Professor Thomas Dempster (c1575-1625) - who hardly ever allowed a day to pass without fighting

Thomas Dempster is the only Dempster left in the Chambers Biographical Dictionary and well deserves the title of "infamous" rather than famous. He was the original historian in the family and has long been considered Scotland's least accurate.

The Dictionary of National Biography comments on his autobiography that

"Dempster's account of his own life is to be received with some suspicion; but what portions of it are fact and what are fiction it is impossible to determine".

Actually, quite a lot of what Thomas Dempster said about himself can be shown to be correct, and a lot of the falsehoods are blindingly obvious. He claimed to have been born on 23rd August 1579, the 24th of 29 children and one of triplets. This is a lie. His position as the 3rd son of Thomas Dempster (senior) and Jean Leslie of Balquhain is made clear in the entail of estates made by his father in 1592. Thomas and Jean had at least 6 children - three sons and three daughters are known to have survived to adulthood - so he dropping of the 20 could make things more plausible - the 4th child of 9.

Next we come to the year of his birth - 1579. A date not impossible, but highly unlikely. His parents married in 1568 and allowing for one child every 18 months would give a year of birth of 1574 or 1575, which would make his achievements much less extraordinary. If he were one of triplets, then his birth could have been as early as 1570.

The DNB then goes on to pour scorn on his "aristocratic pedigree" but once again, it can be shown that what Thomas said was fundamentally accurate. His mother was Jean Leslie of Balquhain, and she was the niece of Lord (not Viscount) Forbes. His paternal great-grandmother (as opposed to grandmother) was probably a daughter of Alexander Stewart, 2nd Earl of Buchan. His father was feudal baron (which is not a peerage) of Auchterless-Dempster and Laithers and held the lands of Muiresk, Auchterless and Killesmont; till 1586 he was Sheriff of Banff. All of the above can be proved by reference to third part evidence except for the identification of his great-grandmother Margaret Stewart as a daughter of the Earl of Buchan. This cannot as yet be shown to be the case with 100% certainty, but there is circumstantial evidence to support it.

Leaving aside his birth and ancestry, why is Thomas famous?

Well, to start with, he was something of a child prodigy. He claimed to have learned to read at the age of 3 and was certainly well educated in his home town of Turriff by Arthur Ogston, a professor from Aberdeen who had been kicked out of the university for being a catholic. From there he went to Aberdeen (probably the Grammar School) for a very short time before going up to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. By his own account he would have been 9 years old, though I reckon 12 or 13 is more likely. He had the misfortune to be going to college, a foreigner and a professed catholic, in the year of the Spanish Armada, and was soon forced to quit England for Paris. This was the start of his career as a wandering scholar.

Broke, but intelligent, it was only the generocity of fellow countrymen in France that helped him to re-start his education. Unfortunately he almost immediately contracted plague. On recovering he set off on his travels once more, to the University of Louvain in Belgium, probably because of the presence of a close relative, John Fraser, who was Abbot of Nyon. Shortly after arriving at Louvain he was selected as one of 4 students to be sent to Rome to be educated at Papal expense, but shortly after his arrival in Italy he came down with plague again and returned north where he came under the wing of another Aberdeenshire academic, James Cheyne. Cheyne arranged for him to study at Douai with pensions from both King Philip of Spain and Archduke Albert of Austria. Graduating first in Poetry and second in Philosophy he taught for a short while in Tournai before moving to Paris where he took his degree in law and became Professor at the College de Navarre about 1596. He soon moved to St Maixent, then to Toulouse, then after refusing Montpelier, to Nimes, with trouble, usually violent, always surrounding him.

His appointment as Professor of Oratory at Nimes led to an armed attack on him, and a 2 year long court case, during which time he was suspended. On winning the court case, he became tutor to the son of the Marshal de St Luc, but an argument with that family led to his sacking and return to Scotland.

