Robert Pont (Scottish politician)

Robert Pont (or Kylpont) (c.1524–1606), Scottish reformer, was educated at St. Andrews. In 1562 he was appointed minister at Dunblane and then at Dunkeld; in 1563, Commissioner for Moray, Inverness and Banff. Then in succession he became minister of Birnie (1567), provost of Trinity College near Edinburgh (1571), a lord of session (1572), minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh (1573) and at St. Andrews (1581).

Pont was a strenuous champion of ecclesiastical independence, and for protesting against parliamentary interference in church government he was obliged to leave his country. From 1584 to 1586 he was in England, but returning north he resumed his prominence in church matters and kept it until his death in 1606.

Born at or near Culross, then in Perthshire, he was the son of John Pont of Shyresmill and Catherine Murray. He received his early education in the parish school of Culross. In 1543 began studies in the college of St. Leonards at the university of St. Andrews. On completing the course of philosophy there, he is then said to have studied law at a foreign university; nothing, however, is definitely known of his career until 1559, when he was settled at St. Andrews, and acted as an elder of the kirk session there.

As a commissioner representing St. Andrews, Robert Pont was present at the very first meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, held in Edinburgh on 20 December 1560. He was one of twenty, within the diocese of St. Andrews, declared by the General Assembly to be qualified for ministry and teaching. He was chosen one of a committee to revise the Book of Discipline, printed in 1561. At a meeting of the General Assembly in July 1562 Pont was appointed to minister the word and sacraments at Dunblane, and in December of the same year he was appointed minister of Dunkeld. He was also in the same year nominated, along with Alexander Gordon, as candidate for the post of bishop of Galloway, but the election was not proceeded.

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