Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/297

 [q. v.], was present at this assembly. The action of Edinburgh University in conferring (8 Nov.) its diploma of D.D. upon four non-subscribers, including Owen, was viewed as a protest against the suspension of Simson.

By the next assembly all the presbyteries but three or four had reported for Simson's deposition. Besides the ‘marrow-men’ a strenuous advocate for this course was Allan Logan (d. 1733), minister of Culross. Finally, the suspension from all ecclesiastical function was confirmed on 13 May 1729. Simson was to retain the emoluments of his chair, though it was ‘not fit or safe’ that he should teach divinity.

After suspension, Simson signed a student's testimonial as S.T.P. No provision was made for the duties of his chair, save that the principal, Neil Campbell, heard the discourses of bursars. Simson died on 2 Feb. 1740. His disposition is described as ‘frank and open,’ though Wodrow complains of his ‘shiftings and hedgings’ under ecclesiastical pressure. His wife was a niece of John Stirling (1662–1727), principal of Glasgow College. He had a son, born 1727, and a daughter, who married (1757) John Moore, M.D. [q. v.], and was the mother of Sir John Moore, the hero of Coruña. He printed nothing except the papers connected with his trials (‘The Case,’ Glasgow, 1715, 8vo; and ‘Continuations,’ Edinburgh, 1727–9, 8vo). His correspondence with Rowan was printed by Webster, Edinburgh, 1715, 8vo, for presentation to the assembly.

[Works cited above; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scoticanæ; Flint's Examen Doctrinæ D. Johannis Simson, 1717; Williamson's Remarks on Mr. Simson's Case, 1727; Dundas's State of the Processes, 1728; Truth's Triumph over Error, 1728; Proceedings of the Committee (1727), 1729; A Ballad by J[oh]n B[rys]s, 1729; Christian Moderator, 1827, pp. 226 sq.; Correspondence of Robert Wodrow (Wodrow Society), 1842–3; Acts of the General Assembly, 1843, pp. 500 sq., 591 sq.; Whiston's Memoirs, 1753, p. 279; Thomson's Hist. Secession Church, 1848, pp. 10 sq.; Innes's Munimenta Universitatis Glasg., 1854, i. 446, ii. 441 sq.; Catalogue of Edinburgh Graduates, 1858, p. 142; Reid's Hist. Presbyterian Church in Ireland (Killen), 1867, iii. 293; Hunt's Religious Thought in England, 1873, iii. 320; Album Studiosorum Acad. Lugduno-Batavæ, 1875.]

 SIMSON, PATRICK (1556–1618), church historian and divine, was born at Perth in 1556. His father was Andrew Simson (d. 1590?) [q. v.] His mother, Violet Adamson, was sister of Patrick Adamson [q. v.], archbishop of St. Andrews. Archibald Simson [q. v.] was a younger brother. Having received a classical education from his father, who was one of the best Latin scholars of the time, Patrick entered St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, at the age of fourteen, and in 1574 took his degree. He was then sent by his father to the university of Cambridge, but he was induced to remain for a time at Bridgstock, where there was a library, and to pursue his studies privately, which he did with such success that he mastered Greek, then little known in Scotland, and attained great proficiency in the knowledge of ancient history, civil and ecclesiastical. While there his father, having fallen sick, recalled him home to assist him in the school. In 1577 he was ordained and admitted minister of the adjoining parish of Spott, and, besides discharging his clerical duties, he continued to teach Greek on weekdays at Dunbar. About 1580 he was translated to Cramond in the presbytery of Edinburgh, and in 1584, when all the clergy were ordered to subscribe the acts then made in favour of episcopacy, and to promise obedience to their bishops on pain of forfeiting their stipends, Simson refused, although his diocesan, Patrick Adamson [q. v.], archbishop of St. Andrews, was his maternal uncle.

In 1590 the general assembly appointed Simson to Stirling, then a royal residence and a resort of courtiers and learned men, and there he spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. He had much influence with the king and the Earl of Mar; but when the attempt to introduce episcopacy was renewed, Simson became one of the weightiest opponents of the royal policy. He declined the offer of a bishopric, and afterwards of a pension, to induce him to connive at the changes which were being introduced. He attended the trial of the six ministers for high treason at Linlithgow, and befriended them by every means in his power; he drew up and signed the protest against episcopacy presented to parliament in 1606, raised a subscription for Andrew Melville when a prisoner in the Tower of London, and refused the permanent moderatorship of the presbytery of Stirling. At the same time he took a leading part in the conferences that were held to prevent an open schism in the church, and urged his brethren to continue to attend the synods after the bishops began to preside over them. He opposed the changes in worship which followed the introduction of episcopacy, and in 1617 the bishop of Galloway wrote urging him to help the bishops ‘out of his talent’ in resisting some of the innovations which the king was forcing down their throats. With all this he was so moderate, peaceable, and charitable,