CALDERWOOD, DAVID, an eminent Scottish divine and ecclesiastical historian, descended of a good family, was b. in 1575, and about 1604 was settled as Presbyterian minister of Crailing, Roxburghshire. Opposed to the designs of James VI. for the estab lishment of Episcopacy in Scotland, on that monarch's visit to his native country in 1617. he and other ministers signed a protest against a bill, then before the Scots parlia ment, for granting the power of framing new laws for the church to an ecclesiastical council appointed by the king, and in consequence he was summoned before the high commission of St. Andrews. Refusing to submit, he was committed to prison for con tumacy, and then banished the kingdom. He retired to Holland, and in 1623 published there his celebrated controversial work, entitled Altare Damascenum, etc., in which he rigorously examined the origin and authority of Episcopacy. In 1622, a pretended recantation of his protest was published at London by a venal writer, Patrick Scott.
While on the continent, C. was known by the quaint appellation of Edwardus Dido clavius, being an anagram on his name Latinized. After king James's death in 1625. he returned to Scotland, and for some years was engaged collecting all the memorials relat ing to the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland, from the beginning of the reformation there to the death of James VI. In 1638, he became minister of Pencaitland. near Edinburgh; and in 1643 was appointed one of the committee for drawing up the Directory for Polio Worship in Scotland. He died at Jedburgh in 1651. From the original MS. of his IIis tory of the Kirk of Scotland, preserved in the British museum, an edition was printed for the Wodrow society, in 8 vols., 8vo (Editt. 1842-45), edited by the Rev. Thomas Thomson.