The Complaynt of Scotland

by Robert Wedderburn, A.M. Stewart (Introduction)

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1550

About the author

Robert Wedderburn (ca. 1510 – between 1555 and 1560) was a Scottish poet and pamphleteer. He was born in Dundee, and attended St Andrews University. He graduated MA in 1530, with his name listed at the head of the roll of graduates. In 1528 he was granted the reversion of St Katherine's Chapel in Dundee, despite being under age.

In the mid-1530s he came under suspicion of heresy and fled to Paris, where he attended the university. He may also have spent some time with his brother John Wedderburn at Wittenberg in the 1540s, a suggestion given credence by the fact that on his return journey to Scotland in 1546 he embarked at Frankfurt an der Oder. Crawford relates that when Robert was journeying back to Scotland and his ship had put in on the coast of Norway, a dispute arose between the Roman Catholic and Protestant passengers, which led Robert and his fellow reformers to burn Cardinal David Beaton in effigy. Beaton was assassinated in St Andrews that same day.

In conjunction with his brothers James and John, he wrote a number of sacred parodies on popular ballads, which were published apparently at first as broadsheet ballads, and were afterwards collected and issued in 1567, under the title Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs collected out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie, with augmentation of sundrie gude and godlie Ballates not contenit in the first editioun.

Wedderburn is widely believed to have been the author of The Complaynt of Scotland (1549), and, although that work's positive attitudes towards the established church make that seem unlikely to some, the editor of the 1979 Scottish Text Society edition of the work and the National Library of Scotland support the attribution.