Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/186

 reprimanded the commander-in-chief and reversed his decision. Napier immediately handed in his resignation, and when the duke of Wellington supported Lord Dalhousie and repeated the reprimand he returned to England. He had been credited with foreseeing the Mutiny of 1857, and on the whole with justice. On one occasion he wrote that mutiny was “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, danger threatening India—a danger that may come unexpectedly, and if the first symptoms be not carefully treated, with a power to shake Leadenhall.” On the mutiny of the 66th native regiment at Govindgarh he disbanded it, and handed its colours over to a Gurkha regiment, thus showing that he distrusted the high-class Brahman, and recognized the necessity of relying upon a more warlike and more disciplined race. His constitution was undermined by the Indian climate, especially by his fatiguing command in Sind, and on the 29th of August 1853 he died at Portsmouth. The bronze statue of him by G. G. Adams, which stands in Trafalgar Square, London, was erected by public subscription, by far the greater number of the subscribers being, as the inscription records, private soldiers.

NAPIER, JOHN (1550–1617), Scottish mathematician and inventor of logarithms, was born at Merchiston near Edinburgh in 1550, and was the eighth Napier of Merchiston. The first Napier of Merchiston, “Alexander Napare,” acquired the Merchiston estate before the year 1438, from James I. of Scotland. He was provost of Edinburgh in 1437, and was otherwise distinguished. His eldest son Alexander, who succeeded him in 1454, was provost of Edinburgh in 1455, 1457 and 1469; he was knighted and held various important court offices under successive monarchs; at the time of his death in 1473 he was master of the household to James III. His son, John Napier of Rusky, the third of Merchiston, belonged to the royal household in the lifetime of his father. He also was provost of Edinburgh at various times, and it is a remarkable instance of the esteem in which the lairds of Merchiston were held that three of them in immediate lineal succession repeatedly filled so important an office during perhaps the most memorable period in the history of the city. He married a great-granddaughter of Duncan, 8th earl of Levenax (or Lennox), and besides this relationship by marriage the Napiers claimed a lineal male cadency from the ancient family of Levenax. His eldest son, Archibald Napier of Edinbellie, the fourth of Merchiston, belonged to the household of James IV. He fought at Flodden and escaped with his life, but his eldest son Alexander, (fifth of Merchiston) was killed. Alexander’s eldest son (Alexander, sixth of Merchiston) was born in 1513, and fell at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. His eldest son was Archibald, seventh of Merchiston, and the father of John Napier, the subject of this article.

In 1549 Archibald Napier, at the early age of about fifteen, married Janet, daughter of Francis Bothwell, and in the following year John Napier was born. In the criminal court of Scotland, the earl of Argyll, hereditary justice-general of the kingdom, sometimes presided in person, but more frequently he delegated his functions; and it appears that in 1561 Archibald Napier was appointed one of the justice-deputes. In the register of the court, extending over 1563 and 1564, the justice-deputes named are “Archibald Naper of Merchistoune, Alexander Bannatyne, burgess of Edinburgh, James Stirling of Keir and Mr Thomas Craig.” About 1565 he was knighted at the same time as James Stirling, his colleague, whose daughter John Napier subsequently married. In 1582 Sir Archibald was appointed master of the mint in Scotland, with the sole charge of superintending the mines and minerals within the realm, and this office he held till his death in 1608. His first wife died in 1563, and in 1572 he married a cousin, Elizabeth Mowbray, by whom he had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Alexander.

As already stated, John Napier was born in 1550, the year in which the Reformation in Scotland may be said to have commenced. In 1563, the year in which his mother died, he matriculated at St Salvator’s College, St Andrews. He early became a Protestant champion, and the one extant anecdote of his youth occurs in his address “to the Godly and Christian reader” prefixed to his Plaine Discovery. He writes:—

The names of nearly all Napier’s classfellows can be traced as becoming determinantes in 1566 and masters of arts in 1568; but his own name does not appear in the lists. The necessary inference is that his stay at the university was short, and that only the groundwork of his education was laid there. Although there is no direct evidence of the fact, there can be no doubt that he left St Andrews to complete his education abroad, and that he probably studied at the university of Paris, and visited Italy and Germany. He did not, however, as has been supposed, spend the best years of his manhood abroad, for he was certainly at home in 1571, when the preliminaries of his marriage were arranged at Merchiston; and in 1572 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Stirling of Keir. About the end of the year 1579 his wife died, leaving him one son, Archibald (who in 1627 was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Napier), and one daughter, Jane. A few years afterwards he married again, his second wife being Agnes, daughter of Sir James