Thomas Dempster (23 August 1579But this date is disputed. Thomas said that he was one of 29 children and belonged to a set of triplets, which seems an impossibility and for which there is no other evidence. A modern Dempster, James, reasons, on a website established by him at , that 9 is a plausible figure. As it has been established by other documentation that Thomas was the third son, fourth child, and that his parents were married in 1568, allowing an interval of 18 months James arrives at 1574 or 1575, which makes Thomas considerably less precocious. However, this article, following the sources on which it is based, presumes a birth at 1579. – 6 September 1625) was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, he was sent abroad as a youth for his education. The Dempsters were Catholic in an increasingly Protestant country and had a reputation for being quarrelsome. Thomas' brother James, outlawed for an attack on his father, spent some years as a pirate in the northern islands, escaped by volunteering for military service in the Low Countries and was drawn and quartered there for insubordination. Thomas' father lost the family fortune in clan feuding and was beheaded for forgery.
For these and political and religious reasons in these often violent Elizabethan times Thomas was unable to come home except for visits. Of uncommon and impressive height and intellectual ability he became an itinerant professor in France and Italy, driven from place to place by a series of colourful personal incidents in which he fought duels or opposed officers of the law. He eventually found refuge and patronage under Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany, who commissioned a work on the Etruscans. Three years later Thomas handed the duke a magnum opus, the manuscript of De Etruria Regali Libri Septem, "Seven Books about Royal Etruria","Royal Hetruria" was Dempster's own English name for the book, used in a letter recounting its loss to him. Rowland, pages 98–99. Dempster's Hetruria has been mainly altered to Etruria in this article, following Coke's convention. in the Latin language, the first detailed study of every aspect of Etruscan civilisation, considered a brilliant work. In 1723 Thomas Coke finally undertook to publish an enhanced edition of it. The original manuscript remains in Coke's library at Holkham.
Biography
Early life
Family background and education Thomas Dempster,Dempstar is an alternative spelling. according to his own account, was born at Cliftbog, Aberdeenshire near Turriff).Some sources place his birth at Brechin. to Thomas Dempster, Laird of Muiresk or Muresk, and Jean Leslie, a daughter of Willam Lesley, 9th Baron of Balquhain, Auchterless and Killesmont, and sheriff (until 1586) of Banff and Buchan. A 1592 charter from James VI confirms the lands owned by Thomas Dempter and his wife Jean Leslie and designates his heirs Robert (2nd son), Thomas (3rd son), and George, who are called "legitimate offspring", with John, Archibald and Charles Dempster. Girls could not inherit, so they are not listed. The oldest son, James, is not included from this record.Robertson pages 570–571.
By birth Jean Leslie was connected to the Clan Forbes, her mother, Janet Forbes, was a daughter of John Forbes, 6th Lord Forbes. Her marriage seems to have taken place a few years before Clan Leslie joined with Clan Gordon in their feud against Clan Forbes. The Leslies were supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, a history which may or may not be connected with later accusations that Thomas was an intelligencer for James I.
Andrew Ogston was appointed as Thomas Dempster's tutor. Dempster wrote that he learned the alphabet from Ogston in a single hour at age three. He may have been older; in any case, Andrew recognised talent in his pupil. He sent him to Grammar School in Aberdeen, and in 1588 at the age of ten (or 14) Thomas left home to enter Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.
Family feud Meanwhile, his father Thomas Dempster of Muresk had taken a mistress, Isabella, from Clan Gordon, which must have been a bitter blow to Jean Leslie. Apparently Isabella charmed not only Thomas but his eldest son James Dempster, who married her. Thomas Dempster disinherited him. James Dempster and a band of Gordons waylaid Thomas and his party on the road between his estates. Thomas was shot several times in the legs and suffered a sword blow to the head, as a result of which James became an outlaw, surviving by banditry in Shetland and Orkney. The younger Thomas' uncle, John Dempster, an Edinburgh lawyer, insisted he be educated abroad to remove him from the environment.Morér.
The elder Dempster continued to make decisions that were the ruin of the family. Clan feuding was an expensive activity from which every clan suffered. The elder Thomas had already lost much of his estate to pay for feuds with Clan Currer and Clan Grant. He decided now to sell the estate at Muiresk to the Earl of Erroll to prevent his eldest son from ever inheriting it. The earl took advantage of some fine print in the law, now obscure, to evade payment.Dictionary of National Biography.
Education abroad
Scots College of Paris Thomas and tutor started out for Paris. He was ten in the most precocious dating scheme, possibly as old as 14 in others. They had no sooner reached the continent when they were robbed of all their possessions and probably beaten as well, as Ogston died not long after. Their assailants remain unknown except that they were French soldiers. However, a good Samaritan stepped forward: Walter Brus, an officer in the French army, who was of Scottish descent, and judging from the name, perhaps not of the humblest birth. Walter sent him on to Paris, where other officers of Scottish descent in the French army took up a subscription to place him at the University of Paris.Stephen page 336.
