an{-e}t
parischoners p^rnt faithfullie p^rmisit to c{o~]curre for y^e
further{a~}ce of y^e work y^t yit restis to be done to y^e said schoole
as also to keipt y^e said M^r Alex^r and his scholleris skaithlis
finallie for farther authorizing of y^e said (_sic_) it wes thought
meitt y^t y^e haill visitors & parichon{-e}s p^rnt suld enter y^e
said M^r Alex^r into y^e said schoole & y^r heir him teache q^{lk}
also wes doone." (Rec. of Presb. of Haddington).[2]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, by Bliss, I., 217.]

[Footnote 2: M'Crie's Life of Melville, vol. ii., p. 509.]

The school rapidly rose to distinction under Hume, but in 1615 he
relinquished his position, and accepted the Mastership of the Grammar
School of Dunbar, then in high repute, and the very same school in which
he had commenced his own education. When occupied at Dunbar, Hume had
the honour of being the first who, in a set speech, welcomed James VI.
back to his Scottish dominions, after an absence of fourteen years. The
King stopped on his way northward from Berwick on the 13th of May, 1617,
at Dunglass Castle the residence of the Earl of Home, and Hume, as the
orator of the day, delivered a Latin address.

The date of Hume's death is not known; but he was witness to a deed on
the 27th of November, 1627; and later still, in the records of the Privy
Council of Scotland, 8th and 16th July, 1630, Mr. D. Laing tells me that
there is a memorandum of the King's letter anent the Grammar of Mr.
Alexander Hume, "schoolmaster at Dunbar." With regard to his private
life, we know that he was married to Helen Rutherford, and had two sons
and a daughter born to him in Edinburgh between the years 1601 and 1606.
He was the father of three more children, also two sons and a daughter,
between 1608 and 1610, in the county of East Lothian.

Hume was a master in controversy, and wrote on subjects of polemical
divinity; but his mind was principally drawn towards language and the
rules of its construction. He especially gave much of his time to the
study of Latin grammar, and feeling dissatisfied with the elementary
books which were then in use, he drew up one himself, which he submitted
to the correction of Andrew Melville and other learned friends, and
published in 1612 under the title of _Grammatica Nova_. The object he
proposed to himself was to exclude from the schools the grammar of the
Priscian of the Netherlands, the celebrated John Van Paut