Chisholm, William, Bishop of Dunblane (1526 -1593)

William Chisholm was the son of Chisholm of Cromlix. He was made coadjutor to his uncle Bishop William by a brief of Pope Pius IV of 1 June 1561, and succeeded him in 1564. He is spoken of by John Knox as “one of the chief pillars of the Papisticall Kirk”, and by the Papal Legate in 1562 as “confirming a great many people in the faith and held justly in high esteem and regard by all good men”. He was much employed on diplomatic missions by Mary Queen of Scots, was declared to have forfeited the bishopric after her fall, and on 3 July 1573 the see was declared vacant. Meanwhile Chisholm had retired to France, and in 1570 was made Bishop of Vaison, near Avignon. He resigned Vaison to his nephew William in 1584, and retired to the convent of the Grande Chartreuse, where he took the vows of a simple monk, but was soon made Prior of the Chartreuse at Lyons and eventually at Rome where he died 26 September 1593.