Forbes

Forbes, ALEXANDER PENROSE, bishop, was born in Edinburgh, the second son of Lord Medwyn, a judge of session, 6th June 1817, and spent the years 1837–40 in the East India Company's service, until ill-health compelled his retirement. He graduated at Oxford in 1844, was ordained in the same year, and in 1847, at the early age of thirty, was consecrated Bishop of Brechin, in Scotland, receiving the honorary degree of D.C.L. in 1848. A warm friend of Pusey, he delivered a charge in 1857 which was practically a manifesto on the manner of the Eucharistic Presence and on the nature of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; its publication raised a storm which culminated in its author's trial before the other bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1860, resulting in a 'declaration of censure and admonition.' Forbes died on 8th October 1875, more widely mourned than any Scottish bishop since the Reformation. He edited, with his brother, the Arbutnot Missal (1864), published with an elaborate preface Kalendars of Scottish Saints (1872), and was the author of valuable expositions of the Articles (2d ed. 1871) and Nicene Creed (2d ed. 1866), and of numerous other works, chiefly devotional. See Memoirs by Miss Skene (1876) and Canon Mackey (1888).