Marital Problems? Stuart Alliances. Scottish Politics and the Protestant North, 1603-1641

1995

This thesis examines the interaction between the Kirk's institutions and the state between the fall of the earl of Arran's government in 1585 and the full restoration of diocesan episcopacy in 1610. Due to the lack of focussed secondary material, reliance has been placed upon primary sources, especially information from the courts of the Kirk above the parochial levelthe presbyteries, synods and the general assemblyon personal correspondence and on governmental and diplomatic sources. The role of the general assembly has been investigated by analyses of its composition and its interaction with the crown. The part played by the presbytery of Edinburgh and its successor as the principal standing committee of the Kirk, the commission of the general assembly, provides a more focussed investigation of the personnel involved in ecclesiastical politics at the highest level. Chapters are also devoted to the synods and the presbyteries, concentrating on how these regional and local courts responded to matters of national significance. Finally, a chapter on the question of ecclesiastical representation in parliament complements the analysis of the institutional framework of the Kirk by demonstrating how opinions on a particular issue were formed and changed by political circumstances. This analysis demonstrates that many of the historiographical constructs which have been placed upon the issue of ecclesiastical politics in the reign of James VI require fundamental reassessment. The idea of factions within the &rk-'Melvillians' , or 'Presbyterians' and 'episcopalians'-is misleading and has done much to cloud the true picture. The alternative view presented here suggests that there were, throughout the period, shifting patterns of opposition and obedience to the policy of the crown rather than fixed clerical parties. Opinions remained fluid and were affected by events. Historians have approached the sources with preconceptions concerning the existence of such factions and have thus tried to find what was often not there. It is also demonstrated that there was a crucial difference in royal policy on either side of the regnal union which, along with 1596, should be seen as a turning point. Prior to 1603, James VI had a firm gnp on his ecclesiastical policy as a result of direct personal involvement after 1596. Consequently, he was able to carry out a successful policy based on consensus. After his accession to the English throne, however, the indirect nature of hs contact with ecclesiastical politics caused him to lose that grip. The centralising tendency in government, which had become evident prior to 1603, accelerated and was a major factor in increased clerical opposition to royal policy during the first decade of the seventeenth century. It is, therefore, also asserted here that, contrary to the view of most historians, it was this factor and not the liturgical innovations of the second decade of the seventeenth century which brought about the loss of clerical confidence in the religious policy of James VI.

Renaissance and Reformation, 2013

Durant la fin des années 1580 et au début des années 1590, Jacques VI d’Écosse a adhéré sans équivoque à la Réforme. En se pénétrant de l’eschatologie protestante, en formant une alliance avec les presbytériens écossais, et en promouvant la réforme à la fois dans son royaume et à l’étranger, le roi fit de l’Écosse un phare de la Réforme. Simultanément, Jacques et ses nouveaux alliés — notamment Andrew Melville — ont vigoureusement favorisé une vision apocalyptique d’une Bretagne protestante unie. En conséquence, l’Écosse surgit comme jamais auparavant dans la politique religieuse tendue de l’Angleterre. Le débat sur la continuation de la Réforme s’est donc transformé en un débat au sujet de l’Écosse et de l’avenir post-élisabéthain anglais. Les conservateurs religieux anglais, tels que John Whitgift et Richard Bancroft, sérieusement alarmés, a lancé une campagne pour bloquer la succession Stuart ou au moins l’éventualité d’une union de la Bretagne. Cette campagne s’est manifestée da...

Allegiances, the choosing of sides, lies at the heart of civil warindeed no civil war can be sustained without it. Thus the reasons why groups and individuals chose the sides they did have been integral to the study of civil wars. This is no less true for the mid seventeenthcentury civil wars in the British Isles which, for England in particular, have provoked a lively and sometimes acrimonious debate. 1 Scotland and England experienced not just civil wars, but revolutions that resulted in over a decade of experimentation with forms of parliamentary government until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Not unsurprisingly therefore, a range of explanations for both elite and popular allegiances have been offered, ranging from classic casus belli such as loyalty to the king, religious and political ideologies and the opportunity for self-advancement, to social and economic factors such as noble indebtedness, class conflict and diversity in agrarian practice and patterns of landholding. 2 The Scottish Revolution 3 gave rise to a series of decision points which asked questions about allegiances or at which choices had to be made. Support for the revolution in Scotland had its roots in a variety of factors, including the consequences of a non-resident monarch and concern at what were perceived as the increasingly absolute royal policies of Charles I (1625-49). The immediate flashpoint was the introduction of a new liturgy on the king's orders in 1637, which became the focus of organised opposition to innovations in church and state, symbolised by the issuing of a bond for mass subscriptionthe National Covenantin 1638. Royal government quickly collapsed and the establishment of the covenanting administration and the legislation of the parliamentary session of 1640-41 brought about a virtual 1 The historiography of civil war allegiances originated from the proliferation of English local studies published from the 1960s onwards, see, for example, Fletcher 1975. 2 An interesting and controversial example of this approach is Underdown 1985, which explores the different customs and social structures of arable and pastoral regions. Something similar has been tentatively done for Scotland in Makey 1979. The link between noble indebtedness and the Scottish Revolution is explored in Brown 1989. 3 Also known as the Covenanting Revolution, as the common term for the opponents of Charles I is ›Covenanters‹. This is the broad equivalent of ›Parliamentarian‹ in the English Civil War.

