Warriston, Archibald Johnston, Lord

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Warriston, Archibald Johnston, Lord (1611–63). Johnston was born in Edinburgh, educated at Glasgow University, and became a lawyer. He helped to frame the national covenant in 1638 and was appointed procurator of the kirk. In the temporary lull of 1641 Charles I appointed him to the Court of Session as Lord Warriston. He was much employed in negotiation with the English Parliament and strongly disapproved of the Engagement in 1648. After the Cromwellian conquest of Scotland, he was deprived of all offices, but in 1657 was reappointed lord clerk register [S], a post he had held 1649–51. He also attended Cromwell's House of Peers and was a member of the Council of State in 1659. After the Restoration, Warriston fled to the continent, but was seized at Rouen, taken to Scotland, and hanged at the market cross in Edinburgh. Burnet, his nephew, wrote that presbyterianism was ‘to him more than all the world’. His son James was secretary of state [S] from 1692 to 1696.

J. A. Cannon