Advocates’ Libraries in Early Eighteenth Century Edinburgh

Scottish Legal History Group1 October 2011

Karen BastonDoctoral Research Student

School of Law, University of EdinburghK.G.Baston@sms.ed.ac.uk

Edinburgh Regent Professor of the Law

of Nature & Nations at Edinburgh University

AdvocateSolicitor GeneralLord AdvocateLord of Session (Lord

Tinwald)Lord Justice ClerkBook Collector

Charles Areskine of Alva(1680-1763)

The Library Catalogue of the Most Learned Lord,

Charles Areskine of Barjarg, Solicitor General

1731.

•Lists 1290 Titles

•Divides Books into Legal & Miscellaneous Categories

•Legal Library has evidence of interest in concerns of legal humanism as well as books for legal practice

•Miscellaneous Library shows engagement with Scottish Enlightenment culture & British culture in general

Charles Areskine’s Library CatalogueCharles Areskine’s Library Catalogue

The University Library, former Béguinage Chapel,

from Les Délices de Leyde (1715)

Leyden Scholars

Leyden: A Place for Books

Sir John Clerk of Penicuik

‘I think every man who has studied here at Leiden should at his return enter advocate, if it were only to let people see he has spent his time to the purpose.’

Book Stalls in Westminster Hall

Allan Ramsay’s Library and

Bookshop, c. 1726

St Giles with Shops

Places to Buy Books: London and Edinburgh

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh Lawyer, Politician, Scholar

Recommendations for the Advocates Library:Law – primary discipline

History, Rhetoric, Criticism – aspects of legal study

Catalogues of the Advocates Library 1692 and 1742

Two libraries of ‘…the greatest Schollar, who is a states-man in Europe: For to hear you talk of books, one would think you had bestowed no time in studying men; and yet to observe your wise conduct in affairs, one might be induced to believe, that you had no time to study Books’. – George Mackenzie, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, in The laws and customs of Scotland, in matters criminal (1678)

The Duke of Lauderdale’s Libraries: Thirlestane Castle

and Ham House

Libraries for Scottish Lawyers

Library at NewhailesBuilt 1718-1722

Library at Arniston HouseBuilt 1726-1732

A Law Library in 1703

From Burkhard Gotthelf Struve, Bibliotheca iuris selecta (Ienae: Apud E.C. Bailliar, 1703); 17 cm. Yale Law Library, BiblC St896.

From Burkhard Gotthelf Struve,Bibliotheca iuris selecta (Ienae: Apud Christian. Henr. Cuno, 1743); 21 cm. Yale Law Library, BiblC St896 1743.

and in 1743

Nicol Graham & Friends in a Library

Gawen Hamilton, c.1730National Gallery of Scotland

Detail of 1743 image from Struve’s Bibliotecha iuris selecta

Learned Drawing Rooms

Cicero…stopt a while…at Antium, where he had lately rebuilt his house, and was now disposing and ordering his library….Atticus lent him two of his Librarians to assist his own, in taking Catalogues, and placing books in order; which he calls the infusion of a soul into the body of his house.

Conyers Middleton, The history of the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, 2 (London: Printed for W. Innys, at the West-End of St Paul’s, 1741), p. 57. (QM 103)

…history informs us of nothing new or strange….Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and endeavour.

David Hume

An enquiry concerning human understandingWith thanks to: