Alexander Arbuthnot - (1538-83) - Poet
He was a leading member of the Reformation
movement in Scotland and one of the early theorists with Andrew Melville of church
government. He was twice Moderator of the General Assembly and between 1569 and his
death on 10th October 1583 he was Principal of King's College, Aberdeen. He wrote a Latin
treatise on church law, and three of his poems in Scots, 'On Luve', 'The Miseries of a Pure
Scholar' and 'The Praises of Women' (a poem that established womankind as the object of
God's praise, and perhaps his best-known work), were published in Ancient Scottish Poems by John Pinkerton in 1786.
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