Wodrow, ROBERT, church historian, was born at Glasgow in 1679. He entered the university there in 1691, and, after passing through the arts classes, studied theology under his father, who was professor of divinity, and had suffered for conscience' sake during the persecution. He discharged at the same time the duties of college librarian, till in 1703 he was licensed to preach, and appointed minister of the Renfrewshire parish of Eastwood. He married in 1708, and had sixteen children; refused calls to Glasgow (1717) and Stirling (1726); and died 21st March 1734. Wodrow's writings, which fill close on fifty volumes of MS., are faithful and laborious, if heavy and one-sided, compilations. One only of them was published in his lifetime—the History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution (2 vols. fol. 1721–22), which was dedicated to George I., 'the best and greatest of kings,' and earned him in 1725 a grant of 100 guineas. The others include Lives of the Scottish Reformers and most eminent Ministers (selections, 2 vols. Maitland Club, 1834–45), Analecta; or a History of Remarkable Providences (4 vols. Maitland Club, 1842–43), a selection from his Correspondence (3 vols. Wodrow Society, 1842–43), and Biographical Collections relating to the North-east of Scotland (New Spalding Club, 1890).
See the Memoir by Dr R. Burns prefixed to his edition of the History (4 vols. 1830), and others by the younger M'Crie and R. Lippe to the two last-named works.