entered Edinburgh along with the lords of the congregation. Shortly afterwards Knox was elected minister of St. Giles; but after a truce had been completed with the queen regent it was deemed advisable that Knox should for a while retire from Edinburgh, Willock acting as his substitute in St. Giles. During Knox's absence strenuous efforts were made by the queen regent to have the old form of worship re-established, but Willock firmly resisted her attempts; and in August he administered the Lord's supper for the first time in Edinburgh after the reformed manner.
After the queen regent had broken the treaty and begun to fortify Leith a convention of the nobility, barons, and burghers was on 21 Oct. held in the Tolbooth to take into consideration her conduct, and Willock, on being asked his judgment, gave it as his opinion that she ‘might justly be deprived of the government,’ in which, with certain provisos, he was seconded by Knox (ib. pp. 442–3). The result was that her authority was suspended, and a council appointed to manage the affairs of the kingdom until a meeting of parliament, Willock being one of the four ministers chosen to assist in the deliberations of the council. Not long afterwards Willock left for England, but he returned with the English army in April 1560, and at the request of the reformed nobility the queen regent had an interview with him on her deathbed in June following, when, according to Knox, he did plainly show her as well the virtue and strength of the death of Jesus Christ as the vanity and abomination of that idol the mass (ib. ii. 71). By the committee of parliament he was in July 1560 named superintendent of the west, to which he was admitted at Glasgow in July 1561. He was also in July 1560 named one of a commission appointed by the lords of the congregation to draw up the first book of discipline.
As a Scottish reformer Willock stands next to Knox in initiative and in influence; but it is possible that the rigid severity of Knox became distasteful to him, and, apparently deeming the religious atmosphere of England more congenial, he about 1562—in which year he was, however, in June and December moderator of the general assembly—became rector of Loughborough in Leicestershire, to which he was presented by his old friend the Duke of Suffolk. Nevertheless, by continuing for several years to hold the office of superintendent of the west, he retained his connection with the Scottish church, and he was elected moderator of the general assembly on 25 June 1564, 25 June 1565, and 1 July 1568. While he was in Scotland in 1565 the queen made endeavours to have him sent to the castle of Dumbarton, but he made his escape (Cal. State Papers, For. 1564–5, No. 1510). In January 1567–8 the general assembly of the kirk sent him through Knox a letter praying him to return to his old charge in Scotland (Knox, Works, vi. 445–6); but although he did visit Scotland and officiated as moderator of the assembly, he again returned to his charge in England. According to Sir James Melville, the Earl of Morton made use of Willock to reveal to Elizabeth, through the Earls of Huntingdon and Leicester, the dealings of the Duke of Norfolk with the regent Moray, for an arrangement by which the duke would marry the queen of Scots (Memoirs, p. 213).
Willock died in his rectory at Loughborough on 4 Dec. 1585, and was buried the next day, being Sunday; his wife Catherine survived him fourteen years, and was buried at Loughborough on 10 Oct. 1599 (Fletcher, Parish Registers of Loughborough). Though Demster ascribes to him ‘Impia quædam,’ it does not appear that he left any works. Chalmers, in his ‘Life of Ruddiman,’ seeks to identify Willock with one ‘John Willokis, descended of Scottish progenitors,’ who on 27 April 1590 is referred to in a state paper as being in prison in Leicester, after having been convicted by a jury of robbery. The supposition of Chalmers, sufficiently improbable in itself, is of course disposed of by the entry of the rector's death in the parish register, but there is just a possibility that the robber may have been the rector's son.
[Wodrow's Biographical Collections (Maitland Club), i. 99, 448 sq.; Histories by Knox, Keith, and Calderwood; Cal. State Papers, For. 1561–1562, and 1564–5; Cal. State Papers, Scottish, 1547–1563; Wodrow Miscellany, vol. i.; Maitland Miscellany, vol. iii.; Sir James Melville's Memoirs in the Bannatyne Club; Chalmers's Life of Ruddiman; Nichols's Leicestershire; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scoticanæ, ii. 375–6.]
WILLOUGHBY. [See also Willughby.]
WILLOUGHBY de BROKE, third Baron. [See Verney, Richard, 1621–1711.]
WILLOUGHBY de ERESBY Baron. [See Bertie, Peregrine, 1555–1601.]
WlLLOUGHBY, FRANCIS, fifth Baron Willoughby of Parham (1613?–1666), son of William, third baron Willoughby of Parham, by Frances, daughter of John Manners, fourth earl of Rutland, was born about
