Religion, the Reformation, history and mythology in Scotland
People generally simply don't know how religion was formed in Scotland. So here is a brief history that outlines events. In doing so I will go back and forward chronologically a bit. So let's start at the beginning with a quick run-down of how and why the Reformation happened at all.
The Renaissance
In the Eleven hundreds Spain was mainly under Muslim control. They seen themselves inheritors of the classical learning of the ancient Greeks, Romans and the Hebrews.
They were enlightened and ran a multi-denominational state that was tolerant to both Jews and Christians.
They explored science and philosophy, they also allowed Christian scholars to translate texts from the ancient cultures from mainly Arabic to Latin. But also the original Ancient Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew etc. (One on the main ones was in fact a very learned Scot, a monk called Michael Scott).
This lead to the reintroduction of classical learning lost to Europe in the Dark ages. The importance of this became very profound to European culture, leading to The Renaissance -literally the rebirth.
Da'Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, the Medici, the Borgias, Machiavelli, Dante, the Sistine chapel. Renaissance Florence, the Republic of Venice. Double entry book keeping, the consolidated holding company, Maritime trade empire, bankruptcy. The birth of modern Europe and capitalism.
Humanism
Humanism was the main philosophical movement that came out of this. Broadly put it studied the history, science, politics and philosophy of the classical world and sought to apply those ideas to improve contemporary Medieval society.
This is not to be confused with modern Humanism.
That is heavily associated -but not completely necessarily- with Atheism. Where a moral view of the world is based on a scientific, liberal, empirical (provable) and rational analysis. Rather than religious morality.
Which modern Humanists find garbled, irrational, illiberal and scientifically incorrect -starting with the very existence of god and the supernatural at all. This irrationality leading to appallingly immoral acts towards others, for not obeying or criticising their demands or rules. Or just not being one of them.
I have digressed so I'll return to the main theme. This far more rationalist approach of Medieval Humanism started to look at the Catholic church askance. Three main issues emerged.
First- the use of Latin rather than native languages in church ceremonies, left the liturgy (the lesson) unintelligible to the congregations. It also meant only a few people generally the church clergy or the rich educated elite could not take lessons by reading the bible themselves.
Second- the church demanded faith to it as an institution. Rather than adherence to biblical teachings as paramount. That with recognition of complete authority in all matters of religion.
Thirdly- CORUPTION, the church was seen as a money making pit. Where huge richly decorated cathedrals rose with beggars and their bowls on the streets outside. Arch-Bishops, Bishops, Cardinals and Popes lived in unbelievable luxury while lowly church priests were in penury, in some cases. To be fair about 50% of the money raised was redistributed -but what about the other 50%?How this money was raised also caused concern. Simony, the practice of selling positions in the church to the highest bidder. Leading to uneducated (theologically) cardinals and bishops holding authority. Many not even residing in the diocese. And Popes themselves getting elected on how much money they could bring to the cause.
People fleeced by long expensive pilgrimages to see clearly fake relics, alleged bones of saints, bits of the true cross and so on. There were apparently over 20 holy foreskins of Jesus floating about Europe -and they say Christ was never a Jew.
But above all the selling of Indulgences, in this by acts of charity or donations to the church. The believer could be sprung for early release from purgatory and off to heaven. To again be fair -different rates for the rich and the Poor.
There were situations where merchants, gave away everything to the church. Their money, home, clothes, furniture the lot. Went out in poor inadequate clothing with a begging bowl to slowly starve to death. Dragging Mrs Merchant and the two point three little Merchants looking particularly worried along.
But it was Ok, dad had the thing sorted, a couple of years in purgatory, then upstairs to the company of angels for eternity –great deal see? Thank yer old pop now. Wee Jimmy will you stop crying for gods sake -that sort of thing.
Major Proto-Reformation events
Before yer actual reformation there were as you might imagine quite a few stabs at the thing before the main event. The main two were.
The Cathars who were a movement that flourished in mainly southern France from the 11th to the 14th centuries, known for their dualist beliefs and rejection of the Catholic Church's corruption and authority.
Weird duellist beliefs about God and Satan both creating the world, baptism at the point of death releasing an angel trapped in the persons body. They disliked sex and seen the material world about as that of Satan, so lived aesthetic lives of poverty and celibacy.
Oddly they became popular both in themselves as their aesthetic lifestyle required kindness and good behaviour to others and became admired liked by the
local Catholic population as sort of very pure Christians. Who refused to bow to the sins forced on them by the material and indeed materialist world.
Then the Inquisition hoved into town, declared them heretics, stated arresting and torturing to get the recanting. The locals Catholics and Cathars were furious, so fought back. Then came the Crusade some historians put the death toll at about 1 million, 200,000 a more agreed on total -most actually faithful Catholics who took the side of the Cathars. Many of whom rejected violence and would not fight so had to leave that up to those of the Sea.
