Memorials of the lineage, early life, education and development of the genius of James Watt

46 MEMORIALS OF
master." 1 That the bona fide schoolmaster of those days was a very
different person — not in point of qualification but of status — there is,
unhappily, but too good reason to believe, if one may judge from a
minute which occurs about this time in the Records from which one
or two quotations have already been made.
Crawfordsdyke being locally within the parish of Greenock, one
schoolmaster was deemed sufficient for " both towns ;" (so in the
original.) Strange as it may appear, the heritors and kirk-session
prohibited there being any more ! At a meeting of the latter court,
held 27th September 1697, they recorded the following minute : —
" Qlk day, after prayer, the Session being met, its ordered, with consent of the
heritors, no school be kept in the parish except the publict school, they considering that
private schools were prejudicial to it, providing always the said school be in a com-
modious place of the parish."
From the same minute we learn what was the munificent allowance
made to the parish teacher. It goes on to state " the small encour-
agement the schoolmaster had arising to him by the publict sallary,
which was only Forty pounds Scots, [Three pounds, six shillings, and
eightpence, sterling,] paid by the foresaid heritors," and their agree-
ing to add other Forty pounds to the salary, " making four score in
all, besides other casualties belonging to him as beadle and clerk of
the Session."
The teacher for whom this provision was made was, it is presumed,
John Richmond, denounced by the Presbytery of Paisley, along with
Thomas Watt, as one of the " disorderly schoolmasters," for not having
taken the Test in 1683.
1 Whether the more dignified designation of character, conferred upon him originally by way
" Mathematician" was a cognomen to which he of honourable distinction, as indicative at once of
himself attached importance, or rather was a title the exact and scientific habitude of his miud, and
accorded to him by common consent, from the of his profession in the town, as a teacher of so
superior nature of his calling, is immaterial to important a branch of science as that of naviga-
decide. In all probability it was of this latter tion was then especially considered to be.