John, Bishop of Ross, was born on the 29th of September 1527. In an account of his life, for which he must himself have supplied the materials, he is said to have been born of honourable parents. Knox has clearly stated that he was the son of a priest; and the illegitimacy of his birth is sufficiently ascertained from a dispensation rendering him capable of receiving holy orders. Keith conjectures, with great probability, that he was the son of Gavin Lesley, rector of Kingusie, and likewise, as he supposes, official of that diocese.

Lesley prosecuted his studies in King's College, Aberdeen, where he took the degree of A.M. In the twentieth year of his age he became a canon of the cathedral churches of Aberdeen and Elgin. Having afterwards studied at Paris, Poictiers, and Toulouse, he returned to his native country in April 1554, and was soon after appointed professor of the canon law in the University of Aberdeen.

The progress of Protestantism, however, soon disturbed his peace; and in Knox's history we have an account of a conference between selected champions on either side, in which Lesley is described as making a sorry figure. Lesley's version is, however, somewhat different, and it is even affirmed that he and his associates were imprisoned in Edinburgh. On the death of Francis the Second, Lesley was despatched to France by the Earls of Huntly, Crawford, Athole, Sutherland, and Caithness, the Archbishop of St Andrews, the Bishops of Aberdeen, Moray, and Ross, with the view of enlisting Mary in their cause. He attended the queen on her return to Scotland, and was soon after admitted an ordinary judge of the Court of Session, along with a preferment to the abbey of Lindores, and the bishopric of Ross.

To the fortunes of the queen Lesley adhered with unshaken fidelity; and he is supposed to have been the individual who suggested an expedient for granting to the Earl of Bothwell an indirect pardon for the murder of the king; a crime to which there is the strongest moral evidence that the queen was an accessory, before as well as after the fact. On her escape from Lochleven she sent for him; but the battle of Langside crushed her hopes; and it was not till the following September that he visited her at Bolton Castle, and afterwards bore an important part in the negotiations between her and Elizabeth. The scheme of a marriage between Mary and the Duke of Norfolk involved many of their adherents in danger and difficulties. Lesley was repeatedly examined before the English queen and council, and was confronted with the Earl of Leicester, who had likewise been implicated in the same transaction. Under suspicion of being accessory to the rising of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, he was placed under arrest, and was detained in custody for six weeks before he was subjected to any examination. Fresh evidence of his complicity in other transactions equally obnoxious soon after came to light, and after a long course of sickness and misfortune he was sent to the Tower, where he was subjected to the most needless cruelty, as well as harassed by the most inquisitorial investigations.

The condemnation of the Duke of Norfolk brought Lesley into fresh troubles. Of all the most material charges the proof seems in a great measure to have rested on what are described as the bishop's confessions; that is, the answers emitted during his repeated examinations after he had himself been taken into custody. On perceiving that their designs were discovered, Lesley had become more communicative, and had thus contributed to the ruin of a man whom he had so much contributed to entangle in dangerous schemes of ambition. While he was beset with such perils in England, the Regent sent Nicholas Elphinstone with a demand that he should be conveyed to Scotland; but the Duke of Montmorency brought instructions from France to intercede for his release; and this application was so far successful as to procure his removal to Farnham Castle, the seat of the Bishop of Winchester. During his confinement in the Tower, he had sought for consolation in study and meditation. There he had composed his *Piae Consolations*; and he was now permitted to transmit them to the queen, who devoted some of her prison hours to the task of translating a portion of it into French verse. He was induced to prepare a similar work, *Auiini tranquilli Munimentum*, which he sent her in October 1573. In the meantime, he was not free from the apprehension of personal danger; the Earl of Morton having twice sent a diplomatic agent, Captain Cockburn, for the purpose of renewing the demand for the delivery of his person. Having some reliance upon his own eloquence, he now addressed to Elizabeth a Latin oration for the recovery of his liberty; and, whatever might be the effect of his classical pleading, he was soon afterwards released from his tedious confinement.

