Robert Douglas (minister)

Robert Douglas (1594–1674) was the only minister of the Church of Scotland to be Moderator of the General Assembly five times.

Douglas officiated at the coronation of Charles II at Scone in 1651. During the ceremony he preached a sermon which said that it was the monarch's duty to maintain the established religion of Scotland and to bring the other religions in Britain into conformity with it. Douglas assisted in the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and afterwards was offered the bishopric of Edinburgh if he would accept the introduction of episcopacy into Scotland. He refused, and was latterly simply Pastor of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh and then Minister of the Parish of Pencaitland until his death.

He was son of George Douglas, governor of Laurence, Lord Oliphant; the father was said to be an illegitimate son of Sir George Douglas of Lochleven, brother of Sir William Douglas, 6th Earl of Morton. He was educated at the University of St Andrews, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1614.

He became minister of Kirkaldy in 1628, and a year later was offered a charge at South Leith, which he declined. He became chaplain to one of the brigades of Scottish auxiliaries sent with the connivance of Charles I to the aid of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War. Gustavus landed in Germany in June 1630; Robert Wodrow, in his ‘Analecta,’ gives several anecdotes, showing how he appreciated Douglas's advice. Returning to Scotland, he was elected in 1638 member of the General Assembly, and in the following year was chosen for the second charge of the High Church in Edinburgh. In 1641 he was removed to the Tolbooth Church, and in July of the same year preached a sermon before the Scottish parliament. In the following year he was chosen moderator of the general assembly—a post he also held in 1645, 1647, 1649, and 1651—and in 1643 he was named one of the commissioners of the Westminster Assembly.

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