1510 – between 1555 and 1560), the third son of James Wedderburn and Janet Barrie, was born in Dundee, and attended St Andrews University.
He may also have spent some time with his brother John Wedderburn at Wittenberg in the 1540s, a suggestion given credence by the fact that on his return journey to Scotland in 1546 he embarked at Frankfurt an der Oder.
Crawford relates that when Robert was journeying back to Scotland and his ship had put in on the coast of Norway, a dispute arose between the Roman Catholic and Protestant passengers, which led Robert and his fellow reformers to burn Cardinal David Beaton in effigy.
In conjunction with his brothers James and John, he wrote a number of sacred parodies on popular ballads, which were published apparently at first as broadsheet ballads, and were afterwards collected and issued in 1567, under the title Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs collected out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie, with augmentation of sundrie gude and godlie Ballates not contenit in the first editioun.
It has been suggested that Robert Wedderburn was the author of The Complaynt of Scotland (1549), and, although that work's positive attitudes towards the established church made it seem unlikely to some[1] that the ascription was accurate, the editor of the 1979 Scottish Text Society edition of the work[2] and the National Library of Scotland[3] support the Wedderburn attribution.