John Strachan and Scottish influence in the charter of King’s College, York, 1827
- John Strachan and Scottish influence in the charter of King’s College, York, 1827
James Angrave is Executive Director of the British Columbia Council for Leadership in Education. His article on William Dawson and George Grant appeared in the Spring 1975 issue of Queen’s Quarterly.
NOTES
1. G. W. Spragge, The John Strachan Letter Book: 1812–1834 (Toronto: The Ontario Historical Society, 1946), pp. 58–9. Letter to Sam Sherwood, Andrew Stuart and James Stuart, dated 14 February, 1815.
2. Ibid., pp. 75–80.
3. John Graves Simcoe (1752–1806) was a soldier and a scholar of Eton and of Merton College, Oxford, who had served in the American colonies during the war. From 1777 to 1781 he commanded the Queen’s Rangers, a corps of colonial troops loyal to the British crown. He knew the people he had been appointed to govern, and was farsighted enough to realize that one of their primary concerns was to replace the universities and schools they had left behind them in the Thirteen Colonies. Even before he left England to assume his new duties, he had written to his close friend, the doyen of British intellectuals, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), President of the Royal Society; “In a literary way, I should be glad to lay the foundation stone of some society that I trust might hereafter conduce to the extension of science. Schools have been shamefully neglected — a college of a higher class would be eminently useful, and would give a tone of principle and manners that would be of infinite support to government.” Letter from Simcoe to Banks, dated London, 8 January, 1791, quoted in J. G. Hodgins, ed., Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, 1792–1876 (28 vols.), (Toronto: King’s Printer, 1893–1904), Vol. I, p. 11. These volumes will be referred to hereafter as D. U. C.
4. Letter from the Duke of Portland, the Colonial Secretary, to the Honourable Peter Russell, President of the Legislative Council, dated November 4, 1797. D.U.C., Vol. I, p. 17.
5. The Constitutional Act of 1791, which created Upper Canada, had provided that, in the Canadas, one seventh of the land in each township be reserved for the Crown and one seventh for the support of the ‘Protestant’ Clergy. This was not unusual: the Government was making large grants of land at this time to individuals, and it was only reasonable to reserve land to support the Crown (i.e. Government) and the Church. Since the Church was responsible for education and charity, it would need the revenues from this land. However, the Clergy “sevenths” led to the greatest controversy in Canadian history when the term ‘Protestant’ was interpreted to mean the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Dissenters: the Methodists, Baptists, non-juring Presbyterians and Congregationalists, constituted a majority of the population in Upper Canada, and they were quick to attack the reserves. For a full treatment of this issue see: C. B. Sissons, Church and State in Canadian Education (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1959), chap. I, and John S. Moir, Church and State in Canada West: Three Studies in the Relation of Denominationalism and Nationalism, 1841–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959).
6. Letter from the Rev. Dr. John Strachan to Sir Peregrine Maitland, D.U.C., Vol. I, pp. 211–15. Sir Peregrine Maitland (1777–1854), a hero of the Peninsular campaign and Waterloo, was Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada from 1818 to 1828, and of Nova Scotia from 1828 to 1834. D.C.B., p. 492; D.N.B., Vol. XII, pp. 811–12.
7. In the exchange of land, the Crown gave over about one-quarter of a million acres valued, on the average, at ten shillings per acre. D.U.C., Vol. I, pp. 204–5.
A copy of the original Charter, with Strachan’s emendations and the alterations he agreed to in 1837 is in D.U.C., Vol. I, pp. 222–5. See also The Universities of Canada, Appendix to the Report of the Minister of Education, Toronto, 1896, Appendix A, which includes the land grant.
8. Report of the Select Committee...
