Memorials, pp. 5–10; and in Calderwood's History, ii. 515–25). In August 1570, in command of the men of Dundee, he assisted in preventing the capture of Brechin by the Earl of Huntly (Calderwood, iii. 8). In June of the following year he was present with the Earl of Morton in the skirmish against the queen's forces at Restalrig, between Leith and Edinburgh (ib. p. 101). On 27 Aug., while engaged in chasing a foraging party and driving them into the city, ‘he was taken at the port upon horseback, supposing that his companions were following’ (ib. p. 138). On 10 Sept. he was delivered into the Earl of Huntly's hands and was to have been executed next day, but was saved by the interposition of Lord Lindsay (Bannatyne, Memorials, p. 187). Soon afterwards he was set at liberty, for on 2 Dec. he was present at a meeting of the secret council (Reg. P. C. Scotl. ii. 98). On 22 Nov. 1572 he was named one of a commission for the trial of Archibald Douglas, parson of Glasgow (fl. 1568) [q. v.], then in ward in the castle of Stirling (ib. ii. 171).
The Earl of Morton on 28 Sept. 1578 appointed Halyburton his commissioner in the conference with Argyll and Atholl, by which a reconciliation was brought about between the rival parties in Scotland (Moysie, Memoirs, p. 19). On 22 Dec. following he held a conference by order of the king in Stirling Castle for the settlement of the church. He was named in April one of the commissioners on pauperism (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iii. 138), and on 7 Aug. of the following year he was named a commissioner for the reforming of the universities, with special reference to the university of St. Andrews (ib. p. 200). He also served on a similar commission chosen 1 April 1587–8. Halyburton was on 4 Dec. 1579 presented to the priory of Pittenweem, previously held by Sir James Balfour. After obtaining the king's protection Balfour repossessed himself of the priory, but, on the complaint of Halyburton, was ordered to ‘deliver the abbey within twenty-four hours after being charged, under pain of rebellion’ (ib. p. 520). On 26 Oct. 1583 it was taken from Halyburton and bestowed on Colonel William Stewart. Halyburton was on 5 March 1581–2 elected a member of James's privy council (ib. iii. 458). He was present at the raid of Ruthven on 22 Aug. 1582, but according to one account was ‘not there at the beginning, but being written for came afterward’ (Calderwood, iii. 637). In the following October he was appointed, along with Colonel William Stewart, the king's commissioner to the general assembly of the kirk (ib. p. 674), and he was also commissioner to the general assembly which met in April of the following year (ib. p. 709). On the escape of King James from the protestant lords to St. Andrews in 1584, Halyburton was deprived of the provostship of Dundee and was compelled to go into hiding (ib. iv. 421). He probably returned with the banished lords, who captured the castle of Stirling in November 1585. At the general assembly which met in February 1587–8 he was again one of the king's commissioners, and in this as well as the assembly which met in August he acted as one of the assessors of the moderator. He died in February 1588–9. On account of the services rendered by him to the nation, and also to the town of Dundee, he received the honour of a public funeral at the expense of the corporation. He was buried in the South Church, Dundee. During the alterations made in the church a monument to him with a Latin inscription was discovered in May 1827 on the floor on the west side of the pulpit, but it was destroyed by the burning of the churches in 1841.
[Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot. vol. i.; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. i–iv.; Acta Parl. Scot. vol. ii.; Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. reign of Elizabeth; Richard Bannatyne's Memorials; Moysie's Memoirs; Knox's Works; Calderwood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland; Millar's Roll of Eminent Burgesses of Dundee.]
HALYBURTON, THOMAS (1674–1712), theologian, was born at Dupplin, Perthshire, on 25 Dec. 1674. His father, George Halyburton (d. 1682), descended from the Haliburtons of Pitcur, and a near relative of George Haliburton [q. v.], bishop of Dunkeld, graduated at the university of St. Andrews in 1652; after being licensed by the Glasgow presbytery in 1656, became assistant minister of the parish of Aberdalgie and Dupplin in 1657; was deprived for nonconformity in 1662; lived, by the kindness of George Hay of Balhousie, in the house at Dupplin, where his son Thomas was born; was denounced by the privy council for keeping conventicles 3 Aug. 1676; and died in October 1682, having had eleven children by his wife Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Andrew Playfair, his predecessor at Aberdalgie.
On his father's death, his mother, a woman of much religious feeling, removed to Rotterdam to escape threatened persecution, and Thomas was educated there at Erasmus's school, where he proved himself a good classical scholar. He returned to Scotland in 1682, graduated at the university of St. Andrews 24 July, 1696 and, after serving as a private chaplain, was licensed by the presbytery of Kirkaldy 22 June 1699. He was ordained to the parish of Ceres, Fifeshire, 1 May 1700,
