Significant Scots
Patrick Young

YOUNG, PATRICK, known also by his Latinized name of Patricius Junius, a distinguished scholar of the seventeenth century, was the son of Sir Peter Young, co-preceptor with Buchanan of king James VI., and was born at Seaton, in Haddingtonshire, in 1584. He was educated at the university of St Andrews—accompanied his father in the train of James VI. to England, in 1603, and was for some time domesticated with Dr Lloyd, bishop of Chester, as his librarian or secretary. In 1605, he was incorporated at Oxford in the degree of M.A., which he had taken at St Andrews; and, entering into deacon’s orders, was made one of the chaplains of All Souls’ college. There he acquired considerable proficiency in ecclesiastical history and antiquities, and became profoundly skilled in the Greek language, in which he made a practice of corresponding with his father and other learned men. He afterwards repaired to London, and, by the interest of Dr Montagu, bishop of Bath and Wells, obtained a pension of 50 pounds a year, and was occasionally employed by the king, and some persons connected with the government, in writing Latin letters. The same interest obtained for him the office of royal librarian. In 1617, Young went to Paris, with recommendatory letters from Camden, which introduced him to the learned of that capital. After his return, he was engaged in the translation of the works of king James into Latin. In 1629, having recently been married, he was presented with two rectories in Denbighshire; soon, after, he became a prebend of St Paul’s, and the treasurer of that cathedral; and, in 1624, he attained, by the influence of bishop Williams, the office of Latin secretary. Young, whose reputation was now widely extended, was one of the learned persons chosen by Selden to aid in the examination of the Arundelian marbles. He made a careful examination of the Alexandrian manuscript of the Bible, and communicated some various readings to Grotius, Usher, and other learned men. He also published a specimen of an edition of that manuscript, which he intended to execute, but was ultimately obliged to abandon; however, in 1633, he edited, from the same manuscript, "The Epistles of Clemens Romanus;" and, afterwards published, with a Latin version, "Catena Graecorum Patrum in Jobum, collectore Niceta, Heracliae Metropolia." In 1638, he published, "Expositio in Canticum Canticorum Folioti Episcopi Londinensis, una cum Alcuini in idem Canticum Compendio." Young also made preparations for editing various other manuscripts, to which his office in the king’s library gave him access, when the confusions occasioned by the civil war, and the seizure of the library by the parliament, put an end to his designs. He retired during this period to the house of his son-in-law, at Broomfield, in Essex, where he died in 1652.