George Stronach

“ Kirkwood left Linlithgow and went, in March 1690, to Edinburgh, where he lived for a year without employment. He then started a school ‘with above sevenscore of noblemen and gentlemen's sons.’ He tells us that he afterwards refused the professorship of humanity in St. Andrews, a call to Duns, another call to be professor of Greek and Latin at Jamestown, Virginia, the mastership of the free school at Kimbolton, and of a free school in Ireland. He also states that he was invited to return to Linlithgow school. ”

“ She married John Kincaid of Warriston, who was a man of influence in Edinburgh, being nearly connected with the ancient family of Kincaid of that ilk in Stirlingshire, and possessed of extensive estates in Midlothian and Linlithgowshire. Owing to alleged maltreatment, the young wife conceived a deadly hatred for her husband, and a nurse who lived in her house urged her to take revenge. ”

“ He matriculated at the university of Glasgow in 1753, and graduated M.A. in 1756. In 1757 Oliphant entered as a divinity student, and attended for four sessions the classes in the hall of the secession church at Glasgow. He left that body, however, owing to a difference with some of the professors, and joined the communion of the church of Scotland. After receiving his license in 1760 from the presbytery of Kintyre, he officiated for a time in the Gorbals Church, Glasgow, from which he was promoted in 1764 to be minister of the chapel-of-ease in Kilmarnock. ”

“ VEITCH, JAMES, Lord Eliock (1712–1793) , Scottish judge, son of William Veitch of Boigend and Eliock, writer to the signet, Edinburgh, was born on 25 Sept. 1712. After serving an apprenticeship with his father, he was called to the Scottish bar on 15 Feb. 1738. Shortly afterwards he visited the continent, where he became a favourite of Frederick the Great at his court. On returning to Scotland, he kept up a correspondence with his majesty. ”

“ On 26 Aug. 1747 Whytt was appointed professor of the theory of medicine in Edinburgh University. In 1751 he published a work ‘On the Vital and other Involuntary Motions of Animals.’ The book attracted the attention of the physiologists of Europe. Whytt ‘threw aside the doctrine of Stahl that the rational soul is the cause of all involuntary motions in animals,’ and ascribed such movements to ‘the effect of a stimulus acting on an unconscious sentient principle.’ He had a vigorous controversy with Haller on the subject of this work. ”

“ Chemistry had always been one of his favourite studies, and his scientific knowledge enabled him to take a leading part in the proceedings of the referees, which resulted in the discovery of the process still in use for the elimination of sulphur and ammonia impurities from gas. ”

“ In order to annoy him, his opponents in Kilmarnock—the moderates, as they were termed—employed a man to walk the streets of Dumbarton, proclaiming as he went ‘the whole works of the Rev. James Oliphant, presentee to this parish, for the small charge of two pence.’ Oliphant lost his sight shortly before his death, which took place on 10 April 1818. He was twice married: first to Elizabeth Hay, on 27 Nov. 1764 (she died on 29 March 1780, leaving a daughter Charlotte, who married Captain David Denny of Glasgow) ”

“ He set up the first trip-hammer ever constructed in Massachusetts, and he succeeded in spreading the manufacture of edge-tools through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In 1748 he made five hundred muskets for the province of Massachusetts Bay, believed to have been the first weapons of the kind produced in the country. During the revolution he was actively employed in casting iron and brass cannon and cannon-balls, for which, in conjunction with a Frenchman, he constructed a foundry. ”

“ In 1586 he returned to London, having obtained his pardon, taking with him a manuscript copy of John Knox's ‘History of the Reformation,’ which he ‘put to press, but all the copies were seized [by the order of Archbishop Whitgift] before the work was completed’ (Works of John Knox, vol. i. p. xxxii) . ”

“ He pointed out the defects of Despauter, ‘the Priscian of the Netherlands,’ and was requested to edit Despauter's grammar, with the result that in 1695 he produced ‘Grammatica Despauteriana, cum nova novi generis Glossa: cui subjunguntur singula primæ Partis Exempla Vernacule Reddita.’ It was dedicated to the commissioners of schools and colleges, and secured the privy council's privilege for nineteen years. A second edition appeared in 1700, a third in 1711, and a fourth in 1720, all published in Edinburgh. ”

“ Patterson was the author of: 1. ‘The New Revolution; or the Napoleonic Policy in Europe,’ Edinburgh and London, 1860 (a work which attracted considerable attention, owing to the singular fulfilment, soon after publication, of several of its predictions) . 2. ‘Essays in History and Art,’ Edinburgh, 1862 (reprinted from ‘Blackwood's Magazine’) . 3. ‘The Economy of Capital; or Gold and Trade,’ Edinburgh, 1865. 4. ‘The Science of Finance,’ Edinburgh, 1868. 5. ‘Railway Finance,’ Edinburgh, 1868. 6. ‘The State, the Poor, and the Country, including Suggestions on the Irish Question,’ Edinburgh, 1870. ”

“ Weir, who was arrested four years afterwards, was broken on the wheel (26 June 1604) , a rare mode of execution in Scotland.
[Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, ii. 445–50; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, i. 316–17; Memorial of the Conversion of Jean Livingston, 1827.] ”