Archibald Fletcher

Who was Archibald Fletcher?

Archibald Fletcher, was a Scottish reformer.

Fletcher was descended from the highland clan of Fletcher, his ancestors, according to tradition, being the first who ‘had raised smoke or boiled water on the braes of Glenorchy.’ He was the eldest son of Angus Fletcher, a younger brother of Archibald Fletcher of Bennice and Dunans, Argyleshire, by his second wife, Grace m'Naghton, and was born at Pooble in Glen Lyon, in 1746. After attending the grammar school of Kenmore in Breadalbane he entered the high school of Perth in his thirteenth year. He served an apprenticeship to a writer to the signet in Edinburgh, and became confidential clerk to Lord-advocate Sir James Montgomery, who introduced him to Mr. Wilson of Howglen, with whom he became partner. In his earlier years he devoted much of his spare time to study, rising at four in the morning to read Greek, attending a debating society, and enrolling himself in some of the university classes, including that of moral philosophy, where he had as one of his fellow-students Dugald Stewart, with whom he became intimately acquainted. In 1778 he was chosen, on account of his knowledge of Gaelic, to negotiate with the M'Cra highlanders, who refused to embark at Leith for service in America.