Matriculation in the context of "Gifford Lectures"

Robert Burton (8 February 1577 – 25 January 1640; sometimes writing under the pen name Democritus Junior) was an English author and fellow of Oxford University, known for his encyclopedic The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Born in 1577 to a comfortably well-off family of the landed gentry, Burton attended two grammar schools and matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford in 1593, age 15. Burton's education at Oxford was unusually lengthy, possibly drawn out by an affliction of melancholy, and saw an early transfer to Christ Church. Burton received an MA and BD, and by 1607 was qualified as a tutor. As early as 1603, Burton indulged in some early literary creations at Oxford, including Latin poems, a now-lost play performed before and panned by King James I himself, and his only surviving play: an academic satire called Philosophaster. This work, though less well regarded than Burton's masterpiece, has "received more attention than most of the other surviving examples of university drama".

St Leonards School is a co-educational private boarding and day school for pupils aged 4–19 in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. Founded in 1877 as St Andrews School for Girls Company, it adopted the St Leonards name upon moving to its current premises, the site formerly occupied by the University of St Andrews’ St Leonard's College, in 1883.

The school emerged from the St Andrews Ladies' Educational Association which was established in 1868. One of the school's founders was Lewis Campbell, chairman of the college council for many years and a Classics professor at St Andrews University who advocated for higher education for women. Consequently, from its earliest days, the college's senior students were encouraged to prepare to matriculate and enjoyed close links with various courses offered at the University of St Andrews; in 1892, the Fifeshire Journal asked its readers: "Who is to enjoy the proud distinction of being the first matriculated girl-student of St Andrews?" St Leonards remained an all-girls school until 1999, upon which it became fully co-educational. As an IB World School, St Leonards offers the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years, Middle Years, Career-related and Diploma programmes alongside the English-system GCSE/IGCSE. It is one of only two schools in Scotland to teach an IB curriculum throughout.

Thomas Percy (c. 1560 – 8 November 1605) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was a tall, physically impressive man; little is known of his early life beyond his matriculation in 1579 at the University of Cambridge, and his marriage in 1591 to Martha Wright. In 1596 his second cousin once removed, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, appointed him constable of Alnwick Castle and made him responsible for the Percy family's northern estates. He served the earl in the Low Countries in about 1600–1601, and in the years before 1603 was his intermediary in a series of confidential communications with King James VI of Scotland.

Following James's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with the new king, who he supposed had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. His meeting in June 1603 with Robert Catesby, a religious zealot similarly unimpressed with the new royal Stuart dynasty, led the following year to his joining Catesby's conspiracy to kill the king and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy helped fund the group and secured the leases to certain properties in London, one of which was the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords, in which the gunpowder was finally placed. The conspirators also planned to instigate an uprising in the Midlands and to simultaneously kidnap James's daughter, Elizabeth. Percy was to remain in London and secure the capture of her brother, Henry.