TRAIL, WALTER (d. 1401), bishop of St. Andrews, belonged to the family of Trail of Blebo, Fifeshire. He was educated and graduated with distinction at the university of Paris, and afterwards became doctor of civil and of canon law. In the ‘Calendar of Petitions to the Pope,’ 1342–1419, he is referred to in 1365 as Walter Trayle of the diocese of Aberdeen, holding a benefice in the gift of the abbot and monastery of Aberbrothoc, and frequently afterwards as receiving church appointments in Scotland. He spent several years at Avignon as referendarius from Scotland at the court of Clement VII, and was there in 1385 when the see of St. Andrews fell vacant. He at once was appointed to the bishopric by the pope, who said that ‘he was more worthy to be a pope than a bishop, and that the place was better provided for than the person.’ In 1390 he assisted at the funeral of Robert II at Scone, and crowned Robert III, under whose feeble reign he exercised a great influence on the affairs of the country. In the following year he was sent as ambassador to France to effect a treaty between France, England, and Scotland, when a year was spent in fruitless negotiations. The ‘Wolf of Badenoch’ [see Stewart, Alexander, Earl of Buchan], who had been excommunicated for destroying Elgin Cathedral in 1390, was absolved by Bishop Trail in the Black Friars' Church, Perth (Registrum Moraviense, pp. 353, 381). In 1398, when the king made his brother Robert Stewart Duke of Albany [q. v.] and his son David Stewart Duke of Rothsay [q. v.]—the first dukedoms conferred in Scotland—Trail preached and celebrated. He died in 1401 in the castle of St. Andrews, which he had built or repaired, and was buried in the cathedral in a tomb which he had erected for himself. On his monument was the following inscription:
Hic fuit ecclesiæ directa columna, fenestra
Lucida, thuribulum redolens, campana sonora.
Trail receives a high character from Fordun and Wynton, and ‘was of such excellent worth that even Buchanan speaks in his praise.’
[Fordun's Chron.; Wynton's Chron.; Cal. of Petitions to the Pope, 1342–1419; Cal. Doc. relating to Scotland; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland; Book of Procurat. of English Nat. at the Univ. of Paris; Keith's Scottish Bishops; Lyon's St. Andrews.]
TRAILL, THOMAS STEWART (1781–1862), professor of medical jurisprudence, son of Thomas Traill (d. 1782) and his wife Lucia, was born at Kirkwall in Orkney, of which place his father was minister, on 29 Oct. 1781. He graduated in medicine in the university of Edinburgh in 1802, where he was a fellow student of Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster. He settled in Liverpool in 1803, and continued in practice there till 1832, when he was appointed to the chair of medical jurisprudence in the Edinburgh University. He was admitted a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh on 7 May 1833, and became its president on 2 Dec. 1852. He died at Edinburgh on 30 July 1862. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1819.
Traill took great pleasure in lecturing, and delivered many lectures in Liverpool, where he was prime mover in founding the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, of which he was the first secretary, and assisted in establishing the Royal Institution and the Liverpool Mechanics' Institution. He had a very tenacious memory, but trusted too much to it. He was editor of the eighth edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ to which he contributed many articles, but much of the work, owing to his ill-health, was edited by Adam Black. He wrote:
- ‘De usu aquæ frigidæ in typho externo,’ Edinburgh, 1802, 8vo.
- ‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence,’ Edinburgh, 1836, 12mo; 2nd edit. 1840, and Philadelphia, 1841; 3rd edit. 1857.
He contributed a ‘List of Animals met with on the Eastern Coast of West Greenland’ to Scoresby's ‘Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery,’ furnished an article on the ‘Thermometer and Pyrometer’ to the ‘Library of Useful Knowledge,’ section ‘Natural Philosophy’ (vol. ii. 1832), and published a translation of Schlegel's ‘Essay on the Physiognomy of Serpents,’ London, 1844, 8vo. He also contributed nearly seventy papers on various scientific subjects to different journals between 1805 and 1862.
[Gent. Mag. 1862, ii. 372; Proc. Royal Soc. Edinburgh, v. 30; Proc. Liverpool Lit. and Phil. Soc. xvii. 3; Hist. Sketch Royal Coll. Physicians, Edinburgh; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot.; British Museum Cat.; Index Cat. Surgeon-General United States Army; Royal Soc. Cat.]
TRAIN, JOSEPH (1779–1852), Scottish antiquary and correspondent of Sir Walter Scott, was born on 6 Nov. 1779 at Gilminscroft in the parish of Sorn, Ayrshire, where his father was grieve and land-steward. In 1787 the father removed to the Townhead of Ayr, and became a day labourer. At an early age the boy was apprenticed to a weaver in Ayr; but, notwithstanding his
