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Alexander Seton, First Earl of Dunfermline: his library, his house, his world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

Peter Davidson
Peter Davidson*
Affiliation:
Chair in Renaissance Studies, School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, UK. Email: peter.davidson@abdn.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article re-considers Alexander Seton, First Earl of Dunfermline (1555–1622) in his cultural context, particularly in the light of the recently-discovered inventory of his private library. This sophisticated collection of continental books, with strong holdings in art, architecture and Catholic apologetics, offers new information on the intense private Catholicism of a statesman who conformed outwardly to Protestantism. The inventory casts light also on his work of building and decoration at Pinkie House, Musselburgh. The article concludes by raising the possibility of some kind of continuance at Pluscarden Priory in Moray after the reformation and under Seton’s protection, and that Seton’s daughter Sophia may have built a freestanding Catholic chapel on her marriage to David Lindsay, first Lord Balcarres.

Keywords

Alexander Seton (1555–1622)Scotland- book historyScotland art and architectureEmblemataCatholic survival in Scotland
Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 315 - 342
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

This article depends for its focus and purpose on material discovered in the papers belonging to the Trustees of the Balcarres Heritage Trust: it is therefore profoundly indebted to the present Earl and Countess of Crawford and Balcarres for access, encouragement and hospitality. It is indebted also to fellow scholars of the early-modern Balcarres libraries, especially Dr William Zachs and Professor Jane Stevenson. I am indebted also to Prof Michael Bath for his unrivalled knowledge of the visual culture of renaissance Scotland and to Janet Graffius of Stonyhurst College for sharing her own work on the Saint-Omer collections there with the greatest generosity.

References

1 The words are those of the designer and maker of ecclesiastical textiles, Helena Wyntour; George Gray SJ to Joseph Simons SJ, 17 November 1668, ABSI, Mount Street, London, MS A.l.22.1.

2 Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio to Cardinal Borghese from Saint-Omer, 18 October, 1609, ‘I wore a cope which once belonged to Henry VIII [sic] and which is preserved here as a rich and rare memorial’, Foley, Henry, ed., The Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London: Burns and Oates, 1883)Google Scholar, 1153. For the Madonna Vulnerata, and for commissioned works in the chapels of the English Colleges at Rome and Valldolid, cf. Davidson, Peter ‘The Solemnity of the Madonna Vulnerata’, Triumphs of the Deafeated, eds. Jill Bepler and Peter Davidson (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2007), 39–54 Google Scholar.

3 For a census of all surviving copies of the Breviarium cf. Beavan, Iain, Peter Davidson and Jane Stevenson, ‘The Breviary of Aberdeen’, Transactions of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society 6 (2011): 11–41 Google Scholar.

4 The Liber Sconensis would seem to have been a manuscript of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon, most probably that identified in a manuscript list of the Abbe Thomas Innes (Edinburgh University Library, MS Laing iii, 513, vol.3, ff.57–69) as in the possession of ‘D. Robt Sybbald’, and possibly to be identified with the ‘Brechin’ MS of the Scotichronicon, now Scottish Record Office MS GD 45/26/48. Cf. Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R.Watt (Edinburgh:Mercat Press/Aberdeen University Press,1998), 9, 188–89.

5 Seton’s work at Fyvie will be discussed in detail by Shannon Marguerite Fraser in a forthcoming article, ‘“To receive guests with kindness”: symbols of hospitality, nobility and diplomacy in Alexander Seton’s designed landscape at Fyvie’, forthcoming.

6 See, principally, Bath, Michael, Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (Edinburgh:National Museums of Scotland, 2003)Google Scholar; also his ‘Philostratus Come to Scotland: A New Source for the Pictures at Pinkie’, Northern Renaissance 5 (2013) http://www.northernrenaissance.org/philostratus-comes-to-scotland-a-new-source-for-the-pictures-at-pinkie/ accessed 17 January 2015.

7 Lee, Maurice, ‘Alexander Seton’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar (hereafter ODNB), accessed 27/12/1014.

8 National Library of Scotland, Crawford and Balcarres Papers, Acc. 9769/14/2/2. All quotations from the papers are by kind permission of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres.

9 Symson, Archibald, Hieroglyphica Animalium … quae in Scripturis Sacris inveniuntur (Edinburgh: Thomas Finlason, 1622)Google Scholar.

10 Cf T.M. Mc Coog and Peter Davidson, ‘Father Robert’s Convert: the private Catholicism of Anne of Denmark’ TLS (November 24, 2000): 16–17.

11 Scotia prima dedit lucem: dat Gallia semen Grammatices: docuit juraque Patavium

Romaque rhetoricen, ubi notus Tullius ille Noscere scripta patrum, sic Salamanca dedit.

Scotia prima dedit cui lumina, et ultima ademit; Haec fuit ipsa Parens, ipsa Noverca fuit.

12 ‘Present State of the Nobility of Scotland, 1583’ in Bannatyne Miscellany I (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1827), 69.

