LESLEY, JOHN. — Scottish bishop and historian, born on 29 September 1527, died in a convent near Brussels on 31 May 1596. A priest and doctor of law at the Sorbonne in 1553, he was a zealous defender of Catholicism against the Protestants.
He returned Mary Stuart to Scotland in 1561, and she appointed him professor of canon law at Aberdeen, then senator of the College of Justice. Bishop of Ross in 1565 and an intrepid supporter of Mary Stuart, he was imprisoned by Elizabeth, queen of England (1568–1573), then exiled to the Netherlands and France, where in 1593 he became bishop of Coutances. His activity as a reorganizer of the laws of Scotland, in 1566, and as a scholar was noteworthy, especially in the De origine moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum, in 10 books, which extends to 1562.
BIBL. The list of L.’s works is in F. W. Bateson, The Cambridge bibliography of english literature, I, Cambridge 1940, p. 905. Armando Saitta