ABSTRACT
Alexander Ross, author of Mystagogus Poeticus, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 1 January 1590/1. 1 Little is known concerning his parentage or early years. According to one seventeenth-century source, he was one of the Roses of Insch, descended from the line of Alexander Rose of Larachmoir, the third son of Hugh, eighth Rose of Kilravock (1453-1517). The Insch Roses included a number of prominent "men of the goun," among them Alexander Ross, D.D. (1594-1639), one of the anti-covenanting "Aberdeen Doctors" 2 ; Arthur, Archbishop of St. Andrews (1634-1704); and Alexander, Bishop of Edinburgh (1646-1720). 3 The precise relation of the subject of the present study to this family cannot be ascertained. It is a plausible conjecture that Ross's father, perhaps a clergyman or merchant of Aberdeen, was born sometime in the seventh decade of the sixteenth century and died about 1641. 4 Alexander, apparently the eldest son, had two known brothers--George, born in 1592, and the younger William, birthdate unknown. 5
