Canadian heraldry

Canadian heraldry is the cultural tradition and style of coats of arms and other heraldic achievements in both modern and historic Canada. It includes national, provincial, and civic arms, noble and personal arms, ecclesiastical heraldry, heraldic displays as corporate logos, and Canadian blazonry.

Derived mainly from heraldic traditions in France and the United Kingdom, Canadian heraldry also incorporates distinctly Canadian symbols, especially native flora and fauna, references to the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and uniquely Canadian elements such as the Canadian pale, derived from the Canadian flag. A unique system of cadency is used for daughters inheriting arms, and a special symbol for United Empire Loyalists.

In 1988, governance of both personal and corporate heraldry in Canada was patriated from the heraldic authorities in England and Scotland, with the formation of the Canadian Heraldic Authority, which now has exclusive jurisdiction over granting awards of arms in Canada. Coats of arms are used throughout Canada by all levels of government, in many cases including royal insignia as a mark of authority, as in the recently granted arms of the House of Commons and the Senate, and of Parliament as a combined body. Use of armorial bearings is not limited to governmental bodies; all citizens of Canada have the right to petition for an award of arms, as do other entities including businesses and religious institutions. The granting of arms is regarded as an honour from the king of Canada, via his viceregal representative, the governor general of Canada, and thus are generally bestowed only on those whom the chief herald has deemed worthy of receiving a grant of arms.

## History

Before the arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous peoples of Canada used symbolic artwork to denote their allegiance to a particular clan or pantribal sodalities, and to show legendary and religious themes. For the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast this would be done with carvings on totem poles. carvings integrated into longhouses and smaller wooden objects like boxes, masks, and canoes. For the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains the hide painting tradition painted images onto tipis, shields, and other animal-hide objects.

The history of European-style heraldry in Canada began with the raising of the Royal Arms of France (modern) by French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534, when he landed on Canadian soil at what is now known as the Gaspé Peninsula. From the beginning of the settlement of Canada until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, armorial bearings were largely either brought from France or awarded by the French crown. A notable exception is the Coat of Arms of Nova Scotia, awarded in 1625 by Charles I (making it the oldest coat of arms in the Commonwealth outside the United Kingdom), in use until 1868, when it was replaced by a new achievement. The original was later rediscovered, and replaced the 1868 version in 1929. The present-day Coat of Arms of Newfoundland and Labrador was granted to a private company shortly after that of Nova Scotia, although it did not enter use as the region's arms until the 1920s. The Coat of Arms of the Hudson's Bay Company was first used in 1671 (although no record of the original grant exists, and it was not registered with the College of Arms in London until 1921), and has been in continual use with minor cosmetic changes to the official depiction ever since.

Upon ratification of the Treaty of Paris, the British Crown confirmed the French awards of arms. Between 1763 and 1867, the year of Canadian Confederation, there is little evidence of much heraldic activity. After Confederation, however, heraldry in Canada became more widespread, including grants of arms to the provinces, various educational institutions, municipalities, and individuals. In the immediate post-Confederation period, arms were granted to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, although not to the country as a whole. In the period between the Treaty of Paris and Confederation, the Arms of the United Kingdom had served as the emblem of authority within Canada.

From 1763 until 1988, heraldry in Canada was under the authority of the College of Arms in London and the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh. In the late 1980s, the Queen issued letters patent authorizing the governor general to exercise her authority in heraldic matters. The governor general then established the Canadian Heraldic Authority.

## Modern heraldry

### Official

Before the creation of the Canadian Heraldic Authority, Canadians wishing to obtain a legally granted coat of arms had to apply to one of the two heraldic offices in the United Kingdom: either the College of Arms in London or, if of Scottish descent, the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh. This process was quite lengthy—and costly. In addition, the heralds in Britain could sometimes be unfamiliar with Canadian history and symbols. In time, many Canadians with an interest in heraldry began calling for an office that would offer armorial bearings designed by and for Canadians.

As early as 1967, plans were reportedly in the works to transfer overview of heraldry from the College of Arms in the UK to Canada. The push for a wholly Canadian heraldic system came largely from the Heraldry Society of Canada (now the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada) almost from its inception, though it was not seen as a priority by successive national governments. In 1986, Vicki Huntington, a politician from British Columbia, forwarded a brief written by the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada calling for the creation of the Canadian Heraldic Authority to a staff member in then-Secretary of State David Crombie's office. Mr. Crombie had his department organize a meeting in Ottawa the following year, to which many national and international heraldic experts were invited. The meeting concluded with "a strong recommendation to government that an Authority be created."

Two years later, on 4 June 1988, then-Governor General Jeanne Sauvé authorized the creation of the Canadian Heraldic Authority, made possible by letters patent signed by Queen Elizabeth II, on the advice of her Canadian Privy Council, and presented by her son, Prince Edward. As a result, Canada became the first Commonwealth realm outside the United Kingdom to have its own heraldic authority. Canada also provides full equality to women in terms of inheriting and transmitting arms. Additionally, all armigers within Canada may file for trademark protection of their grant of arms under the Trade-Marks Act.

### State and national

The Royal Arms of Canada are the official coat of arms of the Canadian monarch and thus also of Canada. They incorporate many distinctive Canadian elements such as the maple leaves, and the reference to the French Royal Arms in the fourth quarter which replace or add to those derived from the British.

The arms are used as a mark of authority by various government agencies and representatives, including the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Speaker of the House of Commons, most courts (including the Supreme Court), and, formerly, Parliament, and on the cover of Canadian passports. From 1962 until her death in 2022, a banner of the arms, defaced with a variant of the Queen's cypher, formed the Royal Standard of Canada, for use by the Canadian sovereign. The personal flag of the governor general has featured the crest of the arms of Canada on a blue background since 1981.

On 15 February 2008, the House of Commons was granted its own heraldic symbol following a request by Commons Speaker Peter Milliken to the Canadian Heraldic Authority. The new symbol for Parliament is a badge of the escutcheon in the Arms of Canada superimposed on the mace used by the House of Commons as a symbol of its authority derived from the Crown. The Senate was granted a similar badge on 15 April 2008, using its own mace. Parliament as a whole has been granted the right to use the escutcheon of the Arms of Canada, superimposed over the maces of the Commons and Senate in saltire.

In June 2008, MP Pat Martin introduced a motion into the House of Commons calling on the government to amend the coat of arms to incorporate symbols representing Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

### Provincial

In much the same way that there is a national coat of arms, each province and territory possesses its own unique arms; Saskatchewan's is known formally as Her Majesty's Arms in Right of Saskatchewan. The year after Confederation, Queen Victoria issued royal warrants assigning arms to Canada's original four provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.

Each provincial coat of arms includes specific local symbolism; most also include symbolism derived from the coats of arms of the United Kingdom, France, or both. Since 1868, each province and territory within Canada has been granted arms through warrants either from the monarch directly or from the governor general, or has assumed them through other means.

Apart from Newfoundland and Labrador, each province and territory bears at least some elements from its coat of arms upon its flag. The flags of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island are banners of the provincial arms, while Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and Yukon each have the shield of the local coat of arms on their flags, with other design elements. The flag of Nunavut uses some elements from its coat of arms along with other symbols and colours. The shield of the arms of each province, on a blue background and circled with ten gold maple leaves, the whole surmounted by a crown, forms the main element of the flag of the lieutenant governor of that province. The exceptions are Nova Scotia, which uses the Union Flag defaced with the shield of Nova Scotia, surrounded by green maple leaves, and Quebec, which uses the shield on a white circle with the provincial motto inscribed below.

### Municipal

The use of armorial bearings among Canadian cities is inconsistent, because many of them have been assumed and brought into force by local governmental authorities, rather than granted from the Crown. Many municipal coats of arms either awarded or confirmed by the Canadian Heraldic Authority may be found within the Public Register of Arms, though the online version of the Register is not complete.

