Wishart, GEORGE, the martyr, was born in the opening years of the 16th century. He belonged to the family of Pittarrow in Forfarshire, his eldest brother being clerk of judiciary and king's advocate. Though so well-known a figure in Scottish history, few facts of his life have come down to us. In 1538 he was acting as schoolmaster in Montrose, where he incurred a charge of heresy for teaching the Greek New Testament. The following year we find him in Bristol, and again in connection with heresy, of which he had to make public abjuration in the church of St Nicholas in that city. The next few years he spent on the Continent, chiefly in Germany and Switzerland, a memorial of which sojourn is his translation of The Confession of Faith of the Churches of Switzerland. In 1543 he was residing in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he had as one of his students a certain Emery Tylney, who has described his tutor as 'a man of tall stature, polde headed, and on the same a round French cap of the best; judged of melancholy complexion by his physiognomie; black-haired, long-bearded, comely of personage, well spoken after his country of Scotland; courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was well travelled.' In 1544 or 1545 Wishart accompanied a commission sent to Scotland by Henry VIII. in connection with the marriage of his son Edward and Mary Stuart. The story of the next two years, the last of his life, told as it is by Knox in his most graphic style, has made Wishart one of the memorable characters of Scottish history. With an enthusiasm and eloquence which filled Knox with admiration, Wishart preached the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith as opposed to the Catholic doctrine of good works, wherever he could gather a congregation to listen to him. His chief centre was Dundee, though he also found many supporters in Montrose, in Ayrshire, and East Lothian. At this period Cardinal Beaton was supreme in the councils of the nation. Through the schemes of Henry VIII., heresy in Scotland had inevitably assumed a political character, the friends of the new religion looking to England as their strongest ally, while the supporters of the old church as naturally looked to France. Both as a churchman and as a politician, therefore, Beaton sought Wishart's death, nor did he wait long before compassing his end. At his instance Wishart was arrested at Orniston on the 16th January 1546, and hanged and burnt at St Andrews on the 12th March of the same year. Three months later Beaton was himself assassinated, his death being undoubtedly in some part due to his merciless dealings with Wishart. After Knox and Andrew Melville, Wishart is the most outstanding figure among the Scottish reformers of the 16th century. By his own labours as a preacher, the tragic manner of his death, by the fact that Knox was first inspired by his teaching and influence, he is to be regarded as one of the leading agents of the Reformation in Scotland.
See David Laing, Works of John Knox (vols. i. and vi.); Lorimer, Preursors of the Reformation; Dr C. Rogers, Life of Wishart (Edin. 1876); Tytler, History of Scotland (vol. iii.); Maxwell, Old Dundee (1891). In the last two books the question is fully discussed whether Wishart was a Scotsman of that name who was concerned in a proposal made to Henry VIII. for the assassination of Cardinal Beaton. As the question at present stands, no satisfactory decision can be given.