LEIGHTON, ROBERT (1611-1684), archbishop of Glas gow, was born, probably in London (others say at Ulishaven, For farshire), the eldest son of Dr. Alexander Leighton, the author of Zion's Plea against the Prelacie, and one of the victims of the Laudian persecution. Robert was educated at the university of Edinburgh, where he took his M.A. in 1631. He then spent several years in France. Either at this time or later he came into contact with the Jansenists. In 1641 he was ordained Presbyterian minis ter of Newbattle, Midlothian, and in 1643 signed the Covenant. In 1652 he resigned his charge and went to Edinburgh, where early in 1653 he was appointed principal of the university, and primar ius professor of divinity.
In 1661, when Charles II. had resolved to force Episcopacy once more upon Scotland, he fixed upon Leighton for one of his bishops (see SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF). The Episcopacy which he contem plated was that modified form which had been suggested by Arch bishop Ussher, and to which Baxter and many of the best of the English Nonconformists would have readily given their adherence. Leighton travelled with the new bishops in the same coach from London towards Scotland, but having become, as he told Burnet, very weary of their company (as he doubted not they were of his), and having found that they intended to make a kind of triumphal entrance into Edinburgh, he left them at Morpeth and retired to the earl of Lothian's at Newbattle. He very soon lost all hope of being able to build up the church by the means which the govern ment had set on foot, and his work, as he confessed to Burnet, "seemed to him a fighting against God." He did, however, what he could, governing his diocese (that of Dunblane) with the utmost mildness, and endeavouring to persuade the Presbyterian clergy to come to an accommodation with their Episcopal brethren. After
a hopeless struggle of three or four years to induce the govern ment to cease the persecution of the Covenanters, he went up to London in 1665 to resign his bishopric, but was induced by Charles to remain. In 1669 Leighton again went to London and made fresh representations on the persecution of the Covenanters, and in 1670 he reluctantly agreed to accept the archbishopric of Glas gow. He now redoubled his efforts for conciliation between Pres byterians and the Episcopacy, but had no success. He resigned the archbishopric in 1674 and retired to Broadhurst, Sussex, where he spent the happiest years of his life. He died suddenly in a London inn in Leighton was little suited to the part he had to play in Scotland. He was made for the meditative life, and his aloofness from every day life brought on him the dislike of both the conflicting parties in the church. It is stated that he left orders that all his mss. should be destroyed after his death. But fortunately for the world this charge was disregarded. His writing seems to flow without effort ; it is the easy unaffected outcome of his saintly nature. It was a common reproach against Leighton that he had leanings towards Roman Catholicism, and perhaps this is so far true that he had formed himself in some degree upon Pascal and Thomas a Kempis.
The best account of Leighton's character is that of Bishop Burnet in Hist. of his Own Times (1723-34). See the editions of his Works pub lished by W. West (7 vols., 1869-75), selections (with biography) by Dr. Blair of Dunblane (1883) ; Andrew Lang, History of Scotland (1902).