The Bishop of Winchester, on receiving the necessary order, conducted him to London on 11th November. On the 16th he was brought before the council, at the house of the lord treasurer, and was informed that he would be permitted to proceed either to Scotland or France. The English statesmen seem to have been much inclined to treat him as they ultimately treated Mary herself; but although he was subjected to a long and arbitrary imprisonment, the ministers of Elizabeth never ventured to bring him to a formal trial.

In January 1574 he landed in France, where he remained till the following year, when Mary sent him on a mission to Gregory XIII., with the view of prosecuting her scheme of conveying her son to a Catholic country, and uniting him in marriage either with a daughter of the Emperor of Germany or the King of Spain. Lesley, however, was more usefully employed in preparing for the press his general history of Scotland, which was published at Rome in 1578. About this time hopes were entertained that through the influence of the Duke of Athole, the religion of Rome might regain its old footing in Scotland, and Lesley was despatched to the neighbouring coast of France to gain intelligence of any symptoms of a spreading change. He had the mishap, however, to be imprisoned by mistake at Falsburg, and he arrived in France (April 1579) only to learn the death of the nobleman on whose exertions Mary and her party had built all their hopes. It was some consolation that the Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop of Rouen, soon afterwards appointed him suffragan and vicar-general of that diocese. In this station he continued for the space of fourteen years, and, principally for his intrepid conduct during the siege of Rouen, he was rewarded in 1594 with the bishopric of Constance, in Normandy. But from this preferment he appears to have derived no advantage; and the unhappy situation of public affairs in France induced him to seek another place of refuge. Directing his course towards Flanders, he reached Château d'Aussey, in the province of Artois, in the month of March, and afterwards proceeded to Brussels, where he experienced a friendly reception from the Archduke Ernest, governor of the Netherlands. By this prince he was rewarded with a pension of fifty crowns monthly, and the promise of a bishopric. The death of Ernest, however, frustrated this latter plan, and fast increasing sickness brought Lesley to the grave before he could reap any advantage from the favour of his successors. He died at Brussels 31st May 1596.

Of the works of Lesley we subjoin a catalogue:

1. A Defence of the Honour of the right high, mighty, and noble Princess Marie, Queen of Scotland, and Dowager of France, imprinted at London, 1569, 8vo. 2. A Treatise concerning the Defence of the Honour, &c., made by Morgan Philippe, Bachelor of Divinitie, an. 1570, Leodii, 1571, 8vo. This treatise he afterwards translated into Latin, as well as into French. 3. Joannis Leslei Scotti, Episcopi Rossan, pro Liberate imperatorum, Oratio, ad senectutem suam Elisabethae Anglicae Reginae, Parisii, 1574, 8vo. 4. Joannis Leslei Scotti, Episcopi Rossan, libri duo: quorum uno, Piae affecti Amici Consolations, divinique Remedii: altero, Asimi tranquillum Munimentum et Conservativio, continenter, Parisii, 1574, 8vo. 5. De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus gestis Scotiae libri decem, Roma, 1578 and 1675, 4to. 6. Commentaria servitium Principis et consuetudinis Cardinalis Alberto Arduinii, &c., de fama et felici vita Archiepiscopi Regionis Provinciae Inferioris Germaniae, Bruxellae, 1596, 8vo. 7. The Discoveries containing a perfect Account given to the most vertuous and excellent Princesse, Marie Queens of Scotte, and her Nobility, of his whole Charge and Proceedings during the time of his Ambassage, from his entries in England in September 1568, to the 28th of March 1572; in Anderson's Collections relating to the History of Mary Queen of Scotland, vol. III., Edinb. and Lond. 1727-8, 4 vols., 4to. 8. The History of Scotland, from the death of King James I., in the year 1468, to the year 1461, Edinburgh, 1830, 4to, edited by Thomas Thomson, from a MS. belonging to the Earl of Leven and Melville.