[BITList] The Admirable Crichton

[John Feltham]

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Crichton,  James  [called  the Admirable Crichton]  (1560-1582), rhetorician and soldier, was born on 19 August 1560, probably at Eliock near Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire, the son of Robert Crichton  (1582), lawyer .

Scotland: law and learning

In February 1552 Robert Crichton had a lease of the lands of Eliock, an estate which since the 1460s had been held by the Crichtons of Sanquhar, the family to which he clearly belonged (though his parentage is uncertain). In 1558 he married the first of his three wives, Elizabeth Stewart of Beath in Fife (through whom their children could claim descent from the Scottish royal house); they had three sons-James, Henry (who died young), and Sir Robert Crichton  (1569-1620) -and two daughters. In 1562, by a transaction already envisaged in 1558, Robert Crichton, now queen's advocate (jointly with John Spens), acquired the estate of Clunie in Perthshire. This belonged to the see of Dunkeld: Bishop Robert Crichton (of another branch of the family) had the chapter's consent for an arrangement with his namesake seemingly intended to avert annexation following the religious revolution of 1560. By a further manoeuvre in 1566 the bishop conveyed the estate to the six-year-old James Crichton, who probably spent much of his childhood in the little castle on the Loch of Clunie. There, or in nearby Dunkeld, he received the first stages of his education, from the schoolmaster Alexander Hepburn, author of Grammaticae artis rudimenta (1568). It is also likely that some of his early education was in Edinburgh, with the resolutely Roman Catholic schoolmaster William Robertson as his teacher.

Robert Crichton's prosperity during the personal reign of Mary Stewart is evinced by a number of advantageous property transactions in the mid-1560s. In public life he acted for the crown in the proceedings against the murderers of Riccio in the spring of 1566, and a year later for the prosecution in the somewhat anomalous trial of Bothwell for the murder of Darnley. He supported the queen in the conflict following her enforced abdication in July 1567 and was among those proscribed in summer 1568 for taking the field with her at Langside. In July 1569, nevertheless, he attended the estates as king's advocate; but his position was far from secure in the unstable situation after the assassination of the regent Moray in January 1570. In September he was summoned to appear before the council; and during the winter of 1570-71 the new regent, Lennox, took steps to keep him in Edinburgh when Mary wished him to take part in the abortive negotiations in England for her conditional return to the throne. Crichton continued in office as lord advocate, but his situation was still uneasy: as late as February 1574, with Morton firmly in control as regent, he was again summoned before the council to answer charges. Meanwhile, some time before February 1572, his first wife had died: he married, secondly, Agnes Mowbray of Barnbougall, with whom he had a daughter.

During this troubled time for his father, James Crichton's academic career had begun: he matriculated at St Andrews, aged ten, in 1570. His college, St Salvator's, was then presided over by a humanist of some note, John Rutherford (1520-1577), author of Commentariorum de arte disserendi libri quatuor (1557). Crichton graduated BA in 1573, and MA in 1575. The fifteen-year-old graduate probably spent much of the next two years in Edinburgh. His signature appears on a deed dated 20 June 1575 forming part of a transaction to secure possession of the Clunie estate from the protestant bishop of Dunkeld (Bishop Crichton having been forfeited in 1571). This was confirmed on 22 March 1576 in 'Mr Robert's foir chalmer at Bell Wynde heid' in the High Street near Parliament House  (Stuart, 108): James Crichton was the principal beneficiary, with reversion to his brother and father. It must have been during this Edinburgh sojourn that James encountered George Buchanan, whom he named later as one of his teachers. Buchanan was then tutor-and a terror-to the boy king, and Crichton is said to have been one of several older youths to have shared that experience. The supposition is plausible, though unconfirmed: certainly Crichton's education, or self-education, must have continued apace. His career, however, was now to take a new direction.

