Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/293

Rh Seeundi Institutionum de Testamentis Ordinandis." It is a sort of running commentary on the title of which it professes to treat; was dedicated to Michael D'Hospital, chancellor of France, and had the good fortune along with his previous Tractatus, to be engrossed in the great Thesaurus Juris Civilis et Canonici of Gerard Meerman, an honour which has attached itself to the works of few Scottish civilians. Henryson appears, soon after the publication of this work, to have resigned his professorship at Bruges, and to have returned to Scotland, where lucrative prospects were opened to his ambition.

A very noble feature in the history of the Scottish courts of law, is the attention with which the legislature in early periods provided for the interests of the poor Soon after the erection of the College of Justice, an advocate was named and paid, for conducting the cases of those whose pecuniary circumstances did not permit them to conduct a law-suit; and Henryson was in 1557 appointed to the situation of counsel for the poor, as to a great public office, receiving as a salary £20 Scots, no very considerable sum even at that period, but equal to one-half of the salary allowed to the lord advocate. When the judicial privileges which the Roman catholic clergy had gradually engrossed from the judicature of the country, were considered no longer the indispensable duties and privileges of churchmen, but more fit for the care of temporal judges, Henryson was appointed in 1563 to the office &P commissary, with a salary of 300 merks. Secretary Maitland of Lethington having in January, 1566, been appointed an ordinary, in place of being an extraordinary, lord of session, Henryson was appointed in his stead, filling a situation seldom so well bestowed, and generally, instead of being filled by a profound legal scholar, reserved for such scions of great families, as the government could not easily employ otherwise. Henryson was nominated one of the commission appointed in May, 1566, "for viseing, correcting, and imprenting the Laws and Acts of parliament." Of the rather carelessly arranged volume of the Acts of the Scottish parliament, from 1424 to 1564, which the commission produced in six months after its appointment, he was the ostensible editor, and wrote the preface; and it was probably as holding such a situation, or in reward for his services, that in June, 1566, he received an exclusive privilege and license "to imprent or cause imprent and sell, the Lawis and Actis of Parliament; that is to say, the bukes of Law callit Regiam Majestatem, and the remanent auld Lawis and Actis of Parliament, consequentlie maid be progress of time unto the dait of thir presentis, viseit, sychtit, and correctit, be the lordis commissaris speciallie deput to the said viseing, sychting, and correcting thairof, and that for the space of ten yeires next to cum." In November, 1567, he was removed from the bench, or, in the words of a contemporary, taken "off sessions, because he was one of the king's council." This is the only intimation we have of his having held such an office; and it is a rather singular cause of removal, as the king's advocate was then entitled to sit on the bench, and was frequently chosen from among the lords of session. Henryson was one of the procurators for the church in 1573. The period of his death is not known, but he must have been alive in 1579, as lord Forbes at that time petitioned parliament that he might be appointed one of the commissioners for deciding the differences betwixt the Forbeses and Gordons.

Henryson has received high praise as a jurisconsult, by some of his brethren of the continent, and Dempster considered him—"Soils Papinianis in juris cognitions inferior" A monument was erected to his memory in the Grey Friars' churchyard of Edinburgh, by his son Thomas Henryson, lord Chesters, who is said by Dempster and others to have displayed many of the legal and other qualifications of his father.