famous meanwhile as one of the finest violinists of the day; and after visiting England in 1890 and establishing his reputation there, he became professor at the Royal College of Music in London. As a composer he is best known by his violin pieces, and by a comic opera, El Centro de la Tierra (1895).
ARBOUR, or Arbor (originally “herber” or “erber,” O. Fr. herbier, from Lat. herbarium, a collection of herbs, herba, grass; the word came to be spelt “arber” through its pronunciation, as in the case of Derby, and by the 16th century was written “arbour,” helped by a confusion of derivation from Lat. arbor, a tree, and by change of meaning), a grass-plot or lawn, a herb-garden, or orchard, and a shady bower of interlaced trees, or climbing plants trained on lattice-work. The application of the word has shifted from the grass-covered ground, the proper meaning, to the covering of trees overhead. “Arbor” (from the Latin for “tree”) is a term applied to the spindle of a wheel, particularly in clock-making.
ARBROATH, or Aberbrothock, a royal, municipal and police burgh, and seaport of Forfarshire, Scotland. It is situated at the mouth of Brothock water, 17 m. N.E. of Dundee by the North British railway, which has a branch to Forfar, via Guthrie, on the Caledonian railway. Pop. (1891) 22,821; (1901) 22,398. The town is under the jurisdiction of a provost, bailies and council, and, with Brechin, Forfar, Inverbervie and Montrose, returns one member to parliament. The leading industries include the manufacture of sailcloth, canvas and coarse linens, tanning, boot and shoe making, and bleaching, besides engineering works, iron foundries, chemical works, shipbuilding and fisheries. The harbour, originally constructed and maintained by the abbots, by an agreement between the burgesses and John Gedy, the abbot in 1394, was replaced by one more commodious in 1725, which in turn was enlarged and improved in 1844. The older portion was converted into a wet dock in 1877, and the entrance and bar of the new harbour were deepened. A signal tower, 50 ft. high, communicates with the Bell Rock (q.v.) lighthouse on the Inchcape Rock, 12 m. south-east of Arbroath, celebrated in Southey’s ballad. The principal public buildings are the town-hall, a somewhat ornate market house, the gildhall, the public hall, the infirmary, the antiquarian museum (including some valuable fossil remains) and the public and mechanics’ libraries. The parish church dates from 1570, but has been much altered, and the spire was added in 1831. The ruins of a magnificent abbey, once one of the richest foundations in Scotland, stand in High Street. It was founded by William the Lion in 1178 for Tironesian Benedictines from Kelso, and consecrated in 1197, being dedicated to St Thomas Becket, whom the king had met at the English court. It was William’s only personal foundation, and he was buried within its precincts in 1214. Its style was mainly Early English, the western gable Norman. The cruciform church measured 276 ft. long by 160 ft. wide, and was a structure of singular beauty and splendour. The remains include the vestry, the southern transept (the famous rose window of which is still entire), part of the chancel, the southern wall of the nave, part of the entrance towers and the western doorway. It was here that the parliament met which on the 6th of April 1320 addressed to the pope the notable letter, asserting the independence of their country and reciting in eloquent terms the services which their “lord and sovereign” Robert Bruce had rendered to Scotland. The last of the abbots was Cardinal Beaton, who succeeded his uncle James when the latter became archbishop of St Andrews. At the Reformation the abbey was dismantled and afterwards allowed to go to ruin. Part of the secular buildings still stand, and the abbot’s house, or Abbey House as it is now called, is inhabited. Arbroath was created a royal burgh in 1186, and its charter of 1599 is preserved. King John exempted it from “toll and custom” in every part of England excepting London. Arbroath is “Fairport” of Scott’s Antiquary, and Auchmithie, 3 m. north-east (“Musselcrag” of the same romance), is a quaint old-fashioned place, where the men earn a precarious living by fishing. On each side of the village the coast scenery is remarkably picturesque, the rugged cliffs—reaching in the promontory of Red Head, the scene of a thrilling incident in the Antiquary, a height of 267 ft.—containing many curiously shaped caves and archways which attract large numbers of visitors. At the 14th-century church of St Vigeans, 1 m. north of Arbroath, stands one of the most interesting of the sculptured stones of Scotland, with what is thought to be the only legible inscription in the Pictish tongue. The parish—originally called Aberbrothock and now incorporated with Arbroath for administrative purposes—takes its name from a saint or hermit whose chapel was situated at Grange of Conon, 312 m. north-west. Two miles west by south are the quarries of Carmyllie, the terminus of a branch line from Arbroath, which was the first light railway in Scotland and was opened in 1900.