Just to clarify thing, the Cathars had nothing to do with the Knights Templar. They were all to much to do with the above mentioned material and materialist world.
They were money changers and bankers. The got the king of France into chronic debt. So to avoid repayment he set about having them killed by falsely claiming, strange heretical practices, some Jewish and Islamic, even devil Worship. Strong armed a reluctant papacy to join in -which it did briefly, but then recanted.
Only about 20-30 Templars were actually killed -the vast majority survived. They did not disappear they remained an order in Spain for centuries after. Attacking Spanish Islam at sword point.
The Papal Schism
In 1378, the Papal Schism split Christendom in two, as rival popes each claimed legitimacy a move that sent the Church’s costs soaring. These needs were met by demanding special tithes and dispensations, while selling off Church offices. Perhaps most egregious was the widespread sale of indulgences which promised to absolve worshipers of their sins for a monetary price. Which infuriated Noble and Common born alike and undermined the church's moral authority.
The Hussites
The Hussites in Bohemia, we now more commonly call the Czech republic or Czechia, all the above noted problems with the church were seen and frowned on. A lay preacher who was a university teacher took the lead a Jan Hus along with other baulking at the whole thing.
The rich priesthood, the Latin sermons, the corruption and selling of indulgences. Now the Czechs had not always been Catholic for a long time Orthodoxy had reigned. So he and others started amid a tradition of questioning things, and knowing there was other ideas about. So he started a campaign against this sort of stuff, writing to scholars and priests in both Latin and Czech.
Czech, because it turned out even many of the priests couldn't understand Latin. Latin was the language the writing system we use was designed for phonetically. So read out Latin text as written and it sound about right so they did just that -without actually knowing what it meant, priest or congregation.
The Czech's had been influenced by John Wycliffe among others, an early English reformer who translated the bible into English. (It had been translated at that point into French, German, and English (mostly) then Czech).
This went well, old Jan railing from the pulpit in Czech against the various iniquities, supported by nobles and the lower orders alike. Pope Alexander ordered Hus to stop preaching, but he refused. The King Wenceslas IV (1361–1419) came out for him his queen even more strongly and defended him from persecution -playing his own game with the Holy Roman Empire whom he did not get on with.
1415 The Sea sees an opportunity. They invite Hus and some of his chums to a conference to talk things out -under an oath of safe conduct. Hus
turns up, he's immediately grabbed and then burned at the stake. Safe conduct, porky pies? Thou shalt not bear false witness -number 9, I do seem to remember.
There is fury in Bohemia, riots and churches set on fire, priests clubbed to death. The king tries to smooth things over. But 1419, old Wenceslas there pops his clogs.
The new king Sigismund sees things different, he wants to patch thing up with the Empire -in the end he actually becomes the Emperor. The Holly sea fights back, the Inquisition comes to town and Sigismund sends in the troops.
Persecutions, show trials, torture, burnings at the steak, more show trials, folk disappearing in the night -and indeed the day. The place was like Glasgow on Old Firm day before the drink laws.
But the rage of the mob will not abate Sigismund's authority along with papal authority is lost. And they have set up a movement named after the badly over cooked Mr Hus, the Hussites.
Denying the authority of Rome, they set up Europe’s first national church, it had elements of both Catholic and Orthodox ideas and of course ditching Latin ceremonials. They choose the chalice of Christ as their symbol because the communion was seen as of central significance by them.
1419 Sigismund, launches crusades to bring the whole thing to heel with dandy knights and mercenaries killing for god and the only church. At first it goes well Prague is retaken, the Hussites on their last legs. Remember those aesthetic Cathars standing meekly waiting for their martyrdom while loyal Catholics fought the crusade against them. Meet somebody of a very different hue, Jan Zizka.
A mercenary soldier that fought in Wenceslas very body guard. As a young man he was part of the Polish army that slaughtered the Teutonic knights at the epic battle of Tannenburg.
Hard as iron, one eyed from a battle wound, a former outlaw -he had been listening to those views of Jan Hus and became a follower.
He took command and introduced the Hussites to Guerilla warfare, started to train them up in the ways of war. But most of all it was the Wagonburgs. Line up the wagons into a defence, cannon between the wagons. The soldiers fighting with crossbows early guns, axes, clubs, halberds but above all two handed agricultural flails from behind their cover.
Bombard the haughty knights, makes them come at you, through a hail of crossbow and cannon fire to get it to stop. They arrive at the wagon trying to climb it's defences as axes and flails pound at them amid a hail of crossbow bolts.
When they weaken launch your own attack on their flanks, keeping the fire from the wagons constant in their centre. As they break inevitably, keep up the fire as they run, pursing those flanks -slaughter with the chalice of Christ flying on the victorious flags.
