CARSTAIRS,
a surname derived from the parish of Carstairs, in the upper ward of
Lanarkshire. In charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the
name appears in the form of Castleterres or Castletarres, and in
documents subsequent to that date in that of Carstares, Carstaires, and
Carstairs. The prefix car or caer, which occurs in the old
British language, signifies either a fort, walled place, or city, and
most probably therefore any place built of stone and lime, originally
derived from the Latin calx, cal, lime, used in countries where
Roman colonies once existed, to denote a building of stone and lime, as
caes, a quay or wharf, in its abstract form of caero or
caeiro, lime-kiln, or place where lime is used, still met with in
the Spanish and Portuguese languages. The frequent use of this word
caer, in Saxon names of places, in England and Scotland, as
Carhampton, &c., and the fact of its not occurring in British or
Welsh topography until after the regions had been visited by the Saxons,
if not conquered by them, makes it doubtful if it be originally of
British origin. The word is thus synonymous with the other prefix
castel. The affix stairs or stair, anciently staer
or ster, is a corrupt form of the word terrae or
terrace signifying lands pertaining to or holding of the castle.
There was an old family of this name who possessed the lands of
Kilconquhar in Fife, and from them that estate came to the ancestors of
the present proprietor, Sir John Lindsay Bethune, Bart., descended from
the Lords Lindsay of the Byres.
CARSTAIRS, WILLIAM,
a divine of great political eminence, was born, February 11, 1649, at
Cathcart, near Glasgow, of the high church of which city his father, who
was descended from an ancient family in Fife, was minister. In
‘Balfour’s Annals,’ (vol. Iv. p. 168), under date 22d November 1650, the
following entry, relative to his father in the proceedings of the
Estates, occurs: ‘The Committee of estaits remitts to the Com. of
quarterings the exchange of prissoners, anent Alex. Jeffray and Mr.
Johne Carster, minister, with some Englishe prissoners in the castle of
Dumbartan.’ His mother, Jane Muir, was of the family of Glanderston, in
Renfrewshire. When very young he was sent to a school at Ormiston in
East Lothian, then kept by a Mr. Sinclair, which under his care had
attained to great celebrity. At this school many of the sons of the
nobility and gentry who afterwards distinguished themselves in life,
were his companions. With several of them he formed an intimacy which
continued through life, and to this, he was wont to ascribe, in a great
measure, his future fortunes. In due time he was entered a member of the
university of Edinburgh, but afterwards, in consequence of the
distracted state of the times in Scotland, he went to Utrecht, where his
prudence and address recommended him to the notice of the prince of
Orange, to whom he was introduced by the pensionary Fagel. In 1682 he
returned to Scotland with the view of entering the church, but,
discouraged by the persecution to which the presbyterians were subjected
at that period, he, after receiving a license to preach, resolved to
return to Holland. As he had to pass through London, he was instructed
by Argyle and his friends to treat with Russell, Sydney, and the other
leaders of that party in England who wished to exclude the duke of York
from the succession to the throne, whereby he became privy to the
Rye-House Plot, on the discovery of which he was apprehended in Kent,
and frequently examined. While, however, he avowed the utmost abhorrence
of any attempt on the life of the king or the duke of York, he refused
to give farther information, and was sent down to Scotland to be tried.
After a rigorous confinement in irons, he was twice put to the torture,
on the 5th and 6th of Sept. 1684, which he endured
with great firmness; but being afterwards promised a full pardon, and
deluded with the assurance that his answers would never be used against
any person, he consented to make a judicial declaration. The privy
council immediately published a statement, which he declared to be a
false and mutilated account of his confession; and, in violation of
their engagement, produced his evidence in court against his friend, Mr.
Baillie of Jerviswood. After the Revolution, the privy council of
Scotland made Mr. Carstairs a present of the ‘thumbikins,’ which had
formed the instrument of his torture. On his release he returned to
Holland in the winter of 1684-5, when the prince of orange made him one
of his own chaplains, and procured his election to the office of
minister of the English congregation at Leyden. He attended the prince
in his expedition to England, and was constantly consulted by him in
affairs of difficulty and importance. On the elevation of William and
Mary to the throne, Carstairs was appointed his majesty’s chaplain for
Scotland, to which were annexed all the emoluments of the chapel royal,
and was the chief agent between the church of that country and the
court. The king required his constant presence about his person,
assigning him apartments in the palace when at home, and when abroad
with the army, allowing him five hundred pounds a-year for camp
equipage.
William was at
first anxious that episcopacy should be the religion of Scotland as well
as of England, but Carstairs convinced him of the impropriety of this
project, which the king was forced to abandon, and the establishment of
the presbyterian form of church government was the consequence. He was
also, in 1694, of great service to the church in getting the oath of
allegiance, with the assurance, declaring William to be king de jure,
as well as de facto, dispensed with, the clergy naturally being
averse to the taking a civil oath as a qualification for a sacred
office.
On the death
of William he was no longer employed in public business, but Anne
continued him in the office of chaplain-royal. On 12th May
1703, he was appointed principal of the university of Edinburgh, for
which he drew up new rules. In the same year he was presented to the
church of Greyfriars in that city, and three years after was translated
to the High Church. He was four times chosen Moderator of the General
Assembly. To the universities of his native country he was a great
benefactor. In 1693 he obtained from the Crown, out of the bishops’
rents in Scotland, a gift of three hundred pounds sterling per annum to
each of the Scottish universities; and at various times he procured
donations for them for the encouragement of learning. When the union
between the two kingdoms came to be agitated, he took an active part in
its favour. He vigorously opposed the patronage act of Queen Anne, and
at all times vigilantly watched over the liberties and privileges of the
Church of Scotland. He warmly promoted the succession of the House of
Hanover to the throne of these realms, and was continued by George the
First in his post as chaplain to the king. Principal Carstairs died in
December 1715, while holding the office for the fourth time of Moderator
of the General Assembly. In 1774 his State Papers and Letters, with an
account of his Life, were published, in one vol, 4to, by the Rev. Dr.
Joseph M’Cormick, principal of the university of St. Andrews. There is a
portrait of him in the university of Edinburgh. Another, by Aikman, is
in possession of Alexander Dunlop, Esq. of Keppoch, which has been often
engraved.
The following
is a woodcut from an engraving by H. Adlard:
[portrait of
William Carstairs]
Principal Carstairs was a man of great learning and eminence in the
church. So complete was his mastery of the Latin language that Dr.
Pitcairn, who regularly attended the, in those days, customary opening
Latin oration of the principal, delivered before the professors and
students in the common hall of the university, used to observe that when
Mr. Carstairs began to address his audience he could not help fancying
himself transported to the forum, in the days of ancient Rome. “He
managed,” says Bower, “Scottish affairs with such discretion, during the
reigns of William and Anne, that he made few public enemies; and such
was his knowledge of human nature, his prudence, and conciliating
temper, that he was held in the highest estimation by those who still
adhered to the house of Stuart. So great was his influence in church and
state that he was generally called Cardinal Carstairs.”
