John Wood (Scottish courtier)

Master John Wood (died 1570), was a Scottish courtier, administrator and secretary to the Earl of Moray. He was assassinated on 15 April 1570.

John Wood was the son of Andrew Wood of Largo, and was educated at St Leonards College at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 1536 and so used the title "Master", referring to his degree. It has been suggested he became vicar of Largo.

John Wood's connection with Queen Mary's half brother, Lord James Stewart, afterwards Earl of Moray, began as early at least as 1548, when he accompanied him to France. About September 1560 he accompanied an embassy to England, recorded by Thomas Randolph, who in a letter of 23 September 1560 promised to send to William Cecil with Wood a copy of Knox's History of the Reformation, "as mykle as ys written thereof."

John Wood was a supporter of the Scottish Reformation, and at the first General Assembly of the kirk in December 1560 he was selected as one of those at St. Andrews "best qualified for preaching of the word and ministering of the sacraments." Wood accompanied Lord James in his embassy to Queen Mary in France in 1561; and Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador at Paris described Wood as one "in whom there is much virtue and sufficiency." He recommended that Wood's devotion to the English interest should be rewarded with a pension.

John Knox wrote that in December 1562 Wood distanced himself from the Assembly of the New Kirk to join with the "rulers" of the Scottish royal court of Mary, Queen of Scots. For three years, Wood became a magistrate, as an Extraordinary Lord of Session, as Lord Tullidavie, from 9 December 1562.

Knox wrote that Mary, Queen of Scots hated John Wood, because he, with John Wishart of Pitarro, "flattered her not in her dancing and other doings." According to Knox, when Mary was told her half-brother, John Stewart Commendator of Coldingham's last words to her were that she should be a Protestant, Mary declared plainly that Coldingham's speech was invented by Wood and Wishart. During the Chaseabout Raid rebellion against Mary in 1565, led by the Earl of Moray, Wood was commanded to surrender himself to imprisonment in Dumbarton Castle within six days, and failing to do so, he was denounced a rebel. He was then deprived of the office of extraordinary Lord of Session, to which, by the title of Tulliedavie, he had been appointed ; and he was not again restored to it except nominally. During the rebellion Wood was sent as emissary to Elizabeth with vain requests for her assistance.

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