page_title: History of universities in Scotland
section_title: Seventeenth century
hierarchical_section_title: History of universities in Scotland / History / Early modern era / Seventeenth century
caption_attribution_description: English: Glasgow University in 1654
context_page_description: The history of universities in Scotland includes the development of all universities and university colleges in Scotland, between their foundation between the fifteenth century and the present day. Until the fifteenth century, those Scots who wished to attend university had to travel to England, or to the Continent. This situation was transformed by the founding of St John's College, St Andrews in 1418 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St. Andrews. St Salvator's College was added to St. Andrews in 1450. The other great bishoprics followed, with the University of Glasgow being founded in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. Initially, these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen. International contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life in the sixteenth century.
  St Leonard's College was founded in St Andrews in 1512 and St John's College as St Mary's College, St Andrews was re-founded in 1538, as a humanist academy for the training of clerics.
context_section_description: King James IV's major contribution to the universities was to combat militant Presbyterianism by insisting that the catechism God and the King must be read in the schools and universities. He also decreed, in 1617, that the town college of Edinburgh should be known as King James's College. In 1641, the two colleges at Aberdeen were united by decree of Charles I (r. 1625–49), to form the "King Charles University of Aberdeen". Under the Commonwealth (1652–60), the universities saw an improvement in their funding, as they were given income from deaneries, defunct bishoprics and the excise, allowing the completion of buildings including the college in the High Street in Glasgow. They were still largely seen as training schools for clergy, and came under the control of the hard line Protesters, who were generally favoured by the regime because of their greater antipathy to royalism, with leading protester Patrick Gillespie being made Principal at Glasgow in 1652. After the Restoration there was a purge of Presbyterians from the universities, but most of the intellectual advances of the preceding period were preserved. There was considerable mistrust between the two colleges in Aberdeen, which was sufficient to produce an armed riot over the poaching of students in 1659. The two institutions were formally demerged by the Rescissory Act 1661.
  The five Scottish university colleges recovered from the disruption of the civil war years and Restoration with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high-quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry. All saw the establishment or re-establishment of chairs of mathematics. The first was at Marshall College in 1613. A university chair was added at St. Andrews in 1668, at Edinburgh in 1674 and at Glasgow in 1691. The chair at Glasgow was first taken by the polymath George Sinclair, who had been deposed from his position in philosophy for his Presbyterianism in 1666, but was able to return after the Glorious Revolution marked a move against episcopalianism. A further chair would be added at King's College Aberdeen in 1703. Astronomy was facilitated by the building of observatories at St. Andrews (c. 1677) and at King's College (1675) and Marischal College (1694) in Aberdeen. Robert Sibbald was appointed as the first Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh and he co-founded the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1681. These developments helped the universities to become major centres of medical education and would put Scotland at the forefront of Enlightenment thinking.
caption: The High Street college of the University of Glasgow, completed under the Commonwealth
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