Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jack, Thomas
JACK, THOMAS (d. 1598), Scottish schoolmaster, was appointed minister of Rutherglen in the presbytery of Glasgow, in 1567, and subsequently became master of Glasgow grammar school. In 1570 he was presented by James VI to the vicarage of Eastwood in the presbytery of Paisley, and in August 1574 resigned his mastership. In 1577 his name occurs as quæstor of Glasgow University, along with the record of his gift of the works of St. Ambrose and St. Gregory to the university. In 1582 he was an opponent of the appointment of Robert Montgomery as archbishop of Glasgow, and from 1581 to 1590 he was thrice member of the general assemblies, and in 1589 a commissioner for the preservation of the true religion. He was imprisoned before 1591 with Dalgleish, Patrick Melville, and others. He died in 1598. His widow, Euphemia Wylie, survived till 1608, and a daughter, Elizabeth, became the wife of Patrick Sharpe, principal of Glasgow University. While master of Glasgow grammar school, Jack began a dictionary in Latin hexameter verse of proper names occurring in the classics. Andrew Melville encouraged and helped him; and he tells us that when he called on George Buchanan at Stirling, the great man interrupted his history of Scotland, the sheets of which were lying on the table, to correct Jack's book with his own hand. Robert Pont, Hadrian Damman, and other scholars also gave their aid. The dictionary, a work of considerable scholarship, was finally published as ‘Onomasticon Poeticum, sive Propriorum quibus in suis Monumentis usi sunt veteres poetæ, brevis descriptio poetica, Thoma Iacchæo Caledonio Authore. Edinburgi excudebat Robertus Waldegrave,’ 1592, 4to.
[M'Crie's Life of Melville, 1824, i. 444, ii. 365, 478; Hew Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 78, 210; Chambers's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, 1869; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 426; R. Baillie's Letters and Journals, iii. 403; Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of the Reformers, &c., i. 179, 529.]