Twilight of the Enlightenment: James Headrick (1759–1841)

Abstract

James Headrick was one of those who have been aptly termed 'foot-soldiers of the Enlightenment'.1 He did, to be sure, have aspira tions beyond serving in the 'poor bloody infantry'. If he did not cherish the delusion that a field-marshal's baton was ready in his knapsack, he certainly had his eye on commissioned rank in the forces of intellectual progress. To end his days as a parish minister in Angus, remembered as 'an excellent man, [who] discharged his parochial duties in a most exemplary manner, and was loved by his parishioners',2 was an entirely respectable achievement; but it fell far short of Headrick's early hopes and ambitions. The future he looked for in his twenties and thirties might have been in academic life or in some other form of public service. It would in any case have been animated by the principles of the Enlightenment applied in a broader context than even Moderate churchmanship could offer in a country parish. The disappointment of those wider hopes may have been due more to faults of personality than to deficiency in talent; but in any case Headrick's career may throw useful light on certain aspects of Scottish intellectual life between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century.