John was educated by his father; he was so precocious that he knew Hebrew at the age of seven, and read daily after dinner or supper portions of the Old Testament in the original.

Sir George Bruce of Carnock also intervened on his behalf and sent a letter by one of his servants, Richard Christie, to the Archbishop.

[3] He was the third surviving son of John Row, a Scottish reformer, and Margaret Beaton of Balfour; he was born at Perth about the end of December 1568, and baptised on 6 January 1569.

Sent to the grammar school of Perth, he instructed the master in Hebrew, who on this account was accustomed to call him Magister John Row.

degree in August 1590, he became schoolmaster of Aberdour in Fife; he was towards the close of December 1592 ordained minister of Carnock, in the presbytery of Dunfermline.

[4] Row signed on 1 July 1606 the protest of the Scottish Parliament against the introduction of episcopacy; and he was also one of those who in the same year met at Linlithgow with the ministers who were to be tried for holding an assembly at Aberdeen, contrary to the royal command.

By the same general assembly, he was also named to a committee to construct such constitutions and laws as might prevent corruptions like those that had troubled the kirk in the past.

[4] He died 26 June 1646, after a few days' illness, and was buried at the east end of Carnock Church, where a monumental stone was erected to his memory.

Row, Pastor hujus ecclesise fidelissimus : vixit acerrimus veritatis et foederis Scoticani assertor : hierarchias pseudo-episcopalis et Romanorum rituum cordicitus osor : in frequenti symmistarum apostasia cubi instar constantissimus."

Though bald with age, and prest with weight, In crooked times this man went straight : His pen kept hid things on record For which the Prelats him abhorr'd : And his Carnock, his little quarter For Canterbury he would not barter.

In 1842 it was printed for the Wodrow Society, chiefly from a manuscript in the university of Edinburgh, under the title ‘Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, from the year 1558 to August 1637, by John Row, Minister of Carnock, with a Continuation to July 1639, by his son, John Row, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen.’ An edition was also printed in the same year by the Maitland Club.