William Greenfield (Minister)
Encyclopedia
William Greenfield was a Scottish minister, literary critic, author and mathematician whose career ended in scandal, resulting in him being excommunicated from the Church of Scotland
, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming the name Rutherfurd.
He served as joint-minister of Edinburgh's High Kirk (1787–98), as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
(1796), and as Regius Professor
of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
at Edinburgh University (1784–98). A friend and correspondent of Robert Burns
and a beneficiary of Walter Scott
, his lecture course in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres had a huge influence on the development of English Literature
as a discipline in universities.
Greenfield was the son of Captain John Greenfield and Grizel Cockburn. He graduated M.A. from Edinburgh University on 7 April 1778 and was almost immediately (though unsuccessfully) nominated as a Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College
, Aberdeen
. He was ordained to Wemyss Parish
on 6th Sept. 1781. He then moved to become the first minister of the new St Andrew's Church in the New Town
on 25 November 1784, to which he was presented by the Town Council on 21 February, taking up post on 1 April 1787. He held this post as well as the Regius Professorship of Rhetoric
and Belles Lettres
(among the first University Chairs in English Literature
in the world), which he had held in conjunction with Hugh Blair
since 1784, and whom he succeeded. He was made Almoner to the King on March 1789. He "radically altered the size and structure of the Edinburgh course" he took over from Blair, according to Martin Moonie's chapter in Crawford's book. Greenfield had wide interest. He was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
, and on 12 April 1784 he read a paper and, later in its Transactions (1788 Vol 1, pp131–145) he published as an article entitled "On the use of negative quantities in the solution of problems by Algebraic Equations". (His son, Andrew Rutherfurd, attached a biographical note to his copy of this article, without revealing that the author was his father). Greenfield also delivered lectures in Natural Philosophy
, the manuscripts of which are still retained Edinburgh University Library.
by Edinburgh on 31 March 1789, was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
on 19 May 1796. From that session, he sent a letter to King George III, congratulating him on having escaped an assassination attempt, and one to the Prince of Wales
, later George IV, congratulating him on his (ill-fated) engagement to Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Robert Burns
writes affectionately and admiringly of him in his second Commonplace Book "he is a steady, most disinterested friend, without the least affectation, of seeming so; and as a companion, his good sense, his joyous hilarity, his sweetness of manners and modesty, are most engagingly charming." He married Janet Bervie,daughter of a Kirkcaldy maltman, on 22 November 1782
Greenfield fled to the North of England and thereafter supported himself by teaching and writing. He authored several works, the most important being the elegantly written Essays on the Sources of the Pleasures received from Literary Compositions, which he published in 1809. This seems to be a polished and published version of his Edinburgh lecture course. It was republished in 1813, and may still be in print. In the same year, Sir Walter Scott introduced him to the publisher John Murray. Scott supposedly asked Murray to keep Greenfield's name secret, as he was hiding from creditors.
In another instance Scott's letter is quoted and and his case described: "You cannot but have heard of that very unfortunate man Dr Greenshields [sic] who for a dishonourable or rather infamous cause was obliged to leave Edinburgh where he was long beloved and admired of every human being..."
Greenfield contributed at least one review to the Quarterly Review
under the name of Richardson. It disapprove morally of the novel Amélie Mansfield by Mme Cottin
. He also assumed the name of Rutherfurd, which may explain, or on the other hand be a result of, Walter Scott's interest. Scott's mother was Anne Rutherford, of a Borders gentry family. This circumstance led many literary gossips, including the Kaleidoscope magazine to suspect Greenfield as the author of the Waverley
or "Scotch" novels. Some thought that Scott was not capable of being the author but Greenfield was. Greenfield was a full and visible and respected member of the British literary set. He died in the North of England on 28 April 1827.
of Crosshill, and captain 25th Regiment), born 7 May 1786; Grizel, born 5 December 1787, who later married Thomas Clark, minister of St Andrew's, Edinburgh, her father's old kirk
; Jane, born 7 July 1789; Andrew, Senator of the College of Justice
, born 21 June 1791, died 13 December 1854; James Hunter, Major Royal Engineers
, born 13 August 1794.
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming the name Rutherfurd.
He served as joint-minister of Edinburgh's High Kirk (1787–98), as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
The Moderator of the General Assembly of Church of Scotland is a Minister, Elder or Deacon of the Church of Scotland chosen to "moderate" the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which is held for a week in Edinburgh every May....
