| Administrative History | Robert Arbuthnot [1728-1803] was a member of a distinguished Jacobite/ Episcopalian family. He was brought up and later owned Haddo-Rattray House, north of Peterhead. He was a merchant and then a banker in the firm of Arbuthnot and Guthrie, which failed in 1772. He then moved to Edinburgh where he bacame secretary of the Board for the Encouragement of Manufacturies and Fisheries in Scotland. He befriended Beattie after Beattie moved to Aberdeen in 1758, and became for some years his principal poetic adviser and promoter. He negotiated on Beattie's behalf and often in conjuction with Sir William Forbes, with the booksellers over several of the publications
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo [1714-1799], lawyer, eccentric scholar, with theories on language and its origins, and pre-darwinian ideas on revolution. Lord of Session from 1767. The Burnett were a landed family who lived at Monboddo House, a mile from the parish church and school of Fordoun, where Beattie was schoolmaster from 1753 to 1758. Beattie said Lord Monboddo was one of his earliest patrons. Beattie later disagreed with much of his wiritngsabout the origins of language and of man
John Gregory [1724-1773] One of a dinasty of professors of medicine at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. He succeded his brother in the chair of medicine at King's College in 1755. He was a close friend and mentor of Beattie. In 1752 he married Elizabeth, daughter of William, Lord Forbes. In 1764 Gregory moved to a more lucrative chair and practice in Edinburgh, but he and Beattie remained intimate friends |