Gavin Dunbar (died 1532) was a 16th-century bishop of Aberdeen. He was the son of Sir Alexander Dunbar of Westfield, near Elgin and Elizabeth Sutherland, apparently a daughter of Alexander Sutherland, Laird of Duffus. Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow, was his nephew.
Life
He was born in Westfield, near Elgin around 1455.[1]
Dunbar's career saw the creation of a huge number of minor ecclesiastical establishments, including two chaplaincies in Elgin Cathedral, a hospital in the Chanonry, Old Aberdeen and an altar dedicated to St Katherine in the Aberdeen Cathedral. To the cathedral, Bishop Dunbar added many structures, including the new south transept. Dunbar was famous for his wisdom and knowledge of the Arts.
He died at St Andrews on 10 March 1532, and was buried in the south transept of St Machar's Cathedral in Old Aberdeen. Due to curtailment of the church the actual grave is now external, within an enclosure made of the original lower eastern walls. A partial replica has been made internally but is not the grave.
^Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. lxvi–lxvii, 334, 338, 347.
^Norman Macdougall, James IV (Tuckwell: East Linton, 1997), p. 255.
Dowden, John, The Bishops of Scotland, ed. J. Maitland Thomson, Glasgow, (1912)
Ray McAleese, Bishop Gavin Dunbar: Nobleman, Statesman, Catholic Bishop, Administrator and Philanthropist. ed. by Walter R. H. Duncan, Friends of St Machar, Occasional Publications, Series 2, No. 7 (Aberdeen: Friends of St Machar, 2013), pp. 40.