Nine consecutive victories against the Empire and Church’s crusaders -unbeaten in any battle. So tough when he died, he left instruction he wanted his skin flayed and made into a great drum, so he could terrify his enemies from beyond death.
It took till 1630 before they were defeated and the Czech's made to recant and rejoin the faith. But not before they fell into the inevitable religious civil war. A radical group called the Taborites emerged.
They abolished, social status, knight, peasant, serf, they refuted the idea of tax and property, so shared land and wealth communally. Which peaked the interest of later Marxist theorists. They took their ideas primarily from biblical text, like later protestants. They believed the rapture and the return of Christ was on hand and were making ready.
Oddly their symbol was a goose, a misinterpretation of one of their leaders a knight, who had a swan as his symbol.
So proto-communist. proto-protestants, flying a goose blazoned flag. As you might imagine they didn't last long in the face of the concerns of the wealthy. More traditional Hussites and still loyal Catholics turned on them together after things settled down and rubbed them out. They lasted 20 years though 1420-40 and influenced much scholarly debate. You see where letting people actually read the bible leads now -all sorts of funny ideas?
You would think that with all this trouble the Sea would look to amend things, moderate it's ways. But no it got worse -a lot worse.
Before Luther
So let me tell you a story of The Emperor, the Banker and the Seven very greedy Popes.
Let's start with the banker a German Jakob Fugger. He and his family banking and industrial dynasty came up with a model of loaning that said you took high risk loans on clients that were less than likely to pay back. For this you on the one hand demanded high interest rates and the other demanded property based security for the loans.
If the debtor took the loan it was win, win. Either high interest or the property. See now it was really the property the Fuggers were after.
In this time the late 14 early 15 hundreds new processes of metalworking had emerged and this sector was booming. The magnate nobles owned this and the Fuggers had them put this up a security for the loans. Knowing they had damn all chance of repaying -they got the factories and above all the mines and they got very, very rich.
It is estimated Fugger owned a full 2% of the what we would now call the GDP of the whole of Europe. Wealth like that needs political power so Fugger went into politics.
How he did that was backing emperors of the Holy Roman Empire who needed his fiscal skills.
The Emperor, his name was Maximilian I, from the hugely successful and ambitious house of Hapsburg -before the inbreeding set in that is and they ended up breeding themselves into sterile idiots.
The Holy Roman Empire worked as a highly decentralized federation of states, not a unified country -mostly but not exculsively German speaking. A powerful emperor was elected by a small group of rulers called Prince-Electors, but his authority was often limited by the numerous princes, bishops, and other local leaders who governed their own territories. The Emperor was elected for life.
There was also the Imperial Diet a kind of appointed parliament. Which was theoretically superior to the emperor. It was composed of the Electors, princes, and representatives from cities, and it handled laws and matters of war and peace.
How this was managed to put it bluntly was bribery and corruption, with occasional military intervention. Who better than the richest man in Europe to manage the fiscal side -and a fine job he did.
Next the greedy Pope. The HRE was dependent on Rome's authority and required the Emperor to bless that authority it further held extensive land and political power in the Empire. Leo X was probably the most extravagant pope in history. Living in personal opulence and wanted to show the world the majesty of the institution with grandiose buildings. For this he needed money.
Enter the Fugger family into Rome. In the year 1500, Jakob Fugger loaned the Vatican the money necessary to build the new St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, as well as other buildings within the Vatican. To repay Jakob the
massive amount of money
owed, Pope Leo X had to heavily tax the German people as well as way upped the selling of indulgences -which was particularly looked after by the Fuggers.
The Vatican was so in hock to the Fuggers, they took over minting the church's coins. Not only that, the Fuggers persuaded the Holy Sea to do something very unpopular. It essentially over turned the ban on usury -the loaning of money with interest. Old Jakob himself persuaded Leo, mainly it was to cover loans if there was a risk of non repayment -which is present in any loan if you think about it.
As in wee Hugh lends big Donald 20 quid. Big Donald mind the bus there, what bus? Splat! We Hugh searches his pockets, nothing. Spent it, 20 bloody quid the bastard. Maybe Leo didn't pick up on that, him being so spiritual rather than material?
Soon debt peonage emerged, poor relief was cut at the price of church opulence. The people were furious at all the burdening taxes. The church had never been more unpopular or more corrupt. And the Fuggers did the banking for seven popes.
More minor events
As you might imagine there were in fact a raft of pre-reformation stuff floating about for years. The Bosnian church had broken away in the 12th century, The above mentioned John Wycliffe, his movement often called derisorily the Lollards -like babblers in meaning. The Waldensians, who influenced and became part of the Reformation -with the same series of complaints. Girolamo Savonarola in Florence railing against church corruption and idolatry -which got him tortured tried by fire and killed. Francis of Assisi whose aesthetic rejection of riches was described as heretical, dozens actually, I've highlighted I think the main two.
