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- Paterson, John (1632?1708), archbishop of Glasgow, was the eldest son of John Paterson (1604?1679), minister of Foveran and later bishop of Ross, and Elizabeth Ramsay, his wife. Admitted to Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1648, on 13 March 1655 he was admitted to study theology at St Andrews. Having taught for a year, on 3 February 1658 he was entered as a regent in St Leonard's College there. On 28 October 1658 he married Margaret (d. c.1685), daughter of Henry Wemyss, brother of the principal, George Wemyss of Conland. In April 1659, after the first child of their large family was born, Paterson publicly acknowledged his antenuptial fornication, the first of several scandals alleged during his lifetime.
On 6 November 1659 Paterson was called, against some opposition, to succeed his father at Ellon, Aberdeenshire, where he was admitted in June 1660. On 24 October 1662 Edinburgh town council chose him for the Tron Kirk, to which he was admitted on 4 January 1663. Appointed a royal chaplain on 6 May 1668, in 1671 he was considered for the archdeaconry of St Andrews, but on 12 July 1672 became dean of Edinburgh, and on 13 November 1673 a burgess there. Both Archbishop James Sharp and the duke of Lauderdale, for whom he acted as eyes and ears, appreciated his abilities and strong opposition to the agitation for a national synod during 1674, rewarding him with an appointment to the see of Galloway on 20 October 1674.
After his consecration in May 1675 Bishop Paterson mainly administered his diocese from Edinburgh, where he had licence to live on the grounds there was no sufficient dwelling in Galloway. He opposed further indulgence of presbyterians in 1676?7, zealously supporting Lauderdale's later policy of intolerance. His reward on 27 September 1678 was a seat on the privy council, which he very diligently attended. His brother William was council clerk. On 29 March 1679, at the duchess of Lauderdale's behest, he was translated to the bishopric of Edinburgh, which was vacated by the humiliating translation to Ross of Bishop Young to succeed Paterson's father, who had died in January. In 1681 Paterson was called upon to explain the Test Act to persuade refusers to comply. At this period he endured mockery as ?Bishop Band-Strings? in Gordon's Reformed Bishop, 1679 (p. 5), and attracted considerable odium as the only bishop on the privy council's committee for the security of the kingdom. In May 1684 the earl of Aberdeen stood accused of, among other wrongs, siding with those such as Paterson who were ?odious to the country? (Lauder, Historical Observes, 131). Caught in the struggle between Aberdeen, the marquess of Queensberry, and the earl of Perth, Paterson was omitted from the council on 15 July 1684, and stripped of his pension of £100 (granted on 9 July 1680), apparently because his claims for it were false. In April 1685 he was excluded from the new council appointed by James VII. That July he was granted 20,000 merks annually from the town of Edinburgh in lieu of an episcopal residence. About 1686 he married Mary Foulis (d. 1691) of the Colinton family.
In February 1686 Paterson accompanied Archbishop Arthur Ross to court to discuss church affairs and assure the king of their personal support for his proposed repeal of the sanguinary element of the penal laws against Catholics. On his return Paterson was reappointed to the council and granted a pension of £150 and other gifts, including the chancellorship of the University of Edinburgh, although the latter was not carried through. In May he helped to draft a bill for repeal, but it failed, partly because other bishops opposed it. He blamed the earl of Tweeddale and Viscount Tarbat, even boasting that he would have voted against the act. Fountainhall noted his ?craft and suttlety? (Historical Notices, 2.738). As Archbishop Alexander Cairncross of Glasgow fell from favour during 1686 Paterson and Ross were empowered to receive nonconformist clergy in his diocese. The council's records show that, despite his enduringly unpleasant reputation and political shrewdness, Paterson could also exercise clemency. James added him to the secret committee on 17 December 1686, and nominated him archbishop of Glasgow on 21 January 1687 in place of Cairncross, whom he deprived. On 8 March Paterson was translated to Glasgow. He sought unsuccessfully to hold Edinburgh in commendam, proposing the alienation of its revenues to the Chapel Royal at Holyrood, which prolonged the vacancy. On 29 January 1688 he preached a thanksgiving sermon for the queen's pregnancy. On 23 May he was reappointed to the privy council, and was consulted on measures against conventiclers.