Renaissance and Reformation/ …, 2006

Royal studies journal, 2023

143-6. xviii + 367 pp. £75. amilies are time-consuming. The three years of my ever-delayed attempts to review this ambitious collection are set against domestic upheaval, relocations, and births. However, this is nothing when compared to the efforts of the Bourbons, Habsburgs, and Stuarts to maintain a generation-long period of marital negotiations (with partners with whom they might simultaneously be in a state of cold war), uphold wider dynastic obligations, honour potential treaty terms, further the interests of composite crowns, and defend their national churches, merchants, and citizens. It is hardly a surprise

introduction to special issue of journal on Scotland 1550-1650, co-edited by Sarah Dunnigan and Elizabeth Ewan

This volume deals with the development, implementation and maintenance of Scottish networks in Northern Europe from c.1600-1746. The book contains nine chapters divided into three parts of original and innovative archival reseach. After an introduction providing a theoretical overview of the subject, the first section focusses on the associations of kith and kin, place and nation and confessional loyalty tested in the numerous case studies throughout the book. Section two provides an analysis of Scottish networks in an economic context providing both quantitative and qualitative evidence to describe their success and failures in a variety of situations and locations. The final section provides three meticulously researched case studies of subversive networks including an espionage network operating in Poland on behalf of Sweden, the confessional network of the irenicist John Durie and rounded off with a review of the Jacobite network stretching across Russia, Sweden, Prussia and Rome.

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2008

2011

The Search for Salvation: Lay Faith in Scotland, 1480-1560. By Audrey-Beth Fitch. (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2009, Pp. xvii, 206. $41.95.) Reforming the Scottish Parish: The Reformation in Fife, 1560-1640. By John McCallum. (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010, Pp. xvii, 259. $124.95.) Commonwealth and the EngUsh Reformation: Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483-1560. By Ben Lowe. (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010, Pp. xv, 308. $119.95.) How and why did Protestant convictions take hold in the lives of everyday British parishioners? Many familiar histories of the period neglect this important query. It is one thing to contrast theologies or chronicle national or international controversies; It is quite another to look at how both parishioners and civil and ecclesiastical leaders adapted the Protestant reforms in their parishes and local jurisdictions. Three fine new monographs address these questions. Audrey Beth-Fitch&#39...

The Restoration of monarchy in rhe spring of 1660 is normaly seen as being genuinely popular. The King's return, as one contemporary pur it, was greeted with rhe 'acclamarions of all rhe people,, and met with 'che greatest and most unanimous satisfaction that ever was perceiv'd in England'.' Conremporaries were well aware, however, that this apparent unanirniry in favour of restoring the King did not represent a genuine consensus. The High Anglican cleric, George Hickes, looking back on the Restoration in a serrnon of 1684, commented that .then were strange things to be seen, Republicans with Royalists, Church_ men with Church-robbers, Rebels and Traytors with Loyal Subjects, Papists with Protestants, Episcopalians with Anti-Episcopalians, all agreed to bring in rhe King, or let him be brought in'.r Clarendon thought that the l\estoration was produced 'by a union of contradictions. þy a concurrence of causes' which 'never desired the same effects'.' It is a major theme of this book that the roots of parry strife in England can be rraced back to 1660, and the problems which the Restoration left unsolved. Ir will be the ârgument of this chapter that the Rescoration was, indeed, a deeply contradictory affair, rhe product of an already divided sociery. The Restoration failed to hear these divisions, and the development of party conflict occurred as a result of