Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Young, Patrick
YOUNG, PATRICK (1584–1652), biblical writer, fifth son of Sir Peter Young [q. v.] of Seaton, and of his first wife, Elizabeth Gibb, was born at Seaton, Forfarshire (not Haddingtonshire, as is stated in Chambers's ‘Eminent Scotsmen’), on 29 Aug. 1584. He was educated at St. Andrews, graduating M.A. in 1603. In that year he accompanied his father to London in the train of James VI, and was appointed librarian and secretary to Dr. George Lloyd [q. v.], bishop of Chester. On 9 July 1605 he was incorporated at Oxford, and, taking holy orders, was made a chaplain of All Souls' College. Following the example of his granduncle Henry Scrymgeour [q. v.], he devoted himself specially to the study of Greek, and became one of the most proficient scholars of his time in that language. Removing to London, he was employed at the court as correspondent with foreign rulers, the diplomatic language then being Latin. On 1 Aug. 1609 he wrote to Isaac Casaubon in Paris, sending him books and urging him to study Strabo (Casauboni Epistolæ, No. ciii.). Through the interest of Dr. Richard Montagu [q. v.], bishop of Bath and Wells, he obtained an annual pension of 50l., and held the office successively of librarian to Prince Henry (Birch, p. 164), James I, and Charles I. In 1613 he held a prebend in Chester Cathedral under his patron, Bishop Lloyd (Le Neve, Fasti, iii. 270). In 1617 he went to Paris, furnished with letters from Camden the historian (his father's intimate friend) to the leading French literary men. On 9 Jan. 1618 he was made a burgess of Dundee along with his younger brother, Dr. John Young (1585–1655), dean of Winchester, the entry in burgess-roll describing him as ‘superintendent of the king's library,’ and recording that the freedom of the burgh was given to him ‘on account of his zeal for the commonweal, and for the mode in which he has munificently increased the library of the burgh.’ It has been reasonably supposed that many of the books and manuscripts which Henry Scrymgeour had bequeathed to Sir Peter Young were conferred upon Dundee at this time, and were placed in the vestry of the church of St. Mary at Dundee; but, as that edifice was totally destroyed by fire in 1841, all these valuable documents and books were lost.
About this time Young was engaged in making a Latin translation of the works of King James, but how far the Latin edition of James I's works that appeared in 1619 (London, fol.) was Young's work is uncertain. In 1620 he was incorporated M.A. of Cambridge, and in 1621 he became prebendary and treasurer of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1624 was appointed Latin secretary by Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) John Williams [q. v.] He was also made rector of Hayes, Middlesex, in 1623, holding the benefice until his sequestration in 1647 by the Westminster assembly, and rector of Llanynys, Denbighshire.
Young was one of the learned men selected by Selden for the examination of the Arundelian marbles, and his reputation as a scholar was so great that he was entrusted with the revision of the Alexandrian codex of the Septuagint, and suggested various readings to Grotius and Ussher. He proposed to publish an edition of this manuscript, and issued specimen pages, but was compelled to abandon the project, though in 1657 his ‘annotationes’ were published in vol. 6 of Brian Walton's ‘Polyglot Bible.’ In 1633 he published at Oxford ‘Clementis ad Corinthios epistola prior,’ dedicated to Charles I. The Greek text is from a manuscript Sir Thomas Roe [q. v.] brought from the East and gave to Charles I, and Young adopted the excellent plan of printing in red the additions necessary to fill in the lacunæ in the MS.; other editions appeared in 1654, 4to, and 1870, 8vo. He also prepared an edition of Clement's two epistles, with a Latin translation, which appeared in 1687 and again in 1694. It is no doubt to these works that an entry in the journal of the House of Lords for 28 Dec. 1647 refers. This is the draft copy of an ordinance directing that the sum of 1,000l. should be paid ‘to Patrick Younge in part recompense of his pains in the edition of a most antient manuscript copy of the Greek Septuagint Bible and other Greek manuscripts.’ On the same day another ordinance was drafted assigning to Young an additional 1,000l. ‘for the same reason.’ It has been asserted that he was appointed archdeacon of St. Andrews, but this is not confirmed; and the statement that he gave ground for the erection of a school in St. Andrews is incorrect, and has arisen through confusion betwixt him and his brother, John Young. In 1637 he published in folio ‘Catena Græcorum Patrum in Jobum,’ with a Latin version, and two years later he issued ‘Expositio in Canticum Canticorum.’ His comments on and abridgment of Louis Savot's work on the coins of the Roman emperors were published with Leland's ‘Collectanea’ (vol. v.) 1770 and 1774.
The civil war interrupted his project for publishing various manuscripts in the king's library, and after Charles I's execution Young retired to the house of his son-in-law, John Atwood of Gray's Inn, at Bromfield, Essex, where he died on 7 Sept. 1652, leaving two daughters. He was buried in Bromfield church. Young was reckoned by his contemporaries one of the most learned men of the time. A small folio bible in a binding of crimson velvet, embroidered with the royal arms and cipher, presented by Charles I to Young, was given by the latter's granddaughter to the church at Bromfield, where it may still be seen.
[A full account of Young, with over one hundred letters to and from him, was published by J. Kemke in 1898 in part 12 of Dziatko's Sammlung bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten, Berlin. See also Smith's Vitæ quor. Erudit. et Illustr. Virorum (1707); Hugh Young's privately printed ‘Sir Peter Young of Seaton’ (1896); Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl. ed. Hardy; Lansd. MS. 985, f. 188; Add. MS. 15671, p. 185; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; I. Casauboni Epp. The Hague, 1638, nos. cv–cix.; Millar's Roll of Eminent Burgesses of Dundee, p. 107; Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen (ed. 1872), iii. 563; Brit. Mus. Cat. s.v. ‘Junius, Patricius,’ the latinised form of his name which Young adopted in his writings.]