[1] Spottiswoode had originally become prominent as an ardent supporter of the strict Presbyterian party, but gradually came to see the inconveniences of "parity of ministers", attributed little importance to the existing matters of dispute, and thought that the interests of both church and state were best secured by keeping on good terms with the king.

He was therefore ready to co-operate with James in curtailing the independent powers of the Kirk which encroached on the royal authority, and in assimilating the Church of Scotland into the Anglican Communion.

[1] In 1608 he worked closely with George Home, Earl of Dunbar in appointing suitable ministers to vacant parishes in the Borders as part of James' programme for bringing peace to the region.

In 1615 he was made Archbishop of St Andrews and Episcopalian Primate of Scotland, and in 1618 procured the sanction of the privy council to the Five Articles of Perth with their ratification by parliament in 1621.

He was a spectator of the riot of St Giles, Edinburgh, on 23 July 1637, endeavoured in vain to avoid disaster by concessions, and on the taking of the Covenant perceived that "now all that we have been doing these thirty years past is thrown down at once."

[1] Spottiswoode published in 1620 Refutatio libelli de regimine ecclesiae scoticanae, an answer to a tract of David Calderwood, who replied in the Vindiciae subjoined to his Altare damascenum (1623).

This historian, as appears from his private correspondence, was engaged in all the Jesuitical plots of the government for overturning Presbytery, which he had sworn to support, and could hardly be expected to give a fair account of transactions in which his own credit was so deeply implicated, and for his share in which he was afterwards excommunicated by the Church which he had betrayed.