Patrick Adair

Patrick Adair (1625?–1694) was an Irish presbyterian minister, notable for his part in negotiations with government for religious liberty and settlement through his career.

Rev. Patrick Adair was of the family of Adair of Galloway, originally Irish (Fitzgeralds of Adare). He is usually treated as son of Rev. William Adair of Ayr (who administered the solemn league and covenant in Ulster 1644), but was probably the third son of Rev. John Adair of Genoch, Galloway. He was eyewitness, ‘being a boy,’ of the scene in Edinburgh High Church, 23 July 1637, when stools were flung at the dean and bishop on the introduction of the service-book. This places his birth about 1625.

He entered divinity classes of Glasgow College in December 1644, and was ordained at Cairncastle, County Antrim, 7 May 1646, by the "army presbytery" constituted in Carrickfergus 10 June 1642 by the chaplains of the Scottish regiments in Ulster. In 1648 Adair and his patron, James Shaw of Ballygally, were appointed on a committee to treat with General Monk and Sir Charles Coote, the parliamentary generals in Ulster, for the establishment of presbyterianism in those parts. But, on the beheading of Charles I, the presbyterian ministers of Antrim and Down (Milton's "blockish presbyters of Clanneboye") broke with the parliament and held a meeting in Belfast (February 1649), at which they protested against the king's death as an act of horror without precedent in history ‘divine or human,’ and agreed to pray for Charles II, who, for his part, promised to establish presbyterianism in Ulster. The parliamentary generals replaced the presbyterian by independent and baptist ministers, and Adair had to hide among the rocks near Cairncastle.

In March 1652 he took part in a public discussion on church government between presbyterian and independent ministers at Antrim Castle. He was the mouthpiece of the ministers who declined (October and November 1652) to take the engagement to be true to the commonwealth against any king, and was one of two ministers appointed to wait on General Fleetwood and the council in Dublin (January 1653) to seek relief therefrom. Being told that Roman Catholics might plead conscience as well as they, Adair drew a famous distinction between the consciences of the parties, ‘for papist consciences could digest to kill protestant kings.’ No relief was obtained, and commissioners were sent from Dublin in April to search the houses of such ministers as had not sought safety in flight. Adair's papers were seized, but restored to him through the daring act of a servant-maid at Larne.

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