Bishops in the kirk: William Cowper of Galloway and the puritan episcopacy of Scotland

Abstract

The anti-episcopal polemic of early Scottish presbyterian historians like Row and Calderwood has misled us to presume that most contemporary presbyterians saw bishops as enemies of the gospel. Instead, both episcopal writings and the manuscript records of kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods show presbytery within prelacy working quite well in Scotland from the Reformation until the troubled 1630s. William Cowper, minister of Perth from 1595 to 1613 and thereafter bishop of Galloway, illustrates how and why the system worked. Calvinist, visionary, preacher, and vigorous reformer of manners, Cowper as minister joined with the Perth session to impose discipline, administered communion Geneva-style, and enforced the Reformation's abolition of traditional holidays. He was by any definition a puritan, and he remained one after his acceptance of a bishopric in 1612. As bishop of Galloway he declined to enforce kneeling or observance of Christmas despite royal mandate, cooperated with presbyteries and sessions, and continued active preaching and discipline. Charges against him of greed and ambition prove unfounded. His puritan episcopacy represents and explains the success of the kirk's hybrid polity in the post-Reformation period.