Walter Stewart of Arthurlie. His elder brother, Sir John Stewart of Minto, was killed at Flodden on 9 Sept. 1513 [see under Stewart or Stuart, Walter, first Lord Blantyre]. He was born in Glasgow in 1479, and educated at the university there, where he took the degree of B.A., being a determinant in 1494, and licentiate in the following year. In accordance with the custom of the period, he probably studied canon law and theology abroad. He was successively parson of Lochmaben, rector of Ayr, and prebendary of Glasgow; and in 1527 he was made dean of Glasgow. On 2 Oct. 1530 he was named lord high treasurer of Scotland, and at the same time he obtained the provostry of Lincluden. On 14 Nov. 1532 he was elected bishop of Aberdeen. On 3 March 1533–4 he left Scotland as principal ambassador, with a large company of attendants, to treat of a peace with England (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 17), and he returned, after a satisfactory embassy, on 3 July (ib. p. 18). On 5 Aug. he left on an embassy to France to treat regarding a marriage between James V and Marie de Bourbon (ib.) He resigned the treasurership in 1537, and died on 17 April 1545. According to the ‘Album Amicorum Collegii Regii Aberdonensis’ (Fasti Aberd. p. 533), Bishop Stewart built the library of King's College, Aberdeen, and furnished it with a number of books, and also built the jewel- or charter-house, as well as the vestry or chapter-house.
[Keith's Scottish Bishops; Crawfurd's Officers of State; Diurnal of Occurrents in the Bannatyne Club; Fasti Aberdonenses in the Spalding Club; Turnbull's Pref. to Hector Boece (Rolls Ser.)]
STEWART, WILLIAM (1481?–1550?), Scots chronicler and verse-writer, born about 1481, was great-grandson of one of the illegitimate sons of Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan [q. v.], and was thus descended from Robert II, king of Scotland. He was educated like his namesake, William Stewart (1479–1545) [q. v.] (afterwards bishop of Aberdeen), at St. Andrews, where apparently he was a determinant in 1499, and first of the licentiates in 1501. He was destined for the church, and possibly some of the minor preferments assigned to the future bishop were really held by the chronicler. Before 1526 he became a frequenter of the court, and the treasurer's accounts in that and the succeeding years contain entries of various payments and presents to him from James V; in 1527 he held a pension of 20l. which was doubled before 1530. The last entry referring to him occurs in 1541, and he was dead before 1560.
Sir David Lyndsay, writing in 1530, mentions Stewart among the poets of James V's court, and John Rolland [q. v.], in his prologue to the ‘Seven Sages’ (1560), classes him with John Bellenden [q. v.] and Bishop Andrew Durie (d. 1558) among his ‘masters.’ The collections of George Bannatyne (1545–1608?) [q. v.] and Sir Richard Maitland, lord Lethington [q. v.], contain several poems ascribed to Stewart, but only one, beginning ‘This hinder nicht, neir by the hour of nyne,’ is inscribed with his name. But he had probably written much verse, which has been lost, before 1528, when he was commissioned by James V to prepare a metrical version of the history of Hector Boece [q. v.] This work had been published in Latin at Paris in 1527, and James requested Bellenden to translate it into Scots prose and Stewart into Scots verse. Bellenden's version appeared in 1536, but Stewart's, which was begun in 1531, remained in manuscript until 1858, when it was published in three volumes in the Rolls Series. It was edited by William Barclay Turnbull [q. v.] from a unique manuscript which, after being in the possession of Hew Craufurd of Cloverhill, Bishop Moore, and George I, was presented by the last-named to Cambridge University library (Kk. ii. 16). Stewart's style is rugged and ungrammatical, but his translation contains some graphic descriptions. He shows an acquaintance with the works of John Mair or Major, Froissart, and Fordun, and he made some notable additions to Boece's original—for example in the account of the siege of Perth by the Danes in 1041, in which he introduces Macbeth and Banquo (Turnbull, pref. pp. xvi–xxiii). Stewart's account is fuller than that of Boece. Holinshed, who is usually supposed to have been Shakespeare's authority, is far more meagre than either of his predecessors (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xi. 321–2).
[Turnbull's Preface to his edition in Rolls Ser.; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vols. xv–xvi.; Sir David Lyndsay's Works, ed. Chalmers, i. 286; Rolland's Seven Sages, 1560.]
STEWART, Sir WILLIAM (d. 1588) of Monkton, was the third son of Andrew Stewart, second lord Ochiltree [q. v.], by Agnes, daughter of John Cunningham of Caprington. Captain James Stewart of Bothwellmuir (afterwards Earl of Arran) [q. v.] was his elder brother. After the raid of Ruthven in 1582, Arran left his followers under Sir William when he went alone to Ruthven Castle, and they were routed by the Earl of Mar, Sir William being hurt and mutilated of two fingers (Calderwood, iii.
