5. James VII: Presbyterians victorious
James VII: Presbyterians victorious 1. James VII: Rome on the throne When James VII of Scotland (James II of England) came to the throne in February 1685, he was determined to bring both his kingdoms back into the Roman Catholic fold.28 At first his northern kingdom was loyal. The only sign of things to come was an attempted rebellion by the Earl of Argyll, who returned from his Dutch exile to raise a Protestant standard against the popish monarch. But Argyll was forced to disband his army because of fierce internal disputes. The militant Covenanters would have nothing to do with Argyll's rising, perceiving it to be politically and personally motivated, rather than a genuine crusade for the Covenants. Argyll was captured and executed. Despite their non-involvement in Argyll's rebellion, the Covenanters suffered for it in a fresh wave of persecution.
James converted the royal chapel at Holyrood into a centre for Roman Catholic worship. Jesuits were based there, together with a Catholic printing press. James also began systematically dismissing Protestants from all positions of authority, even from town councils, replacing them with Catholics. He used royal power to exempt his Catholic nominees from the Protestant "Test Act" of 1681. Some of the more fiery Kirk ministers preached against popery; James silenced them. He even dismissed the Bishop of Dunblane and the Archbishop of Glasgow for opposition to his
Catholicizing policies. In 1687, he issued a royal Indulgence in which all the penal laws against Roman Catholics were lifted, although Presbyterians were merely given permission to worship in private houses. A second
Indulgence the same year suspended all laws against all nonconformists, whether Catholic or Presbyterian, but worship in the open air—the standard
Covenanter practice—was still prohibited.
2. The Glorious Revolution and the 1690 settlement Charles II's Episcopalian policies had been opposed by staunch
Presbyterians. James VII's Romanizing policies were opposed by the entire kingdom—in England as well as Scotland. The English lost patience first, and invited William of Orange, chief magistrate of the Calvinist Dutch
Republic (and husband of James' Protestant daughter Mary) to come to England at the head of an army to save the nation from Romanism.29 James, remembering what had happened to his father Charles I, panicked and fled the country in December 1688, leaving the way clear for a peaceful assumption of power by William of Orange. The event is known in British history as the Glorious Revolution. When news of James' fall from power reached Scotland, there was a popular Protestant uprising in Edinburgh;
Catholic chapels were destroyed by a rampaging Protestant mob. In the Covenanting heartland of the west, the Episcopalian clergy were forcibly driven out of their churches and manses ("rabbled" out) by their own insurgent parishioners.
Agents of the Scottish Protestant establishment met William in London, where an agreement was made that William would administer Scotland's affairs until a national assembly settled matters on a more permanent basis.
In March 1689, William summoned the Scottish convention of estates (a historic institution representing the traditional social orders: a quasiparliament) as the promised national assembly. Supporters of James were present, but they were outnumbered by aggressive supporters of William, and soon deserted the convention. Following England's example, the convention declared the Scottish throne vacant, and then offered it jointly to William and Mary. Supporters of James were henceforth known as "Jacobites" (from the Latin for James, Jacobus). James Graham of Claverhouse, the infamous persecutor of Presbyterians, raised a Highland force for the Jacobite cause, and smashed William's troops at Killiecrankie in July. But Claverhouse himself was killed in the battle, and without his charismatic leadership the Highlanders eventually lost heart and melted away, especially after encountering invincible resistance from a body of Cameronian troops at Dunkeld.
In June 1689 William recalled the convention as his first Scottish parliament. His ecclesiastical policy was guided by his Scottish
Presbyterian chaplain, William Carstares (1649–1715), who had suffered
imprisonment and torture under Charles II, before fleeing to the Dutch Republic and entering William's service. Parliament issued a proclamation calling on all ministers to pray for William and Mary as Scotland's rightful sovereigns; 182 ministers were dismissed for refusing to comply.
Episcopacy was then abolished. William was still reluctant to commit himself to legally establishing Presbyterianism as the national Scottish
Kirk, but it soon became clear that he had no alternative—the Episcopalians were showing themselves to be strongly Jacobite in their loyalties. So in 1690, the Kirk was constituted in law as a fully Presbyterian body. The royal supremacy over the Kirk was abolished. The Westminster Confession was recognized as the national Confession of Faith. The Presbyterian ministers ejected in 1663 were restored; the Episcopalian ministers who had been removed in 1689, either by popular pressure or for refusing to pray for William and Mary, were officially declared deprived of their livings.
