The exact role of lawyers in Scotland – especially that of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh – after the Union of 1707 is a matter of debate; no one doubts, however, that they were important in the administration of Scotland in the system of government through patronage operated by men such as the Earl of Ilay and the Earl of Bute. They also were important social figures in Edinburgh society, even if not to the extent that Lockhart's Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk suggests for the era just prior to the Reform Bill. Members of the Faculty of Advocates can be found as improving landlords; a number of them were well-known literati of the Scottish Enlightenment. There has been some study of the Scottish legal profession in the eighteenth century; much, however, remains to be done.

This essay is part of a much larger project devoted to an examination of legal education in eighteenth-century Scotland. The topic is of particular importance. The literati of the various European Enlightenments were very concerned with education generally. Study of legal education reveals much not only about the values and aspirations of perhaps the most powerful profession in Early Modern societies, but also about the complex linkage of knowledge and politics that characterised societies that worked on the basis of patronage. It also provides a necessary background for an exploration of how the thought of the Enlightenment started to influence legal practice and the development of rules of law.

This essay will examine the establishment of legal education in the University of Glasgow in 1714 and its development over the next fifty years. It is closely related to three others published elsewhere. Read together, all four present a picture of legal education in one institution from shortly after the Union with England until the Reform Act of 1832. Here we shall address the following issues: why the university founded a chair in Law; how the first professor came to be appointed and why he desired the position; his tenure of the chair; and the appointment and tenure of his two immediate successors. Discussion of these topics will allow an approach to an understanding of how issues of politics and personality affected the growth of teaching in law, and impeded or furthered its development.