David Hume of Godscroft

He was the second son of Sir David Hume or Home, 7th Lord of Wedderburn, a Roman Catholic traditionalist of the Merse (now Berwickshire), who had married an active Calvinist wife in Mary Johnston of Elphinstone. He studied at Dunbar grammar school, under Andrew Simson. He then entered the University of St Andrews in 1578, and after a course of study there travelled on the continent. From France he went on to Geneva, intending to travel to Italy. Hume was recalled to Scotland by the serious illness of his elder brother George, returning about 1581. Both brothers supported the Ruthven raid of 1582. In 1583 he was residing as private secretary with his relative Archibald Douglas, 8th Earl of Angus, who was ordered, after James VI withdrew his confidence from the Ruthven Lords, to remain in the north of Scotland. During the exile of the Ruthven party at Newcastle, Hume was in London, ostensibly studying, but actively interesting himself in Angus and his cause. The Lords, with Hume, returned to Scotland in 1585, and between that date and 1588, when Angus died. In later life Hume devoted himself to literature on his property of Gowkscroft, a farming hamlet 2 miles to the north of Abbey St. Bathans, in the Lammermuir Hills, Berwickshire, which he renamed Godscroft, and styled himself Theagrius when he figured as a Latin poet.

Hume wrote Latin poems when very young, and received the commendation of George Buchanan. Buchanan was an intellectual leader for the Scottish Presbyterians, among whom Hume was prominent, and as a close a follower as Buchanan had. In the end he showed dislike for the "angry" Buchanan, who had a quite different view of the Douglas family. Hume's Daphn-Amaryllis was a celebration of Anglo-Scottish union, printed in Edinburgh and London editions, in 1603–5. It consists of four eclogues, and drew on the Liber Pluscardensis and John Mair's Historia, in a setting of "leonine prophecy". In citing this poem in his second union Tractatus, Hume explicitly references both the Lion of Judah (associated with the Davidic Kingdom), and the Lion of Scotland, linking both with the "Lion of the North" prophecy of Paul Grebner; with a simple heraldic code, he also indicated the expansionism of the new kingdom, desiring the removal of the tressure bordering the Scottish lion rampant (harking back to the time of James III of Scotland). The Lusus Poetici (1605) were ultimately incorporated in Arthur Johnston's Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum (1637). When Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales died, Hume wrote a memorial tribute entitled Henrici Principis Justa, and in 1617 he welcomed the king back to Scotland in his Regi suo Gratulatio. His collected Latin poems were twice issued in Paris, in 1632 and 1639, the second time with additions under the care of his son James, and with the title: Davidis Humii Wedderburnensis Poemata Omnia. Accessere ad finem Unio Britannica et Prœlium ad Lipsiam soluta oratione.

Hume was a partisan panegyricist of the Douglas family. He is also said to have "plundered Scottish history for exemplars" within the Douglases, and with the aim of encouraging military services to the king. Arthur Williamson has argued that "Scots wrote histories of great families as general histories of Scotland". A grandson of Alison Douglas, herself a granddaughter of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus, Hume has as his main patron William Douglas, 11th Earl of Angus, later the 1st Marquess of Douglas. Hume's History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus was printed at Edinburgh in 1644 by Evan Tyler, the king's printer. He is thought to have finished the history between 1625 and 1630 (around the year of his death). The political message of the work includes the idea that direct action against "evil advisers" of a king is permissible to defend customary rights; and even against the king. The title-pages of early copies vary, with some having the title A Generall History of Scotland, together with a particular History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus. Confusion arose when the editor, Anna Hume, encountered opposition of Angus, who resented the use which Hume had made of some of the material in the family archives. The work begins with Sholto Douglas, conqueror of Donald Bane, and concludes with Archibald Douglas, 8th Earl of Angus, who is eulogised in a Latin ode and numerous elegiacs. Another manuscript history of the family brings the record close to the death of William Douglas, 10th Earl of Angus, in 1611, and is ascribed to that earl. The tenth earl's son, William Douglas, is said to have threatened its publication in order that Hume's work might be superseded, due to subjective and accuracy in some of his writings. Hume's History of the House of Wedderburn, written by a Son of the Family, in the year 1611, was a Latin eulogy, Davidis Humii de Familia Humia Wedderburnensi Liber. It begins with David, the first laird of Wedderburn, about the end of the fourteenth century. It closes with an account of Hume's own early career in connection with that of his elder brother, to whom, along with the Earl of Home, it is dedicated. It remained in manuscript till 1839, when it was printed by the Abbotsford Club.

Hume married in 1594 Barbara Johnston, widow of his friend James Haldane. They had five children. His daughter Anna Hume was known as an editor, and his son James Hume of Godscroft (1630) as a mathematician.