Calderwood, David

Calderwood, David, an eminent Scottish divine and ecclesiastical historian, was born in 1575, it is thought at Dalkeith, and after studying at the university of Edinburgh, was in 1604 ordained minister of Crailing, Roxburghshire. Opposed to the designs of James VI. for the establishment of Episcopacy, in 1617 he joined in a protest against a bill, then before the Scots parliament, for granting the power of framing new laws for the church to an ecclesiastical council appointed by the king, and in consequence he was summoned before the High Commission at St Andrews, committed to prison for contumacy, and then banished the kingdom. He retired to Holland, and in 1623 published there, under the anagrammatic pseudonym of 'Edwardus Didoclivius,' his celebrated controversial work, Altare Damascenum, in which he rigorously examined the origin and authority of Episcopacy. After King James's death in 1625, he returned to Scotland, and for some years was engaged collecting all the memorials relating to the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland, from the beginning of the Reformation there to the death of James VI. In 1640 he became minister of Pencaitland, Haddingtonshire; and in 1643 was appointed one of the committee for drawing up the Directory for Public Worship in Scotland. He died at Jedburgh in 1650. From the original MS. of his History of the Kirk of Scotland, preserved in the British Museum, an edition was printed for the Wodrow Society (8 vols. Edin. 1842-45).