26 FOUNDATION OF ST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY. were fictitious additions to heighten the gloom of the dark story. The Act of Parliament declaring in the official religious phraseology of the time that he migrated from the light by divine Providence, and not otherwise, yet, at the same time, absolving Albany and Douglas from being parties to the death, has been reasonably cited by historians, like the similar remission to Bothwell from any share in Darnley's murder, as a confirmation of their guilt. The sudden despatch to France of his younger brother, afterwards James I., who was captured by the English on his way, is a further corroboration of the dread of his uncle. Albany at once resumed the office of Governor, and after the death of Robert III., did all he could to delay the ransom of the young king. From these sad stories of the death of kings, we turn with pleasure to the next event in the history of Fife worthy of record in such a sketch as the present. This was the foundation of the University of St Andrews, the first University of Scotland. The substitution for the monastery of the University is not the least of many instances of what may fairly be called historical evolution. An institution which had served its time, gave place to another, whose time had come. It was a moment of far-reaching consequence, when in country after country in Europe the doors of cloisters were opened, not to enclose monks, but to nurture and send forth scholars. This was a gift of the old Church, but it carried with it the seeds of the Reformation wherever, as in Scotland, they were cast on a congenial soil. The poverty of the early apostolic days of the Church had been succeeded by superabundant wealth. A pious Catholic, John Major, the Provost of St Salvator's, laments the corruption of the religious orders both of men and women; the abuses of alien and absentee abbots; the plurality of benefices; the prodigality of prelates, 1411, OPENING OF UNIVERSITY. 27 which, outlasting their own lives, vainly aimed at an earthly immortality in their sumptuous tombs. It might have been expected, he says, that they would sooner have thought of founding a university. That of St Andrews, it is fair to remember, erected by Bishop Wardlaw, still lives, and still gives a sound education to students, and a modest endowment to learning, while the monuments of his predecessors and successors have crumbled into dust. In the year 1411, marked in the history of Scotland by the battle of Harlaw, and of Europe by the summons of the Council of Constance, the Studium Generale or University of St Andrews was opened by Henry Wardlaw the Bishop, and James Bisset the Prior. Two years after, on Saturday, 3d February, the day after the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, Henry of Ogilvie, a Master of Arts, landed at St Andrews from Spain. He brought the bulls by which the Spanish anti-Pope, Benedict XIII., granted at Panis-cola, in Aragon, its first privileges to the University at the request nominally of James I., still a prisoner in England, and really of Bishop Wardlaw. But the King after his return to his kingdom showed himself a steady friend of the University. He had spent a part of his boyhood in the Castle of St Andrews under the care of the Bishop, who became one of his leading councillors. John Cameron, his secretary, afterwards Bishop of Glasgow, and several of his most trusted officers of State, had been amongst the early students of St Andrews. When Ogilvie entered the city gates the bells of all the churches rang in his honour. Next day, Sunday, 4th of February, at nine, there was a congregation of the clergy, when the bulls were presented and read to the Bishop as first Chancellor. A procession followed to the high altar of the cathedral, where the Mass of the Holy Spirit was celebrated by the 28 BISHOP WARDLAW. Prior, and a Te Deum chanted. The Bishop of Ross read the collect, “Deus qui corda," preached the sermon, and pronounced the blessing. The beadle counted four hundred clerks in orders, besides deacons and novices, and a large host of people in the procession. St Andrews has never before or since seen a brighter sight or a happier day. The remainder of it, and the night which followed, were given up to popular rejoicings, bonfires, singing, dancing, feasting, and the ringing of bells. For at least two centuries before this there had been schools in many monasteries in which poor as well as rich boys had been instructed, but there had been no provision for the higher learning, or for what is now called a liberal education. The Scot who wished to complete his studies and obtain a degree had at great cost and some risk, requiring a safe-conduct if he were rich, and begging for alms if he were poor, to resort to Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, or Bologna. It was to obviate these inconveniences by founding a university in Scotland that the six bulls of Benedict were granted. They provided for the study of theology, canon and civil law, arts, medicine, and other lawful faculties, power to grant degrees, exemption from taxes, and a licence of non-residence by the professors at the benefices from which they drew their salaries. The students were divided into four nations-Fife, Angus, Albany, and Lothian. Wardlaw, in anticipation of these privileges, had already drawn round him a group of learned men. Lawrence of Lindores-less favourably known as the inquisitor of heresy had already taught the sentences of Peter Lombard, the text-book of divinity; and Richard Cornwall, Archdeacon of Lothian, had lectured on the canon law. William Stephen, afterwards Bishop of Dunblane; John Litstar, Canon, and Doctor of the Canon Law; FOUNDER OF UNIVERSITY. 29 John Scheves, Official, and John Schevez, Archdeacon of St Andrews, also taught in the same faculty, but probably not during the same period; John Gill, William Fowler, and William Croiser lectured in philosophy and logic. There were in all thirteen doctors of theology and eight doctors of law who either then or soon after took part in the studies. The University of St Andrews had now what a medieval proverb called its "soul," the privileges which no one but a pope was deemed competent to confer; but it lacked both endowments and a home. The latter was given by the same bishop in 1430, when he conferred on it a tenement at first called the Pædagogium or St John's, and afterwards the New College or St Mary's, when St. Salvator's had been founded by Bishop Kennedy, and St Leonard's by Alexander Stuart, the Archbishop, and Prior Hepburn. Wardlaw, as might be expected from this example, was one of the liberal and zealous prelates who adorned the diocese. To him it owes the Guard Bridge, near the mouth of the Eden, as it does to a later bishop-Spottiswoode that at Dairsie. His hospitality was without stint. On one occasion his steward begged him at least to name his guests. The bishop replied, "The two first are Fife and Angus." The steward did not ask the name of the third. Though so liberal in spending his own means, he denounced the luxury beginning to spread with the increase of wealth. He died in 1440, and was buried by the wall between the Choir and the Lady Chapel. His epitaph claimed as his chief praise that he was the founder of the university. CHAPTER III. THE BISHOPS AND THE KINGS BEFORE THE REFORMATION-ORIGIN OF THE SCOTTISH NAVY-BEGINNING OF THE LINEN MANUFACTURE CASTLES OF THE NOBLES AND KINGS IN FIFE- EARLY BALLADS OF A SUCCESSION of vigorous bishops, who reigned at St. Andrews like little kings, had a great influence on the progress of Fife. Its earliest patrons had been the kings, its second were the bishops. They endowed its churches, protected and enlarged its university, and confirmed St Andrews in the position of the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland. Here they can only be named with a word to indicate their character. James Kennedy, the founder of St Salvator's College, who succeeded Wardlaw, was the wise councillor of two kings, and a regent during the minority of James III. Patrick Graham gained for the see the coveted archiepiscopal pall; but quarrelling with the Pope, and envied by the other bishops, perhaps a Reformer before the Reformation, he was deposed, and died a prisoner in St Serf's Inch on Lochleven. William Schevez, who supplanted him, was an ambitious and worldly Churchman of the type of Wolsey, |