### Personal

In Canada, every citizen has the right to petition the Crown for a grant of arms. Canadians who have been appointed to the Order of Canada are automatically entitled to receive an award of arms including the ribbon of the Order, or should they already be armigerous, to encircle their extant arms with the ribbon. Amongst others, all members of the Privy Council are entitled to supporters in their arms, as are the Speakers of the House of Commons and the Senate, Companions of the Order of Canada, Commanders of the Orders of Military Merit, Merit of the Police Forces, and of the Royal Victorian Order.

## Unique Canadian elements and practices

### Indigenous symbolism

Due to the history of Canada, heraldry in the country has incorporated indigenous symbols and elements. The coat of arms of Nunavut, for example, includes elements such as an inukshuk, a qulliq, and an igloo, all of which are references to the Inuit who live in the area, while the arms of the Canadian Heraldic Authority include ravens, a First Nations symbol of creation and transformation. In addition, some Canadians choose to bear their arms on a roundel rather than a shield, a reference to a drumhead; an example is the coat of arms of Nunavut.

### Cadency

In many systems of heraldry, the arms of each living person must be unique. English heraldry has used armorial variants to distinguish the arms of brothers from their father's arms and from each other since the 13th century; this is now normally done by the system of marks or brisures set up by the early Tudor herald John Writhe. Canada adds a unique series of brisures for use by female children who inherit arms. As in other heraldic systems, these cadency marks are not always used; in any case, when the heir succeeds (in Canada, this is normally the first child, whether male or female, according to strict primogeniture; however, the grantee may choose another person as heir), the mark of cadency is removed and the heir uses the plain coat of arms.

Brisures

### Charges, ordinaries, and divisions of the field

The Canadian Pale, a pale division amounting to half the entire field, derived from the Canadian flag, is widely used in Canadian heraldry, while the Canadian fess, a similar horizontal division, has been used once. The term érablé, referring to maple leaves, is often used in Canadian arms. For example, as a tressure érablé in the arms of the Monarchist League of Canada, coronets érablé in the arms of Sudbury and Canada's National History Society, and as a partition much like engrailed or dancetty. Canadian animals and birds, both real and fantastical, have also been widely used in arms, including the mythical raven-bears in the arms of the Canadian Heraldic Authority.

### Status of women

In both the English and the Scottish systems of heraldry, from which the Canadian draws many of its practices, a woman does not inherit or transmit arms unless she is an heraldic heiress, that is, a daughter of an armiger who has no sons. In Canadian heraldry, by contrast, women may inherit arms on an equal basis with their brothers (if any). Women in Canada may also transmit their arms to their heirs, regardless of gender. This system of equality for men and women is a result of provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantee, among other things, freedom from discrimination under the law on the basis of sex.

### United Empire Loyalists

Those who are descended from the citizens loyal to the British Crown who fled the United States during and shortly after the revolution are known in Canada as United Empire Loyalists, and are entitled to the use of special coronets within their arms, if arms are granted to them. There are two versions of the Loyalist coronet: the civil, which is made up of alternating oak and maple leaves, and the military, made up of maple leaves alternating with crossed swords; the latter is reserved for use by the families of those who served in the British military during the revolution. Proof of United Empire Loyalist ancestry must be provided to the Canadian Heraldic Authority before permission is granted to use the coronet in arms. Unlike the common use of coronets in heraldry, the Loyalist coronet denotes no rank of nobility or royalty, but instead alludes to ancestral allegiance.

### Helmets

In Canadian heraldry, helmets play little role and are not blazoned; as such, the armiger can display their helm in whatever style they choose. One notable example of a non-traditional helmet used in Canadian heraldry is the arms of Julie Payette, Governor General 2017–2021, which bears an astronaut's helmet as the helm. Other examples include nasal helmets, Corinthian helmets, and parka hoods.

## Obtaining arms

All citizens of Canada, as well as corporate bodies, may petition the Crown for an award of arms. For an individual to obtain a grant of arms, a petition must be sent to the Chief Herald, providing a biography, references, and completed application forms. If the grant is approved, the individual then consults with heralds from the Authority to work out the design of their award. Upon completion of this process, the grant documents, in the form of letters patent, are created and provided to the grantee. The entire process is subject to certain fees required by the Government of Canada to cover costs of research and artwork; the fees are not to purchase the grant of arms. For corporations and institutions the process is similar.

Those individuals and institutions who are already armigerous through recognized heraldic authorities worldwide may apply to the Canadian Heraldic Authority to have their arms registered. There is no cost associated with application for registration, and it takes less time, approximately three months, than application for a new award of arms, which takes approximately twelve to fourteen months.

## See also

- Armorial of the governors general of Canada
- Canadian royal symbols
- List of Canadian flags
- National symbols of Canada
- Regional tartans of Canada

Canadian coats of arms and other heraldic achievements


Elbridge Gerry

Elbridge Gerry (/ˈɡɛri/; July 17, 1744 – November 23, 1814) was an American Founding Father, merchant, politician, and diplomat who served as the fifth vice president of the United States under President James Madison from 1813 until his death in 1814. The political practice of gerrymandering is named after him.

Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and was active in the early stages of organizing the resistance in the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787, but refused to sign the Constitution because originally it did not include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification, he was elected to the inaugural United States Congress, where he was actively involved in the drafting and passage of the Bill of Rights as an advocate of individual and state liberties.

Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties and cultivated enduring friendships on both sides of the political divide between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. He was a member of a diplomatic delegation to France that was treated poorly in the XYZ Affair, in which Federalists held him responsible for a breakdown in negotiations. Gerry thereafter became a Democratic-Republican, running unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts several times before winning the office in 1810. During his second term, the legislature approved new state senate districts that led to the coining of the word "gerrymander"; he lost the next election, although the state senate remained Democratic-Republican. Gerry was nominated by the Democratic-Republican party and elected as vice president in the 1812 election. Advanced in age and in poor health, Gerry served 21 months of his term before dying in office. Gerry is the only signatory of the Declaration of Independence to be buried in Washington, D.C.

## Early life and education

Gerry was born on July 17, 1744, in the North Shore town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas Gerry, was a merchant who operated ships out of Marblehead, and his mother, Elizabeth (Greenleaf) Gerry, was the daughter of a successful Boston merchant. Gerry's first name came from John Elbridge, one of his mother's ancestors. Gerry's parents had 11 children in all, although only five survived to adulthood. Of these, Elbridge was the third. He was first educated by private tutors and entered Harvard College shortly before turning 14. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in 1762 and a Master of Arts in 1765, he entered his father's merchant business. By the 1770s, the Gerrys numbered among the wealthiest Massachusetts merchants, with trading connections in Spain, the West Indies, and along the North American coast. Gerry's father, who had emigrated from England in 1730, was active in local politics and had a leading role in the local militia.

## Colonial business and politics

Gerry was from an early time a vocal opponent of Parliamentary efforts to tax the colonies after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. In 1770, he sat on a Marblehead committee that sought to enforce importation bans on taxed British goods. He frequently communicated with other Massachusetts opponents of British policy, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and others.

In May 1772, he won election to the Great and General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which served as the state's legislative assembly. He worked closely with Samuel Adams to advance colonial opposition to Parliamentary colonial policies. He was responsible for establishing Marblehead's committee of correspondence, one of the first to be set up after that of Boston. However, an incident of mob action prompted him to resign from the committee the next year. Gerry and other prominent Marbleheaders had established a hospital for performing smallpox inoculations on Cat Island; because the means of transmission of the disease were not known at the time, fears amongst the local population led to protests which escalated into violence that wrecked the hospital and threatened the proprietors' other properties.

Gerry reentered politics after the Boston Port Act closed that city's port in 1774, and Marblehead became an alternative port to which relief supplies from other colonies could be delivered. As one of the town's leading merchants and Patriots, Gerry played a major role in ensuring the storage and delivery of supplies from Marblehead to Boston, interrupting those activities only to care for his dying father. He was elected as a representative to the First Continental Congress in September 1774, but declined, still grieving the loss of his father.

