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WINRAM, JOHN, superintendent
of Fife and Stratherne, was descended of the Fifeshire family of the Winrams
of Ratho. He is supposed to have entered the university of St Andrews (St
Leonard’s college) in 1513, and in 1515 he took the degree of B. A., on
which occasion he is designated a pauper; that is, one who paid the lowest
rate of fees. From that period till 1532, no trace has been discovered of
him, but at the last mentioned date he is noticed under the title of "Canonicum
ac baccalarium in Theologia" as one of the rector’s assessors, and in a
deed dated the same year he is called a canon regular of the monastery of St
Andrews. Two years afterwards he is mentioned as third prior, and in 1536,
as subprior, in which situation he continued till the Reformation.
The first occasion on which
we have found Mr John Winram making a public appearance was the trial of
George Wishart, the martyr. On that occasion he was appointed to open the
proceedings by a sermon, and he accordingly preached on the parable of the
wheat and tares: he mentioned that the word of God is "the only and
undoubted foundation of trying heresy without any superadded traditions,"
but held that heretics should be put down,—a position strangely inconsistent
with the command to let the tares and wheat grow together till harvest.
About the same period, archbishop Hamilton ordered the subprior to call a
convention of Black and Grey friars for the discussion of certain articles
of heretical doctrine. At this meeting, John Knox demanded from Winram a
public acknowledgment of his opinion, whether these heretical articles were
consistent or inconsistent with God’s word; but this the wary subprior
avoided. "I came not here as a judge," he replied, "but familiarly to talk,
and therefore I will neither allow nor disallow, but if ye list, I will
reason;" and accordingly he did reason, till Knox drove him from all his
positions, and he then laid the burden upon Arbuckle, one of the friars.
Winram attended the provincial councils of the Scottish clergy, held in 1549
and 1559, and, on the first of these occasions at least, took an active part
in the proceedings. Thus, up to the very period of the establishment of the
Reformation, he continued to act a decided part with the catholic clergy.
"There have been, and are," says Wodrow, "some of God’s children, and hidden
ones, in Babylon, * * and no doubt Mr Winram was useful even in this
period." May it not be asked, whether he did not, by a bad example, and a
pertinacious adherence to a system which he knew to be erroneous, greatly
more weaken the hands of his brethren, than he could possibly strengthen
them by his private exertions?
Winram, as prior of Portmoak,
attended the parliament of August, 1560, which ratified the protestant
Confession of Faith. The first General Assembly held in December following,
declared him fit for and apt to minister the word and sacraments; and on
Sunday, April 13, 1561, he was elected superintendent of Fife, Fothrick, and
Stratherne, "be the common consent of lordis, baronis, ministeris, elderis,
of the saidis bowndis, and otheris common pepill," &c. The transactions in
which he was engaged in this capacity present so little variety that we
shall merely take a short general view of them.
One of Winram’s earliest acts
as superintendent was the reversal of a sentence of condemnation which had
been passed on Sir John Borthwick, in 1540, for heresy. This gentleman had
saved himself by flight, but appears to have returned to Scotland in or
before 1560, for, at the first General Assembly, we find one of the members
"presented by Sir John Borthwick to the kirks of Aberdour and Torrie." It is
sufficiently singular that Winram was one of "those plain enemies to the
truth" described in the reversal of the sentence, who had assisted at the
trial and condemnation of the man whom he even then must have considered as
a friend, although he had not the courage or the honesty to avow it. The
notices of Winram in the records of the General Assembly consist, almost
without exception, of complaints against him, for negligence in visiting the
district or diocese committed to his charge. [These charges were brought
forward in December, 1562; December, 1564; December, 1565; December, 1567;
July, 1569; July, 1570; March, 1572.] This is a charge which was brought
more or less frequently against all the superintendents: the people on the
one hand seem to have been unreasonable in their expectations, and the
government, beyond all question, gave the clergy but little encouragement by
a liberal or even moderate provision for their wants. In Winram’s case,
however, the frequency of these complaints leaves on the mind a suspicion
that he was to a considerable extent in fault, and, on one occasion at
least, the complaint was accompanied with a charge of a covetous,
worldly-minded disposition,—a charge which circumstances we shall mention in
our general remarks on his character lead us to conclude were not unfounded.
He was several times employed in reconciling party and private disputes. In
1571, he was ordered by the General Assembly to inhibit Mr John Douglas, who
was appointed archbishop of St Andrews, to vote in parliament in name of the
church. In January, 1572, he attended the convention at Leith, at which
Tulchan bishops were authorized, and in the following month he was employed
as superintendent of the bounds to inaugurate the archbishop of St Andrews.
There are no subsequent notices of him of the slightest interest or
importance. He died on the 18th or 28th of September, 1582, (the date seems
uncertain,) leaving by his will James Winram and John Winram of Craigton,
sons of Mr Robert Winram of Ratho his brother, his principal heirs.
The character of Winram is by
no means free from suspicion. He was an early convert to the protestant
doctrines, but he neither abandoned his situation nor emoluments in the
catholic church; he did not, like almost all his brother superintendents,
expose himself to danger or to suffering by a public profession of his
sentiments, and when Knox, at the meeting of the Black and Grey friars,
demanded whether he conscientiously considered the doctrines then called
heretical contrary to God’s word, he not only evaded the question, but
argued on the popish side; he assisted at the trials of at least two of the
reformers, of whom one suffered, and the other only saved himself by flight.
It may perhaps be said that Winram expected to be thus able to advance the
reformation more effectually than by an open abandonment or opposition of
the popish church, but this is an argument which would in any case be liable
to strong suspicion, and which in Winram’s is rendered everything but
inadmissible by the other facts which are known respecting him. The truth
seems to be, and candour requires that it should be stated, that he
generally displayed a covetous, interested disposition. On this account he
was sometimes treated with no great respect, even by persons of inferior
rank: one person, indeed, was charged in 1561, before the kirk session of St
Andrews, with saying that he was a "fals, dissaitful, greedy, and dissemblit
smaik, for he wes ane of tham that maist oppressed, smored, and
held doun the word (kirk?) of God, and now he is cam into it and professes
the same for grediness of geir, lurkand and watchand quhill he may se ane
other tym." Nor does he seem to have possessed in any considerable
degree the confidence of his clerical brethren. It has been remarked that,
in the records of the proceedings of the first General Assembly, his name
appears but seventeenth on the list of persons considered fit to
minister, and is placed after those of men greatly his juniors. This is a
circumstance which mere accident may have occasioned, and is not of itself
entitled to much consideration; but of one fact there can be no doubt, that
in the whole course of thirty-six Assemblies, which, according to Wodrow, he
attended, he was never appointed moderator, nor intrusted even with a share
in the management of their more important transactions.
Winram married Margaret
Stewart, widow of . . . . Ayton of Kinnaldy, but she predeceased him without
having any family except by her first husband. Many passages in the books of
the commissariot of St Andrews show that the superintendent and his wife’s
sons were on indifferent terms, and leave one not without suspicion that he
made some attempt to deprive them of their just rights or property. In the
remarks which we have made on this and other parts of his conduct we have
been actuated by no other motive but a desire to draw a fair and impartial
conclusion from the facts which time has spared to us. At the same time, we
are sensible, and we mention it in justice to the memory of Winram and many
others, that, did the history of the period admit a fuller investigation,
considerations might arise which would probably place many transactions in a
different point of view. [Abridged from Wodrow’s Biographical Collections,
printed by the Maitland Club., i.] The only work known to have
been written by Winram is a catechism, which has long disappeared, and of
which not even a description is now known to exist. |
