Henry Guthrie

Who was Henry Guthrie?

Henry Guthrie was a 17th-century Scottish historian and cleric. The son of Elizabeth Small and the Perthshire minister Henry Guthrie, he was born around 1600 in Coupar Angus, a town in southern Scotland, in the modern region of Perth and Kinross. He graduated from the University of St Andrews in 1621, studied theology and later served as a tutor for the family of the earl of Mar.

He became minister of Guthrie in 1624, and was promoted by King Charles I to Stirling in 1632. He took an ambiguous role in the Covenanter Wars and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He was deposed from his Stirling charge in 1648, although in 1656 was readmitted to the ministry, being given Kilspindie. Despite once opposing the re-establishment of episcopacy, abandoned since the National Covenant of 1638, he changed his position, and later after the episcopate of George Haliburton, became Bishop of Dunkeld, to which position he was consecrated on 24 August 1665. He held this position until his death in 1676.

Guthrie is best remembered for the account of his times he wrote and left to posterity, his Observations. Although circulating in his own day, they were not formally published until 1702.