On 15 July 1761, after delivering a discourse “de testamentis ordinandis”, John Millar was admitted as Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Glasgow. His appointment was to bring a sea-change to the law school at Glasgow, which had languished somewhat in the past few years. The professors of Glasgow, having successfully vanquished the sinecurist William Crosse just a few years before, wished for an active and successful teacher of law and they were determined to have one; in Millar they gained just what they sought and he turned Glasgow into the premier school of law in the United Kingdom. The year of Millar's arrival in Glasgow is significant. It is also the year that two young Russian students, Semyon Efimovich Desnitsky and Ivan Andreyevich Tret'yakov, arrived to study in that university, where they were to stay until 1767.

SEMYON EFIMOVICH DESNITSKY AND IVAN ANDREYEVICH TRET'YAKOV

While Desnitsky and Tret'yakov attended the lectures of other professors, we know for certain that they attended “Dr Smith's class of Ethicks and Jurisprudence” and “Mr Millar's classes of civil law” indeed they had attended the last for three years by December 1765. Millar's teaching had thus been of great importance for the two Russians. On 31 December 1765, the two petitioned to be allowed to offer themselves as candidates for the degree of “Doctor in Laws” and Millar was appointed to examine them privately. On 9 January 1766, Millar was able to report that he had examined them privately and found them “qualified to undergo a publick examination”. This took place on 16 January, when the professors “approved the specimen they had given of their knowledge in Law” and allocated to Tret'yakov the title de in ius vocando of Justinian's Digest (D 4.2) and to Desnitsky that de testamentis ordinandis (D 28.1). On 8 February, the two students read their theses to the Faculty at Glasgow and left them to be examined: a duty devolved to Millar and George Muirhead, then Dean of Faculty. On 8 April, on Muirhead and Millar's favourable report upon the theses, the two Russians were given permission to print them.