Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T20:22:24.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The House of Lords and Religious Toleration in Scotland: James Greenshields's Appeal, 1709–11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2020

Ben Rogers
Ben Rogers*
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
*
*E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines how the House of Lords, as the ultimate appellate authority of the new kingdom of Great Britain, formed after the union of 1707, provided a degree of religious toleration for Scotland's episcopalian minority when they supported James Greenshields's appeal on 1 March 1711. Greenshields was a Scottish episcopalian minister who appealed to the Lords in February 1710 after he was imprisoned by the Edinburgh magistrates for using the English Book of Common Prayer to conduct a service for a private episcopalian congregation. The Lords’ decision confirmed that no law in Scotland proscribed the Prayer Book liturgy and provided a degree of legal recognition to the episcopalians who used it. This article examines the arguments that Greenshields and his supporters used to advance his appeal. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Scotland's established church, the nation's episcopalian minority and the new British state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 56: THE CHURCH AND THE LAW , June 2020 , pp. 320 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Alasdair Raffe and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments on this article.

References

1 London, LPL, Correspondence of Thomas Tenison, MS 1029, fol. 110, Narcissus Marsh to Tenison, 30 December 1710.

2 Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, 1706/10/315, ‘Act ratifying and approving the Treaty of Union of the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England’, 16 January 1707, online at: <http://www.rps.ac.uk>, accessed 2 September 2019; Whatley, Christopher A. with Patrick, Derek J., The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006), 306–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Raffe, Alasdair, Scotland in Revolution, 1685–1690 (Edinburgh, 2018), 140–4Google Scholar; Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London, 2006), 378–88.

4 Records of the Parliament of Scotland, 1706/10/251, ‘Act for Securing of the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government’, 12 November 1706, online at: <http://www.rps.ac.uk>, accessed 2 September 2019; Derek J. Patrick, ‘The Kirk, Parliament and the Union, 1706–7’, in Stewart J. Brown and Christopher A. Whatley, eds, The Union of 1707: New Dimensions (Edinburgh, 2008), 94–115.

5 The Statutes of the Realm: Printed by the Command of His Majesty King George the Third, 2nd edn, 11 vols (London, 1963; first published 1810–28), 9: 557–9.

6 Levack, Brian P., The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland, and the Union 1603–1707 (Oxford, 1987), 98Google Scholar; Cairns, John W., ‘Scottish Law, Scottish Lawyers and the Status of the Union’, in Robertson, John, ed., A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), 243–68Google Scholar.

7 Tristram Clarke, ‘The Scottish Episcopalians, 1689–1720’ (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1987), 200–50.

8 Tompson, Richard S., ‘James Greenshields and the House of Lords: A Reappraisal’, in Gordon, W. M. and Fergus, T. D., eds, Legal History in the Making: Proceedings of the Ninth British Legal History Conference Glasgow 1989 (London, 1991), 109–24Google Scholar.

9 Stephen, Jeffrey, ‘English Liturgy and Scottish Identity: The Case of James Greenshields’, in Macinnes, Allan I. and Hamilton, Douglas J., eds, Jacobitism, Enlightenment and Empire, 1680–1720 (Cambridge, 2014), 59–74Google Scholar.

10 Raffe, Alasdair, ‘Presbyterians and Episcopalians: The Formation of Confessional Cultures in Scotland, 1660–1715’, EHR 125 (2010), 570–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge, 2012), 48–50.

11 Ben Rogers, ‘Religious Comprehension and Toleration in Scotland, 1689–1712’ (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2019), 116–29.

12 Lenman, Bruce, ‘The Scottish Episcopal Clergy and the Ideology of Jacobitism’, in Cruickshanks, Eveline, ed., Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), 36–4Google Scholar8; Clarke, Tristram, ‘“Nurseries of Sedition”?: The Episcopal Congregations after the Revolution of 1689’, in Porter, James, ed., After Columba, after Calvin: Religious Community in North-East Scotland (Aberdeen, 1999), 61–9Google Scholar.

13 An Act for the Toleration of the Episcopal Church in Scotland which was thrown out by the Scotch Parliament An. 1703 (Edinburgh, 1703); Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 135–8.

14 London, BL, Add. MS 28055, fol. 388r–v.

15 Karin Bowie, ed., Addresses against Incorporating Union, 1706–1707, Scottish History Society 6th series 13 (Woodbridge, 2018), 40–1.

16 Bowie, ed., Addresses, 48–9; Raffe, Alasdair, ‘Petitioning in Scottish Church Courts, 1638–1707’, Parliaments, Estates & Representation 38 (2018), 323–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Bowie, ed., Addresses, 55.