## American Revolution

Gerry was elected to the provincial assembly, which reconstituted itself as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress after British Governor Thomas Gage dissolved the body in October 1774. He was assigned to its committee of safety, responsible for ensuring that the province's limited supplies of weapons and gunpowder remained out of British Army hands. His actions were partly responsible for the storage of weapons and ammunition in Concord; these stores were the target of the British raiding expedition that sparked the start of the American Revolutionary War with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. (Gerry was staying at an inn at Menotomy, now Arlington, when the British marched through on the night of April 18.) During the Siege of Boston that followed, Gerry continued to take a leading role in supplying the nascent Continental Army, something he would continue to do as the war progressed. He leveraged business contacts in France and Spain to acquire not just munitions, but supplies of all types, and was involved in the transfer of financial subsidies from Spain to Congress. He sent ships to ports all along the American coast and dabbled in financing privateering operations against British shipping.

Unlike some other merchants, there is no evidence that Gerry profiteered directly from the hostilities. He spoke out against price gouging and in favor of price controls, although his war-related merchant activities notably increased the family's wealth. His gains were tempered to some extent by the precipitous decline in the value of paper currencies, which he held in large quantities and speculated in.

Gerry served in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia from February 1776 to 1780, when matters of the ongoing war occupied the body's attention. He was influential in convincing several delegates to support passage of the Declaration of Independence in the debates held during the summer of 1776; John Adams wrote of him, "If every Man here was a Gerry, the Liberties of America would be safe against the Gates of Earth and Hell." He was implicated as a member of the so-called "Conway Cabal", a group of Congressmen and military officers who were dissatisfied with the performance of General George Washington during the 1777 military campaign. However, Gerry took Pennsylvania leader Thomas Mifflin, one of Washington's critics, to task early in the episode and specifically denied knowledge of any sort of conspiracy against Washington in February 1778.

Gerry's political philosophy was one of limited central government, and he regularly advocated for the maintenance of civilian control of the military. He held these positions fairly consistently throughout his political career (wavering principally on the need for stronger central government in the wake of the 1786–87 Shays' Rebellion) and was well known for his personal integrity. In later years he opposed the idea of political parties, remaining somewhat distant from both the developing Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties until later in his career. It was not until 1800 that he formally associated with the Democratic-Republicans in opposition to what he saw as attempts by the Federalists to centralize too much power in the national government.

In 1780, he resigned from the Continental Congress over the issue and refused offers from the state legislature to return to the Congress. He also refused appointment to the state senate, claiming he would be more effective in the state's lower chamber, and also refused appointment as a county judge, comparing the offer by Governor John Hancock to those made by royally-appointed governors to benefit their political allies. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781.

Gerry was convinced to rejoin the Confederation Congress in 1783, when the state legislature agreed to support his call for needed reforms. He served in that body, which met in New York City, until September 1785. The following year, he married Ann Thompson, the daughter of a wealthy New York City merchant who was 20 years his junior; his best man was his good friend James Monroe. The couple had ten children between 1787 and 1801, straining Ann's health.

The war made Gerry sufficiently wealthy that when it ended he sold off his merchant interests and began investing in land. In 1787, he purchased the Cambridge, Massachusetts, estate of the last royal lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Oliver, which had been confiscated by the state. This 100-acre (40 ha) property, known as Elmwood, became the family home for the rest of Gerry's life. He continued to own property in Marblehead and bought several properties in other Massachusetts communities. He also owned shares in the Ohio Company, prompting some political opponents to characterize him as an owner of vast tracts of western lands.

### Constitutional Convention

Gerry played a major role in the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. In its deliberations, he consistently advocated for a strong delineation between state and federal government powers, with state legislatures shaping the membership of federal government positions. Gerry's opposition to popular election of representatives was rooted in part by the events of Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts in the year preceding the convention. He also sought to maintain individual liberties by providing checks on government power that might abuse or limit those freedoms.

He supported the idea that the Senate composition should not be determined by population; the view that it should instead be composed of equal numbers of members for each state prevailed in the Connecticut Compromise. The compromise was adopted on a narrow vote in which the Massachusetts delegation was divided, Gerry and Caleb Strong voting in favor. Gerry further proposed that senators of a state, rather than casting a single vote on behalf of the state, vote instead as individuals. Gerry was also vocal in opposing the Three-fifths Compromise, which counted slaves as three-fifths of a free person for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives, whereas counting each slave individually would have given southern slave states a decided advantage. Gerry opposed slavery and said the constitution should have "nothing to do" with slavery so as "not to sanction it."

Because of his fear of demagoguery and belief the people of the United States could be easily misled, Gerry also advocated indirect elections. Although he was unsuccessful in obtaining them for the lower house of Congress, Gerry did obtain such indirect elections for the Senate, whose members were to be selected by the state legislatures. Gerry also advanced numerous proposals for indirect elections of the President of the United States, most of them involving limiting the right to vote to the state governors and electors.

Gerry was unhappy about the lack of enumeration of any specific individual liberties in the proposed constitution and generally opposed proposals that strengthened the central government. He was one of only three delegates who voted against the proposed constitution in the convention (the others were George Mason and Edmund Randolph), citing a concern about the convention's lack of authority to enact such major changes to the nation's system of government and to the constitution's lack of "federal features." Ultimately, Gerry refused to sign because of concerns over the rights of private citizens and the power of the legislature to raise armies and revenue.

### State ratification and Bill of Rights

During the ratification debates that took place in the states following the convention, Gerry continued his opposition, publishing a widely circulated letter documenting his objections to the proposed constitution. In the document, he cites the lack of a Bill of Rights as his primary objection but also expresses qualified approval of the Constitution, indicating that he would accept it with some amendment. Strong pro-Constitution forces attacked him in the press, comparing him unfavorably to the Shaysites. Henry Jackson was particularly vicious: "[Gerry has] done more injury to this country by that infamous Letter than he will be able to make atonement in his whole life", and Oliver Ellsworth, a convention delegate from Connecticut, charged him with deliberately courting the Shays faction.

One consequence of the furor over his letter was that he was not selected as a delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention although he was later invited to attend by the convention's leadership. The convention leadership was dominated by Federalists, and Gerry was not given any formal opportunity to speak. He left the convention after a shouting match with convention chair Francis Dana. Massachusetts ratified the constitution by a vote of 187 to 168. The debate had the result of estranging Gerry from several previously-friendly politicians, including chairman Dana and Rufus King.

### U.S. House of Representatives

Anti-Federalist forces nominated Gerry for governor in 1788, but he was predictably defeated by the popular incumbent John Hancock. Following its ratification, Gerry recanted his opposition to the Constitution, noting that other state ratifying conventions had called for amendments that he supported. He was nominated by friends (over his own opposition to the idea) for a seat in the inaugural House of Representatives, where he served two terms.

In June 1789, Gerry proposed that Congress consider all of the proposed constitutional amendments that various state ratifying conventions had called for (notably those of Rhode Island and North Carolina, which had at the time still not ratified the Constitution). In the debate that followed, he led opposition to some of the proposals, arguing that they did not go far enough in ensuring individual liberties. He successfully lobbied for inclusion of freedom of assembly in the First Amendment and was a leading architect of the Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure. He sought unsuccessfully to insert the word "expressly" into the Tenth Amendment, which might have more significantly limited the federal government's power.

He was successful in efforts to severely limit the federal government's ability to control state militias. In tandem with this protection, he had once argued against the idea of the federal government controlling a large standing army, saying, "A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure."

Gerry vigorously supported Alexander Hamilton's reports on public credit, including the assumption at full value of state debts, and supported Hamilton's Bank of the United States, positions consistent with earlier calls he had made for economic centralization. Although he had speculated in depreciated Continental bills of credit (the IOUs at issue), there is no evidence he participated in large-scale speculation that attended the debate when it took place in 1790, and he became a major investor in the new bank. He used the floor of the House to speak out against aristocratic and monarchical tendencies he saw as threats to republican ideals, and generally opposed laws and their provisions that he perceived as limiting individual and state liberties. He opposed any attempt to give officers of the executive significant powers, specifically opposing establishment of the Treasury Department because its head might gain more power than the president. He opposed measures that strengthened the presidency, such as the ability to fire Cabinet officers, seeking instead to give the legislature more power over appointments.

