In 1611 he acquired Tarvet and other lands in Fife, to which he gave the name of Scotstarvet, and six years later he was knighted then made a privy councillor in 1622 by James VI, in whose honour he published a Latin poem, Hodœporicon in serenissimi et invictissimi Principis Jacobi Sexti ex Scotiâ suâ discessum.
He did not practise much, if at all, at the bar, but recommended himself to Charles I of Scotland by a suggestion for increasing the revenue by altering the law of feudal tenure.
He was one of many Scottish lawyers and lairds who accepted the covenant, which he subscribed at his parish kirk of Ceres, Fife on 30 April 1638, and in the following November he declined to sign the king's confession.
Sir James Balfour described Scott's public character in a few words: 'He was a busy man in troubled times.'
He consoled himself for his disappointment in losing office by composing The Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen, not published until a hundred years after his death.
[3][4] Scotstarvit Tower, which Sir John rebuilt, still stands, and the inscription, with his initials and those of his first wife, Anne Drummond, as the builders, and its date (1627) are carved on a stone over the door.
The tower became a kind of college, where he attracted round him the learned Scotsmen of the time, and corresponded with the scholars of Holland, Caspar Barlæus, Isaac Gruterus, and others.
In 1620 he endowed the professorship of humanity or Latin in his old college, St. Leonard's, at the university of St. Andrews, in spite of the opposition of the regents of St. Salvator.
[5] Scott's intimacy with Joan Blaeu of Amsterdam led to the inclusion of a Scottish volume in the series of Delitiæ Poetarum then being issued by that enterprising publisher.
The work was not issued till 1654, when it appeared as 'Geographiæ Blaeuaniæ volumen quintum,’ with dedicatory epistles to Scot both by Blaeu and Gordon of Straloch.