Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/545

 educational methods and administration and in the organisation of the teaching profession. A further stop in advance was made in 1872 by the great Compulsory Education (Scotland) Act. To a weekly paper, 'Educational News,' established at Edinburgh on 1 Jan. 1876 by William Ballantyne Hodgson [q. v.] and other enlightened educational leaders as the official organ of Scottish teachers, Mackay became a chief contributor, and on 1 July 1878 undertook its editorship, at first without salary. He improved the financial position of the paper, and received a salary from 1881. Under his control the paper, in which he wrote on a wide range of themes, did much to increase the efficiency of the statutory system of education and to improve the position of the teaching profession. From 1876 till death he was treasurer of the Educational Institute of Scotland, was president in 1881, and greatly extended the influence of the body. In 1897 he was elected a member of the school board of Edinburgh and was re-elected in 1900. He was convener of the evening school committee. A conservative in politics, he possessed much force of character, independence of mind, and clarity of judgment. He died at 13 Warriston Crescent, Edinburgh, on 4 Dec. 1902. In 1863 he married Jane Watt, who survived him with a son. Major Mackay, and four daughters. Mackay published several works of value in the teaching profession. They include : 1. 'Foreign Systems of Education.' 2. Æsthetics in Schools.' 3. 'A History of Scotland.' 4. 'A Plea for our Parish Schools.' 5. 'Free Trade in Teaching.'

 MACKENNAL, ALEXANDER (1835–1904), congregational divine, born at Truro on 14 Jan. 1835, was the third of seven children of Patrick Mackennal, a Scotsman from Galloway. His mother was Cornish. In 1848 the family removed to London, and Mackennal entered the school of William Pinches, Ball Alley, George Yard, Lombard Street; among his school-fellows was John Henry Brodribb (afterwards Sir Henry Irving [q. v. Suppl. II] ). After passing through another school, at Hackney, he entered Glasgow University in October 1851, learning much from John Nichol [q. v. Suppl. I] and leaving in 1854 without graduation, but recognised as a leader among his fellow-students in liberal thought and politics. His first bent was towards medicine, but in 1852, when acting as tutor in a highland family of Scottish baptists, he resolved upon the congregational ministry, and entered Hackney College (1854); while there he graduated B.A. (October 1857) at London University. As a student he was influenced by Thomas Toke Lynch [q. v.] and deeply by Frederick Denison Maurice. His first settlement was at Burton-on-Trent (May 1858); a strongly Calvinistic section of his flock was not in Sympathy with his breadth of view, and, after his removal, seceded to form a presbyterian congregation, but in the village chapel at Branstone, connected with Burton, he found lifelong friends. In 1862 he removed to Surbiton, Surrey, where John Carvell Williams [q. v. Suppl. II] was one of his deacons. Here he transferred his congregation from a hall to a church building largely planned by himself, and co-operated with Dean Stanley, Robert William Dale [q. v. Suppl. I], and others in a volume of addresses to working people. In 1870 he succeeded James Allanson Picton as minister of Gallowtree-gate Church, Leicester. He established a local mission, and became secretary of the Leicester and Rutland County Union of his denomination. He declined to stand as a candidate for the Leicester school board, being equally opposed to the Cowper Temple compromise and to the secular system, maintaining throughout life that the true solution of the educational difficulty was to be found in 'the frank recognition of schools of different types.' He did much for the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he became president in 1876. In 1877 he moved to Bowdon, Cheshire, where he remained till death, declining calls to London and elsewhere. In 1887 he filled the chair of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, and in the same year received the degree of D.D. from Glasgow University.

Two years later he made the first of several visits to America in 1889, representing the Congregational Union at the triennial council of American congregational churches. This visit formed a turning point in Mackennal's career. It led to the holding of an international congregational council in London (July 1891), of which Mackennal as secretary was the efficient organiser. He took part n the reunion conferences begun at 