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John Napier

Life, Logarithms, and Legacy

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Life and Lineage

May you live in interesting times.

Variously attributed

In this first chapter we attempt to paint a picture of Napier's life and of the world in which he lived it, necessarily using a broad historical brush concerning his life and, having consideration for balance and book length, a brush of even greater width with regard to his Scotland. He was born, lived and died in a tumultuous world of political and religious upheaval, one in which science and superstition, justice and brutality, religion and hatred, life and premature and perhaps violent death coexisted without demur. It defies credulity that someone with his inherited responsibilities and living so remote from the scholarly world of the time would have the motivation and find the opportunity to pursue his academic studies for so long and in such depth. The finer strokes in our picture of him derive from the surviving material relating specifically and reliably to him and, most particularly, the important biography by Mark Napier which we have mentioned in the Introduction. From it we have:

With the exception of those little episodes we have noticed, of battle, murder and sudden death, Popish plots, pestilence and famine, ever and anon demanding more or less of our philosopher's time and attention; together with the whole charge of his own twelve children, and more than half the charge of his unruly brothers, besides farming operations, extending from the shores of the Forth to the banks of the Teith, and the islands on Lochlomond; mingled with occasional demands upon his "singular judgement", from the General Assembly of the church, to the dark outlaw who indulged in magic, and the courtly lawyer who sought a lesson in mensuration; with the exception, we say, of these inevitable interruptions, our philosopher lived the life of an intellectual hermit, entirely devoted to his theological and mathematical speculations, and delighting in no converse so much as the clear crow of his favorite bird, more powerful to "dismiss the demons" than all the incantations of Lilly.

We shall use this involved and ironic quotation as a structure from which our own brief account is formed.

Home and Away

John Napier was born in 1550, as was Charles IX of France, and he died in 1617, the year of the coronation of France's Louis XIII. Locating his dates in an alternative way, he was born three years after the Scottish defeat by the English at the Battle of Pinkie and died two years after the only Roman Catholic Scottish martyr, Saint John Ogilvie, was executed in Glasgow. With these associations we have an encapsulation of the major external influences which shaped his life: the ever-fluid alliances and antagonisms between Scotland, England and France and the momentous effects of the Reformation of the Catholic Church. And he was Scottish. Scotland is not a big country, and neither in Napier's time was it an easy one in which to live or to travel. It measures 274 miles north to south, with a width which varies between 24 miles and 155 miles; its area is somewhat over 30,000 square miles. There is no single natural division to distinguish Scotland's south from England's north; an imaginary line, largely following rivers, mountain ridges and other natural features, meanders from the mouth of the river Tweed in the east, through the Cheviot Hills, to the Solway Firth in the west, with the small town of Gretna the final landfall. After years of conflict, official recognition was given to the 96 mile route by an agreement between the Scottish king Alexander II and the English king Henry III in the Treaty of York of 1237; not that this prevented many military incursions from both sides throughout the tempestuous centuries that followed, with Berwick in particular a recurring area of contention. The topography of Scotland's mainland naturally divides into three: the Southern Uplands (bordering on England), the Central Lowlands above this, and the Highlands to the north and west. Almost two thirds of the mainland comprises mountains and moors, and there are 787 islands, of which 130 are inhabited. It is, and was, a beautiful country with the terrain responsible for that beauty also responsible for the segregation and sometimes isolation of its inhabitants, a point well made by Samuel Johnson:

To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains and islands is equally known with that of Borneo and Sumatra: of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest.

Drovers' routes constituted the main physical infrastructure; roads, where they existed, were poor quality; bridges over the many rivers were rare. News could take days to reach a destination of negligible separation; an express rider could take a week to travel from Edinburgh to London. In short, Napier's Scotland was difficult to negotiate with or within, sparsely and variously populated, and constantly in conflict with England or France or both. Setting aside the small number of monastic foundations, before the Reformation and somewhat after it, its Church was very largely at the mercy of laymen with its foundations corrupt and worldly, its parish churches were frequently empty and mostly in ruin, their congregations often contemptuous of the services, and the bishops were a byword for immorality; James V had five of his illegitimate baby sons appointed to senior church positions, with him enjoying the associated revenue during their minority and them after it. The education system was entirely inadequate at every level, providing only the most basic training for those whose fortune it was to be part of it; schools, where they existed, achieved little and the few universities were not much more than theological training camps. The clan system prevailed in the Highlands, remote from the centres of government, with the most powerful chiefs vying for supremacy with the king. The ruling classes were largely ill-educated or uneducated, albeit with a number of significant exceptions; by 1540 the evidence of written bonds shows that most Scottish nobles could at least write their own name. It was in this environment that this particular and exceptional laird studied classical languages, agriculture and horticulture, engineering, theology – and mathematics.

