to shew his teeth by pressing conformity both by
word and writing, and for that purpose sent instructions to all the
presbyteries within his jurisdiction. The people of Edinburgh were also
threatened by the bishop's thunder; for on the first communion finding
them not so obsequious as he would have had them, he threatened that, if
life was continued, he should either make the best of them communicate
kneeling or quit his gown; and who doubts of his intention to do as he
had promised? But he soon found he had reckoned without his host; for
before he could accomplish that, God was pleased to cut him off on the
12th of April following by a fearful vomiting of blood, after he had
enjoyed this new dignity about two months. Burnet says, he died
suspected of popery.--_Burnet's history, and Stevenson's history, vol.
1._

MR. JOHN SPOTISWOOD was first minister at Calder; but by his undermining
practice he got himself wrought into the bishoprick of Glasgow, and a
lord of the session, 1609. From thence he jumped into the
arch-bishoprick of St. Andrews 1615, and aspired still higher till he
was made chancellor of Scotland. He was a tool every way fit for the
court measures, as he could be either papist or prelate, provided he got
profit and preferment. When in France with the Duke of Lenox, he went to
mass, and in Scotland he had a principal hand in all the encroachments
upon the church and cause of Christ from 1596 to 1637. And for practice
a blacker character scarcely ever filled the ministerial office. An
adulterer, a simoniack, a drunkard tippling in taverns till midnight, a
profaner of the Lord's day by playing at cards and jaunting through the
country, a falsifier of the acts of assembly, a reproacher of the
national covenant;--for which crimes he was excommunicated by that
venerable assembly at Glasgow 1638; after which, having lost all his
places of profit and grandeur, he fled to England (the asylum then of
the scandalous Scots bishops) where he died about the year 1639, in
extreme poverty and misery; according to Mr. Welch's words, He should be
as a stone cast out of a sling by the hand of God, and a malediction
should be on all his posterity;--which all came to pass; his eldest son
a baron came to beg his bread; his second son, president of the session,
was executed in Montrose's affair; his daughter who married lord Roslin,
was soon rooted out of all estate and honours. _Their fruit shalt thou
destroy from earth, and t