Robert, a clergyman of the west of Scotland who lived in the beginning of the 18th century; well known as the author of an Ecclesiastical History of that kingdom during the latter part of the preceding century. His father, Mr James Wodrow, was a man of learning and piety. He preached occasionally to the persecuted Presbyterians, and taught a little academy of their students of philosophy and theology at Glasgow, before the Revolution. About that time he was ordained one of the ministers of that city, continuing his connexion with the academy till he was elected professor of theology by the university in the year 1692. He taught with reputation and success till his death in 1708.

His son Robert was born in the year 1679; his mother being then in the 51st year of her age. Her death (though it did not happen till several years after), was then fully expected; and his father, obnoxious to a tyrannical government, narrowly escaped imprisonment, or something worse, by attempting to obtain a last short interview with her. As he passed the town guard-house, he was marked, and soon followed by the soldiers into his own house, and even into his wife's bed-chamber, where he was concealed. Their officer checked this violence; sent them out of the room, and left the house himself; placing, however, sentinels both within and without, till the birth should be over. In half an hour after, Mr Wodrow at his wife's suggestion, assumed the bonnet and great-coat of the servant of the physician then in attendance; and carrying the lantern before him, made an easy escape through the midst of the guards. They soon renewed their search with marks of irritation, thrusting their swords into the very bed where the lady lay; who pleasantly desired them to desist, "for the bird (said she) is now flown."

His son Robert went through the usual course of literary education at Glasgow, entered the university in 1691; and prosecuted the study of the languages and the different branches of philosophy, till he became a student of theology under the tuition of his father. He was chosen librarian to the university in the year 1698, and continued in that office four years. There he began his researches into every thing connected with the ecclesiastical history of his country, which he continued to pursue to the end of his life; and also imbibed his taste for medals, inscriptions, and whatever seemed curious or illustrative of Roman, Celtic, and British antiquities.

He was among the first in Scotland who attended to the study of natural history. From a great number of letters in his own hand writing, begun about this time, it appears that he was in habits of the utmost intimacy with a select number of literary gentlemen, animated with the same ardour of research; that they corresponded regularly with one another, made collections of singular stones, of fossils, petrified plants, fishes, &c. and exchanged what they could spare from their respective stores. Among his correspondents were Mr William Nicolson, archdeacon, afterwards bishop of Carlisle, and at last of Derry, author of the Historical Libraries; Mr Edward Lhwyd keeper of the Ashmolean closet at Oxford; Sir Robert Sibbald, physician in Edinburgh, author of a natural history of Scotland, and another of Fife; Lord Pitmedan; Messrs James Sutherland, Laughlan Campbell minister of Campbellton, and others. In a letter to Mr Lhwyd dated August 1709, Mr Wodrow tells him his manse was but at a little distance from a place where they had been lithocoping together, during a visit of Mr Lhwyd to Scotland. "My parochial charge (he continues) does not allow me the same time I had then for those subterranean studies; but my inclination is equally strong, perhaps stronger. I take it to be one of the best diversions from serious study, and in itself a great duty, to admire my Maker's works. I have gotten some store of fossils here from our marle, limestone, &c. and heartily with I had the knowing Mr Lhwyd here to pick out what he wants, and help me to class a great many species which I know not what to make of." He informs him, in the end of the letter, that he had 500 or 600 species of one thing or another relative to natural history.

Mr Wodrow, when he left Glasgow, resided a short time in the neighbourhood, in the house of a very distant relation, Sir ——— Maxwell of Nether Pollock, then one of the Scots judges. It being within the bounds of the presbytery of Paisley, he offered himself to them for probationary trials, and obtained their licence to preach the gospel in March 1703. In the summer following, the parish of Eastwood, where Lord Pollock lived, becoming vacant, by the death of Mr Matthew Crawford (another Scots historian), a petition, with an unanimous call or invitation from the parish to Mr Wodrow to be their minister, was presented to the prebstry; presbytery; and they, waving part of the usual second trials, in order to expedite the business, ordained Mr Wodrow to be minister of Eastwood on the 28th of October 1734. In this charge he continued to the end of his life. Notwithstanding his ministerial duty, he still found some time to gratify the early bent of his mind towards natural history, and his curiosity to learn everything in his power, not only at home, but concerning the natural productions of other countries, and the opinions, customs, manners, and way of living of their inhabitants. In his farewell letters to his friends, about to sail to the Scottish settlement of Darien or to the coast of Africa, &c. he directed their attention and enquiries to these subjects; and something similar he suggested to other friends going to reside in remote places of the Highlands, or even on the continent of Europe. The collection of his MS. letters bound up in five or fix thick 8vo volumes, though reaching nearly to the end of his life, seems to consist only of the first draught of his own letters to his friends, not a single scrap is now to be found of their answers to him.

