Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Veitch, William (1640-1722)
VEITCH, WILLIAM (1640–1722), covenanter, younger son of John Veitch, minister of Roberton, Lanarkshire, was born on 27 April 1640. He studied at the university of Glasgow, where he graduated M.A. in 1659; and in 1660 he became tutor to the family of Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead at the university of Edinburgh. About 1664 he took license as a preacher and joined the presbyterians; but, being forfeited in 1667 for having been at Mauchline and the Pentlands, he escaped to England, where he lived under the name of Johnson. For some time he was chaplain to the wife of the mayor of Newcastle; and, after preaching in London and other places, he was in 1671 ordained minister of a meeting-house at Faldlees and afterwards at Hanamhall in the parish of Rothbury, Northumberland, whence four years afterwards he removed to Seaton Hall in the parish of Longhorsly. On 16 Jan. 1679 he was apprehended, while living there under the name of Johnson, but having been on 22 Feb. sisted before the committee of public affairs in Edinburgh, he was sent to imprisonment on the Bass Rock. On 17 July following he was, however, set at liberty, and returned to Northumberland. When in December 1681 the Earl of Argyll escaped from prison, Veitch not only sheltered him in his house, but, being an adept in the shifts of a fugitive from justice, conducted him safely to London. Veitch had soon afterwards to make his own escape to Holland (in 1683), but during the Monmouth rising of 1685 was sent to Northumberland to foment an outbreak there. The Argyll fiasco put an end to the project; and, after remaining for some time in hiding under various names, Veitch became minister of a meeting-house at Beverley, Yorkshire, where he remained six or seven months. Returning to Scotland, he was called to the parish of Whittonhall in the presbytery of Kelso, where he was admitted in April 1688. In 1690 he was translated to Peebles, and in 1694 to Dumfries. He demitted his charge on 8 Dec. 1714, and died on 8 May 1722. His wife, Marion Fairlie of the house of Braid, was author of a diary which was published by the free church of Scotland in 1846. She died a day after her husband, and was buried in the same grave. By her Veitch had five sons and five daughters. The second son, Samuel, who adopted the spelling Vetch [q. v.] for his surname, is separately noticed under that heading.
He was the author of: 1. ‘Two Sermons preached before Her Majesty's Commons at the Opening of Parliament,’ Edinburgh, 1693. 2. ‘Two single Sermons preached before the Commission,’ Edinburgh, 1695, 1699. 3. ‘A Short History of Rome's Design against the Protestant Interest in Britain,’ Dumfries, 1718. 4. ‘Answer to a Letter pretendedly written by Mr. John Hepburn, Division Maker; but really by Riddoch and Hunter and other Romish Emissaries, who are Defenders of his Faith both Summer and Winter,’ Dumfries, 1720.
[Wodrow's Hist. of the Kirk of Scotland; Lauder of Fountainhall's Historical Notices; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scotl. i. 236, 466, 568–9; M'Crie's Life of Veitch.]