ROBERT, the first principal of the university of Edinburgh, was the son of David Rollock of Powis, in the neighbourhood of Stirling, and was born in the year 1555. He enjoyed the instructions of Thomas Buchanan, a man distinguished for worth and learning, and a nephew of the great George Buchanan. From school he was sent to the university of St Andrews, where his progress was so rapid that he was made professor of philosophy soon after he took his master's degree. The magistrates of Edinburgh having petitioned the king to found a university in that city, they obtained a charter, by which they were allowed all the privileges of a university, which was built in 1582, and Rollock was chosen principal and professor of divinity. In the year 1593 Rollock and others were appointed by Parliament to confer with the Popish lords; and in 1595 he was empowered, along with others, to visit the different universities in Scotland, with a view to inquire into the doctrine and practice of the different masters, the discipline adopted by them, the state of their rents and living, which they were ordered to report to the next General Assembly. He was chosen moderator of the General Assembly in the year 1597. The greater part of his life was spent in conducting the affairs of the church; yet Spottiswood assures us that he would rather have preferred retirement and study. Indeed the feebleness of his constitution was not equal to the bustle of public life. He died at Edinburgh on the last day of February 1598, in the forty-third year of his age. Short as his life was, he published many works, chiefly in Latin. A particular account of the author will be found in a volume printed under the following title:—De Vita et Morte Roberti Rollok, Academiae Edinburgensium Primariarum, Narrationes, auctoris Georgio Robertson et Henrico Charteris, Edinb., 1826, 4to.

Robertson's biographical tract was originally published in 1599; that of Charteris was printed from a manuscript in the public library of the university for the use of the Banatynae Club. An edition of the Select Works of Robert Rollock was published in Edinburgh under the auspices of the Wedrow Society, and under the editorship of William M. Gunn, 2 vols., 1849. The editor has translated the biography by Charteris, with elucidatory notes. He has likewise given at the end of the biography a list of the author's writings.