on a visitation of the University by the King in June 1597, he was deprived of his rectorship. He attended the General Assembly at Dundee, March 1598, but was ordered to withdraw by the King. In 1599 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Theology. He caused the Synod of Fife in 1599 to censure certain propositions in the Basilikon Doron by the King. At the Assembly at Montrose in March 1600 he unsuccessfully claimed his right to sit, but was successful in that at Burntisland May 1601. He took part in that held at Aberdeen in 1605 and offered, with others, a protest to Parliament at Perth in 1606 in favour of the right of free Assembly. For this he was summoned with others to London, where he was cited before the English Privy Council for writing a bitter Latin epigram against the accessories of Anglican worship and placed under the custody of John Overal, D.D., Dean of St Paul's, and afterwards of Bilson, Bishop of Winchester. Again brought before the Privy Council, he broke into a violent tirade against that Court and was committed to solitary confinement in the Tower. Henri de la Tour, Duke de Bouillon, having obtained his release, appointed him to the Chair of Biblical Theology in the University of Sedan, and Melville embarked for France 19 April 1611. He died unmarried after a series of illnesses at Sedan in 1622. Early life and early education He was born at Baldovie near Montrose, Angus, the youngest son of Richard Melville (brother to Melville of Dysart). Andrew was the youngest of nine sons of Richard Melville of Baldovy, near Montrose, where he was born 1 August 1545. He is described as the ninth son, yet speaks in a letter of 1612 as having outlived his ‘fourteen brethren.’ His father lost his life in the battle of Pinkie, when Andrew was only two years old and, his mother dying soon after, he was brought up under the care of his eldest brother Richard (1522–1575), afterwards minister of Maryton, who, at a proper age, sent him to the grammar school of Montrose. At an early age Melville began to show a taste for learning, and his brother did everything in his power to give him the best education. He learned the rudiments of Latin at the grammar school of Montrose, after leaving which he learned Greek for