BARCLAY, Alexander Minister of Peterhead, Reverend

  General Notes:

According to Scottish Episcopal Clergy 1689-2000, Alexander Barclay was said to have been a cadet of the Barclays of Gartly. He graduated MA in 1668.

"ALEXANDER BARCLAY, educated at King's College, Aberdeen; M.A. (9th July 1668); adm. to Auchterless in 1674; pres. by George, Earl Marischal, trans, and adm. 28th Sept. 1682; deprived in 1695 for non-jurancy and protesting against the Assembly's Committee for the North; was dismissed by Parliament 9th July that year. He intruded before 12th May 1708; dep. 8th May 1716 for complicity in the Rebellion. He conducted Episcopalian services in a house in the Longate for those seceders who formed the nucleus of St Peter's Episcopal congregation. He marr. (cont. 4th Nov. 1674), Margaret Burnet, and had issue Patrick; William; Alexander; George; Margaret; Elizabeth (marr., cont. 5th Jan. 1705, Patrick White); Jean (marr. (1) cont. 10th June 1718, William Badichell, schoolmaster, Auchterless; ? (2) Charles Gordon, merchant, Aberdeen). [Acts, of Part., ix., 423, App.119 ; Aberdeenshire Poll-Book, i., 572.]"

from Fasti Ecclesiae
Note: in the later volume of Addenda and Corrigenda, Jean's second marriage is contradicted.

"Peterhead is a good example. A fishing port, and later a whaling port, north-east of Aberdeen, its parish minister was Alexander Barclay who managed to keep the parish church until removed in 1695, and who from about 1699 was ministering in a separate meeting-house on Port Henry Lane, being one of the early users of the English Prayer Book. When Queen Anne died in 1714, the Pretender James VIII landed and was proclaimed at Peterhead, whereupon Barclay took over the parish church, and it was claimed against him when the revolt failed that he 'kept possession thereof several months last winter; that he read a proclamation in that pulpit for levying men for the Pretender's service, that he read another proclamation for keeping a Thanksgiving for his safe arrival in Scotland'."

from The Scottish Episcopal Church:A New History by Gavin White ^{1 2}

Alexander married Margaret BURNET, daughter of Reverend Mr William BURNET Minister of Insch and Margaret BARCLAY, 4 November 1674(contract).¹ (Margaret BURNET was born about 1655.)