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Parish Politics and Godly Agitation in Late Interregnum Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2021

Chris R. Langley
Chris R. Langley*
Affiliation:
Reader of Early Modern History, Newman University, Birmingham, UK
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Following the English invasion of Scotland in July 1650, ministers and laymen in the Church of Scotland splintered between Protester and Resolutioner factions: The Protesters argued that the Church of Scotland required further moral reformation in order to appease a vengeful God, and the Resolutioners were more content to accept the reintegration of former royalists into places of trust following the civil wars. This article explores the profound ways in which this split fundamentally altered relationships in the unusually well-documented parish of Crichton in Midlothian. Unlike other studies that have emphasized the ways in which the Protesters moved toward a position of separation from the rest of the kirk, this article explores a group of Protesters who sought to actively reform the kirk from within. Godly agitation in parish affairs was characterized by three traits: it was coordinated, remarkably litigious, and disseminated in manuscript libels and petitions rather than print. Ultimately, while this godly elite was adept at agitating for further reformation at the parish level, it did so without seceding from the structures of the national church altogether.

Keywords

InterregnumPresbyterianismSeparatism
Type
Article
Information
Church History , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 557 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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24 Presbytery of Dalkeith Minutes (1639–1652), 111.

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26 Presbytery of Dalkeith Minutes (1639–1652), 118–119.

27 Some of these disputes echo much older arguments over the parish stipend. My thanks to Dr. Norah Carlin for discussions on this topic.

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57 Lothian and Tweeddale, 376. “Skybald” denotes a scamp, rascal, rogue, a worthless person who is contemptible.

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65 Lothian and Tweeddale, 421–422.

66 Lothian and Tweeddale, 421–422.

67 Hay of Craignethan, 20; and Maurice Lee Jr., The Heiresses of Buccleuch: Marriage, Money and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Britain (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1996), 40.

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107 Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale Minutes (1659–1661), 56.

108 Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale Minutes (1659–1661), 57–58.

109 Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale Minutes (1659–1661), 67.

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