The Scot abroad

It was probably in autumn 1577 that James Crichton left Scotland. He later attributed his departure to disputes with his father that were acrimonious enough to be called intestinas seditiones et praelia domestica ('inner discord and domestic strife'; Tytler, 290), and his exile was in some measure involuntary. The issues dividing father and son may have had a public or semi-public dimension. This was an uneasy period in both politics and religion, and the younger Crichton had spent five years in a university then by no means reliably loyal to the prevailing order. He seems to have remained a Roman Catholic, whereas his father, whether from conviction or convenience, had accommodated himself to the establishment in the Scotland of Andrew Melville. However, the division in the family must not be exaggerated; in 1579 Robert Crichton (now married to his third wife, Isobell Borthwick) took further steps to consolidate his elder son's tenure of Clunie, and three years later James was named as an executor of his father's will and his return to Scotland was still expected.

The usual destination for the Scot abroad-at least for Scots with intellectual ambitions-was Paris; and thither, accordingly, it has been supposed that James Crichton went, though there is no reliable independent evidence. Crichton himself said, two or three years later in Italy, that he had spent two years as a soldier in France 'with the honour of a command' (con carico honorato; Tytler, 290). This may be mere rodomontade: it was certainly part of a campaign of self-promotion. On the other hand, there is later evidence to suggest that Crichton had acquired some military experience and skill beyond the swordsmanship befitting his social status. He certainly arrived in Genoa in the spring of 1579, his fortunes evidently at a low ebb, but within a few months had established himself sufficiently in the city to be invited to deliver on 1 July the ceremonial oration on the biennial election of magistrates. The printed text of this encomium on republican virtue and its exemplification in Genoa was the first-and was to be the most substantial-of Crichton's few publications. It is said to have earned him a substantial financial reward and an invitation to remain in Genoa. The latter he declined, choosing instead to try his fortune in the other (and greater) Italian mercantile republic. By summer 1580 he was in Venice.

It was here that the legend of the Admirable Crichton was born: the midwife was the scholarly publisher Aldo Manuzio, who seems to have seen at once that here was a phenomenon to be promoted-exploited may be too harsh a term for a process from which its subject gained considerably. The promotion of Lo scozzese, detto Giacomo Critonio was extravagant enough: fluent in ten languages (including Hebrew and Chaldean); learned in philosophy, theology, mathematics, astrology, and statecraft; dazzling in disputation, equipped with an almost miraculous memory; eloquent, handsome, courtly, witty in conversation; and soldierly and athletic, as much a master of horsemanship and jousting as of the dance. And withal he was, through his mother, of royal blood! How much of this was then, or can now be, believed is hard to gauge. The handbill in which it is all proclaimed was probably Crichton's own work, the text later revised and expanded by Manuzio-evidently a publicist of considerable calibre. Yet, if the lily was being opulently gilded, there was clearly a remarkable reality behind the showy appearance. Others were independently impressed by what they saw and heard of the Scottish Wunderkind. Learned and sophisticated critics were not hard to find in Venice or in the wider world of Italian culture to which Manuzio could make his new protege known, and his correspondence reflects the success of his efforts. Within a few months of Crichton's arrival in Venice, his reputation had reached the learned cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto. By midsummer 1581 Crichton had been invited to Rome by the erudite Spanish historian of the papacy, Alfonso Chacon. He may have accepted that invitation, but it was primarily in Venice and Padua that he sought to enhance his reputation.

Triumphs and tragedy in Italy

Soon after reaching Venice, doubtless through Manuzio's influence, Crichton, on his twentieth birthday (19 August 1580), addressed the council of ten: his oration earned him 100 gold crowns and launched a brief but brilliant career in the city. Among other episodes, this included a debate in the house of the patriarch of Aquileia on the procession of the Holy Ghost. Crichton's success was somewhat offset by a prolonged illness during the winter of 1580-81. The chronology is not clear, but it seems that Crichton's withdrawal to a villa on the Brenta was partly to convalesce and partly to prepare for a major exhibition of his dialectical skills in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (perhaps originally planned for the autumn of 1580). In any case, in mid-March 1581 he displayed his talents to a formidable academic audience in Padua under the patronage of Giacomo Luigi Corner. It may have been at this time that Crichton met and impressed the octogenarian Sperone Speroni, from whom a letter in flattering terms survives. Applause was not universal: the cancellation of a projected public disputation in Padua prompted some unfriendly comment. To this Crichton's response was the postponed performance in Venice at Pentecost (14 May)-reported by Manuzio as a triumph. It was probably later in 1581 that Crichton met, and was worsted by, his most distinguished opponent, the philosopher Jacopo Mazzoni (1548-1598). A later account of this indicates that, in defeat, Crichton took refuge in the somewhat disingenuous plea that his profession was arms rather than learning. It may well be that such setbacks led him to seek new outlets for his talents and ambitions.