Napier's home city was Edinburgh, the principal city among those that existed: Stirling, St Andrews, Perth, Aberdeen, Montrose, Dundee, Dunbar, etc. All tiny by modern standards, with populations measured as a few thousand, with that of Edinburgh about 12,000 at the time of his birth: Edinburgh's current population of near half a million people was probably that of the whole of Napier's Scotland. Uncomfortably close to the English border though it is, James IV had moved his court from Stirling to Edinburgh in 1492 and to his newly constructed Palace of Holyrood, which was to be the scene of much intrigue both during and after Napier's time. Holyrood was at one end of the city and the ancient castle was at the other; in between, houses predominated and side streets sprouted to accommodate those of contrasting fortunes. In the words of two who had visited the city:

From the Kings Pallace at the east, the city still riseth higher and higher towards the West, and consists especially of one broad and very faire street (which is the greatest part and sole ornament thereof), the rest of the side streets and allies being of poore building and inhabited with very poore people, and this lengthe from the East to the West is about a mile, whereas the breadth of the city from the North to the South is narrow, and cannot be halfe a mile.

And somewhat in contrast:

The buildings on each side of the way being all of squared stone, five, six, and seven stories high, and many by-lanes and closes on each side of the way, wherein are gentlemens houses, much fairer then the buildings in the high-street, for in the high-street marchants and tradesmen do dwell, but the gentlemens mansions and goodliest houses are obscurely founded in the aforesaid lanes.

That long street, the city's backbone, is the Royal Mile and housed the merchants and other professional classes in buildings up to seven storeys high, some of which still survive. Some of its ribs led to the great houses of the gentry, while others provided the squalid homes of the vast majority of the city's residents. With the port of Leith adjacent to it and the monarch based in it, Edinburgh was a great city for its time; small surprise that the gentry and nobility were attracted to it:

The City is high seated, in a fruitful soil, and wholesome air, and it is adorned with many noblemen's towers lying about it, and abounds with many springs of sweet waters.

The abundance of noble towers had attracted the attention of many such visitors, with the two most compelling structures Craigmillar Castle and Merchiston Tower (or Castle). The former, now in ruins, was located to the southeast of the city and played its own significant role in events that were to be an influence on Napier's life; it was there that Mary, Queen of Scots, lodged during her illness following the birth of the future James VI and it was there and then that several Scottish nobles signed the infamous Craigmillar Bond to put an end to her husband, Lord Darnley. This would escalate into civil war, with the Napiers inescapably enmeshed in it. Merchiston Tower was located close to (about a mile and a half away) and southwest of the city (and now engulfed by it, with the district a prestigious residential area and a university located there) and had been the Napier ancestral home for a century when, in 1550, John Napier was born there, the eldest child of the sixteen-year-old Sir Archibald Napier, seventh laird of Merchiston, and his first wife, the equally youthful Janet Bothwell. He was, then, a Merchiston Napier, the earliest accredited reference to which lies in the Records of the Burg of Edinburgh dated 3 October 1403, where mention is made of Alexander Napier as Prepositius (Provost) of Edinburgh, the equivalent of being its mayor. Of course, the importance of this civic position varies with time and country but in Scotland during this period the holder would have been a man of influence who was in a position to protect the city's interests; already, then, we have the Napiers as a family of note. This Alexander's eldest son was also Alexander and it seems likely that the Merchiston Tower that survives was built for him; styled in 1427 as Alexander Naper, he is recorded as a baillie and in 1437 he too appears as provost. The link to John Napier, traced through the eldest sons through whom the line passed, discloses a family of wealth, influence and dedication:

• Alexander: Provost of Edinburgh in 1403.

• Alexander, 1st Laird, and known to own the lands of Merchiston by 1438. Provost of Edinburgh in 1437; died in 1454.

• Sir Alexander, 2nd Laird, Vice Admiral of Scotland and Master of the Royal Household. Provost of Edinburgh three times in 1455, 1457, 1469; knighted in 1461; died in 1473.

