Welsh (1570‒1625)

Welsh, or Welch, John, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man; became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a preacher and for his sturdy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband a bishopric, held out her apron before sovereign majesty, and threatened she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in “Sartor” on Aprons, as one of Carlyle's apron-worthies (1570‒1625).

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)