size; all are said to have been pure and silvery in tone. A violin with the Urquhart label, dated 1666, is in Mr. Hill's collection.
There is in the possession of Mr. John Glen, Edinburgh, an old flute, stamped with Urquhart's name, and characteristically varnished, but it is not possible to decide that this instrument was made by the celebrated Urquhart.
[Grove's Dict. iv. 210, 283; Hart's The Violin, pp. 168, 202, 317; Pearce's Violin-makers, p. 85; Davidson's The Violin; Sandys and Forster's Hist. of the Violin, p. 249; Fleming's Old Violins; Fiddle Fancier's Guide, p. 124; information kindly given by Mr. Arthur Hill, Mr. John Glen, and Mr. Alfred Moffat.]
URQUHART or URCHARD, Sir THOMAS (1611–1660), of Cromarty, author and translator, eldest son of Thomas Urquhart (1582–1642), of a family content to trace back their descent to Galleroch de Urchart, who flourished in the time of Alexander II (though they might, as Sir Thomas subsequently showed, have gone back very much further), was born in 1611, five years after the marriage of his parents (Aberdeen Sasine, Reg. House, Edinb.; note from Rev. J. Willcock; previous memoirs have erroneously assigned Urquhart's birth to 1605 or 1606).
The father (Sir) Thomas, the elder, succeeded his father, Henry Urquhart, on 13 April 1603, and his grandfather Walter on 11 May 1607; and it is recorded that he received the patrimonial estate from the latter unburdened in any way. During the autumn of 1606 (the prenuptial contract is dated 15 July 1606) he married Christian (born 19 Dec. 1590), fourth daughter of Alexander Elphinstone, fourth lord Elphinstone [q. v.], by his wife Jean, daughter of William, sixth lord Livingstone. He appears to have been a favourite with James I, whose learning and views on genealogical and ecclesiastical matters he shared, and the king is said to have knighted him when he was at Edinburgh in 1617. He had abandoned Roman catholicism, but remained a devout episcopalian, and firmly refused to sign the covenant of 1638. In the meantime, owing to reckless expenditure, his affairs became hopelessly involved. He seems to have resided occasionally, during the winter, at Banff, of which place he is described as a ‘parochiner’ in 1630 (Annals of Banff, New Spalding Club, i. 62, ii. 28, 418). In June 1636, in order to meet some of the more pressing demands, he alienated a portion of the family estates to one William Rig and others (cf. Registr. Magni Sigilli Scot. 1634–51, pp. 534, 543, 546, 566, 739, 1374); and in the following year a ‘letter of protection’ from his creditors was granted him by Charles I under the great seal, dated from St. James's, 20 March 1637. Four months later (19 July) two of the old man's sons, Thomas and a younger brother, were indicted for laying violent hands on their father and detaining him in an upper chamber, called the ‘Inner Dortour,’ at Cromarty. The lords of the council appointed certain noblemen to investigate the affair, which was thereupon adjusted without further reference to the law. Sir Thomas, the elder, survived these events a little over five years, and, harassed to the last by creditors, died at Cromarty in August 1642. Although a devoted royalist and episcopalian, he was unmolested on that account, as he was known to be harmless and ‘environed with covenanters as neighbours’ (Gordon, Hist. of Scots Affairs, Spalding Club, i. 61).
As ‘Thomas Urquhardus de Cromartie,’ the future author of the ‘Jewel’ was admitted at King's College, Aberdeen, in 1622, during the regentship of Alexander Lunan (Fasti Aberdonenses, p. 457). Aberdeen was not only then pre-eminent in literature and learning, but a stronghold of loyalty and episcopacy (ib. p. 41; cf. Logopandecteision, p. 42). Among the members of his college Urquhart extols William Lesly and his successor as principal, William Guild, his private tutor William Setoun (Fasti Aberd. p. 452), and many others. It is probable that he owed much of the recondite and eccentric learning for which he was more specially noted to his great-uncle, John Urquhart, called the ‘tutor of Cromarty’ (see below), who was ‘known all over Britain,’ his ward asseverates, ‘for his deep reach of natural art.’ Urquhart was an apt scholar. While others were in quest of game, the diversions of Urquhart were the study of ‘optical secrets, mysteries of natural philosophie, reasons for the varietie of colours, the finding out of the longitude, the squaring of a circle and wayes to accomplish all trigonometrical calculations by signes without tangents with the same comprehensiveness of computation’ (Logopan. p. 35). But before his ‘braines were ripened for eminent undertakings,’ he set off on ‘the grand tour,’ travelling through France, Spain, and Italy. According to his own account he soon spoke the languages of those countries with such a ‘liveliness of the country accent’ that he passed ‘for a native,’ and he seized every opportunity of demonstrating the superiority of Scotland in point of ‘valour, learning, and honesty’ to any of the nations that he visited
