1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pont, Robert

PONT (or Kylpont), ROBERT (1524–1606), Scottish reformer, was educated at St Andrews. In 1562 he was appointed minister at Dunblane and then at Dunkeld; in 1563, commissioner for Moray, Inverness and Banff. Then in succession he became minister of Birnie (1567), provost of Trinity College near Edinburgh (1571), a lord of session (1572), minister of St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh (1573) and at St Andrews (1581). Pont was a strenuous champion of ecclesiastical independence, and for protesting against parliamentary interference in church government he was obliged to leave his country. From 1584 to 1586 he was in England, but returning north he resumed his prominence in church matters and kept it until his death in 1606. His elder son Timothy Pont (1560?–1614?) was a good mathematician, surveyor, and “the first projector of a Scottish atlas.”