James (afterwards James V), to whom Sir David Lyndsay was usher, and in 1515 was secretary to Queen Margaret. He was also entrusted with money for the purchase of clothes, &c., for the young prince and his brother. In 1515 Inglis was in England on the queen's business (cf. his letters in the Cottonian MSS.) Like Lyndsay, he had a share in providing dramatic entertainments for royalty, and in 1526 received money, ‘be the king's precept,’ to purchase stage apparel (cf. Treasury Records). In 1527 he is described in a charter as chancellor of the Royal Chapel of Stirling, and in the same year was ‘master of werk,’ at an annual salary of 40l., superintending the erection of buildings for the king (cf. ib.). About the same time he was appointed abbot of Culross. On 1 March 1531, for a reason unknown, he was murdered by his neighbour, John Blacater, baron of Tulliallan, and a priest named William Lothian. Summary vengeance followed on 28 Aug., when ‘John Blacater of Tullyalloune and William Louthian (publicly degraded from his orders in the Kingis presence the preceding day), being convicted by an assize of art and part of the cruel slaughter of James Inglis, abbot of Culross, were beheaded’ (Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, i. *151).
Sir David Lyndsay, in stanza v. of the prologue to ‘The Testament and Complaynt of our Soverane Lordis Papyngo,’ regrets the repression of Inglis's poetic gift owing to his holding ecclesiastical preferment:—
Quho can say more than Schir James Inglis sayis,
In ballattis, farses, and in plesand playis?
Bot Culrose hes his pen maid impotent.
His writings are lost, although the Maitland MS. credits him with a vigorous onslaught on the clergy entitled ‘A General Satyre,’ which, however, the Bannatyne MS., with distinct plausibility, assigns to Dunbar. Mackenzie's rash assumption, in his ‘Writers of the Scots Nation,’ that Inglis wrote the ‘Complaynt of Scotland’ (which was not printed till 1549), has unnecessarily complicated the question regarding the authorship of that work. Another ecclesiastic named Inglis figures in the ‘Treasurer's Accounts’ of 1532 as singing ‘for the kingis saule at Banakburne,’ and if an Inglis wrote the ‘Complaynt,’ this may have been the man. Robert Wedderburn, however, is the most likely author (see LAING, Dunbar).
[Lesley's De Rebus Gestis Scotorum; Pinkerton's Hist. of Scotland, vol. ii.; Dunbar's Poems, ed. Laing, ii. 390, and Laing's preface to The Gude and Godlie Ballates; Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen; Irving's Hist. of Scotish Poetry.]
INGLIS, JOHN, D.D. (1763–1834), Scottish divine, born in 1763, was the youngest son of Harry Inglis, M.A., minister of Forteviot, Perthshire. He graduated at the university of Edinburgh, studying divinity under the Rev. Dr. Hunter, and completed a distinguished academical course in 1783. He was ordained as minister of Tibbermore, Perthshire, on 20 July 1786. He took an active share in presbyterial administration, and early showed his ability as an ecclesiastical politician. On 3 July 1799 he was presented by the town council of Edinburgh to the Old Greyfriars Church as proximate successor to Principal Robertson the historian. The degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon him by the university of Edinburgh in March 1804, and he presided as moderator of the general assembly held in that year. He was appointed one of the deans of the Chapel Royal by George III in February 1810, and was continued in the office by William IV. He died on 2 Jan. 1834. Inglis married, in 1798, Maria Moxham Passmore, daughter of Abraham Passmore, of Rollefarm, Devonshire, and had four sons and one daughter. The youngest son, John, who became lord justice-general of Scotland, is separately noticed.
Inglis's name is principally associated with his scheme for the evangelisation of India. Through his efforts a committee was appointed for this purpose by the general assembly on 27 May 1824, and it was largely owing to his perseverance, tact, and energy that the scheme was successfully carried out. As a preacher he was too profound and argumentative to catch the popular ear, and his influence was greater in the church courts than in the pulpit. His principal works, all published in Edinburgh, were, besides four single sermons, 1803–26: 1. ‘An Examination of Mr. Dugald Stewart's Pamphlet relative to the election of a Mathematical Professor,’ 1805. 2. ‘Reply to Professor Playfair's Letter to the Author,’ 1806. 3. ‘A Vindication of Christian Faith,’ 1830. 4. ‘A Vindication of Ecclesiastical Establishments,’ 1833. 5. Account of Tibbermore in Sinclair's ‘Statistical Account.’
A portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland.
[Hew Scott's Fasti, i. 44, iv. 668; Cockburn's Memoirs, p. 232.]
INGLIS, JOHN, Lord Glencorse (1810–1891), lord justice-general of Scotland, youngest son—not eldest, as sometimes stated—of John Inglis [q. v.], minister of Tibbermore, Perthshire, by Maria Moxham Passmore, was born in his father's house in George Square, Edinburgh, on 21 Aug. 1810.
