The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

2. The Charter of 6 May 1783

The charter did not come easily, and the opposition is a small masterpiece of Edinburgh institutional jealousy. The Faculty of Advocates opposed the petition, arguing that Scottish manuscripts and printed material had long been deposited in their older library. Edinburgh University resented Smellie’s appointment. The Philosophical Society disapproved of the Antiquaries expanding into natural science — that being, in its view, its own business.

The compromise the King settled on was elegant: the Antiquaries got their charter, and the scientifically-focused Philosophical Society was incorporated as the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Both happened in 1783.

3. Second in Britain, Not First

This is the accuracy point that governs the card. The Society of Antiquaries of London is decisively older:

• First informal meeting at the Bear Tavern, the Strand, 5 December 1707.
• Formally constituted 1717–18.
• Royal Charter from George II, 2 November 1751 — some secondary sources loosely say 1753; 1751 is correct.

The Scottish society was, in the words of the Digitens scholarly notice, “inspired by the Society of Antiquaries in London”. The correct framing is therefore: oldest antiquarian society in Scotland, second-oldest in Britain. Note too the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society of Lincolnshire, founded 1710 — Britain’s oldest surviving provincial learned society, with strong antiquarian interests — which further complicates any simple “oldest antiquarian body” claim and underlines that Scotland’s society was a comparatively late, if distinguished, arrival in the British antiquarian landscape.

Nothing about the Society’s actual record needs the superlative. What it did with its first seventy years is more impressive than being first would have been.

4. The National Museum Lineage

From 1780–81 the Society collected artefacts and bought a property to hold them — the Antiquarian Society Hall, marked on a 1784 plan of Edinburgh. The collection grew into a public attraction: by 1841 the Society’s museum drew over 4,000 visitors including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and by 1850, with free admission, some 17,000 visitors a year.

In November 1851 a Deed of Conveyance with the Board of Manufactures, acting on behalf of Parliament, made the collections national property in exchange for permanent accommodation — forming the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. National Museums Scotland dates the passage into public ownership to 1851; the museum physically moved back to the Royal Institution in 1858 and reopened to the public in 1859. In 1891 the collections moved to purpose-built premises on Queen Street, endowed by John Ritchie Finlay and designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, shared with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Two statutes complete the line. The National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland Act 1954 relieved the Society of managing the museum, vesting it in a new Board. The National Heritage (Scotland) Act 1985 merged the National Museum of Antiquities with the Royal Scottish Museum to create National Museums Scotland. Today the Society’s historic collection forms the core of NMS’s national archaeological collections, with related material also held by National Records of Scotland, the National Library, the National Galleries and Historic Environment Scotland. Fellows retain statutory free access to the NMS Library under section 3(5) of the 1985 Act — a small clause with a long memory.

5. Fellows and Scholarship

• Daniel Wilson (1816–1892), Honorary Secretary from the mid-1840s: adopted the Danish Three-Age System for the Society’s museum and coined the English word “prehistoric” in The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (1851) — a genuine, well-documented Scottish contribution to world archaeology. He gave English the word; he did not invent the concept, which was being worked out in Scandinavia.
• Joseph Anderson (1832–1916), Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities from 1870 to 1913: the pivotal figure in professionalising Scottish archaeology.
• Alexander Henry Rhind (1833–1863), excavator and Egyptologist, whose bequest endowed the Rhind Lectures, delivered annually since 1876 and still hosted by the Society.
• V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957), Abercromby Professor at Edinburgh 1927–46 and a Fellow, whose Skara Brae excavation reports of 1929–31 appeared in the Proceedings.
• Other Fellows of note include the historian William Robertson and the chemist Daniel Rutherford.

Archaeologia Scotica (the Transactions) ran from 1792 to 1890. The annual Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland has run continuously since 1851, and the entire run is freely available online through the Archaeology Data Service. The Society also publishes peer-reviewed monographs and the open-access Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports.

