He remained in London till 1543, when he returned with the Scots nobles taken prisoners at Solway Moss, residing mostly with the Earl of Glencairn.
In 1558 he accompanied Lord James Stewart, afterwards the Regent Moray, to witness the marriage of Queen Mary of Scotland to the dauphin of France.
In Quentin Kennedy's "Compendious Ressonyng" in support of the mass, he is referred to as profoundly "learnit in the mysteries of the New Testament" (Knox, Works, vi.
As the superintendent of Lothian and Tweeddale—which included Edinburgh and the most important part of southern Scotland—Spottiswood was a prominent figure in the ecclesiastical politics of the time, although rather as the mere representative of other leaders—Knox, of course, especially—than as himself a leader.
[4] On the birth of James VI Spottiswood was deputed by the general assembly in June 1566 to congratulate Queen Mary, and to desire that the prince "might be baptised according to the form issued in the Reformed Church"—a request that was not granted.
After the queen's imprisonment in Lochleven and the resignation of the government, he officiated at the coronation of the young king at Stirling on 29 July 1567, placing the crown on his head, assisted by the superintendent of Angus and the bishop of Orkney.
After Mary's flight to England he directed a letter to the lords who "had made defection from the king's majesty," in which he affirmed that God's just judgment was come upon the kingdom mainly because the queen's escape had not been prevented by her execution, "according as God's law commanded murderers and adulterers to die the death;" and exhorted all the supporters "of that wicked woman" in whom, he insinuated, "the devil himself had been loosed," to return to "the bosom of the Kirk" on pain of excommunication (printed in Calderwood's History, ii.
In 1570 he was, at the instance of Knox, sent by the kirk session of Edinburgh to admonish Kirkcaldy of Grange, who held the castle for the queen, of "his offence against God" (Richard Bannatyne, Memorials, p. 80), but without any effect.
According to his son, "in his last days, when he saw the ministers take such liberty as they did, and heard of the disorders raised in the church through that confused parity which men laboured to introduce, as likewise the irritation the king received by a sort of foolish preachers, he lamented extremely the case of the church to those who came to visit him," and "continually foretold that the ministers in their follies would bring religion in hazard" (Spottiswood, History, ii.