The eldest son of Alexander Gibson, Lord Durie I (died 1644) and his wife Margaret, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton, he was made a clerk of session with his father who was promoted to the Scottish bench in 1621. He opposed Charles I's Scottish religious policy based on the service-book, and protested against the royal proclamations of 1638. He petitioned the presbytery of Edinburgh against the bishops, November 1638, and was commissary-general of the forces raised to resist Charles I in the Second Bishops' War of 1640.
