Peter Hume Brown

Peter Hume Brown, FBA (17 December 1849 – 1 December 1918) was a Scottish historian and professor who played an important part in establishing Scottish history as a significant academic discipline. In addition to teaching and writing, he spent 16 years as editor of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and served as Historiographer Royal.

Early life Hume Brown was born in Tranent but soon he and his widowed mother moved to Prestonpans, a few miles away, where he started at the Free Church school in 1857. After his mother's death in 1866 he stayed at the school as a pupil teacher for another three years. with R. B. Haldane who shared some of his intellectual interests. He had also sold his theology books and bought Montaigne's Essays instead. For the rest of his life, Hume Brown's interest in French and German culture flourished alongside his dedication to the history of Scotland; the biographies he wrote of George Buchanan and John Knox gave full attention to the influence of continental Europe in their lives. He pursued his research and published his first book, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer, in 1890. Three other books followed before his biography of Knox in 1895. In 1896 he was made an honorary LLD by Edinburgh, and later honorary degrees came from St Andrews and the University of Geneva. The appointment highlights Hume Brown's major role in "establish[ing] the academic respectability of Scottish history". When this new departure for the university was announced, Hume Brown was described as "a man of new mark and likelihood among Scottish historical scholars" whose book Scotland before 1700 "presents a view of Scotland based entirely upon contemporary native sources". Before Hume Brown's inaugural address the principal expressed pleasure that "there was being introduced a fresh subject into the work of the University." The new professor himself said it could not be a "revolutionary step" for a university to include study of "the national history".

Hume Brown was concerned with Scotland's nationhood, and saw the Reformation as a key period in the development of a national consciousness, He lectured his students on the Making of Scotland, while conceding that no historian could ever give a fully adequate account of the "making" of a nation. He was interested in studying Scotland in a European context more than in the context of the British Empire,

At first his lectures only covered the years up to 1500, but when a second specialist on the history of Scotland, Henry Meikle, joined him in 1909, he added a course taking students up to 1800. He was invited to give prestigious lecture series at other universities, including the Rhind lectures for 1903 on "Scotland in the Time of Queen Mary" and the Ford Lectures for 1913/14. In 1908 he was made Historiographer Royal.

The Haldanes and Goethe Lord Haldane, his mother and his sister Elizabeth were a lifelong support and regularly invited Hume Brown to their estate at Cloan in Perthshire, a change from the suburban home where he lived alone except for his dog.

Selected works George Buchanan, humanist and reformer, a biography 1506–1582 (David Douglas 1890) Early Travellers in Scotland, edited by P. Hume Brown (David Douglas 1891) Vernacular writings of George Buchanan, edited by P. Hume Brown (Edinburgh 1892) Scotland before 1700, from contemporary documents (David Douglas 1893) John Knox: a biography (Adam and Charles Black 1895) History of Scotland, Vols 1–3 (Cambridge 1899–1909) A history of Scotland for schools (Edinburgh 1907) The Youth of Goethe (John Murray 1913) The legislative union of England and Scotland (Clarendon Press, 1914) Life of Goethe, ed. E. and R. Haldane (London 1920)