, the king's printer. He is thought to have finished the history between 1625 and 1630 (around the year of his death).

customary rights; and even against the king.[17] The title-pages of early copies vary, with some having the title A Generall History of Scotland, together with a particular History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus. Confusion arose when the editor, Anna Hume, encountered opposition of Angus, who resented the use which Hume had made of some of the material in the family archives.[5]

The work begins with Sholto Douglas, conqueror of Donald Bane, and concludes with Archibald Douglas, 8th Earl of Angus, who is eulogised in a Latin ode and numerous elegiacs. Another manuscript history of the family brings the record close to the death of William Douglas, 10th Earl of Angus, in 1611, and is ascribed to that earl. The tenth earl's son, William Douglas, is said to have threatened its publication in order that Hume's work might be superseded, due to subjective and accuracy in some of his writings.

Hume's History of the House of Wedderburn, written by a Son of the Family, in the year 1611, was a Latin eulogy, Davidis Humii de Familia Humia Wedderburnensi Liber. It begins with David, the first laird of Wedderburn, about the end of the fourteenth century. It closes with an account of Hume's own early career in connection with that of his elder brother, to whom, along with the Earl of Home, it is dedicated. It remained in manuscript till 1839, when it was printed by the Abbotsford Club.[5][18]

Family

Hume married in 1594 Barbara Johnston, widow of his friend James Haldane. They had five children.

James Hume of Godscroft [fr
] (fl. 1630) as a mathematician.

Notes

  1. ISBN 90-04-14711-X
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  4. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14139. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Lee, Sidney, ed. (1891). "Hume, David (1560?-1630?)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  6. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Simson, Andrew (d.1590?)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 52. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  7. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  8. ISBN 90-04-14711-X
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  10. ISBN 90-04-12823-9
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0-7546-0340-5
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-7486-1298-7
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-521-52019-5
    .
  16. ISBN 978-1-78057-419-6
    .
  17. ISBN 978-0-521-63156-3
    .
  18. ^ Davidis Humii de Familia Humia Wedderburnensi Liber (1839); archive.org.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1891). "Hume, David (1560?-1630?)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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