Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/204

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Lauder
198
Lauder

diocese. When he first began to officiate at Dunkeld he was driven from the altar by armed bands of highland robbers; yet he so far pacified the country as to be able to hold a synod in his church. This building, begun by James Kennedy (1406?–1465) [q. v.], Lauder's predecessor, was finished and dedicated by him in 1464. He provided it with glass windows and adorned the portico with statuary. He increased the number of canons, provided prebends, and founded a chantry. He obtained the royal authority to form the Bishop lands on the north side of the Tay into a barony, to be called the barony of Dunkeld; and those on the south side into another, to be called the barony of Aberlady. He built a bridge over the Tay near to his palace, which was completed on 8 July 1461, and performed many other acts of public utility and charity. He wrote the life of Bishop John Scott, one of his predecessors in the see of Dunkeld, and also a volume of sermons termed 'Postiles, or Brief Notes on the Evangelists.' He died 4 Nov. 1481, and was buried in the cathedral.

[Vitæ Dunkeldensis Ecclesiæ Episcoporum ab Alexandro Myln ejusdem ecclesiæ Edinburg, 1831; Dempster's Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot. No. 820; Spotiswood's Hist.; Registrum Domus de Soltre, necnon Ecclesiæ Collegiatæ S. Trinitatis prope Edinburg, &c. (Bannatyne Club), 1861.]

J. G. F.

LAUDER, Sir THOMAS DICK (1784–1848), author, born in 1784, was a descendant of Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall [q.v.]. His father was Sir Andrew Lauder, sixth baronet of Fountainhall, who married Isabel Dick, the heiress of Grange, and his mother Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brown of Johnstonburn. For a short time he held a commission in the 79th regiment (Cameron highlanders), but on his marriage to Charlotte Cumin, only child and heiress of George Cumin of Relugas, Elginshire, he took up his residence there. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1820. The scenery and legends of the district gave a special bent to his scientific and literary studies. In 1815 he began to contribute papers on chemistry, natural history, and meteorology to the 'Annals of Philosophy,' edited by Professor Thomas Thomson of Glasgow; and in 1818 he read a remarkable paper on the 'Parallel Roads of Glenroy,' in which he conclusively proved that they were not artificially constructed roads, but the result probably of the action of a lake. Shortly after the commencement of 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1817 he contributed to it a tale, 'Simon Roy, Gardener at Dumphail,' which was editorially described as 'written, we have no doubt, by the author of Waverley.' To the 'Edinburgh Cyclopædia' he contributed a statistical account of the province of Moray. Two romances by him, 'Lochindhu' and 'The Wolf of Badenoch,' appeared respectively in 1825 and 1827, the scenes of both being laid in Morayshire, and the period that succeeding the wars of Bruce. They at once acquired popularity, and were translated into several foreign languages; but though vividly realising the charms of external nature and ancient modes of life, they are weak in characterisation. In 1830 there appeared the most permanently popular of all his works, 'Account of the Great Moray Floods of 1829,' which, according to Dr. John Brown, contained 'something of everything characteristic of him—his descriptive power, his humour, his sympathy for suffering, his sense of the picturesque.' In 1832 Lauder removed to his mansion of the Grange, near Edinburgh. He was a zealous supporter of the Reform Bill, and otherwise busied himself in politics on the liberal side until his appointment in 1839 as secretary to the Board of Scottish Manufactures. 'He is,' wrote Lord Cockburn, 'the greatest favourite with the mob that the whigs have. The very sight of his blue carriage makes their soles itch to take out the horses.' He also credits him with 'a tall, gentleman-like Quixotic figure, and a general picturesqueness of appearance' (Journal, 1874, i. 102), and was of opinion that he could have made his 'way in the world as a player, or a ballad-singer, or a street-fiddler, or a geologist, or a civil engineer, or a surveyor, and easily or eminently as an artist or a lawyer.' Soon after his appointment to the secretaryship of the Board of Scottish Manufactures it was united to the Board of White Herring Fishery, and he became secretary to the consolidated board. The work was thoroughly congenial. Officially he devoted much attention to the foundation of technical and art schools, and he became secretary to the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts. In 1837 he published 'Highland Rambles and Legends to Shorten the Way,' 3 vols.; and in 1841 'Legends and Tales of the Highlands,' a sequel to 'Highland Rambles,' 3 vols. In 1842 appeared 'A Tour round the Coast of Scotland,' made in the course of his labours as secretary of the Fishery Board, the joint production of himself and James Wilson [q.v.] the naturalist. In 1843 he published 'Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland,' 1842. During the tedium of a long and painful illness he dictated to his daughter Susan a series of papers descriptive of the rivers of Scotland, which appeared in 'Tait's Maga-