On his visit to Scotland he would have found his family more violent and poorer than he was himself. In 1586, his father had been stripped of the post of Sheriff of Banff - which had been held by the family for several generations - for accounting irregularities. For the next 34 years, till his execution, the elder Thomas was more often an outlaw than not. Thomas' elder brother, James had married his father's mistress, Isabella Gordon of Auchinachie and was at times estranged from the rest of the family, whilst at other times deeply involved in their criminality. Meanwhile, with the aid of his other son Robert, cousins and friends, Thomas senior was cheerfully running a reign of murder, terror and intimidation along the Aberdeenshire-Banffshire border. At one point this even included the setting up of a fake Sheriff Court where everyone from the Sheriff (Thomas) downward to the clerks and Sheriff Officers was "at the horn" i.e. outlaws.

After the disappointments of Scotland, Thomas took himself off to Paris, where in one of the most stable periods of his life, he spent 7 years as a Professor at various colleges in the city. At the end of this time he was President of the College de Beauvais, but his rough (though probably deserved) treatment of some of his aristocratic pupils led to him thankfully crossing to England. This was at the invitation of King James VI & I who wanted him to be Historiographer-Royal. The royal patronage didn't last, Thomas had written a searing attack on Queen Elizabeth whilst a student at Douai and faced fierce opposition led by Bishop Montagu of Bath & Wells, who objected to a catholic and a known enemy of England receiving such royal favour.

Pausing only long enough to marry a beautiful wife whose identity is unknown - her name was only ever given in its latinised form of Susanna Valeria - Thomas left for Italy and eventually gained preferment in Florence where Cosimo II made him Professor of Civil Law at Pisa. Thomas spent 3 years (1616-1619) at Pisa during which he wrote a very well received work on Etrurian antiquities which was still in print 100 years later. However, all was not well in his marriage and after his wife deserted him for an Englishman, his behaviour led to the loss of the Grand Duke's favour and a period in prison.

On his way back to Scotland, he stopped at Bologna where an old friend from his student days in Rome was now a Cardinal and Governor of the city. Cardinal Capponi prevailed on him to take up the seat of Professor of Humanities, which he did and in which post he remained till his death, despite the usual sort of troubles which always seemed to surround him - armed protest by his students, accusations of heresy, and various quarrels with his wife's English former lover.

As well as having a friend in Cardinal Capponi, the election of Maffeo Barbarini as Pope Urban VIII led to Thomas having a friend in very high places, and he was made a knight of the Golden Spur by the new Pope who also provided him with a pension, though this still didn't prevent some of his books being placed on the index of heretical works.

Family life continued to be fraught, and his wife left him for a second time, heading north with her new lover and some of Thomas' property. He followed, armed with an arrest warrant from the Venetian Senate, but on hearing at Vicenza that they had already crossed the alps, he set out to return to Bologna, only to be stricken with illness, from which he died on 6th September 1625.

Two of his contemporaries who were admirers, penned portraits of him

"he was tall, above the stature of common men; his hair nearly black, and his skin almost of the same colour; his head large, and his bodily aspect altogether kingly; his strength and courage equal to that of any soldier"

"a man framed for war and contention, who hardly ever allowed a day to pass without fighting, either with his sword or with his fists"

"harsh and violent in his manners, utterly incapable of disguising his feelings, equally outspoken in his love and in his hatred; the kindest of friends, but the bitterest of enemies, never either forgiving or forgetting an injury"

His best known work is probably his worst, the "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum" a biographical dictionary of Scotland from the earliest times which combines accurate information with what were probably honest mistakes and what were obvious inventions. The inventions include the identification of Boadicea (Bundevica) as daughter of a Scots king. It also lists Boadicea's works - she apparently wrote 6 books when not scything down Romans in her chariot.

The Historia was a work in the spirit of the old Scots claim that Pontius Pilate was born in Perthshire, and its reputation as the least accurate book of Scots History ever written obscures his achievements on Italian Antiquities, the poetry of Claudian and as a poet.

© James Dempster 1997