George Wishart

Who was George Wishart?

George Wishart was a Scottish religious reformer and Protestant martyr.

He belonged to a younger branch of the Wisharts of Pitarrow near Fordoun. He may have graduated M.A., probably at King's College, Aberdeen, and was certainly a student at the University of Leuven, from which he graduated in 1531. He taught the New Testament in Greek as schoolmaster at Montrose, until investigated for heresy by the Bishop of Brechin in 1538. He fled to England, where a similar charge was brought against him at Bristol in the following year by Thomas Cromwell. Under examination by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer he recanted some utterances. In 1539 or 1540 he may have visited Germany and Switzerland, but by 1542 he had entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied and taught.

In 1543 he returned to Scotland, in the train of a Scottish embassy which had come to London to consider the treaty of marriage between Prince Edward and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. He returned to Montrose, where again he taught Scripture.

He may have been the "Scottish man called "Wishart" acting as a messenger to England for Alexander Crichton of Brunstane in a 1544 plot against Cardinal David Beaton.