Gerry did not stand for re-election in 1792, returning home to raise his children and care for his sickly wife. He agreed to serve as a presidential elector for John Adams in the 1796 election. During Adams' term in office, Gerry maintained good relations with both Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, hoping that the divided executive might lead to less friction. His hopes were not realized: the split between Federalists (Adams) and Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson) widened.

## XYZ Affair

President Adams appointed Gerry to be a member of a special diplomatic commission sent to Republican France in 1797. Tensions had risen between the two nations after the 1796 ratification of the Jay Treaty, made between the United States and Great Britain. It was seen by French leaders as signs of an Anglo-American alliance, and France had consequently stepped up seizures of American ships. Adams chose Gerry, over his cabinet's opposition (on political grounds that Gerry was insufficiently Federalist), because of their long-standing relationship; Adams described Gerry as one of the "two most impartial men in America" (Adams himself being the other).

Gerry joined co-commissioners Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Marshall in France in October 1797 and met briefly with Foreign Minister Talleyrand. Some days after that meeting, the delegation was approached by three French agents (at first identified as "X", "Y", and "Z" in published papers, leading the controversy to be called the "XYZ Affair") who demanded substantial bribes from the commissioners before negotiations could continue. The commissioners refused and sought unsuccessfully to engage Talleyrand in formal negotiations. Believing Gerry to be the most approachable of the commissioners, Talleyrand successively froze first Pinckney and then Marshall out of the informal negotiations, and they left France in April 1798. Gerry, who sought to leave with them, stayed behind because Talleyrand threatened war if he left. Gerry refused to make any significant negotiations afterward and left Paris in August.

By then, dispatches describing the commission's reception had been published in the United States, raising calls for war. The undeclared naval Quasi-War (1798–1800) followed. Federalists, notably Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, accused Gerry of supporting the French and abetting the breakdown of the talks, while Adams and Republicans such as Thomas Jefferson supported him. The negative press damaged Gerry's reputation, and he was burned in effigy by protestors in front of his home. He was only later vindicated, when his correspondence with Talleyrand was published in 1799. In response to the Federalist attacks on him, and because of his perception that the Federalist-led military buildup threatened republican values, Gerry formally joined the Democratic-Republican Party in early 1800, standing for election as Governor of Massachusetts.

## Governor of Massachusetts

For years (in the 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803 elections) Gerry unsuccessfully sought the governorship of Massachusetts. His opponent in these races, Caleb Strong, was a popular moderate Federalist, whose party dominated the state's politics despite a national shift toward the Republicans. In 1803, Republicans in the state were divided, and Gerry only had regional support of the party. He decided not to run in the 1804 election, returning to semi-retirement and to deal with a personal financial crisis. His brother Samuel Russell had mismanaged his own business affairs, and Gerry had propped him up by guaranteeing a loan that was due. The matter ultimately ruined Gerry's finances for his remaining years.

Republican James Sullivan won the governor's seat from Strong in the 1807 election, but his successor was unable to hold the seat in the 1809 election, which went to Federalist Christopher Gore. Gerry stood for election again in the 1810 election against Gore and won a narrow victory. Republicans cast Gore as an ostentatious British-loving Tory who wanted to restore the monarchy (his parents were Loyalists during the Revolution), and Gerry as a patriotic American, while Federalists described Gerry as a "French partizan" and Gore as an honest man devoted to ridding the government of foreign influence. A temporary lessening in the threat of war with Britain aided Gerry. The two battled again in 1811, with Gerry once again victorious in a highly acrimonious campaign.

Gerry's first year as governor was less controversial than his second, because the Federalists controlled the state senate. He preached moderation in the political discourse, noting that it was important that the nation present a unified front in its dealings with foreign powers. In his second term, with full Republican control of the legislature, he became notably more partisan, purging much of the state government of Federalist appointees. The legislature also enacted "reforms" of the court system that resulted in an increase in the number of judicial appointments, which Gerry filled with Republican partisans. However, infighting within the party and a shortage of qualified candidates played against Gerry, and the Federalists scored points by complaining vocally about the partisan nature of the reforms.

Other legislation passed during Gerry's second year included a bill broadening the membership of Harvard's Board of Overseers to diversify its religious membership, and another that liberalized religious taxes. The Harvard bill had significant political slant because the recent split between orthodox Congregationalists and Unitarians also divided the state to some extent along party lines, and Federalist Unitarians had recently gained control over the Harvard board.

In 1812, the state adopted new constitutionally mandated electoral district boundaries. The Republican-controlled legislature had created district boundaries designed to enhance their party's control over state and national offices, leading to some oddly shaped legislative districts. Although Gerry was unhappy about the highly partisan districting (according to his son-in-law, he thought it "highly disagreeable"), he signed the legislation. The shape of one of the state senate districts in Essex County was compared to a salamander by a local Federalist newspaper in a political cartoon, calling it a "Gerry-mander". Ever since, the creation of such districts has been called gerrymandering.

Gerry also engaged in partisan investigations of potential libel against him by elements of the Federalist press, further damaging his popularity with moderates. The redistricting controversy, along with the libel investigation and the impending War of 1812, contributed to Gerry's defeat in 1812 (once again at the hands of Caleb Strong, whom the Federalists had brought out of retirement). The gerrymandering of the state Senate was a notable success in the 1812 election: the body was thoroughly dominated by Republicans, even though the house and the governor's seat went to Federalists by substantial margins.

## Vice presidency and death

Gerry's financial difficulties prompted him to ask President James Madison for a federal position after his loss in the 1812 election (which was held early in the year). He was chosen by the party Congressional nominating caucus to be Madison's vice presidential running mate in the 1812 presidential election, although the nomination was first offered to John Langdon. He was viewed as a relatively safe choice who would attract Northern votes but not pose a threat to James Monroe, who was thought likely to succeed Madison. Madison narrowly won re-election, and Gerry took the oath of office at Elmwood in March 1813. At that time the office of vice president was largely a sinecure; Gerry's duties included advancing the administration's agenda in Congress and dispensing patronage positions in New England. Gerry's actions in support of the War of 1812 had a partisan edge: he expressed concerns over a possible Federalist seizure of Fort Adams (as Boston's Fort Independence was then known) as a prelude to Anglo-Federalist cooperation and sought the arrest of printers of Federalist newspapers.

On November 23, 1814, Gerry fell seriously ill while visiting Joseph Nourse of the Treasury Department, and he died soon after returning to his home in the Seven Buildings.

He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with a memorial by John Frazee. He is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence who was buried in the nation's capital city. The estate he left his wife and children was rich in land and poor in cash, but he had managed to repay his brother's debts with his pay as vice president. Aged 68 at the start of his vice presidency, he was the oldest person to become vice president until Charles Curtis in 1929.

## Legacy

Gerry is generally remembered for the use of his name in the word gerrymander, for his refusal to sign the United States Constitution, and for his role in the XYZ Affair. His path through the politics of the age has been difficult to characterize. Early biographers, including his son-in-law James T. Austin and Samuel Eliot Morison, struggled to explain his apparent changes in position. Biographer George Athan Billias posits that Gerry was a consistent advocate and practitioner of republicanism as it was originally envisioned, and that his role in the Constitutional Convention had a significant impact on the document it eventually produced.

Gerry had ten children, nine of whom survived into adulthood:

1. Catharine Gerry (1787–1850)
2. Eliza Gerry (1791–1882)
3. Ann Gerry (1791–1883)
4. Elbridge Gerry, Jr. (1793–1867)
5. Thomas Russell Gerry (1794–1848), who married Hannah Green Goelet (1804–1845)
6. Helen Maria Gerry (1796–1864)
7. James Thompson Gerry (1797–1854), who left West Point upon his father's death and was Commander of the war-sloop USS Albany; the sloop disappeared with all hands September 28 or 29, 1854 near the West Indies.
8. Eleanor Stanford Gerry (1800–1871)
9. Emily Louisa Gerry (1802–1894)

Gerry's grandson Elbridge Thomas Gerry became a distinguished lawyer and philanthropist in New York. His great-grandson, Peter G. Gerry, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.

