P. Hume Brown

Peter Hume Brown, FBA (17 December 1849 – 1 December 1918) was a Scottish historian and professor who played an important part in establishing Scottish history as a significant academic discipline. In addition to teaching and writing, he spent 16 years as editor of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and served as Historiographer Royal.

Early life

Hume Brown was born in Tranent but soon he and his widowed mother moved to Prestonpans, a few miles away, where he started at the Free Church school in 1857. After his mother's death in 1866 he stayed at the school as a pupil teacher for another three years.

He taught in England and Wales before starting a degree in theology at Edinburgh in 1872. He decided he had no vocation to be a minister and left in 1874, only to start a different course the following year, graduating as MA in 1878. In the meantime he had started on a lifelong "loyal... friendship" with R. B. Haldane who shared some of his intellectual interests. He had also sold his theology books and bought Montaigne's Essays instead. For the rest of his life, Hume Brown's interest in French and German culture flourished alongside his dedication to the history of Scotland; the biographies he wrote of George Buchanan and John Knox gave full attention to the influence of continental Europe in their lives.

Independent scholar

After graduation he started a private school, and married the following year, 1879. His wife died only three years later, and Hume Brown gave up the school, earning a small living through private teaching and writing for Chambers' Encyclopaedia, while tolerating periods of material "privation" to concentrate on his own independent studies. He had little hope of a university post in history, which at that time was not a well-supported subject at Edinburgh or other Scottish universities. He pursued his research and published his first book, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer, in 1890. Three other books followed before his biography of Knox in 1895. In 1896 he was made an honorary LLD by Edinburgh, and later honorary degrees came from St Andrews and the University of Geneva.