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FORMAN, ANDREW,
archbishop of St. Andrews, commendator of Pittenweem, and of Cottingham in
England, said to have been one of the best statesmen of his age, was the
son of the laird of Hutton in the parish of that name, in Berwickshire.
The only trace of the possessions of his family that is left is a small
field which still retains the name of “Forman’s land.” In 1499 he was
proto-notary apostolic in Scotland, and in 1501 he was employed, along
with Robert Blackader, archbishop of Glasgow, and Patrick, earl of
Bothwell, to negociate a marriage between James the Fourth of Scotland and
Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry the Seventh of England, which the
following year was ratified by the Scottish ambassadors. In 1502 he was
appointed bishop of Moray, and, together with that see, held, in
commendam, the priories of Pittenweem in Scotland, and of Cottingham
in England. He was afterwards employed as mediator between Pope Julius the
Second and Louis the Twelfth of France, and had the satisfaction of
composing the difference which had existed between them.
On his return
from Rome he passed through France, where he was graciously received by
the king and queen, who bestowed upon him the bishopric of Bourges, from
which he annually derived four hundred tuns of wine, ten thousand francs
of gold, and other smaller matters. He was also most liberally rewarded by
Pope Julius, who, in 1514, promoted him to the archbishopric of St.
Andrews, conferred on him the two rich abbeys of Dunfermline and
Aberbrothock, and made him his legate a latere. The archbishopric,
however, being claimed by the learned Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld,
(who had been nominated by the queen,) and by John Hepburn, who was
preferred by the monks, Forman only obtained possession of it by
surrendering the bishopric of Moray, as wall as giving up some years’
revenue of the archbishopric itself, and paying Hepburn three thousand
French crowns annually out of his ecclesiastical revenues.
In 1517,
Archbishop Forman was appointed by the States one of the lords of the
regency during the minority of James the Fifth, on the occasion of the
duke of Albany’s going to France. The archbishop, who was frequently
employed as ambassador to England, France, and Rome, had the good fortune
to reconcile a difference between the duke of Albany and the nobility,
which at one time threatened to lead to bloodshed. Mackenzie, in his
Lives, informs us that in the Collection of Letters of the Scottish Kings
from 1505 to 1626, preserved in the Advocates’ library, there is an
epistle from the Pope to James the Fourth, dated May 6, 1511, commending
Forman highly, and promising that, at the first creation of cardinals, he
should be made one. His death, however, prevented him from fulfilling his
intention. In the same Collection there is a letter from the duke of
Albany to Leo the Tenth, the successor of Julius, in which he urges the
Pope to advance Forman to the dignity of a cardinal, promised him by his
predecessor, and to continue him as legate a latere. Archbishop
Forman died in 1521, and was buried at Dunfermline. Dempster records that
he wrote a book against Luther, a Treatise concerning the Stoic
Philosophy, and a Collection out of the Decretals. Historians differ in
their estimate of Archbishop Forman’s character, and at this distance of
time it would be somewhat difficult to pronounce a correct opinion as to
its real features. |
