ABSTRACT
The General Assembly that met in Edinburgh in October 1583 had a deeply intellectual flavour to it, with much of its business devoted to the issue of the Protestant reform of the Scottish universities, and the doctrine to be taught within them. Although Robert Pont was elected moderator, he was to be advised on the agenda of business ‘for the riper resolutione of matters’ by a committee that included Melville and several others interested in educational reform, notably James Lawson (who had been involved in early proposals relating to the foundation of Edinburgh University, which opened its doors in that same month), Principal Thomas Smeaton of Glasgow University and his colleague Peter Blackburn, and the St Andrews regent Nicol Dalgleish. One of the first pieces of assembly business was to ‘sight and consider the forme of the new erectioun of the colledge of Aberdeen’ which its principal Alexander Arbuthnott had devised with Melville, and which the assembly now gave ‘their approbatione thereunto’; another was to organise a commission to the University of St Andrews in March of the following year to ensure that the Protestant ‘New Foundation’ of the university enacted in 1579 was being upheld, and the staff of King’s College were also to appear before this visitation to ensure they were fit to carry out its re-foundation.1 This discussion of educational reform turned to matters of content when this same group of advisors, along with the provost of St Salvator’s James Martine, and the principal of St Leonard’s James Wilkie, produced a summary of Latin propositions from the works of Aristotle that were ‘erronious, false, and aganis the Religioun, and condemnit be the commoun vote of the haill Kirk’. They urged the assembly to be vigilant for any other similar points arising from Aristotle’s works, as ‘oft tymes the zouth being curious and of insolent spirits, drinkes in erronious and damnable opiniouns, and … mantaines thair godles and profane opinions obstainately in disputatioun and vtherwayes, to the great slander of the Word of God, and offence of the simple and vnlearnit’.2