One of Crichton's dialectical exploits had been a theological debate in the presence of Cardinal Luigi d'Este; and it was the cardinal's secretary, Annibale Capello, who recommended Crichton to the duke of Mantua's secretary, Aurelio Zibramonti, and thus brought about his migration to the ducal court. By early February 1582 Crichton had established himself there with what seems to have been characteristic facility. He was commissioned by Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga to draw up a plan for the fortification of the city-which may tend to confirm the hypothesis that Crichton had indeed had some military experience in France; and this would lend colour to his claim that his professional skill lay in that field. Other tasks in the court came his way, however. Towards the end of March he was sent back to Venice on business connected with the marriage of the duke's daughter to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. Crichton seemingly spent much of April in Padua, where he renewed his contact with Giacomo Luigi Corner-whose comments after Crichton's death suggest that the patron found the client at least as trying as he was 'admirable'.

Back in Mantua by 7 May 1582, Crichton soon found that his situation at court, advantageous though it was, had its problems. The evidence is by no means clear, but letters in late June and early July from Crichton in the city to Zibramonti at the duke's summer residence indicate that the new favourite had incurred jealous resentment. Though the name is not mentioned, it seems clear that Crichton's chief enemy was the duke's son and heir, Vincenzo Gonzaga. Only a day after his last letter, that enmity-whether by chance or by design-had bloody consequences. In the small hours of 3 July 1582-on a moonlit night following a stiflingly hot day-Crichton was roaming the streets of Mantua. His object and that of the two other young men he encountered may have been merely some respite from the heat, but their hot-tempered brawling ended fatally. Crichton inflicted a mortal wound on Vincenzo's disreputable companion, Hippolito Lanzone. Vincenzo in turn gave Crichton the wound from which he later died. Crichton, it seems, had not recognized his princely adversary until after he was wounded. He was buried by his servants the same day in an unmarked grave in the nearby church of San Simone. Vincenzo's account of the affray was widely disbelieved in the city, where Crichton seems to have been popular; but in default of other evidence 'a general mist of error' seems as likely an explanation of the tragedy as anything more sinister.

Scottish aftermath

In Scotland meanwhile a period of political flux had begun in the spring of 1578. Formal regency came to an end. Morton was arrested in December 1580, and Robert Crichton appeared for the prosecution in the trial which led to his condemnation and execution. Crichton had become sole lord advocate and a lord of session on 1 February 1580. He seems to have been in good standing with the faction who shared the royal favour enjoyed by Esme Stewart, soon to be duke of Lennox. This is suggested by some of the names mentioned in the will Crichton made on 18 June 1582, a fortnight before his son's death in Mantua. This, with James Crichton as one of the executors, made careful provision for the advocate's wife, his younger son, and his five unmarried daughters. Robert Crichton was by then a sick man: by 27 June he was dead.

