Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/37

Rh until 1570. Being educated for the ministry, he early displayed much fervour in his piety, and a fearless boldness and constant zeal in the cause of the reformation in Scotland. When the regent Morton, in the year 1573, obtained an order in the privy council, authorizing the union of several parishes into one, Davidson, then a regent in St Leonard's college, expressed his opposition to, and displeasure at that crying abuse in the church, in a poem, which, although printed without his knowledge, brought him into great trouble. He was summoned to a justice-ayre held at Haddington, when sentence of imprisonment was pronounced against him; he was, however, soon after liberated on bail, in the hope that the leniency thus shown would induce him to retract what he had written, or at least that his brethren might be prevailed upon to condemn the poem. But these expectations were disappointed, and Davidson, finding the intercession even of some of the principal gentry in the country unavailing, and that nothing but a recantation would save him from punishment, fled to the west of Scotland, and thence into England, where he remained until the degradation of the regent, when he returned home. He ultimately attended the earl, along with other clergymen, when his lordship was about to suffer on the scaffold, and on that occasion a reconciliation took place between them.

Davidson again involved himself in difficulties by the active part which he took against Robert Montgomery, minister of Stirling. Robert Montgomery, it appears, had made a Simoniacal purchase of the archbishopric of Glasgow from the earl of Lennox; after which, accompanied by a number of soldiers, Montgomery came to Glasgow, and proceeded to the church. He there found the incumbent in the pulpit, when going up to him he pulled him by the sleeve, and cried "Come down, sirrah." The minister replied, " He was placed there by the Kirk, and would give place to none who intruded themselves without orders." "Thereupon much confusion and bloodshed ensued. The presbytery of Stirling suspended Montgomery, and were supported in their authority by the General Assembly; but the earl of Lennox, not inclined to submit to this opposition, obtained a commission from the king, to try and bring the offenders to justice. Before this court could be held, however, the earl of Gowrie and other noblemen seized upon the young king, and carried him to the. castle of Ruthven, and there constrained him to revoke the commission, and to banish the earl of Lennox from the kingdom. But the king having afterwards made his escape from his rebel nobles, banished all those who had been engaged in this treasonable enterprise. Montgomery, who in the meanwhile had made submission to the church, again revived his claim to the archbishopric of Glasgow, whereon Mr Davidson, then minister of Libberton, was appointed by the presbytery of Edinburgh to pronounce sentence of excommunication against him; which duty he performed with great boldness. He was also appointed one of the commission sent to Stirling to remonstrate with the king on account of this measure in favour of Montgomery. In consequence, however, of the faithfulness with which he had admonished his majesty, Davidson found it expedient to make a hurried journey into England, where he remained for a considerable time.

Having returned to Scotland, Mr Davidson signalized himself in the year 1590, by his letter in answer to Dr Bancroft's attack on the church of Scotland. In 1596, while minister of Prestonpans, he took an active part in accomplishing the renewal of the national covenant. He was chosen to minister unto the assemblage, of divines and elders which congregated for confession and prayer in the Little Church of Edinburgh, as a preparatory step to the introduction of the overture for that purpose into the general assembly;