He is described as having been modest in manner, sweet in temper, of retired and contemplative habits; so that, though he joined the more extreme Presbyterians, in his moderation he deeply lamented the division that had torn the Church asunder.

He was educated at the grammar school of Stirling by Mr William Wallace, studying Latin and Greek, and stayed there from 1613 until 1617 when he was called to Lanark as his mother was dying.

His father wished him to marry and settle down on an estate which he had purchased, but he resolved to study for the church, and having completed his theological course, received licence to preach in 1625.

He was in great request as a preacher and was still unordained, when, on the Monday after a communion, on his 27th birthday, in June 1630, he preached in the Kirk of Shotts, Lanarkshire, a sermon which is said to have produced a serious change in five hundred of his hearers.

[9] Patrons and parishes were anxious to secure his services, but his refusal to give the promise then required of obedience to the articles of Perth stood in the way of his receiving ordination.

He was ordained by some Scottish ministers under the presidency of Andrew Knox, bishop of Raphoe, who, to accommodate his countrymen, omitted those portions of the English ordinal to which they objected.

In September 1636 he and other Scots and English puritans to the number of 140 sailed for New England in a ship called the Eagle Wing, which they had built for the purpose.

He and other Scots who returned from Ireland formed the nucleus of an extreme party, which introduced innovations previously unknown in Scotland, such as the omission of the Lord's Prayer, creed, and ‘Gloria Patri’ in public worship.

During his ministry at Stranraer Livingstone frequently spent some months of the summer in Ulster, supplying vacant charges or officiating to the Scottish troops quartered there.

In 1648 the commission of the assembly sent him to dissuade these troops from obeying the order of the Scottish estates to join the army and then being raised in support of the ‘Engagement,’ but in this mission, he was not successful.

He was one of the commissioners appointed by the church to treat with Charles II at Breda in 1650, and while the ships conveying the royal party were lying at anchor off Speymouth, on their return to Scotland, Livingstone received the king's oath of fidelity to the covenants.

His party soon protested against the resolutions of the church that those who had taken part in the ‘Engagement’ might, on making professions of penitence, be allowed to serve in defence of the country.

‘Being at London,’ he says, ‘I found no great satisfaction, and therefore I left the other two there and came home.’ After the Restoration, he was called before the privy council, and on refusing to take the oath of allegiance because of its Erastian terms, was banished.

The boys admitted throwing the stones, and were sentenced to be scourged through the streets of Edinburgh, burned in the face with a hot iron, and then sold as slaves to Barbadoes.

The bishop of Glasgow, when applied to for a mitigation of the sentence, lest the woman should be with child, mildly answered that he would make them claw the itch out of her shoulders.

[13] He chose Rotterdam as his place of exile, and spent the remainder of his life there, often preaching in the Scottish church and devoting himself to theological study.

His own estimate of his sermons was, however, a very modest one, and he describes himself generally as ‘timorous, averse from debates, rather given to laziness than rashness, too easy to be wrought upon.’ In his later years, he expressed a great abhorrence of sectarianism.

[16] [17] Original portraits of John Livingston and his wife are at Gosford, East Lothian, and Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, and others were in the possession of Mrs Ralston Crosby, New York.