192 Professor Rigaud\s Account of James Stirling. 



On the death of Queen Anne in 1714, there was a very large 

 portion of the British population which was adverse to the suc- 

 cession of the Brunswick family ; and the events of 1715 showed 

 that the attachment to the Stuarts was retained nowhere with 

 greater force than in Scotland. Young Stirling participated 

 in the feelings of his countrymen, and was tried at the Oxford 

 Assizes in the summer of 1716, for treasonable language which 

 he had used against George the First. The jury brought him 

 in not guilty ; but he did not clear himself from suspicion, as 

 there is a letter in the Bodleian Library from Archbishop Wake 

 to Dr Charlett, (dated July 28, 1716,) in which he says, " I 

 have had a full account of what passed at your assizes, from 

 the sermon at St Mary's, to the stop put to the hurra that had 

 like to have risen in the hall upon the acquittal of Sterlin. 

 The judge did his part fairly, and the man was acquitted, yet 

 some were never the more convinced that he was not guilty of 

 the fact whereof he was accused. I am sorry to hear, if he 

 were fellow of Balliol,that he is still reported to be a nonjuror, 

 but more that I doubt some of our Scots exhibitioners, on the 

 Bishop of Rochester's foundation, have not taken the oaths. I 

 shall expect to be very well satisfied of these last that they have 

 qualified themselves as the law requires, before they shall re- 

 ceive any more money from Bishop Warner's charity.'" 



It was probably in consequence of these investigations that 

 notice was taken in college of his politics ; for among Thomas 

 Hearne's manuscript memoranda in the Bodleian we find it 

 said :— " 1717, March 29- Mr Stirling of Balliol College, one 

 of those turned out of their scholarships upon account of the 

 oaths, hath the offer of a professorship in mathematics in Italy, 

 which he hath accepted of, and is about going thither. This 

 gentleman is printing a book in the mathematical way at the 

 theatre. 11 Nothing appears from which it can be ascertained 

 whether he actually went abroad, or, if he did, where he re- 

 sided, and how long he staid there ; but the book which Hearne 

 alludes to must have been the Linece Tertii Ordinis Neivto- 

 niancc, which he published at Oxford in 1717. Montucla, by 

 some mistake, describes it as having been printed at London 

 in quarto; but it was really a small octavo volume of 128 pages, 

 with an appendix of 19 more, containing the solution of three 



