John Spotswood (Spotiswood), Scotch prelate; born at Mid-Calder, near Edinburgh, 1565; died in London, Dec. 26, 1639. He was educated at Glasgow University, and succeeded his father as Parson at Calder, in 1583, when only eighteen. In 1601 he accompanied the Duke of Lennox as chaplain in his embassy to France, and in 1603 James VI. to England. In 1603 he was made Archbishop of Glasgow, and privy-councillor for Scotland. In 1615 he was transferred to St. Andrews, so that he became primate and metropolitan. On June 18, 1633, he crowned Charles I. at Holyrood. In 1635 he was made chancellor of Scotland. He was the leader in the movement to introduce the Liturgy into the church of Scotland, which occasioned the rebellion (1637). When the Covenant was signed (1638), he retired in disappointment to London. He wrote “The History of the Church and State of Scotland” (203–1625), London, 1655; best ed., Edinburgh, 1847–51, 3 vols., with life of the Author.

Personal

  In prosperity his behaviour was without moderation, in adversity without dignity; but the character of a leading, aspiring prelate has either been unduly extolled, or unjustly degraded. As a scholar and an historian he excelled his contemporaries; and it was his peculiar felicity, that his erudition was neither infected with the pedantry, nor confined to the polemical disputes, of the age. His abilities recommended him first to preferment; but his ambitious views were chiefly promoted by the supple, insinuating habits of craft and intrigue. His revenge was formidable to the nobility and officers of state, oppressive to the clergy, and, joined with an inordinate ambition, ultimately ruinous to his own order. At an happier period, when no temptation was presented to his inordinate ambition, the same talents might have rendered him a distinguished ornament to that church, which his disregard of the gloomy decorum exacted by fanatics, was supposed to disgrace.

History of Scotland

  Archbishop Spotiswoode was author of the “History of Scotland,” a work compiled from scanty materials, but with great impartiality. There is throughout the whole an air of probity and candour, which was the peculiar character of the writer. This history was undertaken by the command of James I. who had a high opinion of the author’s abilities. Upon expressing a diffidence to James about that part of it which relates to his mother, and which had been the stumbling-block of former historians, he replied, “Speak the truth, man, and spare not.”

  Archbishop Spotswood’s “Church History” was penned at the special command of K. James the Sixth; who, being told that some passages in it might possibly bear too hard upon the memory of his Majesty’s mother, bid him “write the truth and spare not:” and yet he ventured not so far with a commission as Buchanan did without one.

  Is considered to be, on the whole, a faithful and impartial narrative of the events of which it treats.

  It is an honest book, written by a strong upholder of Episcopacy.

  If he was a courtier, he had all the graces, and far more than the virtues, of the Court. It is natural to compare his work with that of Knox. Readers will declare for or against the sentiments of either according to their prepossessions. In energy, in narrative power, and in the general impression of genius produced, the earlier writer must be pronounced by far the superior. Spottiswoode’s merits are of a different order. His style is smooth, but seldom strikes any high note. There is no display of enthusiasm; the reader is rarely warmed into strong approval or censure; the tone is that of gentlemanly compromise or bland remonstrance. The really notable point about the book is the breadth of its charity. In this Christian virtue it must be acknowledged that the earlier Scottish Reformers were sadly deficient. Knox was most intolerant of opposition. Spottiswoode, in the whole of his “History,” has not a bitter word for foe or friend, unless it be one about Andrew Melville, who had indeed been a sore thorn in His Grace’s flesh.