James Lawson was the Church of Scotland minister who succeeded John Knox at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh.

On Knox's death Lawson became one of the recognised leaders of the kirk, and encouraged a policy of intolerance without increasing its prosperity.

Subsequently the Duke of Lennox, who had been the chief instrument of Morton's fall, lamentably disappointed the hopes of the presbyterians, and Lawson became one of his most persistent opponents.

Always a man of melancholic mood, he was so affected by the troubles of the times and the unworthy conduct of some of his flock that he resolved to leave the country altogether, and make his home in England.

When his flight and that of Walter Balcanquall became known an act was passed by the privy council declaring that they had left their charges void ' against their duties and professions,' and appointing other ministers to preach in their stead (Reg.

[21] The turn of events had seriously affected the health of Lawson, and, according to Calderwood, 'waisted his vitall spirits by peece meale' (ib.

[22][23] James Melville spoke of him as "a man of singular learning, zeal, and eloquence, whom I never heard preach but he melted my heart with tears " (Diary, p. 146).

His funeral, on the following day, was the occasion of a gathering of English and Scottish presbyterians not only more impressive than any other recorded in the sixteenth century, but in a sense more representative than even the Westminster assembly.

An Anglo-Scottish element was present in the persons of one Guthrie, a Scot who kept a school at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, and who was related to Lawson's wife; John Morrison, formerly a minister in East Lothian, and now curate of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate; and William Lynne, a Glasgow graduate whom Thomas Smeton had sent to England and who later became a student and a fellow at Cambridge.

The English puritans were represented by the well-known Walter Travers, now preacher at the Temple; John Field, the party organiser; William Charke, preacher at Lincoln's Inn; Gardener from Whitechapel; Dr. Crook of Gray's Inn; Barber of St. Mary-le-bow; Stephen Egerton of St. Anne's in Blackfriars; Edmonds of Allhallows in Bread Street; "Hundsone" or "Indsonn" of St. Peter's in Cheapside; and Lever Wood, recently deprived for non-conformity.

The high master of St. Paul's school (John Harrison) was there, and the three ministers of the French church in London.

The total number present was over five hundred, at a time when the average attendance at a London funeral — so at least the Scots believed — was seldom one hundred; there were many women who had been "careful mothers and sisters" to the deceased, including an alder- man's wife who had bestowed twenty grains of unicorn's horn on him.

[24] After his death a forged testament was put forth in his name by Bishop Adamson, in which he is represented as repenting of his opposition to episcopacy (ib.

[17] He married Janet (died 1592), daughter of Alexander Guthrie, common clerk of Edinburgh, and had issue — Lawson is the author of the account of Knox's last illness, originally published as an appendix to Thomas Smeton's Ad Virvlentvm Archibaldi Hamiltonii Apostatæ Dialogvm Responsio 1579, its title being Eximii Viri Johannis Knoxii, Scoticanæ ecclesiæ lnstauratoris Fidelissimi, vera extremæ vitæ et obitus Historia, a Pio quodam, et Docto Viro descripta, qui ad extremum usque spiritum segrotanti assedit.