Robert Baillie was a Church of Scotland minister who became famous as an author and a propagandist for the Covenanters.
Allan Ramsay was a Scottish poet, playwright, publisher, librarian and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Ramsay's influence extended to England, foreshadowing the reaction that followed the publication of Percy's Reliques. He was on close terms with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England. He corresponded with William Hamilton of Bangour, William Somervile, John Gay and Alexander Pope.
Richard Cameron was a leader of the militant Presbyterians, known as Covenanters, who resisted attempts by the Stuart monarchs to control the affairs of the Church of Scotland, acting through bishops. While attempting to revive the flagging fortunes of the Covenanting cause in 1680, he was tracked down by the authorities and killed in a clash of arms at Airds Moss in Ayrshire. His followers took his name as the Cameronians and ultimately formed the nucleus of the later Scottish regiment of the same name, the Cameronians. The regiment was disbanded in 1968.
Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian and one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.
William Thom was a Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots language. He was author of The Mitherless Bairn and other works. He was known as the "Inverury Poet".
Archibald Johnston, Lord Wariston was a Scottish judge and statesman.
Robert Blair was a Scottish presbyterian minister who became a Westminster Divine and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1646, after failing to emigrate to Boston in 1636. Born in Irvine in 1593, the sixth son of John Blair of Windyedge, a merchant-adventurer and cadet of Blair, and Beatrix Mure of the Rowallan family, he gained an MA at the University of Glasgow in 1612 and became regent there in 1615. When the episcopalian John Cameron was appointed Principal, Blair resigned and went to Ireland, to become minister of a Presbyterian congregation at Bangor, County Down. He was ordained for it by Robert Echlin, Bishop of Down and Connor, Blair was "very careful to inform... of what accusations had been laid against me of disaffection to the civil powers, whom he was the use of the English liturgy nor Episcopal government.... I declared my opinion fully to the Bishop at our first meeting... [who] said to me, 'I hear good of you, and will impose no conditions on you'". Echlin, however, turned against him. In September 1631, he was suspended from his ministry and on 4 May 1632 deposed. Though bent on emigrating to New England, the ship in which he and other ministers sailed was driven back by weather, a sign, Blair thought, that his services were still required at home. He dodged an order for his arrest by escaping to Scotland and was admitted to the Second Charge of Ayr in July 1638. After periods in Scotland and Ireland, he accompanied the Scottish army to England in 1640 and helped to negotiate the 1641 Peace of Ripon. In 1646, Blair was elected Moderator of General Assembly, then Chaplain-in-Ordinary to King Charles I. He was also on a committee endeavouring in 1648 to get Cromwell to establish "a uniformity of religion in England". He was summoned to London by Cromwell in 1654, but excused himself on grounds of ill health. On the establishment of episcopacy he was removed from his charges in September 1661, confined to Musselburgh, then to Kirkcaldy for three and a half years, and then to Meikle Couston, Aberdour, Fife, where he died on 27 August 1666 and was buried.
William Henry Oliphant Smeaton, sometimes using the pen name Oliphant Smeaton, was a Scottish writer, journalist, editor, historian and educator. He was popularly known for his writing on Australian life and literature for various British publications as well as for his adventure and children's fiction novels during the 1890s. Later in his career, Smeaton also published books on Scottish antiquities and edited English literary text, ballads and collections of verse and prose. His best known work, The Life and Works of William Shakespeare (1911), was especially successful and enjoyed several reprints. He also contributed several biographies for the "Famous Scots Series" published by Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier.
Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier was a Scottish publishing company based in the national capital Edinburgh.
Hector Carsewell Macpherson was a prolific Scottish writer and journalist who published books, pamphlets and articles on history, biography, politics, religion, and other subjects.
Louis A. Barbé (1845–1926) was born in France and came to Glasgow as a French teacher. He settled in Scotland and wrote innumerable books on Scottish history and biography. He was born on 15 November 1845, son of Charles Barbé, Commissaire de Marine, Cherbourg. His mother was Desirée Barbé, née Javelot. He was educated in France and began his teaching career as Professor of English at the College Jean-Bart, Dunkerque. For six years he was tutor to the Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe. In 1880, he married Alice Rosa Allen, who was the daughter of John George Allen of Guernsey. He moved to Glasgow in 1884 and was head of the Modern Languages department at the Glasgow Academy from 1884 to 1918. He was employed as a reviewer with the Glasgow Herald from 1887 to 1926 and joined the Institute of Journalists in 1893. He acted as an examiner in French at the University of Edinburgh from 1901 and in Modern Languages at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. His books are remarkably well-written and show no obvious French influence. He died on 10 September 1926 at Dunbar, East Lothian.
W. Keith Leask was a writer and a classics lecturer at the University of Aberdeen. He wrote several biographies and works in classics.
John Geddie (1848–1937) was a journalist and author of several books mainly on the subject of Edinburgh. His earliest books were about foreign parts but it is not known whether he actually visited these places.
Sir John Herkless was a Scottish biographer and educator who was Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of St Andrews and Principal of United College of St Salvator and St Leonard from 1915 to 1920. He was knighted in 1917 and was the author of several books mainly of an ecclesiastical nature.
T. Banks Maclachlan (1865–1952) was born in Glasgow in 1865. His father was John Maclachlan, a clothier, and his mother was Agnes Jameson. He was educated at George Watson's College, Glasgow, and at Edinburgh University, where he attended Professor David Masson's English Literature class. He joined the Institute of Journalists in 1890. He married Jessie Gilchrist Dunlop on 21 July 1893 at Edinburgh, and apparently emigrated with his 81-year-old wife to Australia in February 1949. He died on 13 April 1952. His wife Jesse Gilchrist died on 1 December 1954 at Camperdown, Victoria.
Eve Blantyre Simpson, sometimes credited as Evelyn Blanytre Simpson, Eva Blantyre Simpson, or E. Blantyre Simpson, was a Scottish writer, author of biographies, short stories, a book about dogs, and a book on the folklore of lowland Scotland.
Rosaline Masson (1867–1949) was a Scottish author and a prolific writer of novels, biographies, histories and other works.
Margaret Moyes Black was a Scottish novelist and biographer. She was born on 27 April 1853 in the parish of Scoonie, Fife. Her father was William Black, a shipmaster, and her mother was Margaret Moyes Deas. She wrote her first novel, In Glenoran, under the pseudonym of M.B. Fife. Of the volume on Robert Louis Stevenson, in the Famous Scots Series, Black stated in her preface that it is, "only a reminiscence and an appreciation by one who, in the old days between 1869 and 1880, knew him and his home circle well." She was unmarried and died on 16 October 1935 at Montrose, Angus.
Rev Archibald Riddell (1635–1708) was a Scots-born 17th-century Presbyterian church minister in Scotland and America. His name is sometimes spelled Riddel. He preached at conventicles in a time when such actions were considered high treason. He was imprisoned on the Bass Rock and was later banished to New Jersey.
William Gordon was a 17th-century landowner and Covenanter. He is remembered as being a correspondent in Samuel Rutherford's Letters and being one of the biographies in John Howie's Scots Worthies. He was regarded as a man of strong religious convictions and piety. In 1664 he was banished for listening to ministers who lacked a government licence, both at his mother's house and in the woods. He arrived at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge after the fighting was over and, hesitating to surrender, was shot.