• John, 3rd Laird: Councillor in Edinburgh in 1477 and 1482 and Provost in 1483; died at the Battle of Sauchieburn on 11 June 1488.

• Archibald, 4th Laird: in 1512 he became the first Baron Napier; he fought at the Battle of Flodden in 1513 and died in 1521.

• Sir Alexander, 5th Laird: killed at Flodden.

• Alexander, 6th Laird: four years old when he inherited the estate. Killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547.

• Sir Archibald, Seventh Laird: he was just 14 when his father died. In 1562 he was appointed Justice-Depute under the earl of Argyll (deputed to preside over the criminal court in place of Argyll, the hereditary Justice General of Scotland); he was knighted in 1565 and in 1582 he was made Master of the Mint, with sole charge of all mines and minerals within the realm, a post he held until his death in 1608. He was staunchly Protestant, twice married and John Napier's father.

We know nothing of Napier's young life and nothing, in particular, of his primary education. Official acknowledgment of Scotland's mediocre educational provision brought about its first Education Act (of 1496), which encouraged the nobility to arrange education for their sons and there is evidence that this had some effect, for there were the lairds' schools, wherein boys (and sometimes girls) of the laird, his larger tenants, and kinsmen were educated. Few records have been passed down to us and the number of such schools and the effectiveness of the system remain largely unknown. This is also the case with the lesser Vernacular (or Inglis) schools, which provided a rudimentary education to children up to the age of seven or eight; and detailed knowledge of the grammar schools is scarce too; certainly, the Edinburgh High School had existed since 1505 and the sons of barons attended it. It is unsurprising that among the general population literacy levels were very low and equally unsurprising at their highest in the cities, where as many as one in four adult males could read to some extent: fewer still could write more than their own name. Perhaps Napier attended a paternally sponsored laird school, perhaps a grammar school; there is no record: or perhaps he was educated at home by a private tutor. We know a little more about his continued education since his trace is once more detected as a thirteen-year-old in the records of the University of St Andrews as beginning his further education on 1 October 1563, three months prior to the death of his mother. The record Johannes Neaper Ex Collegio Salvatoriano 1563 informs us that he had joined St Salvator's College of the university; the alternatives would have been the universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow, with the University of Edinburgh yet to be founded. Evidence of his matriculation exists, then, but not of him being the Determinante he would have been in 1566 had he completed the course. An additional scrap of evidence is provided in the detailed book, The History of St Andrews: Ancient and Modern, by Charles Jobson Lyon, published in 1833; here the author lists in chronological order the names of the most eminent men who were educated at or associated with the university: John Knox and the Admirable Crichton are consecutive and John Napier would have fitted between them, yet his name is absent. The state of university education was lamentable, with the Reformation a significant disruptive and destructive influence; this was particularly the case with St Andrews. This oldest of Scotland's universities was at once deeply entrenched in the old faith and progressive towards the new, with the resulting tensions between the individuals who occupied its three colleges even more profound than those of the other two universities. In the year of Napier's accession to St Andrews, the woeful state of the three universities, and most particularly St Andrews, had been brought before the Queen and Lords of the Articles, resulting in a parliamentary committee being ordered:

Anent ane commissioun to visle the collegels of Sanctandros and utheris within this realme and to reporte to the nixt parliament.

We may gauge its effectiveness from arguments put forward by one of the university's professors as late as 1697 in favour of its removal to Perth. He listed its deficiencies as its inaccessibility, which resulted in a lack of "commodities" and of "victuals" and their high cost, the lack of fresh water, the bad air, commonly occurring infectious diseases which "begin and rage" there, streets filled with dung, and the locals having "a great aversion to learning and learned men." Add to this his report that "the rabble of the place are much given to tumultuate" and we are left with little that is attractive. Small wonder that Napier's maternal uncle, Adam Bothwell, the bishop of Orkney, had forewarned of the inadequacies in a letter of 1560 to Napier's father, Sir Archibald, which also provides an idea of the style of the sixteenth-century cultured Scottish hand:

I pray you, schir, to send your son Jhone to the schuyllis; oyer to France or Flandaris; for he can leyr na guid at hame, nor get na proffeitt in this maist perullous worlde – that he may be saved in it, – that he may do frendis efter honnour and proffeitt as I dout not bot he will: quhem with you, and the remanent of our successioune, and my sister, your pairte, Got mot preserve eternalle.

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Excerpted from John Napier by Julian Havil. Copyright © 2014 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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