Alexander Cruden was born in 1699 in Aberdeen, very close to this site, near Broad Street. A plaque located there records that he was born in a house in Cruden’s Court. He was baptised on 8 June 1699 in St Nicholas Kirk, and was educated at the Grammar School and Marischal College. Cruden was intended for Presbyterian ministry but ill health, which for a time affected his mind, led him to take up teaching at the age of twenty-one. After some years spent in private tutorships, he came to London, where in 1732 he opened a bookseller’s shop in the Royal Exchange. It was during that period that he began his Concordance, which was first published in 1737. His great work won for him special honour at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Two further editions of the Concordance appeared in his lifetime in 1761 and 1769. Cruden died at Camden Place, Islington, in 1770, and was buried in Southwark in a burial ground now said to be included in the premises of a well-known brewery. A bursary provided by him and bearing his name remains among the prizes of Aberdeen University.
Cruden suffered much disdain in his lifetime. His legacy of faithfulness to God and to the Scriptures is very dear to us at Trinity. In 2010, a year before Trinity Church was born, we founded The Cruden Trust “with the primary purpose of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to the people of Aberdeen and beyond.” The Trust has been our vehicle for the direct financial support of local church work and Christian mission.
The Schaeffer Library holds a second edition (1761) of Cruden’s Concordance. He began work on his concordance in 1735 while a bookseller in London. He worked alone from 7.00am to 1.00am each day and completed the bulk of the work in less than a year, the proof-reading and layout taking a little longer. Cruden was so occupied with this project that he failed to notice the diminishing stock in his bookshop and the consequent lack of custom. The second edition of the Concordance of 1761 was dedicated to King George III and presented to him in person on 21 December 1761. The King awarded Cruden £100 for his efforts, and after the slow success of the first edition, the second and third made the author a considerable profit.
“May those who profess to believe the Scriptures to be a revelation from God, apply themselves to the reading and study of them; and may they by the Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures, be made wise to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ”
—Alexander Cruden, October 1737
