Politics, Patronage and Personal Ties: Henry Dundas (1742-1811) and St Andrews, by Aileen Fyfe
Henry Dundas was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews from 1788 to 1811. His role in the abolition (and/or the delay of the abolition) of the slave trade has attracted a lot of public attention recently – especially in Edinburgh, where there is a statue of him. It was his amendment – introducing the wording ‘gradual abolition’ – that was crucial to the historic House of Commons vote in favour of the abolition of slavery in 1792. There are, however, several others ways in which Dundas was, through his personal ties and political roles, entangled in colonialism and empire.
Dundas was the son of an eminent Scots lawyer, was educated at Edinburgh, and went into the law himself. Through his various siblings and half-siblings, he had family links to both the Caribbean and India. His brother William married into a plantation-owning family in Antigua in the 1770s; and two other brothers served in India: both died in Bengal.
In 1777, Dundas was involved in the third of the three important early Scottish legal cases concerning slavery (and the only one decided in court). Dundas was then Lord Advocate, but was, in a private capacity, one of several advocates advising Joseph Knight in the case of Knight vs Wedderburn. Knight had been ‘purchased’ by John Wedderburn in Jamaica, and had returned with him to Perthshire. He and his legal team successfully convinced the Court of Session that slavery was incompatible with Scots law.
Dundas had become a Member of Parliament in 1774, and spent increasing amounts of time in London. He worked closely with prime minister William Pitt from the mid-1780s on, and served in Pitt’s cabinet (as Home Secretary, and War Secretary) in the 1790s. He was the most powerful Scottish politician of his day, and had a huge influence over Scottish affairs.
Dundas was in parliament when William Wilberforce began to push for a parliamentary vote on the abolition of slavery, supported by waves of campaigning and petitioning around the country. Wilberforce’s draft bill was defeated in 1791, but in 1792, the House of Commons for the first time returned a majority in favour of abolition. One of the M.P.s who spoke was Dundas, and it was he who moved the amendment that helped secure the majority, an amendment that changed the proposal from ‘immediate’ to ‘gradual’ abolition. Opinion varies as to whether Dundas should be remembered for supporting abolition, or delaying it. (Compare, for instance, Stephen Mullen’s reflection on his 2021 article on Dundas; and an online response to Mullen from Guy Rowlands.)[1] Despite the Commons majority, abolition was repeatedly blocked in the House of Lords, and then delayed by the wars with France. Abolition of the slave trade would finally be enacted in 1807.
How much did Dundas’s political activities affect the University of St Andrews? Chancellors were not closely involved in University life. They played a ceremonial role at University events, but most of them – and especially Dundas – lived busy political lives far from St Andrews. That might enable them to offer the University sage political advice if it were needed, or to lobby government on their behalf.
Roger Emerson has shown that patronage was central to academic appointments in Scotland throughout the eighteenth century, that appointments were strongly influenced by a candidate’s perceived political loyalty and religious orthodoxy, and that this shaped the intellectual community of St Andrews right into the early nineteenth century.[2] He has also shown that Chancellors did not, ex officio, exert patronage over any professorial appointments, but senior Scottish politicians certainly did – and that includes Dundas, who, from the mid-1770s onwards, was influencing appointments at all the Scottish universities, not just St Andrews. Emerson’s account suggests he exerted more influence – tending towards men who were conservative in politics and moderate in religion – at the bigger universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, where there appears to have been more competition for posts than at St Andrews.
As well as his legal and political roles, Dundas also acquired so many sinecure appointments that, in 1800, he was caricatured (by Isaak Cruikshank) sitting on top of a pile of them. As well as ‘Chancellor of the University of St Andrews’, he was ‘Commissioner for India Affairs’. His involvement with India dated back to at least the 1780s, when he worked with Pitt on the reform of the East India Company’s operations in India (including the India Act 1784, and the new Company charter in 1793). He became president of the Company’s new Board of Control in the 1790s.
Dundas was thus in an excellent position to dispense patronage to young (and not so young) Scots, including those associated with St Andrews. For instance, it was also through Dundas’s influence that professor Hugh Cleghorn came to work for the East India Company in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). John Bruce (whose niece and adopted daughter Margaret Tyndall Bruce was a major donor to the University) amassed a fortune from his political assistance to Henry Dundas, particularly on the East India question. Dundas’s links with the Jamaican planter (and second-generation Scot) Simon Taylor, who was involved with the anti-abolition London West India Committee in the early 1790s, may explain why Taylor sent his nephew and heir to St Andrews, to board with Dundas’s friend, principal George Hill. And the surviving correspondence between Hill and Dundas shows how a university professor could solicit Dundas’s patronage for his sons.[3]
As principal and chancellor, Hill and Dundas worked closely together, and were on cordial terms, regularly sending regards to each other’s wives. As Hill’s sons grew up, he sought Dundas’s help and advice. At Christmas 1805, he was thanking Dundas for helping secure a position in the East India Company administration for David. In 1808, he was telling Dundas about Alexander’s plans to enter the Church of Scotland. In 1810, he was seeking advice about Henry, who wished to enter the law (which had been Dundas’s original profession), and he was thanking Dundas for intervening to secure Joseph a more senior berth on one of the East India Company’s ships. As well as gracious thanks, Hill made a point of regularly reporting to Dundas how they – and especially David – were doing, as a way of demonstrating that Dundas had been right to show trust in the Hill family.
There is no doubt that Henry Dundas was a powerful influence over all the Scottish universities in the last three decades of the eighteenth century. At St Andrews, that influence appears to have been felt most strongly through the patronage he was willing to extend. That could be domestic – helping one of Hill’s other sons with a career in law – or it could open up colonial opportunities. Some of those may have been in the Caribbean, but many others involved the East India Company. It would be very interesting to know how many of the 180 or so alumni who are known to have spent at least part of their subsequent careers in British India (1750-1850) benefited from the direct or indirect patronage of Henry Dundas.
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Some of these connections were continued by his son Robert Saunders Dundas, viscount Melville (1771-1851), who also served as president of the East India Company’s Board of Control (1807-1812) as part of his political career; and was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews from 1814 to his death.
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Footnotes:
[1] Mullen’s article is: Stephen Mullen, ‘Henry Dundas: A “Great Delayer” of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, Scottish Historical Review 100 (2021): 218-48.
[2] Emerson, R. L., Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment: Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), especially Chs 13-17 (on St Andrews). See also R. G. Cant The University of St Andrews: a short history (Scottish Academic Press, 1970).
[3] The letters are catalogued and digitised as part of the Dundas Papers, held at UStA, ms4786.
See also: his entry in Oxford DNB [paywall] and other reference works.