Background
Forbes was the third son of John Forbes, minister of Alford, Aberdeenshire, and afterwards of Delft.
Forbes was the third son of John Forbes, minister of Alford, Aberdeenshire, and afterwards of Delft.
He studied at the university and King"s College of Aberdeen, of which his uncle, the bishop, was chancellor, and took his degree in 1631.
Returning to Holland he became an army chaplain. He was in Scotland in 1638, and signed the national covenant in presence of the General Assembly held at Glasgow in that year. In 1641 he became minister of the British church at Delft, in which his father had officiated.
He commends a manuscript which Forbes had written and sent him, and wishes to see it in print.
The king Charles II, having restored episcopacy in Scotland, appointed Forbes, then chaplain to Andrew Rutherford, 1st Earl of Teviot, governor of Dunkirk, to the bishopric of Caithness, and with five others he was consecrated at the abbey church of Holyrood 7 May 1662 by the archbishops of Saint Andrews and Glasgow and the bishop of Galloway. James Kirkton, referring to his appointment to the bishopric, calls him ‘the degenerate son of ane excellent father.’
Forbes died in 1680, aged about sixty-nine.