Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet - Works and Legacy

Works and Legacy

Scott is characterized by James Grant in Old and New Scotland as "eccentric and sarcastic". He consoled himself for his disappointment in losing office by composing "The Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen", not published until a hundred years after his death.

Scotstarvit Tower, which Sir John rebuilt, still stands, and the inscription, with his initials and those of his first wife, Anne Drummond, as the builders, and its date (1627) are carved on a stone over the door. The tower became a kind of college, where he attracted round him the learned Scotsmen of the time, and corresponded with the scholars of Holland, Caspar Barlæus, Isaac Gruterus, and others. In it his brother-in-law William Drummond composed his History of the Jameses and the macaronic comic poem Polemo-Middinia, which had its occasion in a dispute of long standing as to a right of way between the tenants of Scotstarvet and of Barns, the estate of Sir Alexander Cunningham, whose sister was Drummond's betrothed.

In 1620 he endowed the professorship of humanity or Latin in his old college, St. Leonard's, at the university of St. Andrews, in spite of the opposition of the regents of St. Salvator. At the same time he organised a substantial collective gift of classical texts to the library of St. Leonard's for the use of the Humanity regent. Fellow donors included Scott's brother-in-law, Drummond, and other distinguished men of the time.

Scott's intimacy with Joan Blaeu of Amsterdam led to the inclusion of a Scottish volume in the series of Delitiæ Poetarum then being issued by that enterprising publisher. The Scottish volume, edited by Arthur Johnston, and printed at the sole cost of Scott in two closely printed duodecimo volumes, has preserved the last fruits of Scottish latinity. A more important work was the publication of detailed maps of Scotland in the great atlas of Blaeu. Scot interested himself in the survey of Scotland begun in 1608 by Timothy Pont. Pont's drawings, after his death about 1614, were purchased by the crown. Scott caused them to be revised by Sir Robert Gordon of Straloch and his son, James Gordon, parson of Rothiemay, and then went in 1645 to Amsterdam to superintend their publication, dictating from memory the description of several districts. The work was not issued till 1654, when it appeared as ‘Geographiæ Blaeuaniæ volumen quintum,’ with dedicatory epistles to Scot both by Blaeu and Gordon of Straloch. Other examples of Scott's public spirit were the establishment of the St. Andrews professorship of Latin and his endowment of a charity for apprenticing poor boys from Glasgow at the estate of Peskie near St. Andrews.