John Row was one of six ministers appointed by the Lords of the Congregation for "writing in a book their judgments touching the Reformation of religion."
He was styled Commissioner of Nithsdale and Galloway, March 1570 and elected Moderator of the General Assembly 21 July and 25 December 1567, 24 April 1576, and 11 June 1578.
He was regarded as "a cautious and prudent reformer, of moderate views, benevolent disposition, and amiable and winning manners, a wise and grave father, of good literature according to the time."
He devoted himself specially to the study of the civil and canon law, and shortly after taking the degree of M.A., commenced to practise as an advocate in the consistorial court of St. Andrews.
The ability with which he discharged the duties of his commission commended him to the special notice of Guido Ascanio Sforza, Cardinal of Sancta Flora, as well as to Julius III and his successor, Paul IV.
On 20 July 1556 he was made licentiate of laws of the university of Rome, and subsequently, at the request of Cardinal Sforza, he accepted the degree of LL.D.
[4] Row was first led to entertain doubts regarding things he'd been taught by discovering—through the information of John Colville of Cleish, known as Squire Meldrum—a fraud practised by the priests at the chapel of Our Lady at Loretto, Musselburgh, in pretending to have restored the sight of a boy who they falsely affirmed had been born blind.
He entered upon his duties there prior to 20 December, when he was present as minister of Perth in the first meeting of the general assembly of the church of Scotland (Calderwood, ii.
He is supposed to have been the first to teach the Hebrew language in Scotland, and he also instructed the master of the grammar school of Perth—then one of the most famous in Scotland—in Greek.
Several of the sons of noblemen and gentlemen attending the academy were boarded in Row's house, and he instructed them in Greek, Hebrew, and French.
[5] Row was one of a commission of six men (all named John) appointed in April 1560 to draw up the sum of the doctrine "necessary to be believed and received within the realm".
After the marriage he was also, with other commissioners, sent to request the queen and king to take steps for securing that the third of the benefices should be paid to the ministers, and that the mass and all 'idolatry' should be abolished (Knox, ii.
In 1566 he was appointed, along with the superintendent of Lothian, to take steps that the gift of the third of the benefices, which the queen had promised, "might be despatched through the seals" (ib.
On the petition of the kirk in reference to benefices being rejected by the parliament of the king's party at Stirling, in August 1571, Row, preaching on the Sunday following, "denounced judgments against the lords for their covetousness" (ib.
At the assembly convened at Edinburgh on 6 March 1573 complaint was laid against him for having a plurality of benefices, and for solemnising a marriage betwixt the master of Crawford and the daughter of Lord Drummond "without proclaiming the banns and out of due time" (ib.
[7] By his wife Margaret, daughter of John Beaton of Balfour in Fife, he had ten sons and two daughters: Calderwood describes Row as "a wise and grave father, and of good literature according to the time," and states that "he thundered out mightily against the estate of the bishops, howbeit in the time of blindness the pope was to him as an angel of God" (ib.