Robert Blackader (Or Blacader)
Robert Blackader (Or Blacader) [1]
Blackader (or Blacader), Robert
an early Scottish prelate, was bishop of Aberdeen in 1480, and was transferred to Glasgow in 1484. He was at first a prebendary of Glasgow and rector of Cardross. He studied at Rome, and received consecration from the hands of the pope. It was during his episcopate, and chiefly by his interest with pope Alexander VI, that the see of Glasgow was erected into an archbishopric — an honor which greatly exasperated his spiritual brother of St. Andrew's, who objected to acknowledge this real dignitary, as St. Andrew's had been created by Sextus IV metropolitan of all Scotland. Jealous for the supremacy of his eastern capital, the archbishop of St. Andrew's commenced an ecclesiastical warfare, which divided both clergy and nobility into factions. The prelates were reconciled at length by granting the new dignity to Glasgow, but allowing St. Andrew's still to retain its ancient precedency. In Blackader's time, about 1494, the dawning light of the Revolution was spreading in the west, chiefly in the districts of Kyle and Cunningham. Thirty persons were summoned at his instance before the king and council, as holders of heretical opinions. Among these were Campbell of Cesnock, Reid of Barskimming, lady Stair, and other distinguished persons, who were nicknamed the Lollards of Kyle (Knox, Hist. ch. i). Archbishop Blackader went to England with the earl Bothwell, to negotiate the marriage of James IV. with the princess Margaret, daughter to Henry VII, performed in Edinburgh, 1503 (Hollinshed, v, 465). Spottiswood calls him "a gentleman well descended, and of good knowledge, both in divine and human learning." He died about 1508, while on a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. See Spottiswood, p. 58, 60, 105, 114; Crichton, Memoirs of Rev. John Blackader (2d ed.), p. 10 sq.; Keith, Scottish Bishops, p. 115, 254.
