1. J.W. Cairns, ‘The Formation of the Scottish Legal Mind in the Eighteenth Century: Themes of Humanism and Enlightenment in the Admission of Advocates’, in N. MacCormick and P. Birks (eds), The Legal Mind: Essays for Tony Honoré (Oxford, 1986), 254–77.
2. The Minute Book of the Faculty of Advocates Volume 21713–1750, ed. by J.M. Pinkerton (Stair Society, vol. 32, Edinburgh, 1980), 225.
3. A. Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its first three hundred years (2 vols, London, 1884), i, 232.
4. Charles Areskine, professor 1707–34, advertised his lectures in 1711 (see J. Lorimer, ‘The Story of the Chair of Public Law in the University of Edinburgh’, Law Quarterly Review, 4 (1888), 139–58 at 144); William Kirkpatrick was professor for one year only; George Abercromby, professor 1735–59, in 1741 lectured on Grotius’ treatise De jure belli ac pacis (see Scots Magazine, 3 (1741), 371–4 at 371); Robert Bruce, professor 1759–64, was the teacher referred to by the Faculty of Advocates. For the next two professors, see below, text at notes 104–8.
5. That it was Grotian natural law is indicated both by the title of the chair which reflects the full title of Grotius’ work, and by Abercromby’s textbook in 1741: see note 7 above. On the spread of similar chairs in Europe, see G. Tarello, Le ideologie della codificazione nel secolo XVIII: Corso di filosofio del diritto (3rd edn, Genoa, n.d.), 90–3. On the development of Grotian natural law, see, e.g., K. Haakonssen, ‘Hugo Grotius and the History of Political Thought’, Political Theory, 13 (1985), 239–65.