GILLESPIE, GEORGE, 1013-48; b. Scotland; a prominent member of the Presby terian .party in the Westminster assembly, entered the university of St. Andrews as a " presbytery bursar" in 1629. On the completion of a brilliant student career, lie became domestic chaplain to Lord Kenmure, and afterwards to the earl of Cassilis, his conscience not permitting him to accept the episcopal ordination which was at that time in Scotland an indispensable condition of induction to a parish. While with the earl of Cassilis he wrote his first work, A Dispute Against the English, Popish' Ceremonies Obtruded upon the Church of Scotland, which, opportunely published (but without the author's name) in the summer of 1637, attracted considerable attention, and within a few months was found by the privy council to be so damaging that, by their orders, all available copies were called in and burnt. In April, 1638, soon after the authority of the bishops had been set aside by the nation, Gillespie was ordained minister of emyss (Fife) by the presbytery of Kirkcaldy, and in the same year became a member of the famous Glasgow assembly, before which lie preached a sermon which pronounced so decidedly azainst royal interference in matters ecclesiastical as to call for some remonstrance on the part of Argyll, then lord high commissioner. In 1642, Gillespie was translated to Edinburgh; but the brief remainder of his life was chiefly spent in the conduct of pub lic business in London. Already, in 1640, he had accompanied the commissioners of
the peace to England as one of their chaplains; and in 1643 he was appointed to the Westminster assembly. Here lie took a prominent part in almost all the protracted dis cussions on church government, discipline and worship. supporting presbyterianism by numerous controversial writings, as well as by an unusual fluency and readiness in debate. Shortly after his return to Scotland, Gillespie was elected moderator of the assembly; but the laborious duties of that office (the court continued to sit from July 12 to Aug. 12) told fatally on a constitution which, at no time very vigor ous, had of late years been much overtaxed; and, after many weeks of great weakness, he died at Kirkcaldy. In acknowledgment of his great public services, a sum of £1000 Scots was voted, though destined never to be paid, to his widow and children by the committee of estates. A. simple tombstone, which• had been erected to his memory_in Kirkcaldy parish church, was in 1661 publicly broken at the cross by the hand of the common hangman, but was restored in 1746. Among the other of Gillespie's works may be mentioned the Treatise of Miscellany Questions, wherein many useful questions and vases of Conscience are discussed and resolved, published posthumously (1649); and The Ark of the Testament opened, being a treatise on the covenant of grace, also posthumous.