In the year 1659, when Mr Dickson became professor of divinity at Edinburgh college, the commissioners for visiting that of Glasgow, appointed by the general assembly, unanimously called Mr Durham to the vacant chair. But before he was admitted to this office, the assembly nominated him chaplain to the king's family; a situation in which, though trying, more especially to a young man, he conducted himself with great gravity and faithfulness. While he conciliated the affections of the courtiers, he at the same time kept them in awe; "and whenever," says his biographer, " he went about the duties of his place, they did all carry gravely, and did forbear all lightness and profanity." The disposition of Charles, however, was little suited to the simplicity and unostentatious nature of the presbyterian worship, and although Mr Durham may have
obtained his respect, there is little reason to believe that he liked the check which his presence imposed.
Livingston mentions that Mr Durham offered to accompany the king when he went to Worcester, an offer which, as may have been anticipated, was not accepted. The session of Glasgow, finding that he was again at liberty, wrote a letter to him at Stirling, in which they expressed the warmest feelings towards him. "We cannot tell," say they, "how much and how earnestly we long once more to see your face, and to heaV a word from you, from whose mouth the Lord has often blessed the same, for our great refreshment. We do, therefore, with all earnestness request and beseech you, that you would, in the interim of your retirement from attendance upon that charge, (that of king's chaplain,) let the town and congregation, once and yet dear to you, who dare not quit their interest in you, nor look on that tie and relation betwixt you and them as dissolved and null, enjoy the comfort of your sometimes very comfortable fellowship and ministry." From the letter it would appear, that Mr Durham did not yet consider himself released from his appointment in the king's family; but with the battle of Worcester terminated all the fond hopes of the royalists. Finding the household thus broken up, there could be no objection to his returning to his former residence. He is mentioned as present in the session in April, and it was at this period that his interview with Cromwell took place, but for several months afterwards he seems to have withdrawn. In August, a vacancy in the inner high church arose from the death of Mr Robert Ramsay, and Mr Durham was earnestly requested to accept the charge. He accordingly entered upon it in the course of the same year (1651), having for his colleague Mr John Carstairs, his brother-in-law by his second marriage, and father of the afterwards celebrated principal of the university of Edinburgh. [See article Carstairs.] In the divisions which took place between the resolutioners and protesters, Mr Durham took neither side. When the two parties in the synod of Glasgow met separately, each elected him their moderator, but he refused to join them, until they should unite, and a junction fortunately took place. The habits of severe study in which he had indulged since his entry into the ministry, seem to have brought on a premature decay of his constitution. After several months of confinement, he died on the 25th of June, 1658, at the early age of thirty-six.[1]
- ↑ "Mr Durham was a person of the outmost composure and gravity, and it was much made him smile. In some great man's house, Mr William Guthry and he were together at dinner, and Mr Guthry was exceeding merry, and made Mr Durham smile, yea laugh, at his pleasant facetious conversation. It was the ordinary of the family to pray after dinner, and immediately after their mirth it was put upon Mr Guthry to pray, and, as he was wont, he fell immediately into the greatest measure of seriousnesse and fervency, to the astonishment and moving of all present. When he rose from prayer, Mr Durham came to him, and embraced him, and said, 'O! Will, you are a happy man. If I had been soe daft as you have been, I could not have been seriouse, nor in any frame, for forty-eight hours.' "—Wodrow's Ana. iii. 133.