After his ordination, however, this worthy man, considering the duties of his office as his principal and only proper business, rose into distinguished reputation and usefulness as a preacher, and was looked upon as one of the first clergymen in the west of Scotland. Humble and unambitious of public notice, he was well entitled to it, by his conscientious and exemplary piety, his learning, not only in professional, but in other branches of knowledge, his natural good sense and solid judgement, his benevolent obliging spirit to all, his warm attachment to his friends, who formed a wide circle around him, and especially his deep concern for the best interests of his people, and active exertions for their instruction and improvement. His weekly sermons were all distinctly written out in long hand, and even his lectures in short-hand. Accustomed to regular composition, he had acquired an uncommon facility in it. His countenance and appearance in the pulpit was manly and dignified; his voice clear and commanding, his manner serious and animated: these things, joined with the general prejudice in his favour, added to the impression of the plain edifying discourses he delivered, without papers, to his hearers; and living in the near neighbourhood of Glasgow his little church was often crowded, especially when he dispensed the Lord's Supper, considered in Scotland as the principal religious solemnity.

Yet these talents, and this merited popularity which followed them, made little impression on his own modest conscientious mind; for he chose to continue in the obscure country parish with which he was first connected, resisting all the attempts made by his friends or by strangers to get him translated into several other more honourable and opulent parishes, who were desirous of the benefit of his ministry, however convenient the change might have proved for the education of his family. In the year 1712, the magistrates of Glasgow invited him to be one of the ministers of that city; and in January 1717, a deputation from the town of Stirling did the same. On the other hand, the patron, heirs, and elders of his own parish, strenuously opposed the translation. The presbytery, who had it in their power to have appointed it, found great difficulties in both cases on the plea of the majus bonum ecclesiae; referred the decision in the first case to the synod, and in the last to the commission of the General Assembly, and the courts thought proper to put no restraint on the minister's judgement or inclination, as he himself was certainly the best judge of his comparative usefulness in two different situations.

Mr Wodrow was equally conscientious and assiduous in the business of the ecclesiastical courts, as in his parochial duty. Notwithstanding his studious turn, he punctually attended the meetings of Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly, when elected, as he often was, a member of that court; and also the commissions in November and March, which regularly met during that period of the church. His connexion with Lord Pollock made his journeys to Edinburgh easy: and after he began to collect materials for his voluminous history, his personal inspection of the public records and of the various MSS. accumulated in the Edinburgh libraries, made his visits to that capital frequent and necessary.

In common with the great body of the Presbyterians, he had strongly imbibed what are called Whig principles; in other words, he was warmly attached to the constitutional liberties of the people, as established by the revolution settlement. No wonder! The dreadful persecution and oppression they had suffered during the two preceding reigns were still fresh and galling to their minds: they considered the elevation of King William to the throne and the Hanover succession, as the two chief bulwarks raised up by Providence, for the security both of their religion and liberty. They trembled at every dark appearance threatening to this security, such as the death of King William. That cloud, however, was soon dissipated by the perseverance of the queen's ministers in his views and measures, and the splendid victories of Marlborough and his allies over the armies of Louis XIV. But the elevation of the Tory ministry in the latter part of the queen's reign was a severe trial to the Scottish Presbyterians, and involved the conscientious part of their clergy in very serious difficulties and dangers. The oath of abjuration required at that time from clergymen, and enforced by civil penalties, and even the royal proclamation for a national thanksgiving, after the peace of Utrecht, pressed hard upon the scrupulous consciences of many of the clergy. The very language of the oath seemed to them dubious and Jesuitical, hostile to the elector of Hanover's newly acquired right to the crown, conferred on him by the parliament and the people; and as to the other point, they had not freedom to lead their people, in a solemn thanksgiving to Heaven for a peace, termed safe and honourable, which they and the generality of their hearers considered as dangerous and disgraceful. Mr Wodrow, as might be expected, was one of the recusants of the oath: for nothing could move him to flatter with his conscience. At the same time the liberality and equity of his mind led him to judge candidly of the consciences of others. Accordingly, he made every effort in his power to reconcile his clerical brethren, and his own people, to such of the clergy as had the freedom to take it, and by so doing, had rendered themselves obnoxious to popular prejudice and odium. With such, this good man still continued to live, not only in Christian, but ministerial communion; endeavouring to soften and remove the prejudices against them, and, in as far as his influence reached, to revive and cherish a spirit of mutual forbearance. Many proposals he made, and private meetings and conferences he held with his brethren, to prevent their differences from rising, as they threatened to do, into a schism; to prevent them especially from entering at all into the church courts; justly afraid of the sparks of animosity too apt to be kindled there. His endeavours and those of his friends were seconded by the prudence of the superior courts, especially the commission of the General Assembly. Whatever failed there in the way of admonition to the rest of the church, breathed the spirit of mutual forbearance and love. How he managed the other difficult and delicate point, the Thanksgiving, in a consistency with his duty, does not appear in his letters; nor is it now worth while to investigate this as a trait of his character, which might be done, perhaps, from his MS. sermons preached at the time. Only it is pleasing to remark from the letters, that the same spirit of wisdom and mild forbearance which animated the majority of the clergy in the west, seems also to have pervaded the officers of the crown, justices of the peace, and other civil magistrates in Scotland at the time. The oath was not pressed on the recusants, and the execution of the legal penalties incurred by the neglect of it avoided; for their general loyalty was undoubted.

