Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/694

 SCOTLAND

G28

SCOTLAND

everj' congregation in Scotland, on pain of depriva- tion of the minister, was the signal for a general up- rising, not less formidable because restrained. The Pri\'j- Council permitted (being powerless to prevent) the formation of a provisional government, whose first act was to procure the renewal of the National Ck)venant, first drawn up in 15S0, engaging its sub- scribers to adhere to and defend the doctrine and discipline of the Scotch Protestant Church. The Covenant was signed by all classes of the people, and the General Assembly of 163S, in spite of the protest of the king's high commissioner, Lord Hamilton, abolished the episcopacy, annulled the royal ordinance as to the service-book, and claimed a sovereign right to carry out the convictions of the national church as to its position and duty.

These high pretensions of the General Assembly, of which King Charles was, through his commissioner, a constituent part, were bound to come in confhct with Charles' lofty idea of his royal prerogative. He absolutely refused to concede the right of his Scottish subjects to choose their own form of church govern- ment, and marched an army to the border to enforce submission to his authority. The Scotch, however, possessed themselves of Newcastle; the king was ultimately obliged to sign a treaty favourable to them and their claims; and his own downfall, followed by the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, a sworn oppo- nent of Prelacy, brought the leaders of the Scottish Church into important relations with the new order of things in England. The Scottish Commissioners took a prominent part in the Westminster Assembly of 1643, convened to draw up the new standards of doctrine and church government for England under the Commonwealth; and it was then and there that was framed the "Shorter Catechism" which still remains the recognized religious text-book of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The latter years of the Commonwealth were, in fact, an epoch of prosperity hitherto unknown for Scottish Presby- terianism; but the restoration of Charles II, who was nowhere more warmly welcomed than in his northern dominioas, was a rude blow to their Church's hopes of continued peace and spiritual independence.

Within a year of his assumption of the royal au- thority, Charles rescinded through his Parliaments all the acts approving the national covenant and abolish- ing the hierarchy; and a few months later his Scottish subjects were bidden by proclamations to "com- pose themselves to a cheerful acquiescence" in the re- establishment of the "right government of bishops", on pain of impri-sonment. Four new prelates were consecrated by English bishops for Scotland, and all occupiers of benefices had to get presentation from the patrons and collation from the bishops, or else be ejected from their livings, as nearly four hundred actually were. From this time until Charles II's death in 1685, an era of persecution prevailed in Scotland, large numbers of the Presbyterians refusing to conform to the Episcopal Church, and being treated in con.sequence with every kind of indignity, hounded from their houses, tortured, and in many ca-ses ma.s- sacred. The worship of the Covenanters was pro- hibited under pain of death, but was neverthele.s9 largely attended all over the country, and the armed risings of the people against their oppressors were forcibly put down, the Covenanting forces being hope- lessly defeated in several engagements. At length, on the king's death, came a few years' breathing- time and peace; for his Catholic succeasor, James II, himself of course a diasenter from the established religion, immediately conceded toleration and liberty of worship all over the kingdom, although some of hia more fanatical subjects refused to accept a boon which they regarded as coming from a polluted source.

The Revolution of 1688, and the fiight of the Catho-

lic king, opened the way to the abolition of the Pre- latical government which was odious to the majority of Scotsmen; and one of the first acts of the Parha- ment assembled in the first year of the reign of William III (July, 1689) was to repeal all previous acts in favour of Episcopacy. The Presbyterian form of church government was not settled by this Parlia- ment; but, in the following year, the Jacobite and Prelatical cause having been rendered hopeless by the death of its leader, Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, the king and queen and the three estates of the realm formally ratified the Westminster Con- fession, and re-established the Presbyterian form of church government and discipline. Lord Melville, a zealous Presbyterian, had already replaced Hamil- ton as the king's commissioner to the General As- sembly, and the Restoration Act of Parliament, as- serting the supremacy of the Crown in ecclesiastical causes, had been repealed. Another act ordered all professors and masters in every university and school to subscribe the Confession, and the popular election of ministers took the place of private patronage to benefices. The secular power thus re-established the Church as a fullj^-organized Presbyterian body, just as it had re-established Episcopacj' thirty years before; but the new settlement was made not by the arbitrary will of the sovereign, but (according to the principles of the Revolution) as being that most in accordance with the will of the people, as indeed there is no reason to doubt that it was. A very consider- able section, however, especially in the east and north- east of Scotland, and more particularly among the wealthy and aristocratic classes, remained attached to Episcopalian principles; and though those of the clergy who refused to conform to the Establishment were treated with considerable harshness, no attempt was made to compel the laity to attend Presbyterian worship, or submit to the rigid Presbyterian discipline. The majority of the EpiscopaUans were also Jaco- bites at heart, praying, if not working, for the restora- tion of the Stuart dynasty, and were thus a disturbing element in the country not only from a religious, but from a pohtical point of view. The four Scottish universities (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. An- drews) were beheved, and with reason, to be very un- favourably affected towards the new order of things in Church and State; and the visitation of them con- ducted in the closing years of the seventeenth century resulted in the majority of the principals being ejected from office for refusing to comply with the test ordered by the statute of 1690. The effect of this state of things was that when the General Assembly met for the first time after nearly forty years, the universities were unrepresented save by a single member, while there were hardly any members belonging to the nobility or higher gentry, or representing the wide district of Scotland north of the Tay. The Assembly ordered all ministers and elders to subscribe the Westminster Confession, and appointed a solemn fast-day in expia- tion of the national sins, among which was expressly mentioned the; introduction of Prelacy. But in view of the divid(!(l state of the country, it showed its pru- dence by not attempting to renew the general obliga- tion of the National Covenant. The efforts of the Assembly, through its commissioners, to purge out the old incumbents throughout the kingdom, and replace them by orthodox ministers, proved quite ineffectual in Aberdeen and other strongholds of Episcopacy; but on the whole, the estabUshed religion, backed by the authority of the State and supported by the majority of the people, held its own, and increased in strength and numbers during the reigns of William III and his successor Queen Anne. The latter, while her- self a strong adherent of the Episcopal Church of England, showed no inclination to favour the hopes and schemes of the IOj)iscopalian minority in Scotland. A proposal in the Scottish ParUament of 1703 that the