Author: Boswell, Robert
Biography:
BOSWELL, Robert (1746-1804: ancestry.co.uk)
Lawyer and hymn-writer. He was born on 19 Jan. 1746 at Auchinleck, Ayrshire, to John Boswell (the brother of James Boswell, q.v.) and Anne (Cramond) Boswell. In 1761, he was apprenticed to Thomas Tod, Writer to the Signet, presumably following legal studies at university. He married Sibella Sandemanat Edinburgh on 21 May 1769; they had six children. From 1770 until his death he held the post of Lyon Clerk in the Scottish judiciary. Having taught himself to read scripture in Hebrew, he was very pious and a member of the Glasite sect (his wife was a cousin of Robert Sandeman who spread the Glasite church beyond Scotland). He died while preaching in London on 1 Apr. 1804 and is buried in Greyfriars cemetery, Edinburgh. Boswell’s hymns were privately printed after his death. (ancestry.co.uk 4 May 2018; ODNB [Boswell and Robert Sandeman] 4 May 2018; Charles Rogers, ed., Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell [1876]) SR