A more severe stroke was inflicted on their adversaries by the Tory ministry in the year 1710 by an act of the British parliament which restored patronage to its former full force. An act of the Scotch parliament passed after the Revolution had extracted the chief sting of that grievance, by placing the election of the minister of every parish in the hands of the landed proprietors, called heritors, in conjunction with the elders, or members of the kirk-session. A majority of that joint body, at a meeting appointed for the purpose, drew up a call or written invitation, which they subscribed to a particular candidate to be their minister. This was presented to the presbytery of the bounds, the proper judges of his learning and moral character; and if these were found unexceptionable, he was ordained, or solemnly consecrated and installed into the office. This Scotch act having continued in force for twenty years, and being conceived to have become perpetual by the articles of the Union, was now repealed; and the choice of a minister to every parish was in effect placed in the power of a single person, a patron, because he had in fact the sole power of nominating the only candidate who could enjoy the benefice.

Mr Wodrow was exceedingly averse from the revival of the power of patronage; and in this he was influenced both by his political and religious principles. In his letters, he seems to have looked upon a patron of a parish, as a kind of hereditary depot; or at least like a prince, who had no restraints laid on his prerogative, to prevent or check the abuse of it. The paramount power or trust committed to a patron, this conscientious minister could not reconcile with the apostolic counsels, to commit the keeping of religious truth to faithful men, able also to instruct others. He thought it very improper to leave the choice of a religious instructor, in the first instance, to any single person whatever, especially to one generally a stranger to the circumstances of the parishioners; one who had little knowledge, and therefore little sympathy with them in their religious sentiments and feelings. He was persuaded that the purposes of edification, and the peace of the country, circumstanced as Scotland then was, were Wodrow much better secured by the restraints laid on a patron in the act 1690, that is, by admitting the two principal bodies of the parish to a participation with him in his choice, than by trusting it wholly to himself; and he threw out many judicious hints in his letters, and even schemes or proposals to his brethren, on this difficult and important subject.

On the other hand, he wished nothing to be attempted but in a constitutional way, in harmony with the civil power. Few men were so sensible as he was of the abuses incident to popular government, either in church or state, and of the danger of resisting, even unjust and opprobrious laws, in a tumultuous or disorderly manner. The Presbyterian church, in the outward order or form of it, he viewed as a well regulated republic. He did not confider the people in their individual capacity, as qualified to vote even on the choice of their own minister. The elders of the parish he looked upon as the representatives of the people in the ecclesiastical courts; and their number, in his own congregation, he restricted to a very few, four or five at most, fit to assist him in the exercise of church discipline within the parish. The rest of his fellows were deacons, whose jurisdiction was confined to the care of the poor, visiting the sick, and distributing the bread and wine at the communion, but could not, like the former, be chosen to represent the parish in the presbytery and superior courts. In this sense of the necessity of order and subordination, he persevered to the end of his life. When, contrary to his judgement or vote, an unpopular brother was to be ordained in a parish within twelve or fifteen miles distant from Eastwood, in consequence of a sentence of the General Assembly, to be executed, perhaps with military assistance; this aged minister thought it his duty, regardless of personal danger or odium, to countenance the young brother, by joining with the rest of the clergy in laying their hands on him, inviting him afterwards to his pulpit, and exerting any influence he had to conciliate the irritated minds of that parish.