Patronage was abolished, except in the case of town councils.
In October 1690, the general assembly met—the first since 1663. The Presbyterians were poised to take full advantage of the Glorious Revolution to press their cause, and there was real danger of anti-Episcopalian persecution. King William recommended moderation to the assembly. It was tacitly accepted that the days of the Covenants were over; the three surviving Cameronian ministers were received back into the Kirk as an uncovenanted body. Episcopalian clergy were allowed to remain in their parishes on condition that they subscribed to the Westminster Confession, prayed for William and Mary as Scotland's lawful sovereigns, and obeyed the Kirk's Presbyterian courts (presbytery, synod, assembly).
The restoration of Presbyterianism brought some changes in Scottish public worship. During 1660–90, the use of the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed had come to be associated, in many Presbyterian minds, with the detested Episcopal regime which persecuted Presbyterians. Prior to this, these practices had been Presbyterian norms. But these "liturgical" elements were now dropped by most Presbyterians in the post-1690 Kirk, although a few retained them. It was from 1690 onwards that Scottish
Presbyterianism became anti-liturgical, which certainly the original Scottish Reformers had not been.
Another practice that became widespread among all Presbyterians in this period was the "communion season". This had been pioneered by the Protesters. The minister in the local church where the Lord's Supper was to
be celebrated would be helped by his colleagues from neighbouring churches, and from Saturday to Monday sermons would be preached in the open air each day. People would come from all the churches of that area to take part, and throughout Sunday they would sit in relays at the Lord's
Table. The communion season became a settled feature in Scottish Presbyterian life, a kind of sacramental festival, and to some extent compensated for the infrequency of the Lord's Supper.
So was created the abiding Presbyterian form of the Church of Scotland which has endured to the present day (so far). However, the 1690 settlement was not based on the Covenants, which persuaded many Cameronians to remain outside the settlement, although their three ministers did go in. The Cameronians thus became a small lay movement, Presbyterian but estranged from the national Kirk, lacking both ministers and sacraments.
They continued the pre-1690 practice of meeting as praying societies, until in 1706 they gained the loyalty of John McMillan (1669–1753), who had been the minister in the established Kirk at Balmaghie, in Galloway.
Eventually McMillan was joined by Thomas Nairn (1680–1764), a minister from the First Secession Church (a breakaway Presbyterian Church, dating from 1733). McMillan and Nairn, together with some ruling elders, constituted themselves as a Presbytery in 1743, under the title of "the Reformed Presbytery". This body, as the Reformed Presbyterian Church, still exists today (there are only a few Scottish congregations, but very many more in Ireland, North America, and Canada).
3. The fate of the Episcopalians What happened to the Episcopalians? Some 200 Episcopalian clergy had been evicted by the mob in 1688 in the south-west, the Covenanting heartland. Another 200 had been expelled by the new government for being
Jacobites (refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary). The general assembly set up two commissions for the regions north and south of the river Tay, in order to inquire into the state of the parish ministry and to eject "scandalous" clergy. The northern commission interpreted its remit stringently to mean that all Episcopalians were automatically scandalous, and to be ejected. The result was that in the period 1690–1710, the parishes of the Episcopalian north-east were not allowed to have the clergy they wanted, and they themselves refused to accept Presbyterian clergy. This meant that they were often without a parish ministry of any kind.
Disillusioned, Episcopalians began to withdraw from the parish system and meet on their own. This was an ironic reversal of what had happened in the period 1660–88, when it had been Presbyterians who withdrew and met as private conventicles. Now the boot was on the other foot: the Episcopalians were the dissidents who worshipped in conventicles!
This was regarded as unacceptable by the new Presbyterian establishment. Matters came to an ugly head in 1711 when an Episcopalian clergyman, James Greenshields (active 1700s), was convicted and imprisoned by the Court of Session for conducting Episcopalian worship in Edinburgh. Greenshields appealed to the House of Lords, which upheld his right to conduct Episcopalian worship in Scotland. The Westminster parliament then passed a new Toleration Act in 1712 to enshrine the House of Lords' ruling. However, there was a sting in the tail: the Act required
Scottish Episcopalian clergy to renounce the exiled Stuarts, and swear allegiance to Queen Anne and her designated successor, the German
Protestant Princess Sophia of Hanover. Greenshields was prepared to do this, but many of the Episcopalian clergy were not, owing to their Jacobite sympathies. The Toleration Act therefore brought only a very limited relief to Episcopalians.