So the church was seen by many as corrupt, steeped in secular political activities, decadent, taxed you to death and was brutally violent when it felt like it.
I'll refer you to the brilliant Neil Jordan's box-set the Borgias for your further erudition on the subject. The Banquet of the Chestnuts is season 3, episode 4.
The Protestant Reformation
Luther
Now to the main dude involved, without whom the requisite history cannot be described.
Remember those Fugger owned mines one of the workers, a Hans Luther -a smelter at those mines there had a son. His first born was Martin the first of several little Luthers. Martin was clever and pop there picked out a career for little Marty -a lawyer. Sent him to school, then to university in Erfurt.
Luther hated all of this, school he described as hell and perdition, the university he compared to a beer hall and a whorehouse. See Martin came down with religion -bad!
(There is a story that he was nearly struck by lightening and took fright at this as a portent. A warning of his backsliding and to buck up his ideas).
Despite his lawyer’s degree Martin enrolled himself as an Augustinian Friar, he becomes a monk instead. 1508, the year after he is ordained a monk all that education is headed in another direction. He becomes a teacher in theology at university in Wittenberg.
There he reads the works of the influential Humanist Christian theologian Erasmus -mainly. Comes to the conclusion the church is in a bad way.
Next 1517 he is hammering the 97 theses on to a convenient cathedral door and lambasting the church from the pulpit for all his worth -but in native German. The theses boiled down to the usual complaints, the Latin sermons, church V's scriptural authority, the Indulgences, the Corruption, the Usury and the Indulgences again.
The Usury thing led to anti-Semitism rants from Marty there, but criticising that from the pulpit of the
Sea of Rome is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Now none of this sort of thing hadn’t not happened before to the church. What was new was that in modern parlance it went viral. Within two weeks the new technology of printing meant those 97 theses was all over the German speaking world within months hundreds of copies circulating, a year thousands.
It's precursor revolt the Bohemian thing was in a small nation. But ethnic Germans were the largest group in Europe. The Sea had a problem on it's hands a big one this time.
The sheer speed of the spread of Luther's ideas was staggering, huge areas of North Germany and Scandinavia by 1520's end. Powerful nobles wanting to throw off church authority and tax, (always follow the money to find the reason), who quickly came to his side -notably Elector Fredrick of Saxony. The Emperor by then Charles V was busy with warring the Turks and there was the perennial fear of a huge civil war being sparked.
All this saved Marty from the fires that poor old Jan Hus got. The Papacy tried to shut him up but it all happened too quickly. He was put on trial but refused to recant the fear of the consequences of his execution stopped them short of this. And he ended up burning a papal bull sent to excommunicate him.
1521 Is officially excommunicated by the Pope anyway. Appears at the Diet of Worms, a meeting to decide the issues. He refuses to recant or bow to Papal authority and is declared an outlaw by Emperor Charles V. But the emperor does
not purse this for fear again round martyring him.
Effectively he is kicked out of the church after Worms, rather than leaves along with his converts -the schism with Rome starts there.
He is hidden and translates the New Testament into German. Later the whole bible -which became a best seller, Her Gutenberg and his press on the job. (As an interesting side story the Ottomans who dominated Islam took fright and banned the printing of holy texts for centuries).
He died of completely natural causes in 1546 his reformation secure over most of Northern Europe and still spreading. To cut a very long story short.
With in the short term fairly little blood spilled -if you discount 100,000 dying in a peasants revolt partly rooted in the reformation. But the prospective huge civil war was averted. The treaty of Utrecht in 1555 was a shaky peace based round allowing the ruler to pick the religion of his state within the Empire.
The French religious wars starting 1569, The Spanish-Dutch War, also known as the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), then the Thirty years war woud make up for this grand style though.
The differences
The main Theological differences between Catholics and Protestants are best explained at this point
Authority; Catholic: Believes the Pope is the head of the church. -Protestant: Believes Scripture alone is the sole source of religious authority and that Christ is the head.
Salvation and grace; Catholic: Views justification as a process that involves both faith and good works, receiving grace through the sacraments. -Protestant: Emphasizes salvation by faith alone (Sola Fide) and grace alone (Sola Gratia) through Christ alone (Solus Christus).
Sacraments; Catholic: Recognizes seven sacraments Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist/Communion (the bread and wine bit), Penance and Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Matrimony, and Holy Orders. -Protestant: Generally recognizes only two sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist, often viewing them as symbols or memorials rather than channels of grace.
Purgatory and the dead; Catholic: Believes in purgatory as an intermediate state of purification. -Protestant: Rejects the concept of purgatory.
