1570 he is styled commissioner of Galloway (ib. iii. 38). On the petition of the kirk in reference to benefices being rejected by the parliament of the king's party at Stirling, in August 1571, Row, preaching on the Sunday following, ‘denounced judgments against the lords for their covetousness’ (ib. iii. 138). At the assembly convened at Edinburgh on 6 March 1573 complaint was laid against him for having a plurality of benefices, and for solemnising a marriage betwixt the master of Crawford and the daughter of Lord Drummond ‘without proclaiming the banns and out of due time’ (ib. iii. 273). In answer to the first charge he admitted that he had two vicarages, but affirmed that he reaped no profit from them. These vicarages were Twynam and Terregles, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. On the second charge he was found guilty, and commissioners were appointed to deal with him and his session (ib).
Row in 1574 was appointed one of a commission to ‘convene and write the articles which concern the jurisdiction of the kirk’ (ib. p. 307), and in the following year was named one of a commission to confer with the commissioners that might be appointed by the regent ‘upon the jurisdiction and policy of the kirk’ (ib. p. 344). The result of these and other commissions of which Row continued to be a member was the construction of the ‘Second Book of Discipline.’ At a meeting of a commission of the assembly in July 1575, when the question was raised ‘whether bishops, as now allowed in Scotland, had their function from the Word of God,’ Row was chosen, with three others, to argue in favour of episcopacy; but he was so impressed with the arguments urged in favour of presbytery that he afterwards ‘preached down prelacy all his days.’ He was chosen moderator of the assembly which met at Edinburgh on 9 July 1576, and also of that which met at Stirling on 11 June 1578. He died at Perth on 16 Oct. 1580. By his wife Margaret, daughter of John Beaton of Balfour in Fife, he had eight sons and two daughters: James, minister of Kilspindie; William [q. v.], minister of Forgandenny; Oliver; John (1568–1646) [q. v.], minister of Carnock; Robert; Archibald, minister of Stobo; Patrick; Colin, minister of St. Quivox; Catherine, married to William Rigg of Athernie; and Mary to Robert Rynd, minister of Longforgan.
Calderwood describes Row as ‘a wise and grave father, and of good literature according to the time,’ and states that ‘he thundered out mightily against the estate of the bishops, howbeit in the time of blindness the pope was to him as an angel of God’ (ib. p. 479). He is credited in the memoir by his son with the authorship of a book on the ‘Signs of the Sacrament,’ no copy of which is known to be extant.
[Biography in Appendix to his son John's History of the Kirk of Scotland; Histories of Knox, Calderwood, and Spotiswood; Notes in Appendix to m'Crie's Life of Knox and Life of Melville; James Melville's Diary (Wodrow Soc.).]
ROW, JOHN (1569–1646), historian of the kirk of Scotland, third surviving son of John Row (1525?–1580) [q. v.], Scottish reformer, and Margaret Beaton of Balfour, was born at Perth about the end of December 1568, and baptised on 6 Jan. 1568–9. He received his early instruction from his father, and such was his precocity that at the age of seven he had mastered Hebrew, and was accustomed to read daily at dinner or supper a chapter of the Old Testament in the original. On being sent to the grammar school of Perth, he instructed the master in Hebrew, who on this account was accustomed to call him Magister John Row. On the death of his father in 1580, Row, then about twelve years of age, received, as did his brother William [q. v.], a friar's pension from the King's hospital at Perth. Subsequently he obtained an appointment as schoolmaster at Kennoway, and tutor to his nephews, the sons of Beaton of Balfour, whom he accompanied in 1586 to Edinburgh, enrolling himself as student in the lately founded university. After taking his M.A. degree in August 1590, he became schoolmaster of Aberdour in Fife, and, having continued his studies in divinity, he was towards the close of December 1592 ordained minister of Carnock, in the presbytery of Dunfermline.
Row signed on 1 July 1606 the protest of parliament against the introduction of episcopacy; and he was also one of those who, the same year met at Linlithgow with the ministers who were to be tried for holding an assembly at Aberdeen contrary to the royal command. In 1619, and again in 1622, he was summoned before the court of high commission for nonconformity to the articles of Perth, and required to confine himself within the bounds of his parish (Calderwood, History, vii. 519, 543). He was a member of the general assembly of 1638, when he was named one of a committee of certain ministers ‘come to years’ to inquire—from personal knowledge of the handwriting of the clerks and their own memory of events—into the authenticity of certain registers of the general assembly which had been for some time missing (Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals, i. 129; Gordon, Scots Affairs, i.
