Carstairs, John, a.m.

a Scotch clergyman, took his degree at the University of St. Andrews in 1641; was licensed to preach in 1646; presented to the living at Cathcart in 1647, and ordained. He was elected in 1648 for the living at Burnt-Island, and for one of the livings at Edinburgh in 1649, but was transferred to the Outer High Church in Glasgow in 1650. He accompanied the army, was wounded, stripped naked, and left among the dead at the battle of Dunbar the same year. He had charge of the south district of the city in 1651, and removed to the Inner High Church in 1655. When it was proposed to unite the Resolutioners and Protestors, he urged agreement unconditionally. He had the west quarter of the city for his charge in 1659, and the east district from 1660 to 1662. He was deprived and imprisoned in 1663 for not taking the oath of allegiance; was charged in 1664 with "keeping conventicles," and fled to Ireland, but returned; joined the rising in 1666, for which he was indicted, but had indemnity in 1667, and fled to Holland, where he refused to become minister of the Scottish Church, but returned soon after; attended lord chancellor Rothes on his death-bed, in 1681, and the earl of Argyll previous to his execution, in 1685. He died Feb. 5, 1686, aged sixty- three years. He published some Poems and Letters: — A Treatise on Scandal: — Unsearchable Riches of Christ: — Calderwood's True History of the Church of Scotland (1678). See Fasti Eccles. Scoticanae, 2, 8, 22, 59.