chapter four

Charles Mackie and the Limits of Dutch Learning

Mackie As Agent in the Republic of Letters

Born in the revolutionary year 1688, Charles Mackie was a representa- tive of the post-Revolution students and their educational concerns. Educated in Groningen and Leiden, he brought to the broad humanist and polite education that he had encountered himself. In Groningen he had also been introduced to the French language and in Leiden he had experienced first-hand the Dutch Elegant School in practice. His studies at Leiden had also allowed him to take col- leges on ancient history, a life-long interest that might have begun in Groningen. It may have been his uncle Carstares’ influence that had originally led Mackie to the United Provinces, but he had ambitions of his own. Being a tutor would have suited him well. While well- connected in ’s academic circles, he lacked the means to become a gentleman-scholar or to travel widely. His employment with the Leslies gave him both the opportunity to further his studies and to acquire the patronage he needed to obtain future employment. He had been seeking a Scottish professorship since at least 1716, when Colin Drummond, the Edinburgh Professor of Logic, wrote to him telling him that the purges, which had followed the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, had left open a number of jobs.1 Mackie turned down the possibility of a teaching post at Aberdeen, possibly because he knew he could acquire a better one with Leslie’s patronage. In 1719, Mackie and Leslie returned to Scotland, where Mackie was nominated Professor of Universal History at the and Leslie entered the Faculty of Advocates.2 Mackie seems to have returned to Leiden only once in 1720, shortly after his appointment.3 The post at Edinburgh was modeled essentially on Dutch chairs and was subsidized by the town council. While it was an arts chair,

1 emerson, Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment, 256–7. 2 grant, The Faculty of Advocates. 3 eul, La.II.95/7, 8, John Mitchell to Charles Mackie. 144 chapter four he mainly taught future lawyers and some ministers. This reflected Carstares’ vision, which had been focused on history and had made his brother-in-law, William Dunlop, Historiographer Royal in 1693.4 It also shows the Edinburgh town councils’ ambitions for a civic university. In 1722, Mackie was given a new commission as ‘pro- fessor of Universall History and the History of Scotland in particu- lar and of Greek [,] Roman and British Antiquities’. This resembled the Dutch chair as held by Perizonius and Burman at Leiden, which also very much served the lawyers and the Faculty of Advocates and town council who were the legal patrons to the chair. Mackie would teach until 1753, when, because of poor health, he requested that the town council appoint John Gordon as a conjoint professor, reserv- ing for himself all or most of the salary whilst his colleague taught for fees. This arrangement allowed Mackie to retire from teaching. When Gordon resigned, he was replaced by William Wallace within a year. In 1765, Wallace became Professor of Scottish Law and Mackie retired completely, leaving sole possession of the chair to his friend John Pringle, but he continued to be paid something until 1767.5 By the 1750s, Mackie reckoned to have taught 448 students for one or more years. They were sons of peers, baronets and landed gentlemen as well as a handful of lawyers, doctors and academics. Among his most famous students were the historian William Robertson and the economist Sir James Steuart (1713–1780). He died in Edinburgh on September 11, 1770, following his wife Anne Hamilton, whom he had married in 1726 and who had died on the first of January that same year. Mackie’s time in the United Provinces had a formative effect on his scholarship. His teaching and his research projects show a clear Dutch influence. Moreover, it had introduced him to the wider European scholarly community that was the Republic of Letters, and for a long time he worked hard at remaining part of it and kept up-to-date with

4 he may also have had a hand in securing the ecclesiastical chair for . Ibid., 257. GUL, Ms Gen 204/130, 132, William Carstares to John Stirling. Cf. Robert Wodrow, Analecta, or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1842–3), 370–1. 5 Jeffrey R. Smitten, ‘Mackie, Charles (1688–1770)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/63630, accessed 15 June 2010]. This was a normal retirement arrangement in which the professor was allowed to select a successor with the permission of the Faculty of Advocates and town council.