in poverty and obscurity. He had an Irish pension of 120l. in 1654 and 1655, which would not have been given to an absentee (Reid, ii. 120). Evelyn says that in May 1656 he persuaded Jeremy Taylor to present a young French proselyte for ordination to the Bishop of Meath, whose great poverty he himself relieved by the fees. Meath was vacant, but it is at least probable that Leslie had a promise of it, and it is likely that the exiled hierarchy made some attempt to keep all sees nominally filled. Leslie was in Ireland for some time before the Restoration, for he preached in 1659 at Hillsborough in his own diocese. This sermon, on praying with the spirit and the understanding, was printed, and the title-page describes the preacher as 'maugre all anti-Christian opposition, Bishop of Down and Connor.' There is a prefatory letter by Jeremy Taylor, who says: 'You preached in a family in which the public liturgy of the Church is greatly valued and diligently used, but in a country where most of the inhabitants are strangers to the thing and enemies to the name.' The sermon itself condemns the extempore prayers of those whom Leslie had learned to call 'our dissenting brethren.' He was translated to Meath in January 1661, his friend Taylor succeeding him in Down, but he died in Dublin on 9 April, and was buried in Christchurch.
Leslie married Jane Swinton of Swinton, Peebles. Their eldest son, Robert, was successively bishop of Dromore, Raphoe, and Clogher, and died 10 Aug. 1672. From James, the second son, who was taken prisoner fighting for Charles II at Worcester, descends that family of the Leslies that has long been settled at Ballybay in Monaghan. Lord Belmore is descended through a daughter from the third son, William, who was also a royalist officer. Many valuable books brought from Scotland by the bishop, and attested by his signature, are preserved at Ballybay. They are chiefly theological, but a Petrarch with a history attached to it is among them. There is a Bible believed to have been bought abroad, and containing many entries of genealogical interest. A portrait, probably painted in Holland, is also in his descendant's possession.
[Strafford's Letters and Despatches; Lascelles's Liber Muneram Public. Hiberniae; Aphorismical Discovery, and History of Irish Confederation, ed. Gilbert; Carte's Ormonde; Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. ed. Killen; Robert Baillie's Letters, ed. Laing; Historical Records of the Leslie Family; Lowry's Hamilton MSS.; Ware's Bishops and Writers, ed. Harris; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae;. Ninian Wallis's Britannia Libera; Vesey's Life of Bramhall; Rushworth's Trial of Strafford; Evelyn's Diary; Mant's Church of Ireland; the bishop's known writings, all of which are mentioned above; information from Dr. Reeves, formerly bishop of Down, and from Mr. Robert Charles Leslie, the bishop's lineal descendant.]
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LESLIE or LESLEY, JOHN (1527–1596), bishop of Ross, was the eldest son of Gavin Lesley, rector of Kingussie, Inverness-shire, the great grandson of Andrew Lesley of Balquhain, and commissary of the diocese of Moray. His mother was daughter of Ruthin, the laird of Gormack. He is termed by Knox a ‘priest's gett’ (bastard), and a dispensation was granted him 19 July 1538, while a scholar of the province of Moray, rendering him capable, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, of taking priest's orders. From the fact that his epitaph at Brussels gives his age at the time of his death as seventy, some authorities make 1526 the year of his birth; but in the contemporary life (see Anderson, Collections, i. 1) the date given is 29 Sept. 1527, and the authority quoted for it is the registers of baptism in Scotland. He was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A. It is improbable that he is identical with a John Leslie who in 1544 was made organist and master of a song school in Aberdeen. On 15 June 1546 he was admitted an acolyte in the cathedral church, and in the twentieth year of his age he was inducted to a canonry. In 1549 he proceeded to Paris, and after studying there for some time theology, Greek, and Hebrew, he removed to the university of Poictiers, where, according to his own account, his studies embraced a complete course of canon and civil law, extending over about four years (discourse, ib. iii. 6). He spent another year in Paris studying law in the schools there, and returned to Scotland in April 1554 (ib.) In 1553 he had been appointed canonist in King's College, Aberdeen (Fasti Aberd. p. lxxxi). In April 1558 he was admitted to holy orders, and nominated official of the diocese of Aberdeen, and on 2 July 1559 he was inducted to the parsonage, canonry, and prebend of Oyne. He and other learned men of Aberdeen were summoned in January 1561 to a convention of the nobility in Edinburgh, to dispute with Knox and other reformers regarding the mass and similar controversial matters. Knox represents Leslie as timidly declining to commit himself to any opinion, and affirming that he knew nothing but nolumus and volumus (Knox, Works, ii. 141). Leslie himself, however, affirms that he and the other doctors strenuously contended for the ancient doctrine and usages (De Origine,
