Series 4 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society

LISTS OF SCHOOLMASTERS
I23
to command produced certificates in their favour and signed the oath
and Confession.1 No other schoolmasters arrived on the next two
days, and on 30 August the Glasgow committee decided that ‘con¬
sidering the uncertaintie of there nixt meeting at Glasgow and the
distance of the schoolmasters appoynted to appear before them where¬
by they cannot have satisfying accompts as were requisite of the litera¬
ture and qualifications of the said schoolmasters, therefor and to the
effect the seminaries may the better flourish they offert as ther opinione
to the commissione that the tryall of the said schoolmasters be intirelie
remitted to the respective presbytries within which they reside and
that the said presbytries report to the commission as to the planting,
continuing and removing as they see cause’.2 This suggestion seems
to have had the agreement of the general commission, for although
the Glasgow visitation papers do not contain presbyterial reports for
1690 several for 1696 have survived.3
We have no record of a similar arrangement being made by the
sub-committees at Aberdeen, St Andrews and Edinburgh, or being
suggested to them by the general commission. There is, indeed, no
information of any kind in the visitation papers which concerns school¬
masters either in Aberdeen or in the rest of the region assigned to the
Aberdeen sub-committee.4 We are fortunate, however, to have quite
full data for some parts of the St Andrews and Edinburgh areas: the
survival of several lists of schoolmasters teaching Latin in central and
eastern parts of the country suggests that the sheriffs and magistrates
there showed greater (and perhaps more keenly enforced) assiduity
his bibliography: the sheriff’s return shows that there were grammar schools in 1690
in the parishes of Ochiltree, Cumnock, Dalmellington, Straiton, Maybole, Girvan
(Trochrigg), Louden (Newmilns), Kilwinning, Galston and Dundonald.
1 Munimenta, ii, 498-9, 502. Only the parochial schoolmaster at Straiton attended of
those on the list given in for Ayrshire. The others who compeared were the masters at
Inveraray, Moffat, Dumfries, Ayr, Greenock, Lanark, Cardross, Glasgow, Penpont,
Kilmarnock, Dumbarton and Paisley. 2 Ibid., ii, 504. 3 Ibid., ii, 547-50.
4 The Aberdeen region was much the largest—the sheriffdoms of Kincardine, Aber¬
deen, Banff, Elgin, Nairn, Inverness, Cromarty, Ross, Caithness, Sutherland, Orkney
and Shetland. The St Andrews committee was assigned the shires of Fife, Kinross,
Clackmannan, Angus and Perth and the stewartry of Menteith, while the Glasgow
area comprised the sheriffdoms of Lanark, Renfrew, Bute, Dumbarton, Ayr, Dumfries
and Wigton and the stewartries of Annandale and Kirkcudbright. The Edinburgh
committee was given the oversight of the Lothians and the shires of Stirling, Peebles,
Berwick, Selkirk and Roxburgh.