John, archbishop of St. Andrews, was descended from the lairds of Spotswood in the county of Berwick, and was born in the year 1565, being the son of John Spotswood, minister of Calder, and one of the superintendents. He was educated in the university of Glasgow, and succeeded his father in the parsonage of Calder when but eighteen years of age. In 1601 he attended Lodowick duke of Lennox as his chaplain, in an embassy to the court of France for confirming the ancient amity between the two nations, and returned in the ambassador's retinue through England. When he entered upon the archbishopric of Glasgow, he found there was not a L100 sterling of yearly revenue left; yet such was his care for his successors, that he greatly improved it, and much to the satisfaction of his diocese. After having filled this see eleven years, he was raised to that of St. Andrews in 1615, and thus became primate and metropolitan of all Scotland. He presided in several assemblies for bringing the Church of Scotland to some degree of uniformity with that of England. He continued in high esteem with King James VI., nor was he less valued by King Charles I., who was crowned by him in 1633, in the abbey-church of Holyroodhouse. In 1635, upon the death of the earl of Kinnoull, chancellor of Scotland, the primate was advanced to that post; but he had scarcely held it four years, when the confusions beginning in Scotland, he was obliged to retire into England; and being broken with age, grief, and sickness, died at London on the 26th of December 1639, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The only work which he is known to have published bears the title of "Refutatio Libelli de Regimine Ecclesiae Scotticane." Lond. 1620, 8vo. This was an answer to a tract of Calderwood, who replied in the Vindiciae subjoined to his Altare Damascenum. A more considerable work was published several years after his death: "The History of the Church and State of Scotland, beginning the year of our Lord 203, and continued to the end of the reign of James the VI. of ever blessed memory." Lond. 1655, fol. An Appendix was afterwards added by Thomas Middleton.

The character of Spotswood is thus delineated by Laing: "In prosperity his behaviour was without moderation, in adversity without dignity; but the character of a leading, aspiring prelate has either been unduly extolled, or unjustly degraded. As a scholar and an historian he excelled his contemporaries; and it was his peculiar felicity, that his erudition was neither infected with the pedantry, nor confined to the polemical disputes of the age. His abilities recommended him first to preferment; but his ambitious views were chiefly promoted by the supple, insinuative habits of craft and intrigue. His revenge was formidable to the nobility and officers of state, oppressive to the clergy, and joined with an inordinate ambition, ultimately ruinous to his own order."