Gavin Dunbar (Archbishop of Glasgow)

:dablink|For other men named Gavin Dunbar, see Gavin Dunbar (disambiguation).

Gavin Dunbar (c1490 — 1547) was a 16th century archbishop of Glasgow. He was the third son of John Dunbar of Mochrum and Janet Stewart.

Gavin Dunbar, his uncle, resigned as Dean of Moray on 5 November 1518 to take up the post of bishop of Aberdeen but managed to secure his former position for his nephew. By 1518 he was preceptor to king James V and that same year was recommended to Pope Leo X by the Duke of Albany for provision to the Priory of Whithorn. This appointment was sought by others and it wasn't until August 1520 that it was confirmed. Dunbar was to hold the positions of Prior of Whithorn and Dean of Moray "in commendam".

On July 8 1524 he was provided to the archbishopric of Glasgow by Pope Clement VII, granting at the same time exemption from the primatial and legatine jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of St Andrews, Primate of All Scotland. Nevertheless, Dunbar's rule would see a good deal of conflict with his fellow archbishop, including in 1543 physical attacks by Dunbar on the person of Cardinal and Archbishop David Beaton. Dunbar was made Chancellor of Scotland on July 8, 1528, a position he held until 1543.

Dunbar's archiepiscopate coincided with one of the first tides of Protestantism to enter Scotland. Dunbar played a proactive role persecuting the perceived heretics. In 1539 alone he ordered the burning of seven people, including a youth named Kennedy and a Franciscan friar named Jerome Russell. On February 29, 1528, Dunbar attended the trial and signed the sentence of Patrick Hamilton, who was burned alive for six hours before dying (the faggots were wet), a death which made him one of the Scottish Reformation's most famous martyrs.

Dunbar also is known for his "Monition of Cursing" against the Border Reivers of the Anglo-Scottish Border region. George MacDonald Fraser, in his history of the Reivers, "The Steel Bonnets", admiringly calls it a "remarkable burst of invective," and says that it places Dunbar "among the great cursers of all time." Priests in all of the parishes of the border lands were required to read out the curse (written in Scots) to their congregations; one small piece stated:

"... I curse thair heid and all the haris of thair heid; I curse thair face, thair ene, thair mouth, thair neise thair toung, thair teith, thair crag, thair schulderis, thair breist, thair hert, thair stomok, thair bak, thair wame, thair armes, thair leggis, thair handis, thair feit, and everilk part of thair body, frae the top of thair heid to the soill of thair feit, befoir and behind, within and without..."

The Monition not only curses the Reivers themselves, but their horses, their clothing, their crops, and all who aid them in any way. He died on April 30, 1547.

References

*Dowden, John, "The Bishops of Scotland", ed. J. Maitland Thomson, (Glasgow, 1912)
*Oram, Richard D, "Gavin Dunbar", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography