Robert Forbes (bishop)
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The Right Reverend Robert Forbes |
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|---|---|
| Bishop of Ross and Caithness | |
| Church | Scottish Episcopal Church |
| In office | 1762 to 1775 |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1735 by David Freebairn |
| Consecration | 24 June 1762 by William Falconer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1708 |
| Died | 1775 (aged 66–67) |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Denomination | Anglicanism |
Robert Forbes (1708–1775) was a Scottish Anglican bishop. He served as the bishop of Ross and Caithness for the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Forbes was born in 1708 at Rayne in Aberdeenshire, where his father was schoolmaster. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen (A.M. 1726). In 1735 he went to Edinburgh, was ordained priest by Bishop David Freebairn, and was shortly appointed minister of the episcopal congregation at Leith, a town which was his home for the rest of his life. In his room there, in 1740, John Skinner received baptism at his hands.
On 7 September 1745, when Prince Charles Edward was on his descent from the Highlands, Forbes was one of three episcopal clergymen who were arrested at St. Ninians, near Stirling, suspected of intending to join the rebels, confined in Stirling Castle till 4 February 1746, and in Edinburgh Castle until 29 May.
In 1762 the episcopal clergy of Ross and Caithness elected him their bishop, and he was consecrated at Forfar on 24 June by the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, William Falconer, with Bishops Andrew Gerard and Alexander. He continued to live at Leith, but made two visitations of his northern flock in 1762 and 1770. In 1764 he had a new church built for him, where he gathered a good congregation; but he would not ‘qualify’ according to law, and he was soon reported to government. Soldiers were sent to his meeting to see whether he prayed for King George III, and he was summoned before the colonel-commanding (Dalrymple). An account of the interview that ensued is preserved in his third ‘Journal.’ He made no submission, but thought it better to have his services without singing; and, receiving advice from a friend, he went for some weeks to London. There he worshipped with the remnant of the nonjurors, and received from their bishop Robert Gordon a staff that had once belonged to George Hickes. In the same year he was at a meeting of Jacobites at Moffat, when proposals were discussed for the continuance of the Stuart line and the Stuart pretensions by marrying Charles Edward to a Protestant.
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