The only publication for which the world is indebted to Mr Wodrow, is The History of the Singular Sufferings of the Church of Scotland during the twenty-eight years immediately preceding the Revolution. It was written at a proper distance of time from the events it records; and printed at Edinburgh in the year 1721, in two large folio volumes, with two appendixes consisting of copies of the public records, and of many private, family, and personal papers, letters, &c. inserted as vouchers of the historical facts. In collecting this great body of information, the author was assisted by his friends, who cheerfully seconded his own almost incredible industry and patience of research. In consequence of this, the book has more the appearance of a biographical, than of a historical work. It has, however, the form, and all the essentials of a regular history, divided into books, chapters, and sections, with proper margins and indexes; written in a plain, rather too familiar style, unavoidably interfered with Scoticism, yet these sufficiently intelligible to an English reader. It exhibits a distinct sketch of the characters both of the principal sufferers, and of their persecutors; of the springs of the persecution, in the unjustifiable plans and measures of an arbitrary government; with the motives of the advisers and executors of them. The unfortunate and innocent Wodrow. innocent sufferers, our author viewed in the light, not of a set of wild fanatics, as they were called by their contemporaries, and frequently too by later historians; many of them were most respectable for their rank in their country, as well as for their talents and virtues; but even those in the lower ranks of society, as confessors and martyrs in the noble cause which they had espoused, the support of the rights of conscience, and of national liberty.

The subject of the history is the most melancholy that could be chosen; a long and severe persecution of a people, who had been guilty of nothing unfruitful to their civil or ecclesiastical rulers; a series of open acts of injustice and tyranny, perpetrated under the colour of law, and this with such an increasing and merciful violence, as to sink the usual spirit of a free people, and easily quash one or two feeble ill-timed attempts to resist their oppressors. No wonder that the continued view of such a wretched and melancholy scene, without any thing joyful to interrupt it, should give a melancholy tinge to the mind of the writer, easily communicated to his readers. On the other hand some things have happily an opposite tendency. The mass of biographical intelligence, though it must be confessed it is much too voluminous, and too minute for the management of any historian whatsoever, yet furnishes a variety of anecdotes, which give some needful relaxation or relief to the sympathy of the reader. These indeed are in part the simple annals of the poor, without the varnish or eulogy of polished life; but even in this shape they are not destitute, both of entertainment and instruction; and then the minuteness in the detail of names, of persons, places, and other particular circumstances, adds to the impression of the facts, by placing their certainty beyond all reasonable doubt.

If faithfully to record past facts, and transmit the knowledge of them to posterity, be the principal duty of a historian, this Wodrow has certainly aimed at; and also to refresh any feelings hostile to his fidelity and impartiality; in short, to come as near as he was able to the motto prefixed to his volumes, Nec studio, nec odio. Doubtless, like all other men, he had some political, and many theological prejudices, the last chiefly imbued from education, and confirmed by too high a veneration for the characters of our first reformers—prejudices which warped his personal opinions and feelings on both subjects. But he seems to have made a considerable effort to prevent his party prejudices from warping or perverting his judgement of the truth or falsehood of stubborn historical facts. Nothing almost oratorial enters into his narratives, though there is room for admiration, and much scope for just indignation; no exaggerated encomiums on his friends, or strong opprobrious language in speaking of his and their enemies, the unprovoked persecutors of his church. He allows the facts which he has recorded to speak for both, and transmit to posterity a memorial to their honour or their infamy.

The chief fault of this historical collection already hinted at, is its minuteness, and excessive copiousness. The prodigious multitude of facts it embraces, though different from one another in their circumstances, are in other respects somewhat similar. This must necessarily occasion some repetition and lateness, especially to a fastidious reader, who has it, however, in his power to gratify his taste by selecting what is most agreeable to it. Nevertheless a candid and patient reader can be at no loss to form a proper judgement of the principal transactions of the period, from the authentic accounts of them before him, to appreciate the true characters of the actors, or of the motives and views from which they acted. And an inquisitive and penetrating reader will be gratified by finding not a little of the peculiar principles, opinions, sentiments, habits, and manners of that age, as distinguished from the present; and may thus estimate the gradual progress towards much noble and useful improvement; and on the other hand, the progress towards a very hurtful corruption and degeneracy of manners, which have both taken place during the last hundred and twenty years.

At the time of its first publication, the book met with less general attention than might have been expected in Scotland, and scarcely any attention in England, except from professed readers. As it came to be more studied, it was the more valued, except where there was an evident bias on the opposite side. Few can be at a loss to see why such historians as Hume, Macpherson, and Dalrymple should neglect or undervalue such a book. Our later Scotch historians, Somerville and Laing, have done it more justice. In truth, there is a very near coincidence in their estimates of the characters they draw, and their accounts of the facts they relate, in common with Wodrow. But especially our late illustrious patriot Charles Fox, whose high abilities, uncommon candour, and sweetness of disposition, almost remove the suspected bias of his party spirit.—Mr Fox has, in the historical fragment published since his death, given a very honourable testimony to the fidelity and accuracy of our historian. After mentioning the execution of three females, he adds, page 131, "To relate all the instances of cruelty which occurred would be endless. But it may be necessary to remark, that no historical facts are better ascertained, than the accounts of them which are to be found in Wodrow. In every instance, where there has been an opportunity of comparing these accounts with the records, and other authentic monuments, they appear to be quite correct."