Gerry is depicted in two of John Trumbull's paintings, the Declaration of Independence and General George Washington Resigning His Commission. Both are on view in the rotunda of the United States Capitol.

The upstate New York town of Elbridge is believed to have been named in his honor, as is the western New York town of Gerry. The town of Phillipston, Massachusetts was originally incorporated in 1786 under the name Gerry in his honor but was changed to its present name after the town submitted a petition in 1812, citing Democratic-Republican support for the War of 1812.

Gerry's Landing Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is located near the Eliot Bridge not far from Elmwood. During the 19th century, the area was known as Gerry's Landing (formerly known as Sir Richard's Landing) and was used by a Gerry relative for a short time as a landing and storehouse. The supposed house of his birth, the Elbridge Gerry House (it is uncertain whether he was born in the house currently standing on the site or an earlier structure) stands in Marblehead, and Marblehead's Elbridge Gerry School is named in his honor.

## See also

- Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Vice president of the United States from 1813 to 1814

1812 United States vice-presidential candidates

19th-century vice presidents of the United States

Continental Congressmen from Massachusetts

Democratic-Republican Party state governors of the United States

Democratic-Republican Party vice presidents of the United States

Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts

Politicians from Cambridge, Massachusetts

Signers of the Articles of Confederation

Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence


Renaissance in Scotland

The Renaissance in Scotland was a cultural, intellectual and artistic movement in Scotland, from the late fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late fourteenth century and reaching northern Europe as a Northern Renaissance in the fifteenth century. It involved an attempt to revive the principles of the classical era, including humanism, a spirit of scholarly enquiry, scepticism, and concepts of balance and proportion. Since the twentieth century, the uniqueness and unity of the Renaissance has been challenged by historians, but significant changes in Scotland can be seen to have taken place in education, intellectual life, literature, art, architecture, music, science and politics.

The court was central to the patronage and dissemination of Renaissance works and ideas. It was also central to the staging of lavish display that portrayed the political and religious role of the monarchy. The Renaissance led to the adoption of ideas of imperial monarchy, encouraging the Scottish crown to join the new monarchies by asserting imperial jurisdiction and distinction. The growing emphasis on education in the Middle Ages became part of a humanist and then Protestant programme to extend and reform learning. It resulted in the expansion of the school system and the foundation of six university colleges by the end of the sixteenth century. Relatively large numbers of Scottish scholars studied on the continent or in England and some, such as Hector Boece, John Mair, Andrew Melville and George Buchanan, returned to Scotland to play a major part in developing Scottish intellectual life. Vernacular works in Scots began to emerge in the fifteenth century, while Latin remained a major literary language. With the patronage of James V and James VI, writers included William Stewart, John Bellenden, David Lyndsay, William Fowler and Alexander Montgomerie.

In the sixteenth century, Scottish kings – particularly James V – built palaces in Renaissance style, beginning at Linlithgow. The trend soon spread to members of the aristocracy. Painting was strongly influenced by Flemish painting, with works commissioned from the continent and Flemings serving as court artists. While church art suffered iconoclasm and a loss of patronage as a result of the Reformation, house decoration and portraiture became significant for the wealthy, with George Jamesone emerging as the first major named artist in the early seventeenth century. Music also incorporated wider European influences although the Reformation caused a move from complex polyphonic church music to the simpler singing of metrical psalms. Combined with the Union of Crowns in 1603, the Reformation also removed the church and the court as sources of patronage, changing the direction of artistic creation and limiting its scope. In the early seventeenth century the major elements of the Renaissance began to give way to Mannerism and the Baroque.

## Definitions and debates

Renaissance is a concept formulated by cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt in the mid-nineteenth century to describe the intellectual and artistic movement that began in Italy in the fourteenth century and saw an attempt to revive the principles of the Greek and Roman classical worlds. It encompassed a rational and sceptical attitude, a return to ideas of original sources and proportion and balance in art. The major ideas of the Renaissance are generally considered to have reached Northern Europe much later, in the late fifteenth century. Scotland has been seen as part of a wider Northern Renaissance that is generally considered to have stretched into the early seventeenth century, when it was replaced by the grander styles of the Baroque. However, the association of Baroque styles with Catholicism in predominantly Protestant Scotland tended to result in this trend being overlooked and the period from about 1620 to the end of the seventeenth century is sometimes characterised as a late Renaissance.

In the twentieth century, historians disputed the validity of the concept of a Renaissance as unique, as a reaction against the "dark age" of the Medieval, as a clear break with the past and as a unified movement. Instead, they emphasised the many intellectual trends and movements that went before it, such as the twelfth-century Renaissance on which it built. It was also once common for historians to suggest that Scotland had little or no participation in the Renaissance. More recently, the significant changes in intellectual and cultural life in the period have been seen as forming a watershed in Scottish cultural history. This has been perceived as opening the path for the Reformation, and later for the modernisation of thought and social life in the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, to which Scotland would make a significant contribution.

## Court and kingship

The court was central to the patronage and dissemination of Renaissance works and ideas. It was also central to the staging of lavish display that portrayed the political and religious role of the monarchy. This display was often tied up with ideas of chivalry, which was evolving in this period from a practical military ethos into a more ornamental and honorific cult. It saw its origins in the classical era, with Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar often depicted as proto-knights. Tournaments provided one focus of display, the most famous being those of the Wild Knight in 1507 and the Black Lady in 1508 under James IV. They were also pursued enthusiastically by James V who, proud of his membership of international orders of knighthood, displayed their insignia on the Gateway at Linlithgow Palace.

During her brief personal rule, Mary, Queen of Scots brought with her many of the elaborate court activities that she had grown up with at the French court. She introduced balls, masques and celebrations designed to illustrate the resurgence of the monarchy and to facilitate national unity. The most elaborate event was the baptism of the future James VI at Stirling Castle in 1566, organised by her French servant Bastian Pagez. This combined complex imagery, incorporating classical themes of the goddess Astraea and the revival of the classical golden age, with the chivalry of the Round Table. The ceremony was followed by a banquet, hunts, feasting, poetry, dance and theatre, cumulating in a staged siege and fireworks. The court returned to being a centre of culture and learning under James VI. He cultivated the image of a philosopher king, evoking the models of David, Solomon and Constantine that were seen in his "joyous entry" into Edinburgh in 1579. The grandest event of his reign was the baptism of his son and heir Prince Henry in 1595. For this, the Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle was rebuilt to mirror the proportions of the Temple of Solomon. There were three days of feasting, a staged tournament and a masque featuring a ship of state crewed by classical deities and muses. Masterminded by William Fowler, it was pointedly designed to build the image of the king and support his claim to the English and Irish thrones.

New ideas also affected views of government, described as new or Renaissance monarchy, which emphasised the status and significance of the monarch. The Roman Law principle that "a king is emperor in his own kingdom", can be seen in Scotland from the mid-fifteenth century. In 1469, Parliament passed an act declaring that James III possessed "full jurisdiction and empire within his realm". From the 1480s, the king's image on his silver groats showed him wearing a closed, arched, imperial crown, in place of the open circlet of medieval kings, probably the first coin image of its kind outside Italy. It soon began to appear in heraldry, on royal seals, manuscripts, sculptures and as crown steeples on churches with royal connections, as at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. The first Scottish monarch to wear such a crown was James V, whose diadem was reworked to include arches in 1532. They were included when it was reconstructed in 1540, subsisting in the Crown of Scotland. The idea of imperial monarchy emphasised the dignity of the crown and included its role as a unifying national force, defending national borders and interests, royal supremacy over the law and a distinctive national church within the Catholic communion. New Monarchy can also be seen in the reliance of the crown on "new men" rather than the great magnates, the use of the clergy as a form of civil service, the development of standing armed forces and a navy. The aggrandisement of the monarchy reached its apogee in James VI's development of the concept of imperial rule into a divine right. However, the royal image of James in Scotland may have competed with that of his wife Anna of Denmark who maintained a separate parallel court with a distinct identity, and in the first years of the 1590s she and her courtiers wore Danish fashions.

