1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boyd, Zachary

BOYD, ZACHARY (1585?–1653), Scottish divine, was educated at the universities of Glasgow and St Andrews. He was for many years a teacher in the Protestant college of Saumur in France, but returned to Scotland in 1621, to escape the Huguenot persecution. In 1623 he was appointed minister of the Barony church in Glasgow, and he was rector of the university in 1634, 1635 and 1645. He bequeathed to the university the half of his fortune, a sum amounting to £20,000 Scots, besides his library and twelve volumes of MSS. His poetical compositions, though often eccentric, have some merit. The common statement that he made the printing of his metrical version of the Gospels and other Biblical narratives a condition of the reception of his grant to the university is a mistake. In later years he was a staunch Covenanter, and though for a time opposed to Oliver Cromwell, afterwards became friendly with him. His best-known works are The Battel of the Soul in Death (1629), of which a new edition, with a biography by G. Neil, was published in Glasgow in 1831; Zion’s Flowers—often called “Boyd’s Bible” (1644); Four Letters of Comfort (1640, reprinted, Edinburgh, 1878).