Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/287

  ecclesiastical dignity in that province. His exertions were by no means confined to his ordinary duties. Observing the disadvantage under which the province laboured through the want of seminaries for the education of a native clergy, he set about, and finally was able to accomplish, the honourable work of founding the college of Williamsburgh, which was afterwards, by his personal intervention, endowed by king William III., with a patent, under the title of the William and Mary College. He died in 1743, after having been president of this institution for about fifty, and a minister of the gospel for above sixty years. He had also enjoyed the office of president of the council of Virginia. In the year before his death, he had published at London, his great work, entitled, "Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount Explained, and the practice of it Recommended, in divers sermons and discourses," 4 vols. 8vo., which is styled by Dr Waterland, the editor of a second edition, a "valuable treasure of sound divinity and practical Christianity."  , a churchman of noble family, who, being compelled by the tyranny of Edward I. in Scotland to join the bands of Sir William Wallace, became chaplain to that hero, and did not scruple also to take a share in his battles. He wrote an account of the deeds of Wallace, which is now lost, but is supposed to have furnished materials to Blind Harry. Another work of Blair's was styled, "De Liberata Tyrannide Scotia."  Author:John Blair (d. 1782), LL.D. an eminent chronologist, was, as already mentioned in the memoir of Dr Hugh Blair, a relative of that distinguished personage. He received a clerical education at Edinburgh, and afterwards went in search of employment to London, along with Mr Andrew Henderson, author of a "History of the Rebellion of 1745," and many other works, and who, for some years, kept a bookseller's shop in Westminster Hall. As Henderson describes himself as residing in Edinburgh at the time of the battle of Prestonpans, it is probable that Blair's removal to London took place after that event. Henderson's first employment was that of an usher at a school in Hedge Lane, in which he was succeeded by Blair. The attention of the latter had probably been directed to chronology by the example of Dr Hugh Blair, who, as already mentioned, commenced a series of tables of events, for his own private use, which ultimately formed the groundwork of the work given to the world, in 1754, under the title of "The Chronology and History of the World, from the Creation to the year of Christ, 1753; illustrated in fifty-six tables, of which four are introductory, and contain the centuries prior to the first Olympiad, and each of the remaining fifty-two contain, in one expanded view, fifty years, or half a century. By the Rev. John Blair, LL. D." This large and valuable work was published by subscription, and was dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. In January, 1755, Dr John Blair was elected F. R. S. and in 1761, F. A. S. In 1756, he published a new edition of his "Chronology." In September, 1757, he was appointed chaplain to the Dowager Princess of Wales, and mathematical tutor to the Duke of York, (brother to George III.); and on Dr Townshend's promotion to the deanery of Norwich, the services of Dr Blair were rewarded, March, 1761, with a prebendal stall in Westminster abbey. Such a series of rapidly accumulating honours has fallen to the lot of very few Scottish adventurers. But this was not destined to be the end of his good fortune. He had only been prebend of Westminster six days, when the death of the vicar of Hinckley, in Leicestershire, enabled the Dean and Chapter to present him to that valuable living, to which was soon after added, the rectory of Burtoncoggles in Lincolnshire. In 1763-4, he made the tour of the continent, in company with his royal pupil. A new and enlarged edition of his "Chronology" appeared in 1768, and in 1771 he was presented, by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, to the vicarage of St Bride's in the