(1796), and as Regius Professor
Regius Professor
Regius Professorships are "royal" professorships at the ancient universities of the United Kingdom and Ireland - namely Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dublin. Each of the chairs was created by a monarch, and each appointment, save those at Dublin, is approved by the...
of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
at Edinburgh University (1784–98). A friend and correspondent of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
and a beneficiary of Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, his lecture course in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres had a huge influence on the development of English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
as a discipline in universities.
Greenfield was the son of Captain John Greenfield and Grizel Cockburn. He graduated M.A. from Edinburgh University on 7 April 1778 and was almost immediately (though unsuccessfully) nominated as a Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College
Marischal College
Marischal College is a building and former university in the centre of the city of Aberdeen in north-east Scotland. The building is owned by the University of Aberdeen and used for ceremonial events...
, Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
. He was ordained to Wemyss Parish
West Wemyss
West Wemyss is a village lying on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, in Fife, Scotland. According to the 2007 population estimate, the village has a population of 237. The village was granted burgh of barony status in 1511, bearing the name from the Wemyss family who lived in Wemyss Castle...
on 6th Sept. 1781. He then moved to become the first minister of the new St Andrew's Church in the New Town
New Town, Edinburgh
The New Town is a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It is often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...
on 25 November 1784, to which he was presented by the Town Council on 21 February, taking up post on 1 April 1787. He held this post as well as the Regius Professorship of Rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and Belles Lettres
Belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....
(among the first University Chairs in English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
in the world), which he had held in conjunction with Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair FRSE was a Scottish minister of religion, author and rhetorician, considered one of the first great theorists of written discourse....
since 1784, and whom he succeeded. He was made Almoner to the King on March 1789. He "radically altered the size and structure of the Edinburgh course" he took over from Blair, according to Martin Moonie's chapter in Crawford's book. Greenfield had wide interest. He was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...
, and on 12 April 1784 he read a paper and, later in its Transactions (1788 Vol 1, pp131–145) he published as an article entitled "On the use of negative quantities in the solution of problems by Algebraic Equations". (His son, Andrew Rutherfurd, attached a biographical note to his copy of this article, without revealing that the author was his father). Greenfield also delivered lectures in Natural Philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
, the manuscripts of which are still retained Edinburgh University Library.
Success
He was made Doctor of DivinityDoctor of Divinity
Doctor of Divinity is an advanced academic degree in divinity. Historically, it identified one who had been licensed by a university to teach Christian theology or related religious subjects....
by Edinburgh on 31 March 1789, was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
The Moderator of the General Assembly of Church of Scotland is a Minister, Elder or Deacon of the Church of Scotland chosen to "moderate" the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which is held for a week in Edinburgh every May....
on 19 May 1796. From that session, he sent a letter to King George III, congratulating him on having escaped an assassination attempt, and one to the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, later George IV, congratulating him on his (ill-fated) engagement to Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
writes affectionately and admiringly of him in his second Commonplace Book "he is a steady, most disinterested friend, without the least affectation, of seeming so; and as a companion, his good sense, his joyous hilarity, his sweetness of manners and modesty, are most engagingly charming." He married Janet Bervie,daughter of a Kirkcaldy maltman, on 22 November 1782
Disgrace and after
Greenfield was seriously disgraced in December 1798. The records of the Presbytery of Edinburgh state that because of "certain flagrant reports concerning his conduct... they laid him under a sentence of excommunication." He had voluntarily resigned his Church and University posts as well as that of King's Almoner. He was deprived by the University of his degrees of M.A. and D.D. There is documentary evidence of a public outcry, "a Sin peculiarly heinous and offensive in its nature," according to the Presbytery, and a letter by Greenfield resigning and expressing gratitude to his previous colleagues and charges. Later comment indicated he had been discovered in gay relationship with a student. His name was practically eliminated from the recollections of his contemporaries in Scotland, the notable exception being Walter Scott, who helped Greenfield discreetly.Greenfield fled to the North of England and thereafter supported himself by teaching and writing. He authored several works, the most important being the elegantly written Essays on the Sources of the Pleasures received from Literary Compositions, which he published in 1809. This seems to be a polished and published version of his Edinburgh lecture course. It was republished in 1813, and may still be in print. In the same year, Sir Walter Scott introduced him to the publisher John Murray. Scott supposedly asked Murray to keep Greenfield's name secret, as he was hiding from creditors.
In another instance Scott's letter is quoted and and his case described: "You cannot but have heard of that very unfortunate man Dr Greenshields [sic] who for a dishonourable or rather infamous cause was obliged to leave Edinburgh where he was long beloved and admired of every human being..."
Greenfield contributed at least one review to the Quarterly Review
Quarterly Review
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967.-Early years:...
under the name of Richardson. It disapprove morally of the novel Amélie Mansfield by Mme Cottin
Sophie Ristaud Cottin
Sophie Cottin was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.-Biography:...