## Education

### Schools

In the early Middle Ages, formal education was limited to monastic life, but from the twelfth century new sources of education had begun to develop, with song and grammar schools. These were usually attached to cathedrals or a collegiate church and were most common in the developing burghs. By the end of the Middle Ages grammar schools could be found in all the main burghs and some small towns. There were also petty schools, more common in rural areas and providing an elementary education. They were almost exclusively aimed at boys, but by the end of the fifteenth century, Edinburgh also had schools for girls. These were sometimes described as "sewing schools", and probably taught by laywomen or nuns. There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers. The growing emphasis on education in the late Middle Ages, cumulated with the passing of the Education Act 1496, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools and which endorsed the humanist concern to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, although it was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite, with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the fifteenth century.

The humanist concern with widening education was shared by the Protestant reformers, with a desire for a godly people replacing the aim of having educated citizens. In 1560, the First Book of Discipline set out a plan for a school in every parish but proved financially impossible. In the burghs, the old schools were maintained, with the song schools and a number of new foundations becoming reformed grammar schools or ordinary parish schools. Schools were supported by a combination of kirk funds, contributions from local heritors or burgh councils and from parents that could pay. They were inspected by kirk sessions, who checked for the quality of teaching and doctrinal purity.

There was also a large number of unregulated "adventure schools", which sometimes fulfilled a local need and sometimes took pupils away from the official schools. Outside the established burgh schools, a master often combined his position with other employment, particularly minor posts within the kirk, such as clerk. At best the curriculum included catechism, Latin, French, Classical literature and sports. It took until the late seventeenth century to produce a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, and in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas by the time the Education Act was passed in 1696, forming the basis of the system's administration until 1873.

### Universities

The Renaissance of the 12th century resulted in the emergence of some major intellectual figures from Scotland. Probably the most significant was John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308), a major influence on late medieval religious thought. After the outbreak of the Wars of Independence in 1296, English universities were largely closed to Scots and continental universities became more significant. Just over a thousand Scots have been identified as attending continental universities between the 12th century and 1410. Some Scottish scholars became teachers in continental universities, such as Walter Wardlaw (died 1387) and Laurence de Lindores (1372?–1437). This situation was transformed by the founding of the University of St Andrews in 1413, the University of Glasgow in 1450 and the University of Aberdeen in 1495. Initially, these institutions were designed for the training of clerics but would increasingly be used by laymen who began to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in government and law. In this period Scottish universities did not teach Greek, focused on metaphysics and put a largely unquestioning faith in the works of Aristotle. Those wanting to study for second degrees still needed to go elsewhere. Scottish scholars continued to study on the Continent and at English universities which reopened to Scots in the late fifteenth century.

As early as 1495 some Scots were in contact with the leading figure in the Northern humanist movement, the Netherlands-born Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). They were also in contact with the French humanist and scholar Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455 –1536). Erasmus was tutor to James VI's illegitimate son, and Archbishop of St. Andrews, Alexander Stewart (c. 1493–1513). These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life. By 1497 the humanist and historian Hector Boece, born in Dundee and who had studied at Paris, returned to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen. The continued movement to other universities produced a school of Scottish nominalists at Paris in the early sixteenth century, the most important of whom was John Mair, generally described as a scholastic, but whose Latin History of Greater Britain (1521) was sympathetic to the humanist social agenda. Another major figure was Archibald Whitelaw, who taught at St. Andrews and Cologne, becoming a tutor to the young James III and royal secretary from 1462 to 1493. Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and later Bishop of Orkney, was responsible in the 1520s and 1530s for bringing the Italian humanist Giovanni Ferrario to teach at Kinloss Abbey, where he established an impressive library and wrote works of Scottish history and biography. Reid was also instrumental in organising the public lectures which were established in Edinburgh in the 1540s on law, Greek, Latin and philosophy, under the patronage of Mary of Guise. They developed into the "Tounis College", which would become the University of Edinburgh in 1582.

After the Reformation, Scotland's universities underwent a series of reforms associated with Andrew Melville, who returned from Geneva to become principal of the University of Glasgow in 1574. Influenced by the anti-Aristotelian Petrus Ramus, he placed an emphasis on simplified logic, elevating languages and sciences to the status enjoyed by philosophy and allowing accepted ideas in all areas to be challenged. He introduced new specialist teaching staff, replacing the system of "regenting", where one tutor took the students through the entire arts curriculum. Metaphysics was abandoned and Greek became compulsory in the first year, followed by Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew, launching a new fashion for ancient and biblical languages. Glasgow had probably been declining as a university before his arrival, but students now began to attend in large numbers. Melville assisted in the reconstruction of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and in order to do for St Andrews what he had done for Glasgow, he was appointed Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews in 1580. The result was a revitalisation of all Scottish universities, which were now producing a quality of education the equal of that offered anywhere in Europe.

Major intellectual figures in the Reformation included George Buchanan. He taught in universities in France and Portugal, translated texts from Greek into Latin, and was tutor to the young Mary, Queen of Scots for whom he wrote Latin courtly poetry and masques. After her deposition in 1567, his works De Jure Regni apud Scotos (1579) and Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582) were among the major texts outlining the case for resistance to tyrants. Buchanan was one of the young James VI's tutors and although he helped in producing a highly educated Protestant prince, who would produce works on subjects including government, poetry and witchcraft, he failed to convince the king of his ideas about limited monarchy. James would debate with both Buchanan and Melville over the status of the crown and kirk.

## Literature

In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose also began to develop as a genre and to demonstrate classical and humanist influences. Although there are earlier fragments of original Scots prose, such as the Auchinleck Chronicle, the first complete surviving work includes John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s, including The Book of the Law of Armys and the Order of Knychthode and the treatise Secreta Secetorum, an Arabic work believed to be Aristotle's advice to Alexander the Great.

The establishment of a printing press under royal patent from James IV in 1507 made it easier to disseminate Scottish literature. The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid, the Eneados. It was the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglic language, finished in 1513, but overshadowed by the disaster at Flodden. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court. These included James I (who wrote The Kingis Quair). Many of the makars had a university education and so were also connected with the Kirk. However, William Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris (c.1505) provides evidence of a wider tradition of secular writing outside of Court and Kirk now largely lost. Before the advent of printing in Scotland, writers such as Dunbar, Douglas, together with Robert Henryson and Walter Kennedy, have been seen as leading a golden age in Scottish poetry. They continued medieval themes, but were increasingly influenced by new continental trends and the language and forms of the Renaissance.

As a patron, James V supported poets William Stewart and John Bellenden. Stewart produced a verse version of the Latin History of Scotland compiled in 1527 by Boece and Bellenden produced a prose translation of Livy's History of Rome in 1533. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount the Lord Lyon, the head of the Lyon Court and diplomat, was a prolific poet. He produced an interlude at Linlithgow Palace thought to be a version of his play The Thrie Estaitis in 1540, the first surviving full Scottish play, which satirised the corruption of church and state, making use of elements such as medieval morality plays, with a humanist agenda.

In the 1580s and 1590s James VI promoted the literature of the country of his birth. His treatise, Some Rules and Cautions to be Observed and Eschewed in Scottish Prosody, published in 1584 when he was aged 18, was both a poetic manual and a description of the poetic tradition in his mother tongue, Scots, to which he applied Renaissance principles. He became patron and member of a loose circle of Scottish Jacobean court poets and musicians, the Castalian Band, which included William Fowler and Alexander Montgomerie. By the late 1590s, his championing of his native Scottish tradition was to some extent diffused by the prospect of inheriting the English throne, and some courtier poets who followed the king to London after 1603, such as William Alexander, began to anglicise their written language. James's characteristic role as active literary participant and patron in the Scottish court made him a defining figure for English Renaissance poetry and drama, which would reach a pinnacle of achievement in his reign, but his patronage for the high style in his own Scottish tradition largely became sidelined.