6. The Earl of Buchan

Buchan was a patron of arts and sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a supporter of the American cause who corresponded with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, sending Washington a box made from the oak that reputedly sheltered William Wallace after the Battle of Falkirk — a traditional provenance rather than a documented one — and holding annual Washington birthday celebrations at Dryburgh. In 1786 he reacquired the family’s Dryburgh estate, protecting the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey from stone-robbing, and in 1814 he commissioned the colossal red-sandstone statue of William Wallace at Bemersyde near Dryburgh — the first monumental statue of Wallace erected in Scotland.

He was also, by contemporary account, insufferable. His neighbour Sir Walter Scott described him as “a person whose immense vanity bordering upon insanity obscured or rather eclipsed very considerable talents”. Scholarship is careful about how that reputation formed: the St Andrews study of his life and correspondence notes that “malicious and distorted comments, particularly by Sir Walter Scott, have been responsible for the growth of a legend about Buchan’s eccentricity, although the charge of absurd conduct was lodged against him in his own lifetime”. Both halves of that sentence are load-bearing. He disagreed with the Society’s policies and withdrew from it around 1790.

None of it diminishes what he built. Founders do not have to be likeable to be right about what a country needs.

7. Heritage Protection

The Society has been an advocate since 1792, when its first Transactions carried a plea for a Royal Forest of Oak in Scotland. Its most consequential appearance in legislation is the first Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 — introduced by Sir John Lubbock, with Pitt-Rivers as first Inspector General — which contained a specific Scottish provision requiring duplicate inspector reports to be forwarded to the Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland, the body then linked to the Society’s museum. The Society continues to respond to Historic Environment Scotland and Scottish Government heritage consultations.

8. The Society Today

The Society (Scottish Charity No. SC010440) is Scotland’s senior antiquarian body and oldest heritage charity, headquartered rent-free within the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. Its Fellows, styled so since 1823 and using the post-nominal FSAScot, number roughly 2,600 to 2,800, most in Scotland and the wider UK with a growing number in Europe and overseas. Its Director is Dr Simon Gilmour. In May 2024 it announced that “His Majesty King Charles III has chosen to continue the monarch’s patronage of the Society following his accession to the throne”.

Its current work runs from the peer-reviewed Proceedings and monographs, through the Rhind Lectures and grants and awards including the Murray Medal for History and the Chalmers-Jervise Prize, to two major public-archaeology programmes: Dig It! and the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework. Historic Environment Scotland “granted £876,115 to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to continue coordinating” both through its Partnership Fund, with Dr Gilmour confirming the award funds them “for the next three years”. Annual “Scotland Digs” campaigns and consultation responses round out the programme.

It is also, after nearly two and a half centuries as somebody else’s tenant, trying to acquire a home: Scotland’s Heritage Hub, a plan to buy and redevelop a B-listed building in central Edinburgh as a national heritage centre and the Society’s new headquarters, with a fundraising campaign and a Heritage Lottery application in train.

Timeline

1. 5 Dec 1707

   The London society first meets

   At the Bear Tavern on the Strand — roughly 75 years before Edinburgh's charter

2. 1710

   Spalding Gentlemen's Society founded

   Britain's oldest surviving provincial learned society, with antiquarian interests

