William Rae Wilson

William Rae Wilson (1772–1849) was a Scottish lawyer, landowner and travel writer.

Life Wilson was from a family in Haddington, East Lothian named Rae or Ray, and was born in Paisley on 7 June 1772. His parents were Patrick Ray and his wife Isobel Wilson. He learned law under his uncle, John Wilson of Kelvinbank, town clerk of Glasgow, and for a time practised as a solicitor in the Scottish courts.

His uncle died in 1806, and left him his fortune; and William Rae then, by letters patent, added Wilson to his name.

After his first wife's death, Rae Wilson travelled in Egypt and Palestine, and through most of Europe. He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and in 1844 received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow.

Works Rae Wilson's publications included: A Journey through Turkey, Greece, the Ionian Isles, Sicily, Spain, 1824. Travels in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Hanover, Germany, Netherlands, 1826. Travels in Russia, 1828, 2 vols. Records of a Route through France and Italy; with Sketches of Catholicism, 1835. Notes Abroad and Rhapsodies at Home (1837, 2 vols.), as "A Traveller"

Views and reception A religious man, a writer and a distributor of tracts, Rae Wilson was not of a tolerant spirit.

His sabbatarian views were of his time. Joseph Irving's Book of Scotsmen (1882) commented that "Charitable and hospitable, Rae Wilson's religious views would now be considered narrow and severe [...]". His works included anti-Catholic passages:

In one word, Popery is "of the earth, earthy;"- is revelation so overlaid and disfigured by human conceits and inventions, which, although they cunningly assume the semblance of righteousness, are for the most part quite the reverse of it, as to retain very little indeed of scriptural origin.

John Clubbe wrote that he "glorified the narrowest Protestantism." William Beckford in annotations to the first Travels wrote:

I am rather afraid that reasoning Believers will not find their faith particularly strengthened by the perusal of this volume, which, when it does not repeat what has already been again and again repeated, conveys little if any information at all.

One stricture was answered by Thomas Hood's "Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire", published in 1837 in the Athenæum. It was described by Thomas Wilson Bayne in the Dictionary of National Biography as "discursive and pungent". Rae Wilson was further provoked by Hood's "Drinking Song By a Member of a Temperance Society" published in 1836 in the Athenæum. The "Ode", a satire on evangelicalism, was much liked by Charles Dickens, and James Ewing Ritchie felt that in it Hood had "turned the tables" on his evangelical critics generally.

Family and estate

From his uncle John Wilson, Rae Wilson inherited Kelvinbank House and an estate of 12 Scottish acres. Between Partick to the west and Anderston to the east, it was bounded to the north by the River Kelvin, and by Kelvingrove Street, In 1811 Rae Wilson married Frances Phillips, the invalid daughter of a Glasgow merchant, John Phillips of Stobcross. It bordered the Kelvinbank estate on the south side, closer to the River Clyde. Mary married in 1814 Thomas Rowan of Haughhead; and Hannah, the fifth daughter, married A. W. H. Le Neve RN. John Phillips died in 1829 aged 84, and his wife Frances died in 1832, also at age 84.