## Architecture

The influence of the Renaissance on Scottish architecture has been seen as occurring in two distinct phases. The selective use of Romanesque forms in church architecture in the early fifteenth century was followed towards the end of the century by a phase of more directly influenced Renaissance palace building. The re-adoption of low-massive church building with round arches and pillars, in contrast to the Gothic Perpendicular style that was particularly dominant in England in the late medieval era, may have been influenced by close contacts with Rome and the Netherlands, and may have been a conscious reaction to English forms in favour of continental ones. It can be seen in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, begun in 1406, the facade of St Mary's, Haddington from the 1460s and in the chapel of Bishop Elphinstone's Kings College, Aberdeen (1500–9). About forty collegiate churches were established in Scotland in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Many, like Trinity College, Edinburgh, showed a combination of Gothic and Renaissance styles.

The extensive building and rebuilding of royal palaces probably began under James III, accelerated under James IV, reaching its peak under James V. These works have been seen as directly reflecting the influence of Renaissance styles. Linlithgow was first constructed under James I, under the direction of master of work John de Waltoun. From 1429, it was referred to as a palace, apparently the first use of this term in the country. This was extended under James III and began to correspond to a fashionable quadrangular, corner-towered Italian seignorial palace of a palatium ad moden castri (a castle-style palace), combining classical symmetry with neo-chivalric imagery. There is evidence of Italian masons working for James IV, in whose reign Linlithgow was completed and other palaces were rebuilt with Italianate proportions.

James V encountered the French version of Renaissance building while visiting for his marriage to Madeleine of Valois in 1536 and his second marriage to Mary of Guise may have resulted in longer-term connections and influences. Work from his reign largely disregarded the insular style of Tudor architecture prevalent in England under Henry VIII and adopted forms that were recognisably European, beginning with the extensive work at Linlithgow. This was followed by rebuildings at Holyrood, Falkland, Stirling and Edinburgh, described as "some of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in Britain". Rather than slavishly copying continental forms, most Scottish architecture incorporated elements of these styles into traditional local patterns, adapting them to Scottish idioms and materials (particularly stone and harl). Work undertaken for James VI demonstrated continued Renaissance influences, with the Chapel Royal at Stirling having a classical entrance built in 1594 and the North Wing of Linlithgow, built in 1618, using classical pediments. Similar themes can be seen in the private houses of aristocrats, as in Mar's Wark, Stirling (c. 1570) and Crichton Castle, built for the Earl of Bothwell in the 1580s.

New military architecture and the trace italienne style was brought by Italian architects and military engineers during the war of the Rough Wooing and the regency of Mary of Guise including Migliorino Ubaldini who worked at Edinburgh Castle, Camillo Marini who designed forts on the borders, and Lorenzo Pomarelli who worked for Mary of Guise. The unique style of great private houses in Scotland, later known as Scots baronial, has been located in origin to the period of the 1560s. It kept many of the features of the high walled Medieval castles that had been largely made obsolete by gunpowder weapons and may have been influenced by the French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces. It drew on the tower houses and peel towers, which had been built in hundreds by local lords since the fourteenth century, particularly in the borders. These abandoned defensible curtain walls for a fortified refuge, designed to outlast a raid, rather than a sustained siege. They were usually of three stories, typically crowned with a parapet, projecting on corbels, continuing into circular bartizans at each corner. New houses retained many of these external features, but with a larger ground plan, classically a "Z-plan" of a rectangular block with towers, as at Colliston Castle (1583) and Claypotts Castle (1569–88).

Particularly influential was the work of William Wallace, the king's master mason from 1617 until his death in 1631. He worked on the rebuilding of the collapsed North Range of Linlithgow from 1618, Winton House for George Seton, 3rd Earl of Winton and began work on Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh. He adopted a distinctive style that applied elements of Scottish fortification and Flemish influences to a Renaissance plan like that used at Château d'Ancy-le-Franc. This style can be seen in lords houses built at Caerlaverlock (1620), Moray House, Edinburgh (1628) and Drumlanrig Castle (1675–89), and was highly influential until the Scots baronial style gave way to the grander English forms associated with Inigo Jones in the later seventeenth century.

From about 1560, the Reformation revolutionised church architecture in Scotland. Calvinists rejected ornamentation in places of worship, with no need for elaborate buildings divided up by ritual, resulting in the widespread destruction of Medieval church furnishings, ornaments and decoration. There was a need to adapt and build new churches suitable for reformed services, with greater emphasis on preaching and the pulpit. Many of the earliest buildings were simple gabled rectangles, a style that continued to be built into the seventeenth century, as at Dunnottar Castle in the 1580s, Greenock (1591) and Durness (1619). The church of Greyfriars, Edinburgh, built between 1602 and 1620, used this layout with a largely Gothic form while that at Dirleton (1612) had a more sophisticated classical style. A variation of the rectangular church that developed in post-Reformation Scotland was the "T"-shaped plan, often used when adapting existing churches as it allowed the maximum number of parishioners to be near the pulpit. Examples can be seen at Kemback in Fife (1582) and Prestonpans after 1595. The "T" plan continued to be used into the seventeenth century as at Weem (1600), Anstruther Easter, Fife (1634–44) and New Cumnock (1657). In the seventeenth century a Greek cross plan was used for churches such as Cawdor (1619) and Fenwick (1643). In most of these cases one arm of the cross was closed off as a laird's aisle, with the result that they were in effect "T"-plan churches.

## Art

Little is known about native Scottish artists in the Middle Ages. As in England, the monarchy may have had model portraits of royalty used for copies and reproductions, but the versions of native royal portraits that survive from the late Middle Ages are generally crude by continental standards. Much more impressive are the works or artists imported from the continent, particularly the Netherlands, generally considered the centre of painting in the Northern Renaissance. The products of these connections included a fine portrait of William Elphinstone; the images of St Catherine and St John brought to Dunkeld; Hugo van Der Goes's altarpiece for the Trinity College Church in Edinburgh, commissioned by James III; and the work after which the Flemish Master of James IV of Scotland is named. There are also a relatively large number of elaborate devotional books from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, usually produced in the Low Countries and France for Scottish patrons. These included the prayer book commissioned by Robert Blackadder, Bishop of Glasgow, between 1484 and 1492 and the Flemish illustrated book of hours, known as the Hours of James IV of Scotland, given by James IV to Margaret Tudor and described as "perhaps the finest medieval manuscript to have been commissioned for Scottish use".

Surviving stone and wood carvings, wall paintings and Scottish Royal tapestries suggest the richness of sixteenth century royal art. At Stirling Castle, stone carvings on the royal palace from the reign of James V are taken from German patterns, and like the surviving carved oak portrait roundels from the King's Presence Chamber, known as the Stirling Heads, they include contemporary, biblical and classical figures. Some decorative wood carvings were made by French craftsmen, who like Andrew Mansioun, settled in Scotland. Scotland's ecclesiastical art paid a heavy toll as a result of Reformation iconoclasm, with the almost total loss of medieval stained glass, religious sculpture and paintings. The parallel loss of patronage created a crisis for native craftsmen and artists, who turned to secular patrons. One result of this was the flourishing of Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and walls, with large numbers of private houses of burgesses, lairds and lords gaining often highly detailed and coloured patterns and scenes. Over a hundred examples are known to have existed, and surviving paintings include the ceiling at Prestongrange, undertaken in 1581 for Mark Kerr, Commendator of Newbattle, and the long gallery at Pinkie House, painted for Alexander Seaton, Earl of Dunfermline, in 1621. These were undertaken by unnamed Scottish artists using continental pattern books that often led to the incorporation of humanist moral and philosophical symbolism, with elements that call on heraldry, piety, classical myths and allegory.

