DAVID GREGORIE OF KINAIRDY, 1625–1720
‘Not skill alone of ear and eye
Was yours, but something more—a heart.’
—_Echoes and After-thoughts._
David Gregorie, the second son of the Reverend John Gregorie, was
destined by his father for a commercial career. Alexander, his elder
brother, as we have seen, was heir to the estates of Kinairdy and
Netherdale, and to a good deal of money: the young brother James was so
remarkable a mathematician that he was allowed to follow his own bent
and devote himself purely to mathematics. But David, poor David, most
unwilling to go, was sent to Holland to learn to be a merchant, probably
to Campvere, the happy haven to which so many Scots traders turned.
Herrings and stockings—the great Aberdeen exports of the day—how we can
imagine David Gregorie seeing to the unlading of such cargo as this,
with his heart and very likely his head far away in Scotland! Anyhow he
did not stay a day longer in Holland than was necessary, for after his
father’s death he returned home and settled in Aberdeen in 1655. In the
same year he married Jean, daughter of Patrick Walker of Orchiston, a
great Episcopalian, and also a great Tory.
David Gregorie was only thirty, and the best of life was still before
him. He spent his time in just such a way as attracted him. He studied
medicine, mechanics, mathematics and physics, read every interesting
book within his reach, and corresponded with scientific contemporaries
both in Scotland and out of it. His letters, full of thoughts about the
atmospheric laws, went to Edmé Mariotte in his cell. He may have got
some help from them—certainly Gregorie was immensely interested in the
Frenchman’s discoveries.
His life was enriched by many delightful friendships, but more than all
by the affection shewn to him by his brothers and expressed in so many
practical ways. In 1660 Alexander settled the property of Over
Aschalache on David and his family, subject to the life-rent of old Mrs
Gregorie. It was a most kind arrangement, and must have been a great
help in providing for the growing family. Three years later he was made
librarian of King’s College, and there he spent his time, reading and
searching and arranging in the dreamy way of an old world librarian. But
life, which is so fearfully unknown, held in it for David Gregorie in
1664 that which was to alter his whole career. By the tragic death of
his brother, who left no children, all the family estates passed to him,
and he became suddenly a rich man. He left Aberdeen, and went to live in
the mansion-house of Kinairdy, with which his name is now always
associated.
Few people pass through the remote parish of Marnoch, which lies on the
borders of Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, but those who do are most
certainly rewarded. The Deveron, not so well known as the Dee, still
keeps a charm of loneliness for those who love her, and the burns are
browner than in the southland. By such a burn was Kinairdy built, on a
little promontory where the stream joins the Deveron. When I asked to
see Kinairdy, I was told ‘There’s nothing to see there, only the old
tower down by the river,’ but the old tower was enough for me, and
packed full of memories. To this old house it was that David Gregorie
took his wife and children in 1664. We get occasional glimpses of him as
he passes about the country, at one time laughed at by his neighbours
for his total ignorance of farming, while at another, in a case of
illness, they would eagerly wait for his coming, with a feeling as if
life and death were in his hands. Sometimes no doubt it was so, and to
rich and poor alike he would go, giving his advice gratuitously for the
love of doctoring, and because he was benevolent.
This medical skill of his stood him in good stead on one occasion, when
a deputation of ministers called upon him to answer for himself on the
charge of being a wizard. There were dread stories abroad concerning
him, how, by having sold his soul to the Devil, he was able to foretell
the weather (what a thing to sell your soul for in Scotland!) how, after
days of sunshine, he could predict rain and sure enough the rain would
come, and he might make it go on raining for weeks through his
intercourse with the powers of darkness. Poor Gregorie, face to face
with his accusers, went through the little crowd of his children, and
brought in the familiar spirit, which was only a barometer, tried to
explain how it worked, asked them to examine it (which I do not believe
any of them would do), and won them over to his side by his sheer
lovableness. After all, who was to doctor them with the skill of David
Gregorie if he were burned for a wizard? So the kind doctor was left to
his home and his work. The ministers did not understand his defence, but
there was not one of them who could not remember how, with some
well-chosen simple, he had healed one of their dear ones in the hour of
need.
As his sons and daughters grew up, Gregorie found it more and more
impossible to get the quiet which he so much wanted for his work. His
patients and his children between them were taking up all his leisure.
In these circumstances he determined to rearrange his hours. He retired
early to bed, and rising about two in the morning, worked for a few
hours in the stillness of the night. When that was over, he went to
sleep till he felt rested. If these nocturnal habits were known to the
deputation that waited upon him, there was some excuse for their fears.
What more alarming than the shadows in the room! The midnight crucible
and the sulphurous smell were not there, but it must be admitted that
the Laird of Kinairdy loved the hours of darkness better than the day.
David Gregorie had twenty-nine children. Fifteen of them were the
children of his first wife, and fourteen the children of his second.
