Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/84

 , an eminent antiquary, was the son of the Rev. Patrick Anderson, who had been ejected for non-conformity at the Restoration, and afterwards suffered imprisonment in the Bass, for preaching in a conventicle at Edinburgh. The subject of this memoir, whose brother, Adam, has already been commemorated, was born, August 5th, 1662, and in 1677, is found studying philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, where, after finishing a scholastic education, he obtained the degree of Master of Arts, on the 27th of May, 1680. He chose the law for his profession, and, after serving an apprenticeship under Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn, was admitted a member of the society of writers to the signet in 1691. In this branch of the legal profession, the study of written antiquities in some measure forces itself upon the practitioner; and it appears that Anderson, though a diligent and able man of business, became in time too fond of the accessory employment to care much for the principal. A circumstance which occurred in 1704, decided his fate by tempting him into the field of antiquarian controversy. The question of the union of the two countries was then very keenly agitated—on the one side with much jealous assertion of the national independency—and on the other, with not only a contempt for the boasts of the Scots, but a revival of the old claims of England for a superiority or paramouncy over their country. A lawyer named Attwood, in 1704, published a pamphlet in which all the exploded pretensions of Edward I. were brought prominently into view, and a direct dominion in the crown of England asserted over that of Scotland. For this work, Mr Anderson, though altogether unknown to Mr Attwood, was cited as an evidence and eye-witness, to vouch some of the most important original charters and grants by the kings of Scotland, which Attwood maintained were in favour of the point he laboured to establish. Mr Anderson, in consequence of such an appeal, thought himself bound in duty to his country, to publish what he knew of the matter, and to vindicate some of the best of the Scottish kings, who were accused by Attwood of a base and voluntary surrender of their sovereignty. Accordingly, in 1705, he published "An Essay, showing that the crown of Scotland is imperial and independent," Edinburgh, 8vo. which was so acceptable to his country, that, besides a reward, thanks were voted to him by parliament, to be delivered by the lord Chancellor, in presence of her Majesty's high Commissioner and the Estates; at the same time that Attwood's book, like others of the same nature, was ordered to be burnt at the cross of Edinburgh by the hands of the common hangman. Mr Anderson's publication is now of little value, except for the charters attached to it in the shape of an appendix.

This affair was the crisis of Anderson's fate in life. He had, in the course of his researches for the essay, collected a large mass of national papers; the study of charters was just then beginning to be appreciated by antiquaries; the enthusiam [sic] of the nation was favourable, for the moment, to any undertaking which would show the ancient respectability of its separate system of government. Under all these circumstances, Anderson found it easy to secure the patronage of the Scottish estates towards a design for engraving and publishing a series of facsimiles of the royal charters, previous to the reign of James I., and of seals, medals, and coins, from the earliest to the present time. In November, 1706, he had a parliamentary grant of three hundred pounds towards this object. He then proceeded vigorously with the work, and in March, 1707, had not only expended the three hundred pounds granted by parliament, but five hundred and ninety pounds besides, which he had drawn from his own funds. A committee reported the facts; and the estates, while they approved of his conduct, recommended to the Queen to bestow upon him an additional contribution of one thousand and fifty pounds sterling. Another parliamentary act of grace—and one of the very