380 Bradford-on-Avon. { Old Families & Worthies. 
to his mother Queen Margaret, (sister of Henry VIII. of England,) 
and Henry Steward, son of Lord Evandale, her ¢hird husband, 
created, in 1523, Lord Methven. 
The son of the last-mentioned John de Methven, bearing him- 
self the same name as his father, was a man of great accomplish- 
ments, and was constantly employed in the service of his King and 
country. No Scotsman in the reign of James II. enjoyed more 
of his Prince’s favour. He was one of the principal Secretaries of 
State and Lord Register of Scotland in the year 1440, and a few 
years afterwards was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the 
Court of England. He was concerned in all the important public 
transactions of his time, and always acquitted himself with in- 
tegrity and honour. 
A few generations pass away, and towards the middle of the 16th 
century we meet with two brothers, John and Andrew,—(the sons 
of an Andrew de Methven),—who come before us in the character 
of zealous promoters of the Reformation. We meet also about the 
same time with a Paul de Methven (probably the son of John, and 
of whom we shall speak presently) as a stern opposer of the Church 
of Rome. At the old Kirk of Stirling one of the earliest nurseries 
of the Reformation, this Paul defended Protestantism long before 
the appearance of others with whose names we are more familiar. 
In fact in that town he set at defiance the edicts of the Queen Re- 
gent, Mary of Guise,—the widow of James V.—and thus occupied, 
in his aspect to her Court, the same position which John Knox 
sustained in that of her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. 
Of Andrew, the younger of the two brothers just alluded to, we 
know but little. Of John, we are told, that, dreading the persecu- 
tion of the times, George Wishart having just before suffered 
death at St. Andrews, under Cardinal Beaton, for his Protestantism, 
he fled to England and was kindly received by Queen Elizabeth who 
took his son Paul! under her special protection. The latter was 
1 My authority for these statements is to be found in Playfair’s ‘Family An- 
tiquity’ in a note under ‘‘GoocH”’, Baronet. vol. vii. p. 10. Ihave, however, 
seen a document, and had communications concerning others, which seem to 
represent these two members of this family, viz. ‘Paul,’ who married Ann 
Rogers, and ‘Anthony,’ the Vicar of Frome, as brothers rather than as father and 
