164 Sir JoHN MAcBRAIR. 
with his great countryman. Calvin thought that his friena, 
Knox, had been dishonourably treated. According to Strype 
(cf. Wodrow MS. postea), Macbrair succeeded Knox as the 
English pastor in Frankfort “‘ for about a year.’’ 
Macbrair’s subsequent movements and history are 
obscure. According to Bale (Scriptores, 229), he became a 
pastor in Lower Germany, and wrote an account of the Church 
there. On the death of Queen Mary in 1558 the Protestant 
party in England again became ascendant, and Macbrair re- 
turned as a preacher.’ 
Mr Richard Welford, M.A., a well-known Newcastle 
antiquary, in his Men of Mark ’Twixt Tyne und Tweed, Vol. 
III., p. 131, gives the following account of John Macbrair’s 
coming to the North of England. This was brought about 
‘Through the influence of Dr. Best, Bishop of Carlisle. 
: Lord Scrope, writing from Carlisle to Secretary 
Cecil, on the 15th July, 1564, informs him that 
to the Bishop of Carlisle, a Scotsman, named Mawbraye, and 
two of the Prebendaries of the same church, preached several 
¢ 
a chaplain 
days to great audiences, who liked their sermons and doc- 
tiines.’ A year later Mr Magbray obtained the Dean and 
Chapter [Durham] living of Billingham, near Stockton, 
vacant by the deprivation of Prebendary George Cliff, and on 
the 28th November, 1568. on the death of the Rev. William 
Salkeld, his friend, the Bishop of Carlisle, inducted him to 
the vicarage of Newcastle.” 
‘“ Neither of these livings being too well endowed,”’ con- 
tinues Mr Welford, ‘‘ Vicar Magbray was allowed to hold 
them both. It was soon found, however, that Newcastle re- 
ceived most of his attention, and that Billingham was 
neglected. He kept a curate in his Teeside benefice, but the 
curate did not do his duty, and grave scandal accrued. In 
the Act Books of the Court of Durham, under a date not 
given but presumably in 1573, is the record of a case in which 
the churchwardens of Billingham complain that for two 
Sundays running they had no service, and that the parishioners 
7 According to Strype, he preached at St. Paul’s Cross on 3rd 
September, 1559. 