3. 2 Nov 1751

   London receives its Royal Charter

   From George II

4. 14 Nov 1780

   Buchan's inaugural discourse

   Delivered to fourteen guests at his Edinburgh home

5. 18 Dec 1780

   The Society is formally constituted

   Bute elected first President; Buchan first Vice-President

6. 1780–81

   Collecting begins

   Members donate material; the Society buys premises to store and display it

7. 6 May 1783

   Royal Charter granted

   By George III; the Royal Society of Edinburgh is chartered the same day

8. 1792

   Archaeologia Scotica begins

   Carrying, among other things, a plea for a Royal Forest of Oak in Scotland

9. c. 1790

   Buchan withdraws

   After falling out with his own Society over its policies

10. 1841

    Over 4,000 visitors to the museum

    Including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

11. 1850

    17,000 visitors a year

    Free admission has transformed access

12. Nov 1851

    Deed of Conveyance

    The collection becomes national property; the Proceedings begin publication

13. 1851

    Daniel Wilson coins “prehistoric” in English

    In The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland

14. 1859

    The museum reopens to the public

    At the Royal Institution, after the 1858 move

15. 1870–1913

    Joseph Anderson as Keeper

    Professionalising Scottish archaeology

16. 1876

    First Rhind Lectures

    Endowed by the bequest of Alexander Henry Rhind; still delivered annually

17. 1882

    Ancient Monuments Protection Act

    With a specific Scottish provision routing reports through the Board of Manufactures

18. 1891

    Collections move to Queen Street

    Purpose-built premises endowed by John Ritchie Finlay

19. 1929–31

    Childe publishes Skara Brae

    V. Gordon Childe's excavation reports appear in the Proceedings

20. 1954

    National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland Act

    Management passes from the Society to a state Board

21. 1985

    National Heritage (Scotland) Act

    Merger with the Royal Scottish Museum creates National Museums Scotland

22. May 2024

    Royal patronage continues

    King Charles III continues the monarch's patronage of the Society

Did You Know?

• The Society was founded at a dinner party for fourteen people.
• Its first President was a former Prime Minister, the 3rd Earl of Bute.
• The Faculty of Advocates tried to block its Royal Charter on the grounds that Edinburgh already had a good enough library — theirs.
• The compromise that gave the Antiquaries their charter in 1783 also created the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
• The man who compiled the first Encyclopaedia Britannica, William Smellie, was the Society's Superintendent of Natural History.
• The English word “prehistoric” was coined by a Fellow of this Society, Daniel Wilson, in 1851.
• Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were among the 4,000-odd visitors to the Society's museum in 1841.
• Fellows still have a statutory right of free access to the National Museums Scotland Library, under a clause of the 1985 Act.
• V. Gordon Childe published his Skara Brae excavations in the Society's journal.
• The founder sent George Washington a box said to be made from the oak that hid William Wallace — a tradition, not a documented provenance.
• The Society has been housed inside somebody else's museum for most of its life, and is now fundraising for a building of its own.

Honest Caveats

• Two legitimate 1780 dates exist — the 14 November discourse and the 18 December constitution — and they are not in conflict. They describe different events.
• Membership figures vary by source and year. The Society’s own pages cite “over 2,700” and “over 2,800”, and a 2024–25 impact report “over 2,600”. Treat as approximately 2,600–2,800 and expect drift.
• The museum-transition dates are distinct steps, not alternatives. Deed of Conveyance in 1851; physical move back to the Royal Institution in 1858; public reopening in 1859. They should not be collapsed.
• The Wallace-oak box is tradition, not documented provenance, and is reported here as such.
• The London charter is sometimes given as 1753. It is 1751, per the London society’s own history and Oxford Reference.
• Wilson’s coinage should not be inflated. He gave English the word “prehistoric”; he did not invent the concept of prehistory.
• Some heavily cited web sources are not authoritative. Grokipedia, HandWiki and fan wikis were not relied on; the Society’s own material, National Museums Scotland, the London society, Oxford Reference, peer-reviewed journals and St Andrews’ MacTutor were preferred.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Cards

• National Museums Scotland

  Built on the collection this Society gave to the nation in 1851.

• Royal Society of Edinburgh

  Chartered on the same day in 1783, after a rivalry.

• Encyclopaedia Britannica

  William Smellie compiled the first edition and became the Society's natural historian.

• National Trust for Scotland

  The other great heritage body, founded 150 years later.

• Faculty of Advocates

  Opposed the Society's petition for a charter, on library grounds.

• National Library of Scotland

  Where much of the related manuscript material now lives.

• The Keepers of Scotland

  The archives that hold the other half of the record.

• University of Edinburgh

  Resented Smellie's appointment; later home to Childe's chair.