and ministers held at his instance at St. Andrews on 23 Nov. to arrange for their enforcement practically failed of its purpose (ib. pp. 397–408); and when at a diocesan synod held at St. Andrews on 25 April 1620 a proposal was made to censure those who had not conformed, the majority left the meeting (ib. p. 442). Ultimately in June 1621 the articles were ratified by parliament. When the commissioner stood up to perform the act of ratification, a terrific thunderstorm broke out (ib. p. 503); this the one party interpreted as a special manifestation of God's wrath, the other as a witness of his special approbation, in the same manner as it was expressed when the law was given on Sinai.
After the death of King James, Spottiswood continued in equal favour with Charles I. By a letter to the privy council, on 12 July 1626, Charles commanded that he should have the place of precedency before the lord chancellor of Scotland; but, according to Sir James Balfour, the lord chancellor (Sir George Hay, first earl of Kinnoull [q. v.]), ‘a gallant, stout man,’ would never ‘suffer him to have place of him, do what he would’ (Annals, ii. 41). But on the death of Kinnoull the archbishop, in January 1635, was himself made chancellor.
Nevertheless Spottiswood appears to have done what he could to prevent or delay the introduction of the liturgy. But when he saw that this was inevitable, he resolved to act with his customary zeal in enforcing the royal wishes, and himself in 1637 procured a warrant from the king peremptorily commanding the performance of the liturgy in all the churches. After the riot at St. Giles on 23 July, of which he was a witness, he recognised that all his worst forebodings were realised; and with other privy councillors he signed a letter to the king in which they affirmed that on account of ‘the general grudge and murmur of all sorts of people,’ they could not proceed further in the introduction of the service-book until the king had heard all particulars (printed in Sir James Balfour's Annals, ii. 229–31). He did everything he could to modify the policy of the king; but events marched too quickly for him, and when on 1 March 1638 it was announced to him that the covenant was being signed with enthusiasm by larger numbers of the people, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘Now all that we have been doing these thirty years past is thrown down at once’ (Life prefixed to the Spottiswoode Society edition of his History, vol. i. p. cx). His life being in danger, he took up his residence in Newcastle, and in his absence from Scotland he was, on 4 Dec., deposed by the unanimous vote of the assembly on the miscellaneous charge of ‘profaning the Sabbath, carding and diceing, riding through the country the whole day, tippling and drinking in taverns till midnight, falsifying the acts of the Aberdeen assembly, lying and slandering the old assembly and covenant in his wicked book, of adultery, incest, sacrilege, and frequent simony.’ The deliverance can scarce, however, be interpreted as anything else than the mere expression of bitter partisan spite. Spottiswood remained at Newcastle until the close of 1639, when he went to London. When in Newcastle he had been attacked by fever, and, having had a relapse on his arrival in London, he died on 26 Nov. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. In his will, dated at Newcastle, 14 Jan. 1639, he made a full declaration of his faith, in which, as regards ‘matters of rite and government,’ he expressed himself thus: ‘My judgment is, and has been, that the most simple, decent, and humble rites should be choosed, such as is the bowing of the knee in resaving the Holy Sacrament and others of that kinde, prophannesse being as dangerouse to religion as superstition; and touching the government of the church, I am verily persuaded that the government episcopall is the only right and Apostolique form. Paritie among ministers is the breeder of confusion, as experience might have taught us; and for these ruling elders, as they are a mere human devise, so will they prove, if they find way, the ruin both of church and estate’ (ib. p. cxxxi). By his wife Rachel, daughter of David Lindsay (1531?–1613) [q. v.], bishop of Ross, he had two sons and a daughter: Sir John of Dairsie, Fifeshire (which the archbishop had purchased in 1616), Sir Robert [q. v.], and Anne, married to Sir William Sinclair of Roslin. Spottiswood was the author of ‘Refutatio Libelli de Regimine Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ,’ 1620, but is best known by his ‘History of the Church and State of Scotland from the year of our Lord 203 to the end of the reign of King James VI, 1625,’ published posthumously at London in 1655 (with a life of the author supposed to be by Bishop Duppa); again in 1677; and in 3 vols. in 1847, after collation with several manuscripts, by the Spottiswoode Society—a society, named after the archbishop, which published between 1844 and 1851 twelve volumes illustrating the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. Undertaken at the request of King James, by whose command Spottiswood had access to the necessary state documents, his work has the customary defects of an official history. But,
