him, and admitted his avowed enemies to prove the accusation. Though the
whole train of evidence, which was led, proved little or nothing against
him, yet they resolved to involve him in troubles, because he had
declined their authority, as incompetent judges of doctrine, and
therefore remitted him to ward in the castle of Edinburgh, during the
king's will. Being informed, that, if he entered into ward, he would not
be released, unless it should be to bring him to the scaffold, that the
decree of the council was altered, and Blackness was appointed for his
prison, which was kept by some dependants on the earl of Arran, he
resolved to get out of the country. A macer gave him a charge, to enter
Blackness in 24 hours: and, in the mean while, some of Arran's horsemen
were attending at the west-port to convoy him thither: But, by the time
he should have entered Blackness, he had reached Berwick. Messrs. Lawson
and Balcanquhal gave him the good character he deserved, and prayed
earnestly for him in public, in Edinburgh, which both moved the people
and galled the court exceedingly.

After the storm had abated, he returned to St. Andrews in 1586, when the
synod of Fife had excommunicated P. Adamson, pretended bishop of St.
Andrews, on account of some immoralities. He (Adamson) having drawn up
the form of an excommunication against Messrs. Andrew and James Melvils,
and sent out a boy, with some of his own creatures, to the kirk to read
it, but the people paying no regard to it, the bishop (though both
suspended and excommunicated) would himself go to the pulpit to preach,
whereupon some gentlemen &c. in town conveened in the new college to
hear Mr. Melvil. But the bishop being informed that they were assembled
on purpose to put him out of the pulpit and hang him, for fear of which,
he called his friends together, and betook himself to the steeple; but
at the entreaty of the magistrates and others he retired home.

This difference with the bishop brought the Melvils again before the
king and council, who (pretending that there was no other method to end
that quarrel,) ordained Mr. Andrew to be confined to the Mearns, Angus,
&c. under pretext that he would be useful in that country in
reclaiming papists. And, because of his sickly condition, Mr. James was
sent back to the new college; and, the university sending the dean of
faculty, and the masters, with a supplication to the king in Mr.
Andrew's behalf, he was suffered to retur