According to the structure of the university at the time, Thomas would have entered the Scots College there; the fact that the subscription was of Scottish officers indicates that that is the most likely possibility. If true, it shows that Brus' motivations were not entirely altruistic. The Scots Colleges abroad were being used as training and staging areas for Scottish priests intended to enter Scotland in the wake of the invading army and play the most significant role in its reconversion. The failure of the invasion left them in place (without much work to do other than intelligence and conspiracy).
Diversions to Belgium and Rome At the University of Paris Thomas became deathly ill with "the plague"This is the Dictionary of National Biography term. Thomas' own term (page 674) is lues horrenda. and on recovering was sent by someone in charge of his destiny to the University of Louvain in the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), to study under Justus Lipsius. Thomas himself gives that as a reason,Page 675. but otherwise does not have a clear explanation for the change, stating only that Belgium was a "safe refuge".Tutum portum (accusative case), page 674. Instead he was diverted from this plan by William Crichton, Jesuit,1535–1617, recruited into the Jesuits by William Hay on the latter's mission to Mary, Queen of Scots, 1592, subsequent member of an unsuccessful mission to convert James VI and I, even though he had been released from the Tower of London on condition that he not return to England. then Superior of the Scots College, Douai, which is a good indication that forces unknown to young Thomas were at work in his life. He did not matriculate at Louvain.
The University of Douai was founded by Philip II of Spain as part of his military build-up against England and was at first identical to the English College there. This college was a refuge and rallying point for English Catholics fleeing the re-establishment of Protestantism after the death of Mary I and the accession of Elizabeth I. Mary had won for herself the popular title "Bloody Mary" for her methods in attempting to reimpose Catholicism on England. Philip II, who had been married to Mary 1554–1558, used the seminarians from Douai openly as agents. They were often in England illegally to establish contacts and maintain a bridgehead, so to speak, for reconversion.
The mastermind in the strategy to reconquer Great Britain for Catholicism and Spain was that of Philip II. He was supported in this effort by a long series of short-term popes (some very short-term), such as Innocent IX (1591), Gregory XIV (1590–1591), etc., who basically followed his strategy. Clement VIII (1592–1605), Cardinal Aldobrandini since 1585, changed the policy and stood against Philip, after his military defeat by the English.
In the latter part of the 16th century, deeming that the reconversion structure needed strengthening, the popes established a number of Scots Colleges, typically through the Jesuits. One of these was the Scots College at Douai, founded by its first Superior, Father William Crighton (P. Gulielmus Creighton), who held the office 1581–1597, according to the records of the college.Records of the Scots Colleges, page 96.
Apparently Crighton had been asked by "the pope": perhaps Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) to provide Scottish students for seminary study at Rome. The Scots College at Rome did not receive its foundation bull from Clement VIII until 1600, but the request specifically for Scotsmen evidences an early interest in that direction. How Crighton got Dempster's name remains as unknown as why he was deported from Paris, but Thomas was one of four selected and did not enroll at Louvain, but journeyed straight to Rome. He mentions that Cardinal Aldobrandini was raising an army there and calls him also Clement VIII, perhaps in anticipation of later events. Dempster says that he was in a seminarium Romanum with "the choicest nobility of Italy", which he would not have been if the Scots College had existed then.
Scots College of Douai The Roman plan came to nothing when, as Dempster says, "the lethal disease recurred." Acting on medical advice the church authorities returned him to Belgium for a change of climate. After an arduous and dangerous journey north of the Alps he connected at Tournai with James Cheyne, a member of his network of Scottish patrons. Securing funding from "the king of Spain", who must have been Philip II, and "Archduke Albert",Dempster page 675. Cheyne sent him to the Scottish College, Douai, from which, after a few years, he graduated.
The name of Thomas Demster appears as Item Number 64 in the Register of Alumni for the college, applying to the year 1593, with a very brief entry next to his name, "etiam seminarii alumnus." Apparently the college accepted both seminarians and seculars, and this notification identified Thomas as a seminarian. If the 1579 birthdate is true, Thomas would have been 14. Of his stay there he had little to say, only that he took first prize in poetry and second in philosophy.
He showed such ability that, when still in his teens, he became lecturer on the Humanities at the University of Douai. After a short stay, he returned to Paris, to take his degree of doctor of Canon law.
Itinerant professor
Dempster's first position as a doctor was a regent, or full professor, of the Collège de Navarre, at age 17. He soon left Paris for Toulouse, which in turn he was forced to leave by the hostility of the city authorities, aroused by his violent assertion of university rights. He was than elected professor of eloquence at the academy of Nîmes. A murderous attack upon him by one of the defeated candidates and his supporters was followed by a libel case, which, though he ultimately won, forced him to leave the town.