CALDERWOOD, David (1575-1650), an historian of the Church of Scotland, was born in 1575. He was educated at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of Μ. A. in 1593. About 1604 he became minister of Crailing, near Jedburgh, and he speedily began to take part in the ecclesiastical proceedings of that period, and was conspicuous for his resolute opposition to the introduction of Episcopacy. In 1617, while James was in Scotland, a Remonstrance which had been drawn up by the Presbyterian clergy was placed in Calderwood’s hands. He was summoned to St Andrews and examined before the king, but neither threats nor promises could make him yield, and deliver up the roll of signatures to the Remonstrance. He was deprived of his charge, committed to prison at St Andrews, and afterwards removed to Edinburgh. The privy council, which long exercised an undefined and despotic jurisdiction, ordained him to be banished from the kingdom for refusing to acknowledge the sentence of the High Commission. On giving security to banish himself from the kingdom before the ensuing Michaelmas, and not to return without the royal licence, he was released from prison. He accompanied Lord Cranstoun to Carlisle, where that nobleman presented a petition in his favour to the king; but it was followed by no beneficial result. The subsequent application of Lord Cranstouu to the privy-council, and to the bishops, was attended with no better success. He lingered in Scotland, publishing a few tracts, till the 27th of August 1619, when he sailed for Holland. Where he chiefly resided in that country we are not informed, but Bishop Guthry states, that “in the time of his exile he had seen the wild follies of the English Brownists in Arnheim and Amsterdam.” During his residence in Holland he published various ...works, and, among the rest, his Altare Damascenum. At one period his enemies supposed him to be dead; and he has recorded a very extraordinary attempt to impose upon the world a recantation fabricated in his name. Calderwood appears to have returned to Scotland in 1624, and he was soon afterwards appointed minister of Pencaitland, in the county of Haddington. During the remainder of his life he continued to take an active part in the affairs of the church, and he introduced in 1649 the practice, now confirmed by long usage, of dissenting from the decision of the Assembly, and requiring the protest to be entered in the record. His last years were devoted to the preparation of a History of the Church of Scotland. In 1648 the General Assembly urged him to complete the work he had designed, and voted him a yearly pension of £800. He left behind him an historical work of great extent and of great value, not indeed as a masterly composition, but as a storehouse of authentic materials for history. An abridgment, which appears to have been prepared by himself, was published after his death. An excellent edition of the complete work was published by the Wodrow Society, 8 vols. 1842-49. The manuscript, which belonged to General Calderwood Durham, was presented to the British Museum. A copy, transcribed under the inspection of Wodrow, is among the archives of the church; another belongs to the library of the university of Glasgow; and, as Dr M’Crie has stated, “in the Advocates’ Library, besides a complete copy of that work, there is a folio volume of it, reaching to the end of the year 1572. It was written in 1634, and has a number of interlineations and marginal alterations, differing from the other copies, which, if not made by the author’s own hand, were most probably done under his eye.” Calderwood died at Jedburgh on the 29th of October 1650, aged seventy-five. He appears to have been a man of unbending integrity, fearless in maintaining his opinions, and uniformly consistent in his professions; but as human virtues are never perfect, his decision of character had some tendency to deviate into that obstinacy from which good men are not always exempted.
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