Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/441

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Reid
435
Reid

11 April 1582 the town council was empowered to pursue and recover the money from the abbot of Kinloss, Walter Reid (ib. iii. 472–4). Ultimately only two thousand five hundred marks were recovered, and this was paid in instalments by Abbot Walter Reid—seven hundred in 1583 and eighteen hundred in 1587. The abbot is stated to have been the author of a ‘Geographical Description of the Islands of Orkney, and a Genealogical and Historical Account of the Family of the Sinclairs;’ but probably the treatise was merely written by his direction or sanction, as it is signed by the chapter as well as by himself.

[Ferrarii Historia Abbatum de Kinloss (in the Bannatyne Club), 1839; Records of the Monastery of Kinloss, ed. John Stuart, LL.D. 1872; Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. i.; Hamilton State Papers, vol. i.; Sadler State Papers; Reg. Privy Council of Scotland, vol. i.; Histories of Knox, Spotiswoode, Calderwood, Buchanan, Lesley, and Keith; Grant's History of the University of Edinburgh; Keith's Scottish Bishops; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice.]

T. F. H.

REID, ROBERT (1776–1856), of Lowood, architect, was born in 1776. He competed for the laying out of Moray Park, Edinburgh, and the lower part of the new town, begun early in the 19th century. In 1806 he designed the bank of Scotland; 1808–10, the new courts of justice, embracing three sides of Parliament Square, and the upper library of the Society of Writers to the Signet; 1810, the lunatic asylum, Morning Side; 1811–14, St. George's Church, the custom-house at Leith, and several other public buildings. He exhibited architectural designs at the Royal Academy, 1818–20. In 1820 he designed St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, the east wing of which was completed in 1831 at a cost of about 10,000l. About the same time he made considerable additions to St. Mary's College. He was the last master of the king's works, or king's architect, in Scotland, an office abolished on 5 April 1840. He died at Edinburgh, 20 March 1856, and was buried in the Dean cemetery.

[Dictionary of Architecture; Graves's Dict of Artists; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, s.v. Reed; Gent. Mag. 1856, i. 547.]

C. D.

REID, ROBERT (1773–1865), topographer and antiquary, youngest son of John Reid, mahogany dealer and cabinet-maker in Glasgow, was born there on 27 Jan. 1773. He was educated at the grammar school and the university of Glasgow. In 1793 he commenced business as a muslin manufacturer, and in 1800 became a partner with his brother John as a wholesale mahogany dealer. On his brother's death he took over the business, adding to it that of cabinet-making and upholstery. In 1832 he sold off his stock-in-trade and retired from business. Devoting himself to literature, under the pseudonym of ‘Senex,’ he contributed for many years attractive and well-informed articles on local memorabilia to the ‘Glasgow Herald.’ These papers were afterwards collected and published, as ‘Glasgow Past and Present,’ in three volumes. Two volumes appeared in 1851 and the third in 1856. Reid's ‘Glasgow and its Environs’ was issued in 1864, and both works, with additions by other writers, were reprinted in three quarto volumes at Glasgow in 1884. The third volume, written entirely by Reid, contains his portrait and a short autobiography.

During the last years of his life Reid resided at Strahoun Lodge in the island of Cumbrae, where he died on 7 June 1865. Reid married, in 1809, a daughter of Robert Ewing, a merchant of London. She died in 1826. By her he had three sons. Reid was also author of: ‘Fragments regarding the Ancient History of the Hebrides,’ 12mo, Glasgow, 1850.

[Obituary notice in Glasgow Herald; autobiography, reprinted 1865.]

G. S-h.

REID, READ, or RHÆDUS, THOMAS (d. 1624), Latin secretary to King James I, was second son of James Reid, minister of Banchory Ternan, Kincardineshire, a cadet of the Pitfoddels family. Alexander Reid (1586?–1643) [q. v.] was a younger brother. Thomas was educated at the grammar school, Aberdeen, and at Marischal College and University, where he appears to have graduated M.A. about 1600. In 1602 he was appointed to a mastership in the grammar school, which he resigned in the following year on being chosen one of the regents in Marischal College. After conducting a university class through the four years of their curriculum, he went to the continent, where he prosecuted his studies, at first in France, and afterwards at the universities of Rostock and Leipzig. While at Rostock, where he was admitted a ‘docent’ in December 1608, he ‘taught philosophy and humane letters for several years with distinguished reputation,’ and carried on a disputation on metaphysical subjects with Henningus Arnisæus, professor of medicine in the university of Frankfort. Reid's contributions to the discussion are characterised by Sir William Hamilton as displaying elegant scholarship and great philosophical talent. He matri-