Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/410

 covenant, and forwarded the explanations which he had given to the presbytery after his former visit to London in 1604, to be made use of at court as occasion should require.

In this year, 1606, the assembly, at the bidding of James, enacted that there should be permanent moderators for presbyteries and synods, and Gladstanes was appointed president of the presbytery of St. Andrews, and also of the synod of Fife. The presbytery proved recalcitrant. The privy council issued a special charge (17 Jan. 1607) to the members to obey the act of assembly within twenty-four hours under pain of being put to the horn or denounced rebels. To secure full submission four commissioners from the king attended the synod meeting at Dysart on 18 Aug. to induct Gladstanes as permanent moderator, but resistance continued. The brethren answered severally they ‘would rather abide the horning and all that follows thereupon than lose the liberty of the kirk’. The leaders of the opposition were imprisoned, and one was put to the horn.

About the same time Gladstanes was empowered to constitute a chapter consisting of any seven of the ministers of his diocese he might choose. He was a zealous member of the Scottish legislature, giving much attention to his duties, both in the privy council and in parliament. In 1609 Gladstanes and James were at variance on a question of the perquisites of the archbishopric, Gladstanes claiming that as of old the estates of bastards, the customs of St. Andrews, and confiscated goods pertained to the episcopal see. James wished them for the crown, and Gladstanes humbly tendered his submission, but asked to be heard on the subject (Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vi. 453). In the same year he projected another journey to court, and wrote to the king in May asking the requisite permission. In September he was far on his way, and from Standford on the 11th of that month intimated his approach in a letter of remarkable sycophancy, calling James his ‘earthly creator’ (Original Letters relating to Ecclesiastical Affairs of Scotland, Bannatyne Club, i. 205).

The court of high commission was established shortly after the return of Gladstanes from his visit to London, and was the combined result of the efforts of Gladstanes and his archiepiscopal colleague in the west of Scotland. Spotiswood, Gladstanes' successor in the primacy, had already to a large extent supplanted him in the king's estimation. In 1610 Gladstanes begged hard of James to nominate him for the moderatorship of the general assembly, but the king declined.

Gladstanes at this time was a good deal resident in Edinburgh, where, as James Melville states, he kept a ‘splendid establishment,’ and was surrounded by ‘crowds of poor ministers’ (Melvini Epistolæ, p. 125). Gladstanes in a later letter to James speaks of his influence with complacency. ‘All men,’ he says, ‘do follow us and hunt for our favour upon the report of your majesty's good acceptance of me and the bishop of Caithnes.’ James placed the regulation of the stipends of the clergy in the power of the bishops, and also distributed money among them. In 1610, just before the meeting of the assembly in June, he placed ten thousand merks at the disposal of Archbishops Gladstanes and Spotiswood for the members of that meeting (Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, viii. 844).

Although created a bishop in 1600, Gladstanes had never received consecration at the hands of a prelate. The bishops of Glasgow, Brechin, and Galloway were therefore consecrated at London by Abbot, bishop of London, in November 1610. On their return they consecrated Bishop Gladstanes at St. Andrews, on 13 Jan. 1611, along with several others. After this date he is mentioned as residing in the castle of St. Andrews. He held the bishopric until his death, which took place at St. Andrews on 2 May 1615. It was said to be caused by a loathsome disease. His body had to be buried immediately in the parish church; but a public funeral was accorded to him in the following month at the expense of the king (7 June).

Gladstanes, in his connection with the university of St. Andrews, revived the professorship of canon law, to which he nominated his own son-in-law (Ecclesiastical Correspondence, tempore James VI, i. 433*), and he also made great efforts for the restoration of degrees in divinity. On this subject he wrote in 1607, requesting his majesty in his ‘incomparable wisdom’ to send him ‘the form and order of making bachelors and doctors of divinity,’ that he might ‘create one or two doctors to incite others to the same honour, and to encourage our ignorant clergy to learning’ (ib. p. 109). But the royal permission was not granted until the year following Gladstanes' death. Spotiswood, his successor, eulogises him as a man of good learning, ready utterance, and great invention, but of too easy a nature (Hist. Spottiswoode Soc. iii. 227).

Gladstanes married Christian, daughter of John Durie, minister of Montrose, who survived till 1617, and by whom he had one son and three daughters. The son, Alexander, was appointed archdeacon of St. An-