Scottish Presbyterian minister, schoolmaster and philosopher
Alexander Crombie FRS (1760–1840) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, schoolmaster and philosopher.
Biography.
He was born in Aberdeen on 17 July 1760, the son of Thomas Crombie. He studied at Marischal College. There he was taught divinity by James Beattie, gaining a M.A. in 1778. In 1794 his college awarded him an honorary doctorate (LL.D.).
Crombie was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Aberdeen, but instead became a teacher. He moved by 1790 to London, where he ran an academy in Highgate, identified as a Unitarian school. Charles Jerram was an assistant there.
From 1796 to 1798, Crombie officiated at the Presbyterian Meeting House at Southwood Lane. The congregation had diminished in the time of Joseph Towers, who left in 1778. The meetings ceased in 1798.
Crombie then moved to be principal of a school in Greenwich, Kent. Among his pupils was William Wentworth.
Crombie died in York Terrace, Regent's Park, London, on 11 June 1840. He was buried at St Marylebone Church.
Publications.
Philosophy and theology.
In the preface to the "Defence", Crombie states that personal freedom was discussed in his divinity course under Beattie, who followed Thomas Reid and the commonsense philosophy, and supported libertarian free will. He changed his view in the direction of necessitarianism after reading Joseph Priestley's "Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated" (1777). He was spurred into print by reasoning from James Gregory's "Philosophical and Literary Essays" (1792), and his 1793 work draws heavily on Priestley's arguments. It adds to them, when he rebuts Reid's "Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind" (1788). There was a 1799 reply from John Golledge, addressed to Thomas Twining.
Associations.
An obituary of Crombie was written by John Grant A.M (c.1770–1846), "philologist and critic" of Crouch End, who had published a Latin grammar in 1808. It stated that in early life, Crombie was acquainted with Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and Alexander Geddes. Grant himself was a school principal in Hornsey, for 40 years from 1802; his 1813 English grammar praised Crombie's.
Property.
In Greenwich, Crombie lived in Maize Hill, a large mansion. It had been built by Sir Gregory Page, 2nd Baronet. Sir Walter James, 1st Baronet resided there, and Crombie bought it from him. It was demolished in 1822, and the site was occupied by Maize Hill Chapel, among other buildings. Crombie disposed of the site by dividing it into lots sold piecemeal. By that time, he was living in the Regent's Park area of London.
Crombie then in 1832 inherited a substantial property in Scotland from his cousin Alexander Crombie of Phesdo, Thornton Castle, Marykirk, Aberdeenshire. The hamlet of Phesdo was sold on after his death, around 1845, to Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet.
Family.
Crombie was married at least twice:
By his first marriage, he had a son:
He remarried, on 6 March 1798, at Cluny, Aberdeenshire, to Jane Nory (c. 1773–1859); the couple had children including:
References.
 ;templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" / ;