His father the Rt Rev Thomas Rattray (1684–1743) was an Episcopalian priest who became the Bishop of Dunkeld, then of Brechin and was elected Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

These were to do with the administration of the competition indicating that the draw should be made from a bonnet, that it should be open to any golfer from Great Britain & Ireland and that clerks should mark down each stroke.

It is Rattray's signature that appears below the 13 original rules of golf[10] recorded in the minute book of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

[8] The rules signed by Rattray lay undisturbed in the minute book of the Honourable Company for some 200 years until discovered there by the golf historian CB Clapcott in 1937.

John Rattray joined the Jacobite army just after their victory at the Battle of Prestonpans on 21 September, when the call went out to Edinburgh surgeons to care for the wounded.

Rattray rode the five miles from his house at South Foulis Close near the foot of Edinburgh's High Street with his colleague George Lauder, Deacon (president) of the Incorporation of Surgeons.

Rattray stayed with the Jacobite army as it advanced into England then retreated from Derby, eventually becoming Surgeon-general and personal surgeon to Prince Charles.

After the battle of Culloden, Rattray surrendered to the Hanoverians and was imprisoned in Inverness, but he and Lauder were not allowed to treat the wounded among their fellow prisoners.

Robert Forbes, bishop of Ross and Caithness, in his detailed contemporary account of events of the '45 rising The Lyon in Mourning[12] describes how Rattray was taunted by a Hanoverian officer "We know well what you are sir, the Pretender’s surgeon.

They were freed but Cumberland ordered that they be rearrested in Edinburgh and they were held in London until January 1747 when they were finally released having signed an oath of obedience to the King.