ARBUTHNOT, ALEXANDER, principal of the univer-
sity of Aberdeen in the reign of James VI. of Scotland, was born in the year 1538. He studied first at Aberdeen, and was afterwards sent over to France, where, under the famous Cujacius, he applied himself to the study of the civil law. In the year 1563 he returned to Scotland and took orders. Whether he was ordained by a bishop or by presbyters is a matter of uncertainty. In 1568 he was appointed minister of Arbuthnot and Logie Buchan; and in the following year Mr Alexander Anderson being deposed, he was made principal of the King's College at Aberdeen in his room. In the General Assembly which met at Edinburgh in the years 1573 and 1577 he was chosen moderator, and to the end of his life was an active supporter of the Reformed religion. He died in 1583, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and was buried in the College church of Aberdeen. It was by him that Buchanan's History of Scotland, published in 1582, was edited. The only production of his own is his Orationes de Origine et Dignitate Juris, printed at Edinburgh in 1572, 4to. His contemporary Thomas Maitland wrote a copy of Latin verses on the publication of this book: they are printed in the Delit. Poet. Scot. The same collection contains an elegant epitaph on him by Andrew Melvil.