Walter Wardlaw

Who was Walter Wardlaw?

Walter Wardlaw was a 14th-century bishop of Glasgow. He was the son of a Sir Henry Wardlaw of Torry, a middling knight of Fife. Before becoming bishop, Walter was a canon of Glasgow, a Master of Theology and archdeacon of Lothian. He was at the University of Paris, and a roll of the year 1349 has one "Master William de Wardlaw" in the English Nation. By this stage, he was already a canon of Glasgow, with a prebend in Glasgow and another in the diocese of St Andrews. Yet a petition of 1349 to the papacy has Walter requesting the church of "Dunenach" in the diocese of Aberdeen. By 1359, he is rector of Erol and archdeacon of Lothian.

After the death on 27 January 1367 of William Rae, Bishop of Glasgow, Pope Urban V, who had previously reserved the see for his own appointment, advanced Walter as bishop. The canons of Glasgow had already elected him, but the pope declared the election void before himself providing the same man to the bishopric. On 23 December 1383, during the Western Schism in which the Kingdom of Scotland sided with the Avignon Papacy, Avignon Pope Clement VII made Walter a cardinal priest.