established
within ten years of his death and that one of the Colleges to be
comprised in the University should be called "McGill College." If the
College was not erected in the time specified the conveyance to the
Royal Institution was to be null and void; and the estate and endowment
were to revert to his widow, and after her death to her first husband's
nephew, Francis Desrivieres and to his legal heirs. He named as
executors of the will John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and
James Dunlop.

These executors were all close personal friends of the testator. The
career of John Strachan has already been outlined. Although it was not
specified in the will that he should be connected with the proposed
College, it may be assumed that because of his close friendship, his
marriage connection, and his established reputation as a brilliant and
successful educationalist with definite ideas on Canadian nationality,
James McGill desired that he should have a prominent part in the
organization of the College and that possibly he should be its first
Principal. That this desire was stated to the trustees seems certain. In
a letter written from Toronto some years after James McGill's death,
while the trustees who knew the circumstances were still living, Bishop
Strachan said:

"If it had been my desire, it was certainly in my power to have been at
the head of it [McGill College] for it so happened that I had some
difficulty in prevailing with my friend, Mr. McGill, to forbear annexing
it as a condition to his bequest that I should fill that situation;" and
he added that "a Professorship in McGill College was never desired or
thought of by me, nor could any situation in that institution have
formed an inducement to me to leave this Province to which I have been
for so many years devoted."

The three trustees associated with the Rev. Dr. Strachan as
administrators of the will were all prominent in civic and provincial
affairs. They were all Scotchmen and were connected with St. Gabriel
Street Presbyterian Church. John Richardson, partner in the mercantile
house of Forsyth, Richardson and Co., was a native of Banffshire,
Scotland. He represented the East Ward of Montreal in the first
Parliament of Lower Canada, which met in 1792, and he took his seat at
the same time as James McGill, his colleague from the West Ward. With
the latter, he was one of the commissioners appointed for the removing
of the old city walls in 1802 and