Nine of them died as quite little babies, but twenty grew to be older;
and so, though everyone says, that it was remarkable for Kinairdy to
have three sons professors of mathematics, it must be allowed that he
had a most unusual number of children to choose from!
In the pedigree of the family of Gregorie in Mr Philip Spencer Gregory’s
book, from which the table of the professors is for the most part taken,
it is seen that David, Professor of Mathematics in Edinburgh, and later
of Astronomy in Oxford, Isabel, the grandmother of Professor Innes of
Aberdeen, and James, Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews and
Edinburgh, were the children of the first marriage; while Margaret, the
mother of Thomas Reid, and Charles, Professor of Mathematics in St
Andrews, were of the second marriage.
Jean Walker was probably a cleverer woman than Isabel Gordon, Gregorie’s
second wife. In the first place she converted her husband to Episcopacy
and Toryism, and secondly, her son David was much the most brilliant of
the Kinairdy children. To him it was, when he was working as Savilian
professor at Oxford, that old Kinairdy confided a model of an improved
cannon, which in his enthusiasm to improve the munitions of war, he had
designed in his peaceful home by the Deveron. His son, who thought it
most ingenious, showed it to Sir Isaac Newton, and the great philosopher
evidently agreed with him; but to invent an instrument, the only object
of which was to kill better than any cannon in use, seemed to him a
fearful abuse of ingenuity. The horrors of Marlborough’s wars, where men
were slaughtered by the thousand, were they not enough as it was? Who
could deserve mercy from his Maker if he were to bid god-speed to such a
terrible machine? Sir Isaac asked the professor to destroy the model,
which he did, and the little toy which may have been a gatling gun, for
aught we know, was broken in pieces.
Old David Gregorie, who had been preparing to join the allies in
Flanders, to see his cannon in use, bore his disappointment most
sweetly. Perhaps Newton was right, he thought, for although he had meant
to help his fellow-countrymen, the invention would soon be known to the
enemy, and the Gregorie gun be levelled against his compatriots.
There seems to be something almost pitiful about the end of David
Gregorie’s life. Kinairdy was made over to his son, the Savilian
professor at Oxford, the sweet old house forsaken, the rooms in which
such merry life had been lived, deserted, and the flowers from which the
gentle herbalist had drawn so many healing virtues, left to die. It
would be best to think that he returned to Aberdeen at the call of
King’s College, which ‘Beautified with bells within, without decked with
a diadem,’ is said to ring her sons back to her before they die. But
there were probably other reasons, and more potent ones. His children
had to be provided for, and his wife, shrewd and not poetical (or else
how could she have been a Hanoverian?) thought of all that her brother,
the Provost of Aberdeen, had in his power, and she knew he could do much
and would do much for her children, so they set up house once more in
the old town of Aberdeen.
In 1715 comes another turmoil, a flitting, almost a flight across the
North Sea to Holland, to be out of the difficulties of conflicting hopes
and fears, to be out of the country, to take at least no part against
the Stuarts, whom we suspect Kinairdy of loving in his secret heart.
Likely enough they may have offered him bribes, and a title in the
coming kingdom, but there was another counsellor nearer and dearer to
him, and with her and his children he sought the shelter of a foreign
land. Two or three years passed before they returned to Scotland. They
were content to wait till the storm was past. When they came back
Gregorie’s life was nearly over. He died in 1720, an old man of
ninety-five.
‘And in his story still remains
A distant memory of life’s loss and gains,
A starlit picture of his joy and pains.’
A visit to his widow, who was Thomas Reid’s grandmother was described by
her grandson in after years in a letter to James Gregory, Professor of
Medicine in Edinburgh. ‘I found her,’ he says, ‘old and bedridden, but I
never saw a more ladylike woman. I was now and then called into her
room, when she sat upon her bed, or entertained me to sweetmeats and
grave advices. Her daughters, who visited her, as well as one who lived
with her, treated her as if she had been of superior rank, and indeed
her appearance and manner commanded respect. She and all her children
were zealous presbyterians, the first wife’s children were Tories and
Episcopalians.’
But to return to what interests us about David Gregorie of Kinairdy, in
connection with his many professorial sons and other kindred, he was a
great lover of science, and a worker to whom all scientific matter came
home to stay. His mathematical and mechanical gifts, great as they
were—and we know he was far advanced in meteorological studies—were not
to be compared with the power which he had, and which now appears for
the first time in the Gregorie family—the inborn gift of doctoring. He
had no training except what he gave himself, but he could no more help
being a physician, than his brother Professor James could help his
incessant work at mathematics. David and James Gregorie were the
children of their mother far more than of their father; who, good as he
probably was, is, we must confess, just a little dull. Yes, Janet
Anderson, you have lived again for us in your sons!