Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/51

 , Archbishop of St Andrews. This prelate, whose name occupies so remarkable a place in the history of the Scottish Reformation, was born of humble parents, in the town of Perth, in the year 1543. Such is the date assigned; but we think it may be safely carried two or three years farther back, as we find his name in the roll of the first General Assembly held by the reformed church of Scotland, in 1560, as one of those persons belonging to St Andrews who were fit for ministering and teaching; while, only two years after, we find him minister of Ceres, in Fifeshire, with a commission to plant churches from Dee to Etham. Great as were the emergencies of the infant kirk at this time from the want of ministers, it is scarcely to be thought that it would have appointed to such important charges a youth who had not yet attained the age of twenty. Previous to this period he had studied at the university of St Andrews, where it is likely he was distinguished by those talents and literary acquirements that subsequently brought him into such notice, and, after having gone through the usual course, he graduated as Master of Arts. His name at this period was Patrick Consteane, or Constance, or Constantine, for in all these forms it is written indifferently; but how it afterwards passed into Adamson we have no means of ascertaining. At the close of his career at college, he opened a school in Fife, and soon obtained the notice and patronage of James M'Gill of Rankeillor, one of the judges of the Court of Session, who possessed considerable political influence. He had not long been minister of Ceres, when we find him impatient to quit his charge; and accordingly, in 1564, he applied to the General Assembly for leave "to pass to other countries for a time, to acquire increase of knowledge," but was inhibited to leave his charge without the Assembly's license. That license, however, he seems at length to have obtained, and probably, also, before the meeting of the Assembly in the following year, when they published such stringent decisions against those ministers who abandon their spiritual charges. Patrick Constance, or, as we shall henceforth call him, Adamson, now appointed tutor of the son of M'Gill of Rankeillor, passed over with his young charge, who was destined for the study of the civil law, to Paris, at that time the chief school of the distinguished jurisconsults of Europe.

Adamson had not been long in Paris when such adventures befel him as might well make him sigh for the lowly obscurity of Ceres. In the course of events that had occurred in Scotland, during his absence, were the marriage of Queen Mary and Henry Darnley, and the birth of their infant, afterwards James VI.; and Adamson, who at this time was more of a courtier than a politician, and more of a poet than either, immediately composed a triumphant "carmen" on the event, entitled, Serenissimi et nobilissimi Scotiæ, Angliæ, Franciæ, et Hiberniæ Principis, Henrici Stuarti lllustrissimi Herois, ac Mariæ Reginæ amplissimæ Filii, Genethliacum. The very title was a startling one, both to France and England, the great political questions of which countries it at once prejudged, by giving them the Scottish queen for their lawful, indisputable sovereign. Had this poem, which was published a few days after the event, been produced in England, its author would scarcely have escaped an awkward examination before the Star Chamber; but as it was, he was within the reach of Catherine de Medicis, to the full as jealous of her authority as Elizabeth herself, and far more merciless in exercising it. Adamson was therefore rewarded for his Latin poetry by a six months' imprisonment, which perhaps would have been succeeded by a worse infliction, had it not been for the media-