Saints and Mary; Catholic: Veneration of saints is a common practice, and Mary is highly honoured as the Mother of God and Mother of the Church. -Protestant: Rejects the veneration of saints as unbiblical.
That and the rejection of priesthood celibacy, which as you might imagine some historians point to as explaining it's popularity amongst the said profession.
Calvinist V's Lutheran
Protestant; original meaning -came from German princes who protested against the decision of the Diet of Speyer in 1529, which had denounced the Reformation. And there are two main types.
Lutheran, this tries to reform the standing institutions of the church to the ways of big Marty and his acolytes, as explained above. However the structure and hierarchy of these institutions is left in place -just kind of purified. Bishops, Archbishops and their attendant powers, big cathedrals with a reduced but still significant opulence and what not.
Calvinism, Calvin was French but preached mainly in Germany then moved to Geneva where he set up shop.
Predestination, that god knew who was to be saved was a central tenet For Calvin. Here he split from Luther in that he reckoned you could tell who was to be
saved -Luther did not and regarded it as a mystery as indeed did Catholicism.
He proposed there were three tests: the profession of faith -declaring openly your faith, reading and obeying the lessons of the bible yourself.
A rigorously disciplined Christian deportment -living out your life in a proper Christian manner.
A love of the sacraments. Which meant the Communion, since infant baptism was not to be repeated. Persons who could meet these three tests could assume their salvation and stop worrying.
It was also heavily against idolatry, using art or decoration in religion and like all protestants against praying for the intercession of saints. However, Calvinists did not necessarily reject art music etc., outside religion -indeed could be quite effusive.
Calvin also though the Roman church was irredeemably corrupt and new organisation of worship had to be
instituted. These were mainly derived surprisingly from copying the Jews of the Old Testament. In a wide sense a bottom up rather than a top down reformation.This developed into numerous forms and interpretations. Although not exactly pro-Jewish, they are generally perceived as less anti-Semitic, than Rome or the Lutherans.
Importantly, they did not completely reject usury, but thought money could be lent with moderate rates of interest. They also emphasised the separation of state and church. As the actions of the state, were secular and all to often sinful -it implies by necessity. (Ghosts of those Cathars and the devil making the material world)? So in necessarily broad strokes of brevity, there is Calvinism.
Calvinists led the second wave of reformations mainly in France, Holland, Scotland and indeed Transylvania.
The English Reformation
The English reformation
Events in Scotland and England are connected so we have to have a brief run down there.
Henry VIII England's rock star king. Charles Laughton, Richard Burton, Robert Shaw to name but a few have brought their Henry to the silver screen.
Now as we know he had a problem, who would inherit the throne? His father a king of doubtful claim Henry VII had won a brutal dynastic civil war called by history now the War of the Roses about 105,000 died -but to the thinking of Henry the absolute carnage of the English nobility was most in his mind and it scared him.
"England hath long been mad, and scarr'd herself; The brother blindly shed the brother's blood, The father rashly slaughter'd his own son, The son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire:
All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division,"
William Shakespeare
The Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Shrewsbury. Viscount Beaumont, Earl of Northumberland, Lord Dacre, Earl of Wiltshire, Duke of Somerset, Earl Rivers, Prince of Wales Edward of Westminster, Duke of Somerset, Earl of Devon, Baron Hastings, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Lincoln -to name but a few of the major nobles from a quick google on the subject. Henry who came to the throne 1509 early doors was a devout Catholic, interested in Catholic theology. He was wed to the Spanish Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his elder brother Arthur who died in 1502, in an illness that his wife also caught but recovered from. At first all looked good, they were well matched. Soon after marrying Henry, Catherine conceived. She gave birth to a stillborn girl on 31 January 1510. About four months later, Catherine again became pregnant. On 1 January 1511, New Year's Day, a son Henry was born.
However, the child died seven weeks later. Catherine had two stillborn sons in 1513 and 1515, but gave birth in February 1516 to a girl, Mary -more from her later. But Henry wanted a male heir with an iron-clad undisputed claim to the throne, fearing the future outbreak of civil war over other claims.
He had numerous mistresses and acknowledged Henry FitzRoy who was born 1519. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, Catherine of Aragon's lady-in-waiting. He may too have had another boy by Anne Boleny's sister Mary. But bastards make poor claimants for the kingship.
By 1527, Henry was worried about the succession to the extent of writing off to the Pope for his marriage to Catherine to be annulled. Claiming god was punishing him for marrying his brothers wife forbidden in the bible. And had a bit in Leviticus looked out as evidence.
She stuck a spanner in the works claiming her earlier marriage to Arthur hadn't been consummated -him being only 15 when he fell of his perch. So no consummation no marriage.
