Introduction
Introduction The period covered by this Chapter is often considered the heroic age of the Scottish Church—or "Kirk", as we shall call it (it is merely the Scottish word for church). That heroism blazed forth in a long, bloody struggle for Presbyterianism within the national Kirk, against the Stuart monarchy and its determination to reduce the Kirk to a subservient department of state, run by royally appointed bishops.
A student is entitled to wonder how differently things might have turned out, had the Stuart kings themselves been devout Presbyterians. Would the Kirk have developed so stern an insistence on its spiritual autonomy from the state, if the state itself had taken the lead in fostering Presbyterian government in the Kirk? Perhaps a royalist Presbyterianism might have evolved, with Reformed churchmen happy to accept kingly government over the Kirk of Scotland. Of course, it is one of the might-have-beens of history; in reality, the Stuart monarchs loathed Presbyterianism, and vigorously promoted an Episcopalian form of church government as the instrument of monarchical control. For the Scottish Reformed Kirk, then,
Presbyterianism went hand-in-hand with independence from royal authority: Calvinists had to secure the latter to enjoy the former.
The story begins where it ended back in VolumeThree of the series, with the death of Scotland's first great Reformer, John Knox.