Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/384

This page has been validated.
Gilpin
378
Gilpin

he continued to represent till his death, and at the same time he was appointed a lord of articles. He obtained the insertion of a clause in the Militia Act that the kingdom should not be obliged to maintain any force levied by the king otherwise than as it should be agreed by parliament or a convention of estates. He spoke in parliament in defence of the Marquis of Argyll, but without avail, and, joining the Lauderdale party, helped, especially by personal audiences with the king in London, to overthrow Middleton in 1663. In 1664 he became a member of the court of high commission, and exerted his influence without success to mitigate the severity of the bishops who were members of it. In the privy council he refused to vote for the execution of the insurgents taken at Pentland, to whom quarter had been promised; but he signed the opinion of the court of session to the effect that forfeiture could be pronounced against accused persons in their absence if they had been duly cited to appear. On 22 Dec. 1670 he resigned his judgeship in consequence of ill-health, and died next year. Reports of his decisions from 1661 to 1666 are preserved. He is described by Sir George Mackenzie in his ‘Idea Eloquentiæ Forensis’ as a man of rough eloquence and powerful common sense, but little learning. There is a portrait of him by Scougal at Inch, near Edinburgh.

[Books of Sederunt; Acts Scots Parl.; Wodrow's Analecta; Fountainhall's Decisions, i. 500; Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, p. 224; Omond's Lord Advocates; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Douglas's Peerage, ed. Wood, i. 99; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the Royal Coll. of Justice.]

J. A. H.

GILPIN, BERNARD (1517–1583), the ‘Apostle of the North,’ was born at Kentmere, Westmoreland, in 1517. He came, both by father and mother, of ‘ancient and honourable’ families. His mother was daughter of William Laton of Delamain, Cumberland. Having received the rudiments of education at a grammar school in the north, Gilpin was sent to Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen. At Oxford he was much attracted to the works of Erasmus, and received help in acquiring Greek and Hebrew from Mr. Neale, a fellow of New College, and afterwards the author of the famous Nag's-head fable. Gilpin proceeded B.A. in 1539–40, and M.A. in 1541–2, and was about the same time elected fellow of his college and admitted into holy orders by the Bishop of Oxford. He took his B.D. degree in 1549. His scrupulous conscience was much troubled by an oath required of him at his ordination (thought necessary on account of the recent breach with Rome), that he held all such ordinations, past or future, to be valid. Cardinal Wolsey's foundation of Christ Church had now been completed by the king, and the most promising scholars were sought for to be admitted as students. Among these Gilpin was one of the first elected. As yet he had no inclination towards the reformed opinions in religion, and in fact undertook to hold a public disputation with John Hooper in defence of the old doctrinal views. In this he obtained considerable reputation, insomuch that in the next reign, when Peter Martyr was established as divinity professor at Oxford, Gilpin was put forward to dispute with him. It was now that, searching diligently into the records of the primitive church, Gilpin began to have doubts as to the truth of the modern Roman doctrines. He applied for help to Tunstall, bishop of Durham, who was his mother's uncle, and learnt from him the comparatively modern origin of the doctrine of transubstantiation and the equivocal character of some of the papal ordinances. Afterwards he conferred with Dr. Redman, another relative, who defended the Book of Common Prayer, then newly issued. Although influenced by these arguments and a diligent search of the scriptures and fathers, Gilpin still had difficulties. At this juncture he was induced to accept the vicarage of Norton, in the diocese of Durham; but before taking possession of it he was called upon to preach before Edward VI at Greenwich (1552). In this sermon Gilpin inveighs against the abuses of the time in the scandalous robbery of church property and incomes. ‘A thousand pulpits in England are covered with dust,’ he says. He does not treat much of doctrine. Bishop Tunstall, who no doubt saw in which direction Gilpin's mind was moving, now advised him to travel abroad. But first Gilpin insisted, much against the bishop's will, on resigning his benefice. He then proceeded abroad, where he remained some years, first at Louvain and afterwards at Paris. At Paris he lived in the house of Vascosanus, the printer, and occupied himself with carrying through the press a work of Tunstall on the Eucharist. Returning into England in the latter years of Queen Mary, Gilpin was in 1556 promoted by Tunstall to the rectory of Easington and the archdeaconry of Durham. The persecution prevalent in England under Mary, though the mild temper of Tunstall would not allow it to be felt in the diocese of Durham, seems to have decided Gilpin to set forth reforming views with greater distinctness and earnestness. He also reproved vigorously the faults of the clergy. Conse-