In 1502 Henry VII sent his Flemish portrait painter Maynard Wewyck to the court of James IV and Margaret Tudor. Later in the sixteenth-century anonymous artists made portraits of important individuals, including the Earl of Bothwell and his first wife Jean Gordon (1566), and George, 7th Lord Seton (c. 1575). The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was probably disrupted by minorities and regencies between 1513 and 1579. James VI employed two Flemish artists, Arnold Bronckorst (floruit, in Scotland, 1580–1583) and Adrian Vanson (fl. 1581–1602), who have left us a visual record of the king and major figures at the court. Anna of Denmark brought a jeweller Jacob Kroger (d. 1594) from Lüneburg, a centre of the goldsmith's craft. The first significant native artist was George Jamesone of Aberdeen (1589/90–644), who became one of the most successful portrait painters of the reign of Charles I and trained the Baroque artist John Michael Wright (1617–94).

## Music

The captivity of James I in England from 1406 to 1423, where he earned a reputation as a poet and composer, may have led him to take English and continental styles and musicians back to the Scottish court on his release. In the late fifteenth century a series of Scottish musicians trained in the Netherlands, then the centre of musical production in Western Europe, before returning home. They included John Broune, Thomas Inglis and John Fety, the last of whom became master of the song school in Aberdeen and then Edinburgh, introducing the new five-fingered organ playing technique. In 1501, James IV refounded the Chapel Royal within Stirling Castle, with a new and enlarged choir and it became the focus of Scottish liturgical music. Burgundian and English influences were probably reinforced when Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor married James IV in 1503. The outstanding Scottish composer of the first half of the sixteenth century was Robert Carver (c. 1488–1558), a canon of Scone Abbey. Five masses and two votive antiphons have survived in his choirbook. One of the masses provides the only example of the use of the continental fashion of the cantus firmus to have survived in Britain. The antiphon "Oh Bone Jesu" was scored for 19 voices, perhaps to commemorate the 19th year of the reign of James V. His complex polyphonic music could only have been performed by a large and highly trained choir such as the one employed in the Chapel Royal. James V was also a patron to figures including David Peebles (c. 1510–79?), whose best known work "Si quis diligit me" (text from John 14:23), is a motet for four voices. These were probably only two of many accomplished composers of their times, their work surviving largely in fragments.

In this era Scotland followed the trend of Renaissance courts for instrumental accompaniment and playing. Accounts indicate that there were lutenists at the court from the reign of James III and in the houses of the great lords and clergymen. Instruments also appear in art of the period, with a ceiling at Crathes Castle showing muses with lute, bass viol, fiddle, harp, cittern, flute and clavicord, similar to a mixed consort found in England in this period. Music also became one of the accomplishments of the Renaissance courtier and even royalty. James IV entertained his bride Margaret Tudor during their marriage celebrations by playing "the clarychords and lute" and Margaret herself had been taught the lute as a child. James V, as well as being a major patron of sacred music, was a talented lute player and introduced French chansons and consorts of viols to his court, although almost nothing of this secular chamber music survives.

The Reformation would severely affect church music. The song schools of the abbeys, cathedrals and collegiate churches were closed down, choirs disbanded, music books and manuscripts destroyed and organs removed from churches. The Lutheranism that influenced the early Scottish Reformation attempted to accommodate Catholic musical traditions into worship, drawing on Latin hymns and vernacular songs. The most important product of this tradition in Scotland was The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, which were spiritual satires on popular ballads composed by the brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn. Never adopted by the kirk, they nevertheless remained popular and were reprinted from the 1540s to the 1620s. Later the Calvinism that came to dominate the Scottish Reformation was much more hostile to Catholic musical tradition and popular music, placing an emphasis on what was biblical, which meant the Psalms. The Scottish psalter of 1564 was commissioned by the Assembly of the Church. It drew on the work of French musician Clément Marot, Calvin's contributions to the Strasbourg psalter of 1529 and English writers, particularly the 1561 edition of the psalter produced by William Whittingham for the English congregation in Geneva. The intention was to produce individual tunes for each psalm, but of 150 psalms, 105 had proper tunes and in the seventeenth century, common tunes, which could be used for psalms with the same metre, became more common. The need for simplicity for whole congregations that would now all sing these psalms, unlike the trained choirs who had sung the many parts of polyphonic hymns, necessitated simplicity and most church compositions were confined to homophonic settings. There is some evidence that polyphony survived and was incorporated into editions of the psalter from 1625, but usually with the congregation singing the melody and trained singers the contra-tenor, treble and bass parts.

The return of James V's daughter Mary from France in 1561 to begin her personal reign, and her position as a Catholic, gave a new lease of life to the choir of the Scottish Chapel Royal, but the destruction of Scottish church organs meant that instrumentation to accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors. Like her father, she played the lute, virginals and (unlike her father) was a fine singer. She brought French musical influences with her, employing lutenists and viol players in her household.

James VI was a major patron of the arts in general. He made statutory provision to reform and promote the teaching of music, attempting to revive burgh song schools from 1579. He rebuilt the Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1594 and the choir was used for state occasions like the baptism of his son Henry. He followed the tradition of employing lutenists for his private entertainment, as did other members of his family. When he went south to take the throne of England in 1603 as James I, he removed one of the major sources of patronage in Scotland. Beginning to fall into disrepair, the Scottish Chapel Royal was now used only for occasional state visits, leaving the court in Westminster as the only major source of royal musical patronage.

## Decline and influence

The Renaissance in Scotland has been seen as reaching its peak in the first half of the sixteenth century, between the reigns of James IV and the deposition of Mary, Queen of Scots. The loss of the church as a source of patronage in the 1560s and the court in 1603, changed and limited the further development of Renaissance ideas. In the same period civic humanism began to give way to private devotion and retreat from the world influenced by Stoicism. In art and architecture, Renaissance proportion began to give way to Mannerism and the more exaggerated style of the Baroque from about 1620.

The legacy of the Renaissance can be seen in the transformation of the ruling elite in Scottish society from a warrior caste to one with more refined morals and values. Humanism created an acceptance of the importance of learning, which contributed to the legacy of the Scottish school and university systems. Specifically, the 1496 Education Act has been seen as establishing a precedent for a public system of education, which was taken up by the reformers in 1560 and informed later legislation and expansion. The establishment of the Scottish universities, and especially the humanist reforms associated with Melville, allowed Scotland to participate in the "educational revolution" of the early modern era and would be vital to the development of the Enlightenment in Scotland. These circumstances have been seen by David McCrone as making education "vital to the sense of Scottishness".

The Renaissance left a legacy across intellectual fields including poetry, historical writing and architecture, which continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A growing number of Scottish scholars emerged who had an increasing confidence in their own literature. Part of the explanation for the sudden flowering of the Scottish Enlightenment, is that the country already had a history of achievements in philosophy, poetry, music, mathematics and architecture and was in close touch with intellectual trends in the rest of Europe. From this period Scotland would make major contributions in the fields of medicine, law, philosophy, geology and history. Among these ideas the limitation of royal sovereignty over the people remained present in Scottish intellectual life and resurfaced to contribute to the major debates of the eighteenth century.

## See also

- Renaissance architecture in Scotland
- Early Renaissance
- Late Renaissance

## External links\|

[ ](Category:Renaissance_in_Scotland "wikilink") [Scotland](Category:Northern_Renaissance "wikilink") [Scotland](Category:Renaissance_by_country "wikilink") [\*](Category:Renaissance_architecture_in_Scotland "wikilink") [Renaissance](Category:History_of_Scotland_by_period "wikilink") [R](Category:Cultural_history_of_Scotland "wikilink") [Scotland in the Late Middle Ages](Category:Scotland_in_the_Late_Middle_Ages "wikilink") [.](Category:15th_century_in_Scotland "wikilink") [.](Category:16th_century_in_Scotland "wikilink") [17th century in Scotland](Category:17th_century_in_Scotland "wikilink") [English Renaissance](Category:English_Renaissance "wikilink") [Tudor England](Category:Tudor_England "wikilink") [R](Category:History_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_period "wikilink")

Cultural and artistic movement in Scotland dating from the 15th century to the early 17th century