. He also assumed the name of Rutherfurd, which may explain, or on the other hand be a result of, Walter Scott's interest. Scott's mother was Anne Rutherford, of a Borders gentry family. This circumstance led many literary gossips, including the Kaleidoscope magazine to suspect Greenfield as the author of the Waverley
Waverley Novels
The Waverley Novels are a long series of books by Sir Walter Scott. For nearly a century they were among the most popular and widely-read novels in all of Europe. Because he did not publicly acknowledge authorship until 1827, they take their name from Waverley , which was the first...
or "Scotch" novels. Some thought that Scott was not capable of being the author but Greenfield was. Greenfield was a full and visible and respected member of the British literary set. He died in the North of England on 28 April 1827.
Posterity
His wife, who had assumed the maiden name of her mother Margaret Rutherford (or Rutherfurd), died on 20 June 1827. His children seemed to have made successful careers or marriages in the law, army and the Church, sugegsting the scandal did not affect them much, well concealed under the name of Rutherfurd. Their careers and marriages seemed also to have been based in Scotland, which might indicate that Greenfield had left his family there, the North of England being a common refuge for fugitive Scots, near but beyond the jurisdiction. The children were daughter Margaret, born 25 July 1784; a son Hugh Blair (named after Greenfield's predecessor as Professor of Rhethoric, and later lairdLaird
A Laird is a member of the gentry and is a heritable title in Scotland. In the non-peerage table of precedence, a Laird ranks below a Baron and above an Esquire.-Etymology:...
of Crosshill, and captain 25th Regiment), born 7 May 1786; Grizel, born 5 December 1787, who later married Thomas Clark, minister of St Andrew's, Edinburgh, her father's old kirk
Kirk
Kirk can mean "church" in general or the Church of Scotland in particular. Many place names and personal names are also derived from it.-Basic meaning and etymology:...
; Jane, born 7 July 1789; Andrew, Senator of the College of Justice
Senator of the College of Justice
The Senators of the College of Justice are judges of the College of Justice, a set of legal institutions involved in the administration of justice in Scotland. There are three types of Senator: Lords of Session ; Lords Commissioner of Justiciary ; and the Chairman of the Scottish Land Court...
, born 21 June 1791, died 13 December 1854; James Hunter, Major Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
, born 13 August 1794.
Sources
- Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae V4: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation Edinburgh (1922)
- Burns Encyclopaedia http://www.robertburns.org/encyclopedia/GreenfieldTheRevWilliamd1827.414.shtml
- Gaillet, Lynée Lewis, Scottish rhetoric and its influences 1998, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, Mahwah, 07430, New Jersey, USA http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k39_OE6Sg94C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
- Crawford, Robert, The Scottish Invention of English Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-59038-8 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scottish-Invention-English-Literature/dp/0521590388#_
- Kaleidoscope, or Literary and Scientific Mirror Vol 1, page 32 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JjEFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Sir+Walter+Scott+Greenfield&source=bl&ots=rV4Wp5EIJi&sig=XiIseVhR7qONFJSOQVKY1ugxWk&hl=en&ei=Mc_7TMfQIYmLhQeLl83VCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CD0Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Sir%20Walter%20Scott%20Greenfield&f=false A similar comment was made by Andrew LangAndrew LangAndrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
in his Editor's Comments to an 1893 complete edition of the Waverly novels. http://www.fullbooks.com/Waverley--Or-Tis-Sixty-Years-Hence-Complete2.html; as well as in Leigh Hunt'sLeigh HuntJames Henry Leigh Hunt , best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet and writer.-Early life:Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the USA...
The ExaminerThe ExaminerThe Examiner can refer to:* The Examiner , an early 18th century journal with contributions by Jonathan Swift*The Examiner, a weekly paper published between 1808 and 1886*The Examiner , a weekly paper in Beaumont, Texas...
http://www.fullbooks.com/Waverley--Or-Tis-Sixty-Years-Hence-Complete2.html
External links
Publications
- Address, delivered to the congregation of the High Church of Edinburgh, on Thursday the 9th of March 1797, ... by William Greenfield
- Sermon, preached in the high-church of Edinburgh, before His Grace the Earl of Leven and Melville, His Majesty’s High Commissioner, on Thursday the 18th of May 1797, at the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. / By William Greenfield
- Dissertatio inauguralis, de methodis exhaustionum, atque rationum primarum et ultimarum: quam, ... ad gradum magistri in artibus liberalibus ... recitabit Gulielmus Greenfield, Edinburgh 1778, Balfour and Smellie