PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The design of the present work is to present a comprehensive account of
the Succession of Ministers of the Church of Scotland since the period
of the Reformation. An attempt is made to give some additional interest
by furnishing incidental notices of their lives, writings, and families,
which may prove useful to the Biographer, the Genealogist, and the
Historian.
The sources from which the work has been compiled are the various
records of Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assemblies
;
together with the Books of Assignations, Presentations to Benefices, and
the Commissariat Registers of Confirmed Testaments. From these
authentic sources the information here collected will, it is believed, be
found as accurate as the utmost care can render it. Having been com-
menced at an early period of life, this work has been prosecuted during
all the time that could be spared from professional engagements for a
period of nearly fifty years.
Some idea of the labour and continuous research involved in preparing
the work may be formed when the Author states that he has visited all
the Presbyteries in the Church, and about seven hundred and sixty
different Parishes, for the purpose of examining the existing records.
In this way he has had an opportunity of searching eight hundred and
sixty volumes of Presbytery, and one hundred volumes of Synod Records,
besides those of the General Assembly, along with the early Registers of
Assignations and Presentations to Benefices, and about four hundred and
thirty volumes of the Testament Registers in the different Commissariats.
The Author has to express his grateful acknowledgments to the Synod
and Presbytery Clerks, and, indeed, to almost all the Ministers of the
Church to whom he applied. While carrying on his early researches in
Edinburgh, he cannot forget his obligations to the late Thomas Thomson,
Esq., Deputy Clerk Register, to the late Alexander Macdonald, Esq., and
other gentlemen connected with the Record Department in the General
Register House. He is indebted to the Rev. Thomas Gordon of Newbattle,
and the Rev. John Struthers of Prestonpans, for revising the divisions
which contain the Presbyteries of Dalkeith and Haddington; also, for