Uncertainty as to James Crichton's fate may explain the puzzling fact that his father's will was not confirmed until 24 January 1586. (It may also help to explain his being sometimes confused with another James Crichton (fl. 1585-1587), schoolmaster and author in the archdiocese of Milan. In 1586 James's brother Robert, heir to the Eliock and Clunie estates, was then not yet of full age-years of discretion he perhaps never attained. His career was one of aristocratic thuggery, including the violent kidnapping of his half-sister Marion in July 1592. The murder of the laird of Moncoffer in 1598 was part of a campaign of revenge for the slaying of Crichton's kinsman, 'the bonny earl of Moray'. Four years later, failure to answer a charge of assault committed in the king's presence cost him the forfeiture of his remaining estates: necessity had compelled him to sell Eliock to his brother-in-law Robert Dalzell (later earl of Carnwath) in 1595. Although seemingly knighted in the late 1590s, Sir Robert Crichton's life after 1602 seems to have been a combination of property dealing and violence. In 1616-not for the first time, though perhaps for the last-he was imprisoned following a 'tumult' in Edinburgh. His stormy career ended some time between then and 1620.

James Crichton alone, then, gives this branch of the family a claim to substantial biographical interest, if hardly historical significance. (His father played more of a part, however small, in the public domain.) It may be harsh to say that nothing in James's life did as much for his reputation as his premature and melodramatic death. Was he 'likely, had he been put on, to have proved' if not 'most royal' then at least more than a transient prodigy? Neo-classical Latin verse and rhetorical prose would have to be of more dazzling excellence than Crichton's to sustain an affirmative answer. His fame rested on reported brilliance in forms that have, necessarily, left no adequately objective record. Yet in James Crichton there was perhaps a conjuncture of precocious talents in a youth who died before finding the vocation they might have served. Incongruously, The Admirable Crichton is widely remembered as the title of J. M. Barrie's Edwardian social comedy. Less inaptly, Crichton's story was seized upon and inflated by Sir Thomas Urquhart (in The Jewel, 1652); but the larger-than-life figure in those ornate pages would here be out of place, as well as out of proportion.

J. H. Burns 

Sources  'Lo Scozzese, detto Giacomo Critonio' (1580) [anonymous handbill] + A. Manuzio, Relatione della qualita di Jacomo di Crettone, 8 vols. (Venice, 1581) + A. Manuzio, 'Dedication', in In M. Tullii Ciceronis de officiis libros tres Aldi Mannucij, Paulli F. Aldi N. commentarius: item in dialogos de senectute, de amicitia, paradoxa, somnium scipionis, ed. A. Manuzio and others (Venice, 1581) + Thomae Dempsteri Historia ecclesiastica gentis Scotorum, sive, De scriptoribus Scotis, ed. D. Irving, rev. edn, 1, Bannatyne Club, 21 (1829), 187-9 + J. Imperialis, Museum physicum (1640), 62, 122 + J. Imperialis, Museum historicum et physicum (1640), 140-43, 242 + P. F. Tytler, Life of the admirable Crichton (1823) + J. Stuart, 'Notices of Sir Robert Crichton of Cluny and of his son James, "The admirable Crichton"', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2 (1854-7), 103-18 + D. Crichton, The admirable Crichton: the real character (1909) + D. Crichton, 'James Crichton of Eliock', Votiva tabella: a memorial volume of St Andrews University (1911), 339-61 + Reg. PCS, 1st ser. + CSP Scot., 1547-69; 1586-1603 + J. M. Thomson and others, eds., Registrum magni sigilli regum Scotorum / The register of the great seal of Scotland, 11 vols. (1882-1914), vols. 3-8 + M. Livingstone, D. Hay Fleming, and others, eds., Registrum secreti sigilli regum Scotorum / The register of the privy seal of Scotland, 4-8 (1952-82) + C. T. McInnes, ed., Accounts of the treasurer of Scotland, 12 (1970) + J. Stuart, ed., 'Papers from the charter chest of the earl of Airlie', The miscellany of the Spalding Club, 4-5, Spalding Club, 20, 24 (1849-52)
Likenesses  oils, 1600-40, priv. coll. · oils, 1600-40, priv. coll. · eleventh earl of Buchan, pencil and chalk drawing (after unknown artist), Scot. NPG · attrib. J. Medina, junior, version of oil painting in Royal Collection, Lennoxlove, East Lothian · engraving (after portrait), repro. in Stuart, 'Notices of Sir Robert Crichton' · oils, Royal Collection [see illus.]




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