The collection of the materials for writing the church history from the public records, and many other authentic sources, must have cost the author a prodigious labour and time. The pecuniary expense incurred was considerable, and scarcely refunded from the sale of the book. The only neat profit, he has been heard to say, which accrued from it, was one or two hundred pounds that he received from the king, to whom it was dedicated.

"The last twelve years of Mr Wodrow's life were chiefly occupied in drawing up a biography of the principal persons concerned in introducing the reformation of religion into Scotland, and settling the different forms or modes of ecclesiastical government attempted to be established there from the beginning to the end of that period, namely from about the year 1560 to 1669, when the printed history of the sufferings commences. Had it pleased God to continue his useful life till this larger work was finished, public curiosity would have been much gratified; for it contains the lives, not only of John Knox, George Buchanan, and others already well known, but the lives of a great number more, very learned WODROW

Learned, ingenious, respectable, and worthy men, scarcely at all known to the literary world; besides a variety of anecdotes naturally entering into such a work, illustrative of the history and the living manners of that age. Happily these manuscript lives are still preserved, all written with his own pen, and some of the longest of them copied, probably during his last long illness, in a more legible hand. Whatever important or curious information they may contain, they are not fit for the press in their present state. They are now deposited in the library of the university of Glasgow.

Besides writing the history and the biography, both extended by himself for publication, and two days every week regularly appropriated to his preparation for the pulpit, much of his time must have been occasionally spent in writing letters, some of them like dissertations, on theological and other literary subjects; for he corresponded with a very wide circle of acquaintances and friends in Scotland, England, and Ireland, and with a few on the continent and in North America.

His constitution in the first part of life was robust and strong, his health in general good; but his studious habits or constant reading, and especially incessant writing, it is supposed, may have brought on the bodily complaint which occasioned his death. In the latter end of the year 1731, a swelling about the size of a small chestnut appeared on his breast, near the collar bone. It was on the same place where a spark of fire had fallen when he was a child, and had then left a little lump and hardens like a large pea. About a month after the swelling began, it had increased to the size of a plum, and in April 1732 was a large as a man's fist. It was attempted to be removed by cautic; the attempt failed. His body became greatly emaciated, and he gradually declined till his death, which happened on the 21st of March 1734. Supported by the testimony of a good conscience, joined with the strong consolation and well-founded hope of the gospel, he bore this long-continued severe distress with admirable fortitude, unabated piety and resignation; never uttering a murmur, but behaving to his friends who came to see him, and to all about him, with much ease and affection; thus leaving, both in the active exertions of a useful life, and in his patient sufferings at the close of it, a very edifying example to his family and his flock. The day before his death, he gathered his children around his bed, gave each of them his dying blessing, with counsels suitable to their ages and circumstances; last of all two boys, neither of them four years old, too young to understand and feel these marks of his affection, yet, after the example of the venerable patriarch, Gen. xlvii. 15, even them he drew to him, laid his hands upon their heads, and devoutly prayed, that the God of his fathers, the angel who had redeemed him from all evil, would bless the lads.

Mr Wodrow was married in the end of 1708, to Margaret Warner, grand daughter of the reverend Mr William Guthrie of Penwick, well known in Scotland by his writings, and daughter of the reverend Patrick Warner, then living on his estate of Ardeer in Ayrshire. Mr Warner, in the early part of his life, had been chaplain to the East India Company at Madras. After his return home, he was driven from his ministry and from the kingdom, by the persecution of the privy council; but returned in consequence of King James's indulgence, and became minister of Irvine. He had a personal interview on his last return with the prince of Orange at the Hague, a short time before the Revolution, an account of which appears in the history, vol. ii. p. 604. Mr Wodrow had a family of 16 children, nine of whom, with his widow, survived him in decent circumstances, without any breach among them for above 25 years. The only remaining survivor is the reverend Dr James Wodrow of Stevenston in Ayrshire.

Besides his collection of fossils, and a few Roman and British medals, Mr Wodrow left a valuable library of books, many volumes of pamphlets and also of manuscripts written by others; sent to him in presents, or copied by his orders. The most valuable part of them is now in the advocates library, and in the repositories of the church at Edinburgh. His own manuscript biography, as has been already said, is in the library of the university of Glasgow.