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Rh promulgated, and was being enthusiastically signed throughout Scotland. But at Aberdeen the townsmen would have none of it; the theological faculty condemned it; and when ‘the tables’ sent commissioners (among whom were Montrose and Henderson, Cant and Dickson) to advocate the cause, the Aberdeen doctors met them with a series of questions regarding the lawfulness of the covenant and the authority by which it was imposed. They received the thanks of the king for their firmness, and on 25 March 1639, on the approach of the covenanting army to Aberdeen, Leslie, with Sibbald and Baron and some sixty cavaliers, sailed for England. Charles was unable to protect them, Leslie and Sibbald returned home in the autumn, and in July 1640 the general assembly which met in Aberdeen deposed him from the ministry, and deprived him of his principalship, on general charges of laziness, negligence, drunkenness, and his refusal to subscribe the covenant. Writers of the other party explain the laziness as bookishness, and a ‘retired monastic way of living;’ they indignantly deny the drunkenness, describing him as ‘sober and abstemious above his accusers.’ His meekness was certainly remarkable. He ‘was never heard to speak against his enemies or their procedure, but suffered all things with great patience, attending God's will’—firm, however, in his refusal of the covenant, ‘saying he would not hurt his conscience for worldly means.’ For a time he occupied a chamber in the college which he hitherto had ruled. Later, he was the guest of the Marquis of Huntly at Gordon Castle, but that refuge also failed him, and he went to live with his kinsman, Alexander Douglas of Spynie, Elginshire, son of a former bishop of Moray, at whose house he died of cancer about 1654.

Leslie's contemporaries are loud and unanimous in their praise of his great learning and instructive conversation, but nothing remains of his writings except two short Latin elegies on his patron Bishop Patrick Forbes, contained in the ‘Funerals’ of that prelate, and a fragment on the writings of Cassiodorus preserved by Dr. George Garden [q. v.] in his edition of the works of John Forbes. 

LESLIE, WILLIAM (1657–1727), bishop of Laybach in Styria, born in 1657, was the second son of William Leslie, fifth laird of Warthill, Aberdeenshire, by his wife Anne, daughter of James Elphinstone of Glack, and grand-niece of William Elphinstone [q. v.], bishop of Aberdeen. He went at the age of eleven with his elder brother to King's College, Aberdeen, and on leaving the university he was for a time parish schoolmaster of Chapel of Garioch, near his father's property. In 1684 he removed to Padua for purposes of study. There he became a Roman catholic and took holy orders. Cardinal Barbarigo appointed him professor of theology at Padua. He had relatives in Austria, the Counts Leslie, and he went to help them in the management of their affairs. Through their influence he became in 1716 bishop of Waitzen in Hungary. He soon won high favour with the emperor, who in 1718 procured his translation to the more important see of Laybach, an appointment which carried with it the dignities of metropolitan of Carniola and prince of the Holy Roman Empire. He was also a privy councillor to the emperor. In 1725 he sent home to Scotland, to his brother, his portrait and his diploma from the university of Padua, relics still preserved at Warthill, along with some interesting letters describing his prosperity. In one of these (July 1725) he speaks of Scotland as ‘the Land of Cakes.’ He died in 1727. 

LESLY, GEORGE (d. 1701), divine and poet, a native of Scotland, was instituted to the rectory of Wittering in Northamptonshire in 1681, was presented to the vicarage of Olney, 1 Nov. 1687, and was buried in Olney Church on 17 March 1701 (manuscript note in Israel's Troubles;, Bucks, iv. 307).

Lesly wrote: 1. ‘Fire and Brimstone, or the Destruction of Sodom’ [1675], 8vo. 2. ‘Abraham's Faith,’ n.d. A morality, or, as the writer calls it, a ‘Tragi-Comedy,’ which ‘pleased myself and friends. But if it please not others, let them cast It out of doors, perhaps 't may be the last.’—Ep. The characters include the Devil, a Midwife, Faith, Flesh and Despair. The two reprinted with additions in 3. ‘Divine Dialogues, viz. Dives's Doom, Sodom's Flames and Abraham's Faith … to which is added Joseph Reviv'd … the second edition,’ London, 1684. A dedication to Charles, Earl of Westmoreland, dated 14 June 1676, describes the work as ‘the frozen conception of one born in a cold climate.’ Hunter says he saw a first edition dated 1678. Together with this work is bound up in the British Museum copy ‘The Universal Medicine, a Sermon, together with four more,’ 2nd edit. 1684. 4. ‘Israel's Troubles and Triumph, or the History of the Dangers in and Deliverance out of