13 This confusion may even lie behind the puzzling entry in one of the lists of men on the Scottish Mission in ARSI MS Anglia 42: Alexander Seton, ‘si sit sacerdos’.

14 Maitland, Richard, The History of the House of Seytoun to 1559, with the continuation by Alex. Viscount Kinston to 1687 (Glasgow: Maitland Club, 1829)Google Scholar, 63.

15 Ibid., 61–62.

16 Ibid., 63.

17 Inscription reproduced and discussed in Michael Bath, ‘Philostratus Comes to Scotland’.

18 Maurice Lee, ‘Alexander Seton’.

19 William Forbes-Leith SJ, Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary Stuart and James VI (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1885), 187.

20 Interim aliquoties in omno venit ad confessionem et communionem catholicum cum matre, fratre sorore ac nepotibus qui sunt catholici constantiores. William Crichton to General Acquaviva, 30 Sept 1605; ARSI, Rome, MS Anglia 42, f. 197.

21 Regni Scotiae cancellarium qui pro Regis officio fungitur creavit Alexandrum Setonium, piae memoriae Gregorii 13 alumnum. Hic in Seminario Romano studuit Philosophise et Theologiae et quamvis suo magnomalo simulavit cum Haereticis consentire, Rex tamen probe scit eum esse Catholicum. Ibid. f. 261.

22 Seton’s friend and associate, John Lindsay of Balcarres, Lord Menmuir, (1552–1598) Secretary of State, is recorded as having owned a now-lost copy of the Jesuit James Tyrie’s The Refutation of ane Answer made be Schir John Knox to ane letter be James Tyrie (Paris, 1573), and certainly his own attempts to foster Protestant episcopacy elicited the continual hostility of the Presbyterians.

23 Discussed in Shannon Marguerite Fraser, ‘To receive guests’.

24 For Jesuit festal affixiones cf. Karel Poorteman, Emblematic Exhibitions at the Brussels Jesuit College (1630–1685) (Brussels: Royal Library, Brepols, 1996).

25 McWilliam, Colin, The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian except Edinburgh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 335–337 Google Scholar.

26 Michael Bath, ‘Philostratus comes to Scotland’.

27 (Paris: Abel l’ Angelier, 1587).

28 His first wife was Lilias Drummond, daughter of Menmuir and Edzell’s sister Elizabeth Lindsay and Patrick, 3rd Lord Drummond. She died in 1601.

29 NLS MS Acc 9769 14/8/2.

30 Brown, Keith, Noble Society in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 183 Google Scholar.

31 NLS Acc 9769/14/2/2.

32 Brown, , Noble Society, 264 Google Scholar. Seget appears to have matriculated at the University of Leiden in 1589; after intensive humanist study under Justus Lipsius, he returned to Edinburgh in 1595. Ö. Barlay, Szabolcs, ‘Thomas Seget’s (from Edinborough) Middle European connections in reflection of Cod. Vat. Lat. 9385’, Magyar Könyvzsemle 97 (1981) 204–220Google Scholar, at 208.

33 His album amicorum, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica, Vat. Lat. 9385, yields information about his peregrinations and distinguished contacts in the late ‘90s; further information about Seget in McInally, Tom, The Sixth Scottish University: The Scots Colleges Abroad, 1575–1799 (Leiden: Brill,2012) 91–94Google Scholar.

34 Rosen, Edward, ‘Thomas Seget of Seton’, Scottish Historical Review 28 (1947): 91–95 Google Scholar.

35 In 1596, Spanish sources speak of Lindsay as in Spain, negotiating with the government under the pseudonym of Don Balthasar. He must then have gone to Italy. While abroad he composed his Relación del estado del reyno de Escocia, en lo tocante a nuestra religion catolica, which was printed in Madrid in 1594.

36 Maurice Lee, ‘Alexander Seton’.

37 A ‘Barony’ in this context is, approximately, a landholding with certain rights of exercising justice.

38 I am much indebted to Dr Stephen Holmes for his scrupulous published work on this subject, for his generous permission to use his photograph as Fig. 4, and for his advocacy of all caution when dealing with this subject.

39 Holmes’s, Stephen ‘Sixteenth Century Pluscarden Priory and its World’, Innes Review, 58, 1 (2007): 35–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ibid. 62, citing Mark Dilworth OSB, Scottish Monasteries in the Late Middle Ages (Edinburgh: 1995), 79.

41 Aberdeen University Library, BCL A648.

42 Holmes, ‘Pluscarden’: 70.

43 I am most grateful to Dr Holmes, Dr David Walker filius, and Professor Richard Fawcett for their kind advice on this matter. It seems clear that the present state of the tabernacle is the result of a repair but the date of that repair must remain an open question, in that there is no visual record of the state of the Church at Pluscarden before the late eighteenth century.

44 RCAHMS, Eleventh Report with Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in the Counties of Fife Kinross and Clackmannan (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1933) no. 311 (163–64).

45 Ibid.

46 Gifford, John, The Buildings of Scotland: Fife (London: Penguin, 1988), 83 Google Scholar.