Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blacader, Robert

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1311309Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 05 — Blacader, Robert1886Thomas Finlayson Henderson

BLACADER or BLACKADER, ROBERT (d. 1508), archbishop of Glasgow, was the son of Sir Robert Blacader, of Tulliallan, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Sir James Edmestone, of Edmestone. He is first mentioned as a wrebendary of Glasgow and rector of Cardross. On 23 June 1480 he sat among the lords of council as bishop elect of Aberdeen. He was translated to the see of Glasgow previously to February 1484. The see was erected into an archbishopric 9 Jan. 1492. On account of this a bitter rivalry ensued between him and the archbishop of St. Andrews, and the estates had to intervene to silence their quarrels. Archbishop Blacader was frequently employed in the public transactions with the English, especially in 1505. Along with the Earl of Bothwell and Andrew Foreman, prior of Pittenweem, he negotiated a marriage between King James IV and Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII. In 1494 the arch-bishop sent up thirty persons from the district of Kyle, in Ayrshire, who had been convicted of the Lollard heresy by the ecclesiastical judicatories, for punishment by the civil power; but nothing further was done in the matter. He died 8 July 1508 (Regist. Episcop. Glasg. ii. 616). According to Knox (Works, i. 12) and Bishop Lesley (Hist. ed. 1830, p. 78), the latter of whom gives the date of his death as 26 July, he died in the Holy Land, during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. David Laing, in 'Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' ii. 222, quotes extracts from the contemporary diary of the Venetian, Maria Sanuto, describing the reception by the doge of Venice of the ‘rich Scottish bishop,’ who arrived there in May 1508 on his way to Jerusalem. This diary also states that the vessel from Jaffa, in Palestine, returned to Venice in November 1508, and that the ‘rich bishop’ was one of the twenty-seven pilgrims who died on the voyage.

[Keith’s Scottish Bishops, ed. 1824, pp. 254-6; Gordon's Eccles. Chron. of Scotland, ii. 512-4; Knox's Works, ed. Laing, i. 7, 10, 12, vi. 663-4.]

T. F. H.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.28
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page Col. Line  
105 i 14-13 f.e. Blacader, Robert: for Sir Robert Blacader of Tulliallan by Elizabeth read Sir Robert Blacader of Blackader, co. Berwick. His brother, Sir Patrick Blacader or Blackader of Tulliallan, married Elizabeth
12 f.e. for He read Robert