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