On 3 November, in response to William of Orange's declarations, Paterson subscribed the bishops' declaration of loyalty, and in December he and his brethren commissioned bishops Bruce and Alexander Rose to consult the English hierarchy in London. He sought Archbishop William Sancroft's advice about representing the church's predicament, and excused his and the primate's compliance in 1686, which he ascribed to the bishops' vulnerability to the king's wide prerogative. On about 17 January he sent an address to Prince William for a proclamation to protect the parish clergy in the south and west subject to ejections. He recommended his dean, Robert Scott, who journeyed south for redress of their grievances, and was probably in London himself, returning in March for the sitting of the estates. He claimed that the bishops showed especial fortitude in upholding James's rights and interest in the intimidating presence of armed Cameronians, and under the temptation to comply with William and Mary's regime to secure themselves in office. In the committee of elections he vainly protested against the election of former traitors. He failed to persuade the convention to represent grievances to James before proceeding further, nor to prevent the forfaulture vote on 4 April by a strong speech in which he asserted James's rights, warned of civil war, and in the bishops' name dissented from the vote. The bishops withdrew from the convention and were absent when parliament abolished episcopacy on 22 July 1689.
As a result of his plotting with the earl of Arran and others, on 18 April 1691 the privy council ordered Paterson's imprisonment and the seizure of his papers. While in Edinburgh Castle, from which he was released once in July 1691 to visit his sick wife at Colinton, he persisted in Jacobite intrigue. Armed with evidence of a plot to coincide with a French invasion, the government persuaded him to accept voluntary banishment in January 1693. Next year, while at Leiden, where his son John was studying law, he attempted to gain the earl of Portland's favour by forwarding an invitation to St Germain that he had received from King James. He next lived in Hamburg. All his efforts to gain a remission failed until he was allowed to live under surveillance in London, where he arrived on 29 September 1695. He received an offer of marriage from a Lady Warner, which came to nothing. From June 1696 he sojourned at Norwich, then at Great Yarmouth, where sympathizers ?much caress'd? him (Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, 181).
On his return to Scotland in early 1697 Paterson was obliged to live in or near Cupar, Fife. His complaints about confinement contrary to a subject's rights led to his release in 1701. At Queen Anne's accession he argued that episcopalians could now own Anne's title, because the Roman Catholic James Stuart was in effect a French prisoner, morally and physically incapable of the crown. At an episcopal meeting Archbishop Ross and Bishop Rose believed that they had secured an agreement not to adopt this legitimist position, but in January 1703 Paterson, aided by bishops George Haliburton and Ramsay, sponsored an address for toleration by about a hundred clergy. The Toleration Bill of 1703 failed, but Paterson tried to capitalize on his new found loyalty by unscrupulously highlighting his brethren's Jacobitism and portraying the duke of Queensberry, who had blocked the toleration measure, as the episcopalians' friend, much to the queen's bemusement. Nevertheless, besides stressing his role in fostering the former nonjurors' loyalty Paterson sought help for the clergy and his brother bishops at court during the winter of 1703?4. At the same time he wanted more for himself and his eleven children than the £300 sterling allowed to each archbishop in 1702. He secured a grant of £200 for their support after his death. His numerous begging letters during the years 1702?7 bear out the Jacobite George Lockhart of Carnwath's judgement that although possessed of ?extraordinary parts and great learning?, Paterson above all indulged an ?avaricious worldly temper? (Lockhart, 1.84?5). Bishop Rose reckoned him the wealthiest churchman since the Reformation. Although the senior bishop from 1704, he was less active in church affairs than Rose, with whom in December 1704 he accredited Robert Scott as agent for the clergy charity. On 25 January 1705, in his private chapel, he, Rose, and Bishop Douglas consecrated John Sage and John Fullarton as bishops. He suffered increasing ill health, and after revoking parts of his peevish will, on 9 December 1708 he died at his house in Edinburgh, and was buried on 23 December in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood. [Oxford DNB]
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1632 - 1708 (76 years)