ABSTRACT
Between 1574 and 1606, the progress of Melville’s intellectual reform programme was less than sweeping across the ‘ancient’ universities of Scotland. Both King’s College and the colleges at St Andrews outwith his direct control largely failed to engage with his innovations, and although he left Glasgow fully reformed in line with his programme, a severe political backlash against the students and masters for their support of radical Presbyterianism in the half decade following his departure seriously hampered the college’s ability to function.1 However, in the last two decades of the sixteenth century new centres of higher education were established across Scotland in locales as far apart as Edinburgh (1583), Fraserburgh (1592) and in New Aberdeen (1593), the burgh adjacent to the village of Old Aberdeen that housed King’s College. These institutions owed nothing to the old Catholic Church, and were founded wholly in line with the aims of the local Protestant population, and the magnates and authorities that supported them, to provide a ‘godly’ education for their children. To what extent did Melville have a role in their foundation and development, and to what extent were they engendered by other factors and parties outwith his control?