Having lost the government machinery of the national Church, Episcopalians did not survive or thrive so well as the Presbyterians had done in 1660–88. A significant number of Episcopalians drifted into fullblooded Jacobitism, and thus became liable to the death penalty for treason;
this had the psychological effect of enhancing their sense of alienation from the Scottish political and religious establishment.
Episcopalians increasingly became a virtual sect. However, they did survive, and by the latter half of the 18th century they constituted an enduring minority Church in the life of Scotland, reconciled to their marginal status. In reaction to the prevalent Presbyterianism, Episcopalians became rather more "High
Church" in their theology, indeed much higher and closer to Roman Catholicism than were the Episcopalians (Anglicans) of England.
4. Other key figures Henry Scougal Henry Scougal (1650–78) was a native of Leuchars, and son of Bishop
Patrick Scougal (1607–82) of Aberdeen. He studied at Aberdeen University; he was ordained in 1672, and appointed to the parish of Auchterless. In 1674 he became professor of divinity in Aberdeen, but died four years later
(aged only 28). He is remembered for his devotional classic, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677). This book has taken an honoured place alongside such select works as Bernard of Clairvaux's On Loving God,
Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as a landmark of Christian spirituality. The true nature of religion was its theme. Scougal argued that this consisted not primarily in intellectual belief or in moral practice, but in a spiritual union between the soul and God, in which God's very life was transfused into a person. The root of this supernatural life was faith; its fruits were love for God, charity to our neighbour, purity of life, and humility. The chief means of promoting the divine life in the soul were "fervent and hearty prayer", and frequent participation in the Lord's Supper. The Life of God in the Soul of Man has had an enduring impact on the piety of the English-speaking world, and often been reprinted. The great 18th century English evangelist, George
Whitefield, testified that it was through Scougal's book that he was saved from a reliance on external religious works to seek the new birth in Christ.
Alexander Peden Alexander Peden (1626–86), or "Peden the Prophet" as he was nicknamed, was born in Ayrshire, educated at Glasgow University, and trained for the ministry. However, just as he was about to receive his license to preach, a young unmarried mother accused him of fathering her child out of wedlock.
The charge was eventually proved groundless, but Peden was so shaken by the episode that he apparently vowed never to take a wife. In 1660 he became minister of New Luce in Galloway, but his ministry was ended prematurely by the great ejection of 1663 of all those ministers who would not submit to Episcopal reordination.
So began Peden's career of preaching at secret Covenanter meetings in southern Scotland, a career marked by many hair's-breadth escapes from
the persecuting hand of Charles II's government. Peden joined the Pentland Rising of 1666, but left just before their defeat at the battle of Rullion
Green, having (it seems) foreknowledge of the defeat. His mere presence among the Pentland Covenanters was enough to have him declared a rebel by the government. He was finally seized in 1673 and imprisoned on the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, where many Covenanters were held captive. In 1677 the government ordered Peden to be shipped out as a slave to the American plantations, together with other Presbyterian prisoners. But Peden prophesied to his fellow captives that they would never suffer this fate; and when they arrived in London, the captain of the ship that was to transport them discovered that they were prisoners of conscience, and refused to take them. Thus they regained their freedom.
Peden spent the next nine years in Ireland and Ayrshire, preaching again to secret gatherings. Remarkable, even miraculous, deliverances from capture are recorded. On one occasion, a squad of royal troopers were approaching Peden and several companions. A slight elevation of ground came in between the troopers and the fleeing Covenanters. Peden called a halt, and prayed:
Lord, it is Thy enemy's day, hour, and power; they may not be idle, but hast Thou no other work for them but to send them after us? Send them after them to whom Thou wilt give strength to flee, for our strength is gone. Twine them about the hill, Lord, and cast the lap of Thy cloak over Old Sandy and these poor things, and save us this one time, and we will keep it in remembrance, and tell it to the commendation of Thy goodness, pity, and compassion, what Thou didst for us at such a time.
A mist descended on the hill, and Peden and his friends were safe.
Peden's last days were lived in a cave on the banks of the river Ayr. A few hours before his death, he had a presentiment of the approaching end, and so left the cave and went to his brother's house where he died. Peden's reputation as a preacher and saint of the Covenant was perhaps surpassed only by Samuel Rutherford. After his death, Patrick Walker collected all known examples of Peden's prophecies and published them in 1724. They are one of the greatest literary monuments to the supernatural and miraculous aura that surrounded Covenanting piety at its most exalted.