So no go to annulment, various suggestions floated about, both the pope and the new upstart Martin Luther later suggested two wives. So no divorce but bigamy then. Henry didn't like this one little bit.
Now Marty had a lot people listening to him in England, one was a Thomas Cranmer who was Archbishop of Canterbury and helping Henry with the legalities of the annulment. Along with a cardinal Wolsley who fell from power when the Pope refused the thing. (He did try, apart from the Leviticus thing, Wolsley turned up in Rome claiming the marriage contract, was worded in a legally incorrect way. However Catherine's relies sent the Vatican a copy that was -I mean the man has points for effort surely. However Wolsey had an
assistant called Thomas Cromwell ambitious ruthless and on board.
Then there was the equally ambitious and very Protestant Boleyns the pretty Mary had already had two children by Henry -we think. Little sister Anne comes on the scene, she's not quite as pretty as Mary, but a lot smarter -I mean a really sharp mind with a deep education.
Possibly with the connivance of the ambitious father Thomas. She seduces Henry, but she's coy, unlike big sister there is no beast-with-two-backs, but seductive promises, if old Henry will marry. See that education it is from France and Holland and protestant.
So the conspirators come together, the king in need of an heir, the ambitious churchmen, the protestant Anne and the other Boleyns all looking for reformation.
So they break with Rome. 1533 Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn. Catherine gets sent to the nunnery. 1534 The Act of Supremacy is passed, declaring Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church of England, formally breaking from the Pope. 1536 Henry VIII dissolves the monasteries and pocket's their money. Rome of course took a major falkie and excommunicated Henry.
So Henry marries the young presumably fertile Anne. Get's the church and it's power as his play thing replacing the Pope as head in England, it's wealth to keep. Positions galore, Cromwell and Cranmer get huge promotions. Thomas is made Earl of Wiltshire, his daughter is now queen of England.
Only it doesn’t work right, Anne produces only a daughter Elizabeth and is beheaded. Thomas Cromwell was executed. Henry went through a further four wives, beheading another. Both protestants who seen his position little better than a form of Catholicism and Catholics who refused to recognise his position both ended up dead
Of course his other kingdom Ireland was aghast -ya think so?- and would soon slide into centuries of rebellion.
He left England and the English church in an ambiguous position. The door was left open for returning to the Catholic fold -there was little actual theologically Protestant reforms within the church. All other major form of Christianity in theory divorced state and church, his didn't.
Though protestant it fell neither neatly into the Lutheran of Calvinist camp. And though he left the succession in the hands of a male heir, Edward VI was only nine and he didn't last long.
Edward VI the boy king
However little Edward had been tutored in the Protestant faith and started the process of protestantisation of the
English church. Particularly the introduction of the book of common prayer, removing Catholic practices in ceremony and allowing the priesthood to marry -careful old Archbishop Cranmer in the background.
Much of his rein under a regency council, led first by Edward Seymour and later by John Dudley, and they too pushed for religious reform. He had two half sisters Mary and Elizabeth, they tried to exclude them from succession by declaring them illegitimate -they failed spectacularly.
Edward died at 15 years of Consumption the succession up for grabs (again), the English reformation only half secure amid several rebellions and an only half convinced nobility and populace particularly in the English North and West.
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Bloody Mary
Bloody Mary
The succession was crazy complicated, there was a long list of exclusions. Catholic (there goes the still shaky reformation), Plangent (brought into doubt the Tudor's legitimacy at all), the illegitimate offspring of Henry VIII (brought into doubt the legality of his
various divorces), the Stewarts, specifically excused legally by Ted 6 and father (the Jockalock's ending up running the place. By gad sah no)!
So the three obvious candidates excluded, Mary the daughter of Catherine (Catholic and declared illegitimate). Elizabeth the daughter of Anne Boleyn (a Prod but declared illegitimate). Lord Darnley the son of a first cousin of the expired king (Catholic, seven years old and far too Scottish).
The dying Edward and his chief minister Dudley decided on a solution. 1553 they picked on Lady Jane Grey, a cousin of the deceased king and a protestant. Nine days the poor bitch lasted, before riots and revolts in and out of parliament by the Catholic faction seeing it's chance, put Mary -clearly the closest in blood to the throne on the said chair, so then Mary I of England.
She immediately released errant Catholics from the tower Lady Jane and Dudley swamping places -then the block. And she would go on as she began, showing all the tact and political skill of the proverbial baby elephant in the china shop.She married the powerful Hapsburg Philip II of Spain, a foreign co-regent monarch, devoutly catholic as they all were. Up to his eyeballs in the counter-reformation and later a loosing war with the Protestant Netherlands. Unpopular and led many to see her religious policies as a foreign imposition. She tried to reverse the reformation, returning confiscated church land from the nobility. Returning also the catholic
rites in the English church.