18 BL, Add. MS 28055, fol. 338r.

19 Report of the Manuscripts of the late Allan George Finch, Esq., of Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, vol. 3, HMC 71 (London, 1957), 348.

20 Kidd, Colin, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500–2000 (Cambridge, 2008), 101–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Glasgow, Glasgow UL, Murray MS 651, unpaginated.

22 [James Webster], Lawful Prejudices against an Incorporating Union with England (Edinburgh, 1707), 9–11; Raffe, Culture of Controversy, 79.

23 A Narrative of the late Treatment of the Episcopal Ministers within the City of Edinburgh since March last 1708 (London, 1708), i–iii, 4–8; Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 190–2.

24 P. W. J. Riley, The English Ministers and Scotland, 1707–1727 (London, 1964), 92–5.

25 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842 (Edinburgh, 1843), 418–19.

26 The Appellant's Case ([London?], 1710).

27 Statutes, 7: 747–50; Raffe, Culture of Controversy, 90–1.

28 Tompson, ‘Greenshields’, 114.

29 To the Right Honourable Lords of the Council and Session: The Petition of Mr James Greenshields Minister of the Gospel ([Edinburgh?], 1709), 3–5.

30 Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 254–7.

31 Szechi, Daniel, ‘The Politics of Persecution: Scots Episcopalian Toleration and the Harley Ministry, 1710–12’, in Shiels, W. J., ed., Persecution and Toleration, SCH 21 (Oxford, 1984), 275–87Google Scholar; David Wilkinson, ‘Dalrymple, Hon. Sir David (c.1665–1721)’, in D. W. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks and S. Handley, eds, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690–1715, 5 vols (Woodbridge, 2002), online at: <https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/dalrymple-hon-sir-david-1665-1721>, accessed 2 September 2019.

32 A True State of the Case of the Reverend Mr. Greenshields, now Prisoner in the Tolbooth in Edinburgh (London, 1710), 5–6.

33 Edinburgh, NRS, Correspondence of Lord Grange, GD124/15/975, 1.

34 Statutes, 6: 74–9; Ralph Stevens, Protestant Pluralism: The Reception of the Toleration Act, 1689–1720 (Woodbridge, 2018), 13–18.

35 Rogers, ‘Religious Comprehension’, 212–26.

36 NRS, Mar and Kellie Judicial Papers, GD124/6/171, 1; Stephen, ‘English Liturgy and Scottish Identity’, 69–74.

37 NRS, Episcopal Chest Manuscripts, CH12/12/1855.

38 [Daniel Defoe], Greenshields out of Prison and Toleration settled in Scotland, or the Case of Mr. Greenshields farther examined (London, 1710), 6.

39 J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979), 62.

40 [Defoe], Greenshields, 9–11.

41 NRS, Episcopal Chest, CH12/12/1815.

42 Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 148.

43 NRS, Episcopal Chest, CH12/12/1980.

44 Clyve Jones and Geoffrey Holmes, eds, The London Diaries of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, 1702–18 (Cambridge, 1983), 551.

45 Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 245–7; Tompson, ‘Greenshields’, 114–15.

46 Holmes and Jones, eds, London Diaries, 553.

47 [George Lockhart], The Present State of Mr. Greenshields Case, now before the Right Honourable the House of Lords: In a Letter from a Commoner of North-Britain (London, 1711), 5–7; Daniel Szechi, ‘Lockhart, George (1681?–1731)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004, online at: <http://www.oxforddnb.com>, accessed 2 September 2019.

48 [Lockhart], Present State, 13.

49 Tompson, ‘Greenshields’, 113–14.

50 Glasgow UL, Murray MS 650, unpaginated.

51 Joseph McCormick, ed., State Papers and Letters addressed to William Carstares, Confidential Secretary to King William during the whole of his Reign (Edinburgh, 1776), 791.

52 LPL, Papers of Thomas Tenison, MS 954(32), ‘Some proper Methods to circulate the English Liturgy in Scotland’, n.d.; Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 328–30.

53 NRS, Episcopal Chest, CH12/12/1855.

54 [George Lockhart], A Letter from a Scots Gentleman residing in London, to his Friend in Edenborough ([London?], 1711), 11–15; Clarke, ‘Scottish Episcopalians’, 287–8.

55 The Church of England still Persecuted, or the Case of Mr Murray, depos'd by the Presbytery of Perth, on the Tenth of January, for reading the English Service ([Edinburgh?], 1712), 2–3.

56 Statutes, 9: 557–9.