ARBUTHNOT, ALEXANDER (1538–1583), Scottish ecclesiastic and poet, educated at St Andrews and Bourges, was in 1569 elected principal of King’s College, Aberdeen, which office he retained until his death. He played an active part in the stirring church politics of the period, and was twice moderator of the kirk, and a member of the commission of inquiry into the condition of the university of St Andrews (1583). The “correctness” of his attitude on all public questions won for him the commendation of Catholic writers; he is not included in Nicol Burne’s list of “periurit apostatis”; but his policy and influence were misliked by James VI., who, when the Assembly had elected Arbuthnot to the charge of the church of St Andrews, ordered him to return to his duties at King’s College. He had been for some time minister of Arbuthnott in Kincardineshire. His extant works are (a) three poems, “The Praises of Wemen” (224 lines), “On Luve” (10 lines), and “The Miseries of a Pure Scholar” (189 lines), and (b) a Latin account of the Arbuthnot family, Originis et Incrementi Arbuthnoticae Familiae Descriptio Historica (still in MS.), of which an English continuation, by the father of Dr John Arbuthnot, is preserved in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. The praise of the fair sex in the first poem is exceptional in the literature of his age; and its geniality may help us to understand the author’s popularity with his contemporaries. Arbuthnot must not be confused with his contemporary and namesake, the Edinburgh printer, who produced the first edition of Buchanan’s History of Scotland in 1582. Some have discovered in the publication of this work a false clue to James’s resentment against the principal of King’s College.
The particulars of Arbuthnot’s life are found in Calderwood, Spottiswood, and other Church historians, and in Scott’s Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae. The poems are printed in Pinkerton’s Ancient Scottish Poems (1786), i. pp. 138-155.
ARBUTHNOT, JOHN (1667–1735), British physician and author, was born at Arbuthnott, Kincardineshire, and baptized on the 29th of April 1667. His father, Alexander Arbuthnot, was an episcopalian minister who was deprived of his living in 1689 by his patron, Viscount Arbuthnott, for refusing to conform to the Presbyterian system. After his death, in 1691, John went to London, where he lived in the house of a learned linen-draper, William Pate, and supported himself by teaching mathematics. In 1692 he published Of the Laws of Chance . . . , based on the Latin version, De Ratociniis in ludo aleae, of a Dutch treatise by Christiaan Huygens. In 1692 he entered University College, Oxford, as a fellow-commoner, acting as private tutor to Edward Jefferys; and in 1696 he graduated M.D. at St Andrews university. In An Examination of Dr Woodward’s Account of the Deluge (1697) he confuted an extraordinary theory advanced by Dr William Woodward. An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning followed in 1701, and in 1704 he became a fellow of the Royal Society. He had the good fortune to be called in at Epsom to prescribe for Prince George of Denmark, and in 1705 he was made physician extraordinary to Queen Anne. Four years later he became royal physician in ordinary, and in 1710 he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Arbuthnot’s ready wit and varied learning made him very valuable to the Tory party. He was a close friend of Jonathan Swift and of Alexander Pope, and Lord Chesterfield says that even the generous acknowledgment they made of his assistance fell short of their real indebtedness. He had no jealousy of his fame as an author, and his abundant imagination was always
