Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/206

 ment off Heligoland on 21 June 1650. On returning to Scotland he joined the army and fought in the battle of Dunbar on 3 Sept., where he was so severely wounded that he died eight days later (, iv. 98).

[Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, pp. 341–2; Balfour's Annales of Scotland, 1825, vols. iii. and iv.; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. vi. passim; Letters and Papers illustrating the Relations between Charles II and Scotland in 1650, ed. Gardiner (Scottish Hist. Soc.); Baillie's Letters and Papers (Bannatyne Club), index; Clarendon State Papers, 1773, vol. ii. App.; Masson's Life of Milton, iv. 180; Carlyle's Works, xv. 198, 230; Foster's Scottish Members of Parliament; Records of the General Assemblies of 1646 and 1647 (Scottish Hist. Soc.), 1892 passim; Hoskins's Charles II in the Channel Islands, 1854, ii. 358–62, 372; Select Biographies (Wodrow Soc.), 1845, i. 169–81; Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ii. 4, 32, 38, 39, 51, 57, 65, 66; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1650, p. 157.] 

WINRAM, WYNRAM or WINRAHAM, JOHN (1492?–1582), Scottish reformer, descended from the Winrams or Winrahams of Kirkness or Ratho, Fifeshire, was born about 1492. Entering the college of St. Leonard's, St. Andrews, in 1513, he graduated B.A. 17 March 1515. As early at least as 1528 he was an inmate of the Augustinian monastery of St. Andrews, of which he became third prior in 1534 and sub-prior in 1536, the prior being Lord James Stewart (afterwards Earl of Moray), who was then in his minority.

At the trial of George Wishart (1513?–1547) [q. v.] in 1546 Winram preached the opening sermon, the subject being ‘Heresy,’ which he very safely defined as ‘a false opinion defended with pertinacitie, cleirlye repugning to the word of God’ (summary in, Works, i. 150–151, and in Chronicle, pp. 459–60). In reality the sermon contained nothing to which Wishart himself would not have been willing to subscribe, and the general and colourless character of its propositions indicated at least a tendency towards toleration. That Wishart believed the sub-prior to be favourably disposed towards him may be inferred from the fact that while waiting in the castle of St. Andrews before execution it was for him he sent in order to make his confession. ‘Go, fetch me,’ he said, ‘yonder man that preached this day, and I will make my confession unto him’ (, i. 168). Knox is unable ‘to show’ what Wishart said ‘in this confession,’ but Lindsay affirms that Winram informed Beaton that Wishart had declared his innocence and asked the consent of Beaton that he should ‘have the communion,’ which was refused (Chronicle, p. 476).

In regard to Knox, Winram adopted a similarly impartial attitude. He was present at Knox's first sermon preached in the chapel of the castle of St. Andrews in 1547, and, after the sermon, called him before a convention of the grey and black friars in the yard of St. Leonard's, not ‘to hear as judge, but only familiarly to talk.’ After arguing with Knox in a very half-hearted fashion, Winram left further discussion in the hands of Arbuckle, the grey friar; but Knox represents his own triumph in the argument as complete; and although the friars resolved that, as an antidote to Knox's teaching, every learned man in the city, beginning with the sub-prior, should preach a series of sermons in the parish kirk, the sermons, according to Knox, were ‘penned so as to offend no man’ (Works, i. 193–201). Winram was present at the meeting of the provincial council held in Edinburgh in November 1549, at which special resolutions were passed for reforming the lives of the clergy (, Stat. Eccles. Scot. ii. 82–4); and by some he is supposed to have been the author of the catechism, known generally as Archbishop Hamilton's, approved by a provincial council held at Edinburgh in January 1552.

Although present at the trial of Walter Milne in 1558 and at a provincial council held in 1559, Winram cast in his lot with the reformers as soon as their cause seemed likely to prevail; and, being nominated by the lords superintendent of Fife, 9 July 1560, he was admitted at St. Andrews 13 April 1561. He is sometimes included among those to whom was entrusted the compilation of the first confession of faith; but, on the contrary, it was to him and William Maitland of Lethington that the confession was submitted for revision, and they mitigated ‘the austeritie of maynie words and sentences which seemed to proceed rather of some evil-conceived opinion than of any sound judgment’ (Randolph to Cecil, 7 Sept. 1560, in, vi. 120). He was present at the parliament at which it was ratified, and spoke in its support (Randolph to Cecil, 19 Aug. ib. vi. 118), and, after the ratification, was appointed one of a commission to draw up the ‘Book of Discipline’ (ib. ii. 128).

Winram is described by Quentin Kennedy as ‘wonderfullie learnit baith in the New Testament, Auld Testament, and mekle mair [much more]’ (‘Ane Compendious Reasoning,’ in ib. vi. 167), and it is very