Skinner, JOHN, the author of 'Tullochgorum,' was born in the parish of Birse, Aberdeenshire, 3d October 1721, the son of the schoolmaster there. He graduated at seventeen at Aberdeen, taught in the parish schools at Kenmay and Monymusk (where he left the Presbyterian for the Episcopal Church), and in 1740 went as private tutor to Shetland, where he married the daughter of the Episcopal clergyman. In 1742 he was ordained a deacon, and placed at Longside, where he ministered for sixty-four years. In 1746 his house was pillaged and his chapel burned by the Hanoverian soldiery, although Skinner was no Jacobite, and was one of the few who, so far as he could, complied with the terms of the Toleration Act—for which, however, he had to receive the absolution of his bishop, the church at large regarding compliance as sin. The Act of 1748 he and his people evaded for the most part, and in 1753 he was imprisoned for six months. At some period before 1789 he became dean of the diocese; and he died at Aberdeen, in his son's house, 16th June 1807.
Skinner is remembered only by a few songs. He published An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland (2 vols. 1788), and several controversial writings; and other works appeared posthumously, including those wrought out after the theory of John Hutchinson (q.v.). His Poems were collected in 1809 (3d ed. 1859), the best being 'The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn' and 'Tullochgorum'—praised by Burns, in a friendly letter to Skinner (1787), as 'the best Scotch song Scotland ever saw.' See the Life by the Rev. Dr Walker (2d ed. 1883).
His son, JOHN SKINNER, Primus of Scotland, was born at Longside, 17th May 1744, in 1753 shared his father's imprisonment, and graduated at Aberdeen at the age of sixteen. In 1763, when only nineteen—for the same reason as in the case of Dr Chalmers, because he was 'a lad of pregnant parts'—he was ordained and placed in charge of Ellon, with a stipend of £25 a year, eked out by farming. Eleven years later he was called to Aberdeen, where by 1776 his congregation had so increased as to compel his removal to a larger house at Longacre, where the upper floor as usual was fitted up as a 'meeting-house'—the large 'upper room' in which Dr Seabury was consecrated in 1784. By this time Skinner had been made coadjutor-bishop (1782), and in 1787 he became bishop of the diocese, and in 1788 primus. The death of Prince Charles Edward, which occurred in this last year, was the solution of the church's Jacobite difficulty; and the leading part in obtaining the Relief Act of 1792 fell to the primus. Skinner proved a wise and successful administrator, and his great influence was exerted invariably for the real good of the church. He died on 13th July 1816, and was succeeded as bishop by his son. See the Life by Dr Walker (1887).