David Hume of Godscroft

David Hume or Home of Godscroft (1558–1629) was a Scottish historian and political theorist, poet and controversialist, a major intellectual figure in Jacobean Scotland. It has been said that "Hume marks the culmination of the Scottish humanist tradition."

Confusion is possible with David Hume or Home, Scottish minister at Duras in France, a contemporary: they had quite different views on the union with England.

Life He was the second son of Sir David Hume or Home, 7th Lord of Wedderburn, a Roman Catholic traditionalist of the Merse (now Berwickshire), who had married an active Calvinist wife in Mary Johnston of Elphinstone. He studied at Dunbar grammar school, under Andrew Simson. He then entered the University of St Andrews in 1578, and after a course of study there travelled on the continent. From France he went on to Geneva, intending to travel to Italy.

Hume was recalled to Scotland by the serious illness of his elder brother George, returning about 1581.

In 1605 a union tract by Robert Pont suggested Hume's treatise De Unione Insulæ Britanniæ, a study in how to effect the closer political union of Scotland and England. The first part Tractatus I. was published in London (1605).

On the relative values of episcopacy and presbytery, Hume was a persistent polemicist in discussing the theme: first with James Law, bishop of Orkney, from 1608 to 1611; and secondly, in 1613, with William Cowper, bishop of Galloway. He was also responsible about the same time for De Episcopatu, 1 May 1609, Patricio Simsono, to Patrick Simson. Hume's other major Latin prose writings are his unpublished attack on William Camden for his depreciatory view of Scotland, written in 1617—Cambdenia; id est, Examen nonnullorum a Gulielmo Cambreno in "Britannia,"—and a work dedicated to Charles I (Paris, 1626), entitled Apologia Basilica; seu Machiavelli Ingenium Examinatum, in libro quem inscripsit Princeps.

Hume's Daphn-Amaryllis was a celebration of Anglo-Scottish union, printed in Edinburgh and London editions, in 1603–5. It consists of four eclogues, and drew on the Liber Pluscardensis and John Mair's Historia, in a setting of "leonine prophecy". In citing this poem in his second union Tractatus, Hume explicitly references both the Lion of Judah (associated with the Davidic Kingdom), and the Lion of Scotland, linking both with the "Lion of the North" prophecy of Paul Grebner; with a simple heraldic code, he also indicated the expansionism of the new kingdom, desiring the removal of the tressure bordering the Scottish lion rampant (harking back to the time of James III of Scotland).

The Lusus Poetici (1605) were ultimately incorporated in Arthur Johnston's Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum (1637). When Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales died, Hume wrote a memorial tribute entitled Henrici Principis Justa, and in 1617 he welcomed the king back to Scotland in his Regi suo Gratulatio. His collected Latin poems were twice issued in Paris, in 1632 and 1639, the second time with additions under the care of his son James, and with the title: Davidis Humii Wedderburnensis Poemata Omnia. Accessere ad finem Unio Britannica et Prœlium ad Lipsiam soluta oratione. Arthur Williamson has argued that "Scots wrote histories of great families as general histories of Scotland". A grandson of Alison Douglas, herself a granddaughter of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus, Hume has as his main patron William Douglas, 11th Earl of Angus, later the 1st Marquess of Douglas.

Hume's History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus was printed at Edinburgh in 1644 by Evan Tyler, the king's printer. He is thought to have finished the history between 1625 and 1630 (around the year of his death). The title-pages of early copies vary, with some having the title A Generall History of Scotland, together with a particular History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus. Confusion arose when the editor, Anna Hume, encountered opposition of Angus, who resented the use which Hume had made of some of the material in the family archives.

Family Hume married in 1594 Barbara Johnston, widow of his friend James Haldane. They had five children. His daughter Anna Hume was known as an editor, and his son ( 1630) as a mathematician.