Spottiswoode, JOHN

Spottiswoode, JOHN, Archbishop of St Andrews, son of John Spottiswoode, Superintendent of Lothian, was born in 1565. He was educated at the university of Glasgow, and at eighteen succeeded his father as parson of Calder. In 1601 he attended the Duke of Lennox as chaplain on his embassy to France, and in 1603 King James to London. Soon after he succeeded James Beaton as Archbishop of Glasgow, but was only consecrated in London in 1610. As Moderator of the General Assembly at Glasgow in 1610 he laboured to confirm episcopal government, and he forced the Perth Assembly (1618) to sanction the five points of discipline known as the Perth (q.v.) Articles. He was translated to the see of St Andrews in 1615. He officiated at the coronation of Charles I. at Holyrood in 1633, and in 1635 became Chancellor of Scotland. He reluctantly entered into the king's unwise measures for the introduction of a liturgy into Scotland, and naturally became hateful to the Covenanters. The king compelled him to resign the chancellorship in 1638, and that same year the Glasgow General Assembly deposed and excommunicated him. Spottiswoode died at London, 26th November 1639, and was buried in Westminster. His chief work is the well-known History of the Church of Scotland (1655; 3 vols., ed., with a Life, by Bishop Russell for the Spottiswoode Society, 1849-51).