Page 18 - Scottish Alchemists

Sir George Erskine.

In the reign of King James VI there were many followers of the hermetic
philosophy in Scotland, the most important of whom perhaps was Sir George
Erskine, or Areskine, of Innertiel. He was the third son of Sir Alexander
Erskine of Gogar, and brother of the first Earl of Kellie. The date of his birth
is uncertain, but it must have been in the latter part of the 16th century.
There are few particulars known of him from which a biography might be
drawn up. It is stated, however, in Mackenzie’s Lives of the Eminent
Writers of the Scots Nation, that he had the advantage of being in his youth
under the tuition of the famous George Buchanan along with King James the
Sixth, and it is on his authority that Mackenzie gives his interesting account
of the death of Buchanan. Several particulars are given with reference to him
in Brunton and Haig’s Account of the Senators of the College of Justice. In
1617 Sir George was admitted a lord ordinary of the Court of Session, under
the title of Lord Innertiel, in place of Sir James Wemyss of Bogie. He was in
1621 appointed a commissioner for regulating the tax roll of the shire of Kin-
cardine. He is stated in Balfour’s Annals of Scotland to have refused the
Covenant in 1638. In November 1641 an Act of Parliament was passed
declaring that the judges of the Court of Session should in future hold their
places ad vitam aut culpam, and Sir George was the first judge named in the
new commission. He sat on the bench till his death in 1646, when he was
succeeded by Sir Alexander Gibson of Dune. Sir George had two daughters -
Anne, married to John, third Lord Melville of Raith, and Margaret, married
first to Sir John Mackenzie of Tarbat, and mother of the first Earl of
Cromarty.

According to Lord Hailes, Sir George drew up some decisions of the
Court while he sat on the bench, but no trace of these has been discovered.
Some remains of his alchemical labours are to be found in his manuscripts,
several volumes of which were presented by his grandson, Lord Cromarty,
to the Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1707. On
one of these volumes, remarkable for the variety of its contents, and the
beauty of its calligraphy, as also for the manner in which it came into the
possession of Sir George Erskine, is the following inscription by the Earl :

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