But it was the killing spree that that took the lives of at least 300 burnings at the stake in public -that created the protestant martyrs that solidified their position, rather than weakened it. Even wily old Cranmer got himself burned, trying to wriggle out by recanting. But no good, sent to the fires anyway, sticking the hand that signed the recantation into the flames cursing them as he roasted.
Then there was the usual no heir situation. Mary became physically ill and her mental health dubious. She experienced chronic symptoms, including severe headaches, nausea, and abdominal pain, diagnosed by physicians of the time as "strangulation of the womb" (possibly severe endometriosis or ovarian cancer).
Then there were the Phantom Pregnancies (Pseudocyesis). Mary experienced at least two false pregnancies, most historians say this was even more frequent and possibly ectopic episodes. Likely caused by intense pressure to produce a Catholic heir leading to periods of deep melancholy.
Philip II found her unattractive and was indifferent to her. Compounding her mental difficulties and some have also claimed such was her desperation for a Catholic heir, her ministers regularly were required to have sex with her. Ill, mad and heiless, she died after five years on the throne.
Just one thing more, Mary didn't start that way. She is initially described as kind, gentle and intelligent. Just shows what peer-group pressure and controling-expectation can do an individual -Old Firm fans take note. So if you see one of the faithful on the terraces, pee himself thinking his water had broken. Stick a pin into that balloon he has up his tap and refer him to a mental health centre.
The Virgin Queen
The Virgin Queen
So over to “Good Queen Bess”, Bet Davis to Margot Robbie, the other Yea Olde English monarch, of the world according to Hollywood. Of very high intelligence, she could speak, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Irish, Scots even Cornish fluidly. Under her tutors mainly her governesses, Margaret Bryan and Catherine Champernowne, later tutors William Grindal and Robert Ascham.
By 12, she was able to translate her stepmother Catherine Parr's religious work from English into Italian, Latin, and French. She translated Latin and Greek texts like Tacitus and Plutarch into English -a very clever woman. And that education was Protestant. Enter Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley he marries step-mum Catherine and he is an ambitious player in the court and very Protestant. He is also the original dirty old step dad. Coming into poor little Bess's chambers (she's 14 at this point) in his night-clothes, to tickle her and spank her bum -I kid you not. Step-Mater finds out and puts a stop to it after their found in an “embrace”. Mum however dies in child birth and Thomas declares his love and desire to
marry young Elizabeth soon after -she at least openly rebuffs him.
Thomas has an older brother Edward and they are both ridiculously ambitious -and they both hate each other. Problem for Tommy is that his ambition outstrips his brains by a huge margin. He does well initially in a war in Scotland (however that soon turns bad, with the arrival of a French army) and starts to intrigue at court. But has to make do with his position as high Admiral. In this he openly talks to the fleet about rebellion, he's supposed to be chasing pirates, instead does a deal with them. He then goes into crooked dealings with with the vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint, Sir William Sharington to finance this rebellion.
Not unnaturally he's called to court to explain himself but doesn’t come. Instead he tries to assassinate Edward VI. He's caught in the royal gardens making his way to Ted's bed chambers with a loaded pistol. A Spaniel having spotted him as no good started barking. Our Ninja assassin Tommy shoots the dog -the rest as you might imagine, what's that noise then? Arrest, the tower, the block.
Naturally given step-dads antics the cold light of suspicion falls on Elizabeth. Her governess Kat Ashley is arrested, the king's Council are convinced of her complicity she is interrogated for weeks -her royal blood saving her from torture.
But the council found itself in a sharply defined game of wits with Elizabeth, who proved to be a master of logic, defiance, and shrewdness. They could get nothing incriminating from her.
Her relationship with Thomas Seymour has split historians, unwelcome attentions of a dirty old man. Or in her “embraces” did Bess see an opportunity for the crown and securing the protestant cause as a co-regent? Whatever the truth half-sister Mary's antics noted above would serve her the crown and the cause on a huge silver plater.
Speaking of which Bloody Mary comes to the throne. Elizabeth wisely bends in the wind. She rides beside her half sister as she comes to take the throne and makes a show of being seen at Catholic masses.
At 25 in 1559 she comes to the throne, she is crowned by a Catholic bishop a certain Owen Oglethorpe Bishop of Carlyle. However, she pursues a middle course on religion, she declares herself protestant and pursues the ideas of Edward VI and excludes the Calvinist Puritans as much as the Catholic group who want to reunify with the old faith.
Mainly through the Act of Supremacy, restoring the break with Rome. Elizabeth was named the "Supreme Governor" of the Church of England, This title was considered more palatable to some Catholics than her father Henry VIII's title of "Supreme Head," as it left wiggle room for some to claim the Pope was still the head of the church.
