Robertson, JOSEPH

Robertson, JOSEPH, Scottish antiquary, was born, a small shopkeeper's son, at Aberdeen, 17th May 1810, and was educated at Udny Academy, and the grammar-school and Marischal College of his native city. An Episcopalian and Conservative, he was apprenticed to a lawyer, but took early to writing, and, after six years of literary work at Edinburgh, was a newspaper editor at Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh from 1839 to 1853. He was in that year appointed curator of the historical department of the Edinburgh Register House, received in 1864 the degree of LL.D., and died 13th December 1866. He was an originator of the Aberdeen Spalding Club (1839-70), for which he edited four works; and for the first edition of this encyclopædia he wrote eighty articles (Columba, Culdees, Cuthbert, Mary Stuart, &c.), many of which have, with revision, been retained. Of his other works may be noticed The Book of Bon-Accord, or a Guide to the City of Aberdeen (1839), Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses, Books, and Paintings of Mary Queen of Scots (Bannatyne Club, 1863), the invaluable Concilia Scotiæ: Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ Statuta, 1225-1559 (2 vols. Bannatyne Club, 1866), and an admirable article in the Quarterly Review for June 1849 on 'Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals.' See the Memoir prefixed to a reprint of the last (Aberdeen, 1891).