Career
Methuen was originally a baker in Dundee, was an early convert to the new doctrines. Methuen avoided arrest through the intrepidity of Provost Haliburton, and to show their disappointment at his escape, the secret council fined the town of Dundee in the sum of 2,000l. Methuen, William Harlaw, John Douglas, and John Willock now began to preach with greater publicity in different parts of Scotland.
Being found guilty, he was "denounced rebel and put to the horn as fugitive".
He was deposed from his incumbency, with some difficulty, towards the end of 1562, for adultery with his servant, and sentence of excommunication was also pronounced against him. Thereupon he fled to England and resumed his ministerial office there.
In 1563 it was declared in the assembly that he was "verie sorrowful for his grievous offence, and wald underly whatever punishment the kirk would lay upon him," which declaration, on 27 December 1564, "the haill Assemblie with ane voyce are content to receive." After an absence of up wards of two years the assembly, on 26 June 1566, ordained his public repentance.
He was ordered to appear at the church door of Edinburgh when the second bell rang for public worship, clothed in sackcloth, bare-headed and bare-footed.
To stand there until the prayer and psalms were finished. When he was to be brought into the church to hear the sermon, during which he was to be "placeit in the publick spectakill above the peiple." He was to repeat this procedure at Dundee and Jedburgh, where he had officiated as minister. Methuen went through a part of this discipline, but being overwhelmed with shame, or despairing to regain his lost reputation, he stopped in the midst of it, and again returned to England.
