William Greenfield (minister)

William Greenfield FRSE (born 1754/55; died 1827) was a Scottish minister, professor of rhetoric and belles lettres, literary critic, reviewer, and author whose clerical career ended in scandal, resulting in him being excommunicated from the Church of Scotland, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming his wife's patronymic Rutherfurd.

A friend and correspondent of Robert Burns and a beneficiary of Walter Scott, his lecture course in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres had a huge influence on the development of English Literature as a discipline in universities.

He matriculated at Edinburgh University in 1774, graduating with MA on 17 April 1778, and was almost immediately (though unsuccessfully) nominated as a Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College, Aberdeen.

He was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and on 12 April 1784 he read a paper and, later in its Transactions (1788 Vol 1, pp131–145) he published as an article entitled "On the use of negative quantities in the solution of problems by Algebraic Equations".

Robert Burns writes affectionately and admiringly of him in his second Commonplace Book "he is a steady, most disinterested friend, without the least affectation, of seeming so; and as a companion, his good sense, his joyous hilarity, his sweetness of manners and modesty, are most engagingly charming.

There is evidence of a public outcry, "a sin peculiarly heinous and offensive in its nature," according to the Presbytery, and a letter by Greenfield resigning and expressing gratitude to his previous colleagues and charges.

This circumstance led much literary gossip, including The Kaleidoscope magazine to suspect Greenfield as the author of the Waverley or "Scotch" novels.

His children seemed to have made successful careers or marriages in the law, army and the Church, suggesting the scandal did not affect them much, well-concealed under the name of Rutherfurd.

Their careers and marriages seemed also to have been based in Scotland, which might indicate that Greenfield had left his family there, the North of England being a common refuge for fugitive Scots, near but beyond the jurisdiction.