Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/49

 spirit were the establishment of the St. Andrews professorship of Latin and his endowment of a charity for apprenticing poor boys from Glasgow at the estate of Peskie, a farm of 104 acres, near St. Andrews.

[The Staggering State of Scots Statesman; Sir John Scot's Manuscript Letters in Advocates' Library; Register of Privy Council of Scotland, vol. xii. pp. cx, 716–18; Preface to Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum, and Bleau's Atlas of Scotland; Balfour's Annals; Baillie's Letters; Brunton and Haig's Senators of College of Justice; Memoir of Sir John Scot by Rev. C. Rogers; Preface to reprint of The Staggering State, Edinburgh, 1872.]

 SCOTT, JOHN (1639–1695), divine, born in 1639, was son of Thomas Scott, a grazier of Chippenham, Wiltshire, and served as a boy a three years' apprenticeship in London. Then altering his course of life, he matriculated at New Inn Hall, Oxford, 13 Dec. 1658. He took no degree at the time, but later in life proceeded B.D. and D.D. (9 July 1685). He became successively minister of St. Thomas's, Southwark, perpetual curate of Trinity in the Minories (before November 1678,, Repertorium, i. 920), rector of St. Peter-le-Poor, 1 Feb. 1678 (resigned before August 1691; ib. i. 529), and rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, being presented to the last benefice by the king, 7 Aug. 1691 (, Repertorium, i. 613). He was buried in the rector's vault in St. Giles's Church in 1695. He held a canonry of St. Paul's from 1685 till his death, but was never canon of Windsor, as stated by Wood. An engraved portrait of Scott by Vandergucht is prefixed to ‘Certain Cases of Conscience,’ 1718, and another, by R. White, to his ‘Discourses,’ 1701.

Besides twelve sermons published separately and preached on public occasions (all in the British Museum; cf., Athenæ Oxon. iv. 415), Scott wrote: 1. ‘The Christian Life from its beginning to its Consummation in Glory … with directions for private devotion and forms of prayer fitted to the several states of Christians,’ pts. i. and ii., London, 1681, 8vo; 2nd ed. 1683–1686, 8vo; 6th ed. London, 1704, 8vo; 9th ed. 1712, 8vo; 9th ed. [sic] 1729–30, fol.; in French, Amsterdam, 1699, 12mo, 2 parts; in Welsh, London, 1752, 8vo. The work ultimately extended to five volumes. 2. ‘Certain Cases of Conscience concerning the Lawfulness of Joyning with Forms of Prayer in Publick Worship,’ 1683, 4to; 1685, 4to (as ‘A Collection of Cases and other Discourses’), 2 vols. 1694, fol.; 1718, 2 vols. In reply to this appeared ‘An Answer to Dr. Scot's Case against Dissenters concerning Forms of Prayer and the Fallacy of the Story of Common plainly discovered,’ 1700, 4to. 3. ‘The Eighth Note of the Church Examined, viz. Sanctity of Doctrine’ (in ‘The Notes of the Church as laid down by Cardinal Bellarmin Examined and Confuted’), London, 1688, 4to; 1839, 8vo; and in Gibson's ‘Preservative against Popery,’ 1738, vol. i., 1848, vol. iii. 4. ‘The texts examined which papists cite out of the Bible for the proof of their doctrine and for prayers in an unknown tongue,’ 1688, 4to; and in Gibson's ‘Preservative against Popery,’ 1738, fol.; 1848, 8vo, vol. vii. 5. ‘Practical Discourses upon Several Subjects,’ 2 vols. London, 1697–8, 8vo (vol. ii. with a separate title-page and with dedication signed by Humphrey Zouch).

Scott wrote a preface for the second edition of J. March's sermons, 1699, 8vo, and his ‘Works,’ with the funeral sermon preached at his death by Zacheus Isham [q. v.], were collected in 1718 (London, fol. 2 vols.; Oxford, 1826, 8vo, 6 vols.). In the ‘Devout Christian's Companion,’ 1708, 12mo; 1722, 12mo, are ‘private devotions by J. S[cott],’ and some quotations from his book are given in P. Limborch's ‘Book of Divinity’ and other devotional works.

[Le Neve's Fasti; Newcourt's Repertorium; Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; Abr. Hill's Letters, p. 135; Isham's Funeral Sermon, 1695; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. v. 140; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 344.]

 SCOTT, JOHN (fl. 1654–1696), adventurer, first appeared on Long Island, New Netherlands, in 1654, when he was arrested by the Dutch authorities for treasonable practice with the neighbouring English. He represented himself as a disreputable boy who had got into trouble by annoying the parliamentary soldiers, and who had been transported to the plantations. In 1663 he was acting in England in conjunction with a number of respectable and influential New-Englanders, and with them petitioning the government to confirm a purchase of land made by them from the Narragansett Indians and disputed by the inhabitants of Rhode Island. Soon after he writes from Hartford, New England, denouncing the Dutch as intruders on Long Island. After the conquest of New Netherlands, he persuaded some of the English settlers on Long Island to form a provisional government pending a settlement by the Duke of York, with Scott himself for president, and he made some ineffectual attempts to exercise authority over the Dutch settlements on Long Island. In 1664 he was imprisoned by the government of Connecticut, and in the next year he en-