John Spottiswoode

‘Walter Scott, my father, was born in 1729, and educated to the profession of a Writer to the Signet… His general habits were not only temperate, but severely abstemious; but upon a festival occasion, there were few whom a moderate glass of wine exhilarated to such a lively degree. His religion, in which he was devoutly sincere, was Calvinism of the strictest kind, and his favourite study related to church history. I suspect the good old man was often engaged with Knox and Spottiswoode’s folios, when, immured in his solitary room, he was supposed to be immersed in professional researches.’

Archbishop of St. Andrews John Spottiswoode died this day, November 26, in 1639.  Clearly he was well known in the Scott household.  Spottiswoode published “The History of the Church and State of Scotland” in 1655.  The text above comes from Lockhart’s “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott”.