In 1669 Gregorie’s books were suppressed in Italy, which came as a shock to him, and was all the more grievous because it deprived him of many of his most interested readers—and controversialists! Scotland, however, supplied the deficiency wonderfully well. There was a professor in Glasgow called George Sinclair, a mathematician, and a demonologist of great repute, who wrote a book on Hydrostatics. It was quite clever, and may have been more interesting to the general reader than books on Hydrostatics usually are, because of an appendix in which some strange things were included, amongst others, A Short History of Coal and the Story of the Devil of Glenluce. The humour of the combination was too much for Gregorie, and under the name of Patrick Mathers, Arch-Bedal to the University of St. Andrews, he wrote an answer to the scientific part of the Hydrostatics, which he called ‘The Great and New Art of Weighing Vanity.’ Witty, scurrilous, easily written and easily read, the book was a great source of merriment both to Gregorie and his colleagues at St. Andrews, and it raised a perfect hurricane in Glasgow. The very name was an impertinent play on the title of his antagonist’s former book _Ars nova et Magna_ and the fact that Professor Sinclair was no mean adversary added zest to the battle, which continued many days. But Professor Sinclair had prepared an ill reception for his work by the edict which he had had printed and sent abroad to persuade people to order copies of it:— ‘Forasmuch as there is a Book of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in English, to be printed within these four months, or thereabouts; wherein are contained many excellent and new purposes: As first, Thirty Theorems, the most part whereof were never so much as heard of before:’ (Alas! poor professor what a beginning! And is the ending any better!) ‘and an excellent way for knowing, by the eye, the Sun or Moon’s motion in a second of time, which is the 3600 part of an hour, and many others of different kinds, useful and pleasant. These are therefore to give notice to all ingenious persons, who are lovers of Learning, that if they shall be pleased to advance Gedeon Shaw, Stationer at the foot of the Ladies Steps, three pounds Scots, for defraying the present charges of the said Book, they shall have from him, betwixt the date hereof and April next to come, one of the Copies: And for their further security in the interim the Author’s obligation for performing the same.’