Alexander Henderson

Alexander Henderson 1583-1646, Scottish churchman often regarded as the greatest figure in the Church of Scotland after John Knox . Henderson became a leading opponent of prelacy and of English domination of the church. In 1638, after the signing of the National Covenant (see Covenanters ), he was elected moderator of the general assembly at Glasgow, which deposed the bishops and set up Presbyterianism in spite of royal threats. Henderson met King Charles I to settle the problem and was favorably received. In 1640, he was elected rector of the Univ. of Edinburgh. In 1641 and 1643, he was moderator of the general assembly and presented (1643) a draft of the Solemn League and Covenant. He sat thereafter (1643-46) in the Westminster Assembly. In 1646, he again met Charles for a conference on church government during the course of the king's alliance with the Scottish army. Henderson wrote many speeches and sermons.

Bibliography: See biographies by J. P. Thomson (1912) and R. L. Orr (1919).

Henderson, Alexander (c.1583–1646), Scottish Covenanting leader. He was mainly responsible for drafting the National Covenant of 1638, and during the Bishops' Wars of 1639–40 he was the recognized leader of the Scottish Presbyterians. He prepared the draft of the Solemn League and Covenant for both Scotland and England (1643) and of the Directory for Public Worship (1644).

Potter, William Appleton (1842–1909). American architect, the half-brother of E. T. Potter, he designed several outstanding US equivalents of High Victorian Gothic, including the Chancellor Green Library, Princeton University, NJ (1871–3), the South Congregational Church, Springfield, MA (1872–5—with bold polychrome treatment and a vast wheel-window of plate-tracery, probably his finest work), and the Custom House, Evansville, IN (1875–9). He took Robert Henderson Robertson (1849–1919) into partnership in 1875, and thereafter the firm's work was strongly influenced by that of H. H. Richardson, notably at the round-arched Alexander Hall, Princeton University (1891–4). The Pyne Library at Princeton (1896–7) and the First Reformed Dutch Church, Somerville, NJ (1895–7), are Gothic Revival. For his houses he drew on the English Domestic Revival as well as on American Colonial exemplars.

Bibliography

Are, xxvi (1909), 176–96;
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxxiii/2 (May 1973), 175–92;
S. Landau (1979);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Summerson (ed.) (1968);
Jane Turner (1968);