Life of Sir Walter Scott

PARENTAGE.

SIR WALTER SCOTT was one of the sons of Walter Scott, Esq., Writer to the Signet, by Anne, daughter of Dr John Rutherford, Professor of the Practice of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.

His paternal grandfather, Mr Robert Scott, farmer at Sandyknow, in the vicinity of Smailholm Tower, in Roxburghshire, was the son of Mr Walter Scott, a younger son of Walter Scott of Raeburn, who in his turn was third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, in which family the chieftainship of the race of Scott is now understood to reside. Sir Walter’s grandfather, Mr Robert Scott, farmer at Sandyknow, as we learn from the Border Antiquities, ‘though both descended from and allied to several respectable Border families, was

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 chiefly distinguished for the excellent good sense and independent spirit which enabled him to lead the way in agricultural improvement—then a pursuit abandoned to persons of a very inferior description. His memory was long preserved in Teviotdale, and still survives, as that of an active and intelligent farmer, and the father of a family all of whom were distinguished by talents, probity, and remarkable success in the pursuits which they adopted.’

Walter, the third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, lived at the time of the Restoration, and embraced the tenets of Quakerism, which at that period made their way into Scotland. For this he endured a degree of persecution for which it is now difficult to assign a reason. The Scottish Privy-council, by an edict dated June 20, 1665, directed his brother, the existing representative of the Harden family, to take away his three children, and educate them separately, so that they might not become infected with the same heresy; and, for doing so, he was to be entitled to sue his brother for the maintenance of the children. By a second edict, dated July 5, 1666, the Council directed two thousand pounds Scots money to be paid by the Laird of Raeburn for this purpose; and, as he was now confined in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, where he was liable to be further tainted by converse with others of the same sect there also imprisoned, the Council further ordered him to be transported to the jail of Jedburgh, where no one was to have access to him but such as might be expected, to convert him from his present principles.

Walter, the second son of this gentleman, and father to the novelist’s grandfather, received a good education

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 at Glasgow College, under the protection of his uncle. He was a zealous Jacobite—a friend and correspondent of Dr Pitcairn—and made a vow never to shave his beard till the exiled House of Stuart should be restored; whence he acquired the name of Beardie.

Dr John Rutherford, maternal grandfather to the subject of this memoir, was one of four Scottish pupils of Boerhaave, who, in the early part of the last century, contributed to establish the high character of the Edinburgh University as a school of medicine. He was the first Professor of the Practice of Physic in the university, to which office he was elected in 1727, and which he resigned in 1766, in favour of the celebrated Dr John Gregory. He was also the first person who delivered lectures on Clinical Medicine in the Infirmary. His son, Dr Daniel Rutherford, maternal uncle to the novelist, was afterwards, for a long period, Professor of Botany in the Edinburgh University, and further distinguished by his great proficiency in chemistry. Dr D. Rutherford was one of the cleverest scientific men of his day; and, but for certain unimportant circumstances, would have been preferred to the high honour of succeeding Black in the chair of Chemistry. When he took his degree in 1772, Pneumatic Chemistry was in its infancy. Upon this occasion he published a thesis, in which the doctrines respecting gaseous bodies are laid down with great perspicuity, as far as they were then known, and an account also given of a series of experiments made by himself, which discover much ingenuity and address. He was the first European chemist who, if the expression may be used, discovered nitrogen. Had he proceeded a single step farther, he would have anticipated the discoveries of Priestley,

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 Scheele, and Lavoisier, respecting oxygen, which have rendered their names immortal. As it was, the experiments and discoveries of Dr Rutherford made his name respected all over Europe.

The wife of Dr John Rutherford, and maternal grandmother of Sir Walter Scott, was Jean Swinton, daughter of Swinton of Swinton, in Berwickshire, one of the oldest families in Scotland, and at one period very powerful. Sir Walter has introduced a chivalric representative of this race into his drama of Halidon Hill. The grandfather of Jean Swinton was Sir John Swinton, the twentieth baron in lineal descent, and the son of the celebrated Judge Swinton, to whom, along with Sir William Lockhart of Lee, Cromwell intrusted the chief management of civil affairs in Scotland during his usurpation. Lord Swinton, as he was called, in virtue of his judicial character, was seized, after the Restoration, and brought down to Scotland for trial, in the same vessel with the Marquis of Argyll. It was generally expected that one who had played so conspicuous a part in the late usurpation, would not elude the vengeance of the new government. He escaped, however, by suddenly adopting the tenets of the society to which Walter Scott of Raeburn afterwards attached himself. On being brought before the parliament for trial, he rejected all means of legal defence; and his simply penitent appearance and venerable aspect wrought so far with his judges, that he was acquitted, while less obnoxious men were condemned. It was from this extraordinary person, and while confined along with him in Edinburgh Castle, that Colonel David Barclay, father of Robert Barclay, the eminent author of the Apology for the Quakers, contracted those sentiments

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 which afterwards shone forth with such remarkable lustre in his son……………….