A history of the University of Glasgow : from its foundation in 1451 to 1909 / by James Coutts.

  • Coutts, James, 1852-1913.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of the University of Glasgow : from its foundation in 1451 to 1909 / by James Coutts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1560 LORD HAMILTON’S GIFT I I Hamilton. The latter, despairing of success, surrendered to the king at Abercorn, and though for a time imprisoned in Roslin Castle, was assured of future favour. The defeat of the Earl’s brothers at Arkinholm in May, and the subsequent surrender of the fortress of Threave, completed the ruin of the Douglases, and at a Parliament held in August their estates were either annexed to the Crown or bestowed on nobles friendly to the king, a liberal share falling to Sir James Hamilton of Cadyow, who in 1455 was created first Lord Hamilton. The Douglas wars and the devastation of their lands and those of Hamilton bore hardly, not only on the districts immediately concerned, but on the neighbouring country, and on the City of Glasgow, from which the forces of the combatants were partly recruited. Much property was destroyed, including crops needful for the subsistence of the people, and trade and industry received a shock from which they could only gradually recover. Destitution followed, the plague broke out in Glasgow in 1455, and wounded and broken men crept back to the city after the war to aggra¬ vate the poverty and disease which were witnessed. The University, which had sustained a great loss by the death of Turnbull at Rome towards the end of 1454, felt the pressure of evil times. There was only a small number of incorporations in 1454 and 1455, and, though William Heriss, who was rector for two or three years after this, earned the praise and thanks of the University for his active beneficence, in 1457 the faculty of Arts, on an application by Duncan Bunch and William Arthurle, the regents, ordered six marks to be given them because they were burdened with debts for the rent of the Pedagogy, and in consequence of war, pestilence, and fewness of students. The number of incorporations again improved, and the gift by Lord Hamilton in 1460 of a tenement of buildings with an accompanying area of ground should at least have freed the faculty from the burden of paying rent. The tenement stood in High Street, between the Place of the Friars Preachers on the south and ground belonging to Thomas Arthurle, chap¬ lain, on the north, and the four contiguous acres of land in Dovehill extended to the Molendinar. The property had some time before been conveyed to the Friars Preachers of Glasgow by Sir Gavin Hamilton, Provost of the Collegiate Church of Bothwell, but in 1455 the Friars resigned their right to it and declared that Sir Gavin and his heirs should be entitled to take back the property into their possession whenever they pleased. The tenement and land thus came into the hands of Lord Hamilton, and in January, 1460, he made a gift of them to Duncan Bunch and the regents of the faculty of Arts, for the use of the regents and students of that faculty, on condition of prayers being said and other