Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Short Account of the University of Glasgow: Prepared in Connection With the Celebration, of the Ninth Jubilee in June 1901
A poet of the nineteenth century has described his native country as Caledonia stem and wild, and perhaps the description would have been as appropriate in the middle of the fifteenth century; but it appears that even then most of the land available in Scotland was carefully cultivated, that the common people were not less pros perous than in continental countries, that industry had made considerable progress, and that there was an appre ciable amount of foreign commerce, especially with the Netherlands. But the progress of the country was too often interrupted by outbreaks of unruly and rapacious nobles or by schemes of crafty and ambitious ecclesiastics, both sets of disturbers finding additional Opportunity in the long and, unfortunately, too frequent minorities of the sovereign. James II., who, at the time the University was founded, had scarcely come of age, proved a ruler of good ability during his brief reign, though at the outset his career was stained by the slaying of Douglas under severe provocation, as Bruce's had been by the slaying of Comyn. James III. Did not know how to conform to his environment or to make his environment conform to him, and his reign was distracted especially in the atter part, but the Wars of the Roses kept the English employed at home, and prevented their making serious mischief in Scotland. Afterwards the reign of James IV - tolerably prudent for the most part, till it ended in the supreme imprudence of Flodden - was a time of notable progress. The condition of the country, therefore, for the first sixty years from the foundation of the University, though it cannot be described as a golden age, was not altogether unfavourable.
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