Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Annand, William
ANNAND, WILLIAM (1633–1689), dean of Edinburgh, was born at Ayr in 1633. Four years afterwards his father, minister of Ayr, was seriously assaulted by the presbyterian women of Glasgow for having preached in favour of Laud's liturgy before the diocesan synod held in that city; and being deposed by the general assembly in 1638, the elder Annand migrated to England, where he ultimately obtained church preferment, first as vicar of Throwley, and afterwards as rector of Leaveland, in Kent. In 1651 his son was admitted a scholar of University College, Oxford, then under presbyterian rule, but while there he consorted with royalists and adherents of episcopacy. He proceeded B.A. in July 1655, and having, in 1656, received orders at the hands of an Irish bishop, he performed the Anglican service for some years at Weston-in-the-Green, Oxon. Some time after taking his M.A. degree, in July 1656, he became vicar of Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, and published, in 1661, his ‘Fides Catholica, or the Doctrine of the Catholic Church,’ containing the substance of sermons preached before the Restoration. During the next year Annand returned at last to his native country, as chaplain to the Earl of Middleton, the royal commissioner in the parliament which restored episcopacy in Scotland. In 1663 Annand was appointed minister of what was then called the Tolbooth church in Edinburgh, from which he was transferred, a few years afterwards, to the charge of the Tron church in the same city. Mention is made of a sermon which he preached in Edinburgh in 1664, ‘on the composing all differences’ (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1664–5, p. 93), and in 1676 he was made dean of Edinburgh, the degree of D.D. being conferred on him by the university of St. Andrews in 1685. As dean of Edinburgh, Annand was on the scaffold at the right hand of the Earl of Argyle on his execution in 1686, and received from him ‘his paper.’ Having lived to see episcopacy restored in Scotland, he died just when it was being abolished, on 13 June 1689, the very day that Edinburgh Castle was surrendered to the convention of Scottish estates by the Duke of Gordon, who had held it for James II. On his deathbed Annand said that ‘he never thought to have outlived the church of Scotland, yet hoped others should live to see it restored.’ Besides 1. the ‘Fides Catholica,’ Dean Annand published: 2. ‘Panem Quotidianum’ (1661); 3. a sermon in defence of the liturgy, on Hosea xiv. 2 (1661); 4. ‘Pater Noster, or the Lord's Prayer explained’ (1670); 5. ‘Mysterium Pietatis, or the Mystery of Godliness’ (1672); 6. ‘Doxologia’ (1672); 7. ‘Dualitas, or a two-fold subject explained’ (1674), a politico-ecclesiastical treatise. ‘A Funerall Elegie upon the death of George Sonds, Esq., who was killed by his brother, Mr. Freeman Sonds. Ann. Domini 1655. By William Annand, junior,’ is also ascribed to the dean in the new catalogue of the British Museum library. His writings are flavoured with a lively quaintness, which sometimes reminds one of Thomas Fuller.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), iv. 257, and Fasti, ii. 187, 214; Biographia Britannica (Kippis's), sub nomine; Principal Baillie's Letters and Journals (1841), i. 20; Lord Fountainhall's Historical Observes (1840), p. 193, and his Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs (1848), p. 754 (Bannatyne Club); Grub's Ecclesiastical History of Scotland (1861).]