Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/169

Rh Calderwood. I can go no further.

He was then removed. Being afterwards called up, and threatened with deprivation, he declined the authority of the bishops to that effect ; for which contumacy, he was first imprisoned in St Andrews, and then banished from the kingdom. When we read such conversations as the above, we can scarcely wonder at the civil war which commenced twenty years afterwards, or that the efforts of the Stuarts to continue the ancient arbitrary government of England were finally ineffectual.

Mr Calderwood continued to reside in Holland from the year 1619, till after the death of king James, in 1625. Before leaving his country, he published a book on the Perth assembly, for which he would certainly have been visited with some severe punishment, if he had not been quick to convey himself beyond seas. In 1623, he published, in Holland, his celebrated treatise, entitled, "Altare Damascenum," the object of which was to expose the insidious means by which the polity of the English church had been intruded upon that of Scotland. King James is said to have been severely stung in conscience by this work. He was found very pensive one day by an English prelate, and being asked why he was so, answered, that he had just read the Altar at Damascus. The bishop desired his majesty not to trouble himself about that book, for he and his brethren would answer it. "Answer that, man!" cried the king sharply; "how can ye? there is nothing in it but scripture, reason, and the lathers." An attempt was made, however, to do something of this kind. A degraded Scottish gentleman, named Scott, being anxious to ingratiate himself at court, published a recantation as from the pen of Mr Calderwood, who, he believed, and alleged, was just dead. There was only one unfortunate circumstance against Mr Scott. Mr Calderwood soon let it be known that he was still alive, and of the same way of thinking as ever. The wretched impostor is said to have then gone over to Holland and sought for Mr Calderwood, in order to render his work true by assassinating him. But this red ink postscript was never added, for the divine had just returned to his native country.

Mr Calderwood lived in a private manner at Edinburgh for many years, chiefly engaged, it is supposed, in the unobtrusive task of compiling a history of the church of Scotland, from the death of James V. to that of James VI. His materials for this work lay in Knox's History, Mr James Melville's Observations, Mr John Davidson's Diary, the Acts of Parliament and Assembly, and other state documents. The work, in its original form, has hitherto been deemed too large for publication; but manuscript copies are preserved in the archives of the church, Glasgow University, and in the Advocates' Library. On the breaking out of the troubles in 1638, Mr Calderwood appeared on the public scene, as a warm promoter of all the popular measures. At the Glasgow assembly in that year, and on many future occasions, his acquaintance with the records of the church proved of much service. He now also resumed his duty as a parish minister, being settled at Pencaitland, in East Lothian. In 1643, he was appointed one of the committee for drawing up the directory for public worship; and, in 1646, an abstract of his church history was published under the care of the General Assembly. At length, in 1651, while Cromwell's army occupied the Lothians, Mr Calderwood retired to Jedburgh, where, in the immediate neighbourhood of the scene of his earliest ministrations, he sickened and died at a good old age. Both his "Altare Damascenum," and his "True History of the Church of Scotland," have been printed oftener than once; but an edition of his larger history is still a desideratum in Scottish literature.

CALLANDER,, of Craigforth, an eminent antiquary, was born in the early part of the eighteenth century. He was the descendant of John Gallon-