The Funeral Oration of George Keith, Fourth Earl Marischal (1623)

CHAPTER 7 A Classic Send-Off: The Funeral Oration of George Keith, Fourth Earl Marischal (1623) Miles Kerr-Peterson Sometime before 1607, George Keith, the fourth earl Marischal, erected a Roman legionary tablet in pride of place on the northern wall at the end of his long gallery in Dunnottar Castle. He had found the stone, a distance slab created by the twentieth legion, in a “dike in the borders of England and Scotland” (possibly on his estate of Keith Marischal in the parish of Humbie) and had it shipped to Dunnottar. He then had it vibrantly painted and gilded.1 In 1620 the same earl composed a genealogy of his family, in which he described how his ancestors, the Germanic Chatti, had been defeated in a surprise attack by the Romans and had hence fled to Scotland.2 Marischal is a good representative example of the Scottish nobility, who in the latter half of the sixteenth century had benefited from a classical and humanist educa- tion. These Scots proudly saw their ancestors as the fierce resistors and enemy of Rome, but at the same time embraced all things Roman—their language, antiquities, history, poetry and Stoic ethos—with no apparent crisis of confidence or identity.3 This apparent disconnect was likewise expressed in 1623 in the same earl’s memorial service, held in Aberdeen’s Marischal College, an institution which he had founded in 1593. This was held on 30 June 1623, five days after his body had been laid to rest in the earls’ burial aisle in Dunnottar Parish Church. The proceedings of the college’s service were then published by the Aberdeen-based 1 A. Mitchell (ed.), Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1908), iii, 233; W. Camden, Britannia, 1607 (New York, 1970), 711–712; L. Keppie, Roman Inscribed and Sculptures Stones in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow (London, 1998), 72–73. 2 W. Ogston, Oratio Funebris, in obitum maximi virorum Georgii, Marischalli Comitis (Aberdeen, 1623), 6. 3 These notions can also be found in the contemporary genealogy of the Earls of Mar, which Marischal contributed to NRS GD124/5/10, 13; A. Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh, 1979), 23–24; N. Royan with D. Broun, “Versions of Scottish nationhood 850–1707”, in I. Brown et al. (eds) The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: From Columba to the Union (until 1707) (Edinburgh, 2007) , 168–183, at 178; D. Allan, Philosophy and Politics in Later Stuart Scotland (East Linton, 2000), 3–13, 19, 47. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/9789004330733_009 A Classic Send-Off: the Funeral Oration of George Keith 183 printer Edward Raban.4 This service was largely in Latin. It began with a funeral oration by the professor of moral philosophy, William Ogston, and was then followed by poetry by the rest of the staff. The oration by Ogston will be the principal focus of this chapter, as it helps us understand the apparent paradox within the Protestant learned society of the university. The Scottish Calvinism it represented was on the one hand hostile to all things Roman Catholic (and sometimes, by extension, Roman) while on the other hand it interacted with continental Calvinist trends which were increasingly classicis- ing in nature. Although superficially such an engagement with Greco-Roman literature might be assumed to have clashed with the anti-Romanist tenets of Scottish Calvinist theology—as well as the anti-Roman tradition within the culture of the Scottish nobility—this interaction offers valuable insights into certain methodological and conceptual problems that have dogged historians regarding its place in post-Reformation Scottish society. Before leaping into a discussion of this though, we must first untangle the other influences and expectations which impacted upon the piece. Funeral Sermons versus Funeral Orations Marischal’s memorial service seems quite unorthodox to modern eyes when set within the established funerary culture of Protestant Scotland. The 1560 First Book of Discipline had commanded simple burials with no funeral sermons, as they were deemed too Catholic.5 William Birnie, the minister of Lanark, set out in his 1606 Blame of Kirk-Buriall that churches should be places specifically and strictly for the worship of God and not for the glorification and vanity of mortal men. This included all the pomp of funerals, from inter-mural burial to the wasting of the minister’s time with funeral sermons: “for burials now are become the occassion not onely of the brugling brags of men, but of the contemp also of Gods hous and seruants.”6 Although memorial poetry survives 4 Ogston, Oratio Funebris, contains the oration and memorial poetry, but a separate publication was made of just the poetry. Marischal College, Lachrymae Academiae Marischallanae sub Obitum Moecenatis, & Fundatoris sui munificentissimi: Noblisissimi, & Illustrissimi Georgii, Comitis Marischalli (Aberdeen, 1623). 5 J. Cameron (ed.), The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), 200–201. 6 Funeral literature was frowned upon in Scotland, but death literature had its place. James Melville’s Exhortatioun anent Death sought to comfort his dying friend with his own musings on death prompted by an illness in his wife. This publication included a Scots translation of the French account of the death of the Queen of Navarre as the example of how to die well. Part of this message was that the dead body is an irrelevance and so tombs and pomp- ous funerals are therefore redundant. W. Birnie (ed. W. Turnbull), The Blame of Kirk Buriall, .

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