The Act of Uniformity, this act made Anglicanism the official English
state faith. All public officials were forced to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office.
The reintroduction of a Book of Common Prayer, which was based on the version used under Edward VI.
She repealed Mary's laws on Heresy, meaning that non Anglican worship though not endorsed were not illegal or their penalties massively reduced. So no more burning at the stake etc. -well OK more rarely.
It worked in the main, she solidified the protestant faith in England without major internal rebellions. But make no mistake Elizabeth was on the protestant side.
She politics heavily in the religious wars in Europe on the protestant side particularly in the insanely brutal events of the Dutch rebellion. Spain sends the armada in retaliation. Poor old Philip II seen the thing as a punishment for his own sins. Confesses to assassinations and the killing of his own son -acquitted of course the Sea has it's uses for such.
Then the English Armada, 180 ships 27,00 sailors set off by Bess to the drive home the opportunity of the Spanish disaster -with an attack on Spain. It was a disaster, up to 18,000 killed, wounded or died 40 ships captured, sunk or scuttled -maybe god was listening to catholic king's confession. Kind of airbrushed out of history this one, I wonder why?
However in Ireland there is another disaster. It leads to three revolts 1569–1573 and 1579–1583 the Desmond revolts, the deaths were at least only in the hundreds. Then 1594–1603, the devastating Nine Years' War breaks out, led by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, backed by the Hapsburg Spanish -120,000 die. Ulster was particularly badly hit, with areas left largely depopulated by famine and the killing.
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The issues primarily the English encroachment on local Irish lords power and control and the imposition of the protestantism and law of the English state.
It is the start of Ireland heavily identifying with Catholic faith as part of a national identity. However Ireland had been rebelling against English rule since the Middle Ages.
The first attempted post Medieval colonisation of Ireland was in fact in the time of very Catholic Bloody Mary. In Queen's County (Laois) and King's County (Offaly). To create a protective buffer zone around around Dublin by settling loyal English subjects on confiscated land.
So where does this leave “Good queen Bess's” now well established English reformation? It sits abet uncomfortably into the Lutheran camp.
The liturgy is in English it is protestant. But it retains much of the pomp, ceremony and hierarchical nature of the old faith. Almost uniquely it does not separate religion and state, it is legally the tool of the English state with the head of state the monarch as it's leader.
The church and state are one and religion is part of state control.
But to Catholics it is still heretical and rejects the Popes authority. To the Calvinists it's half Catholic and the worst case scenario for a Protestant church. Even Lutherans view it's direct association with the control of the state under a monarch as suspiciously like the Monarch is a surrogate secular Pope -the Calvinists even more so. A protestant church obeys only the word of the bible. How can a secular state leader be trusted in relation to that -you see the problem?
However to those English monarchs, it is political and social as well as religious control under authority ordained by god -just like the Orange Lodge want for us all.
However “The Virgin Queen” as you might reason out left no heir. And a very ambitious man in Scotland was looking on -the “Wisest Fool in Christendom”.
The Scottish Reformation
The Reformation in Scotland
Early doors, the initial impetus for reformation in Scotland was influenced by Luther rather than Calvin.
From the 1520s. Lutheran literature circulating in the east-coast burghs. In 1525 Parliament banned their importation.
In 1527, the English ambassador at Antwerp reported that Scottish merchants were taking William Tyndale's New Testament to Scotland. In 1528 the nobleman Patrick Hamilton, influenced by Lutheran theology while at the universities of Wittenberg and Marburg, became the first Protestant martyr in Scotland.
He was burned at the stake for heresy -the Protestants had their first martyr. The intention backfired, Hamilton's execution inspired more interest in the new ideas. The Archbishop of St Andrews was warned against any further such public executions as
"the reek of Maister Patrik Hammyltoun has infected as many as it blew upon".
The complaints were the usual, the Latin Liturgy, the corruption to which can be added in Scotland. The priesthood's wide spread habit of marrying in secret or conducting affairs and fathering children. That and holding down jobs other than the priesthood (clerical pluralism) or going into business (Clerical Trading) all forbidden. This indeed may have been a necessity for the priest to make end meet -they seen little of the money the likes of Cardinal Beaton took.
So the thing started to spread slowly amongst workers guilds and elements of the nobility and priesthood. With clandestine services -conventicles- and occasional attacks on churches.
In most of Europe the Church was seen as corrupting and extorting the state. In Scotland the state corrupted and extorted the church. James V had many illegitimate children -nine in total. And he used them to gain royal authority and position.
Several particularly David Beaton who was a Cardinal sent into the clergy to fleece the church. Using Henry VIII break with Rome refusing a request to join him -as a fulcrum for his choice of appointments. 1538 James increased tax on the church extracting a cool £72,000 annually. Mind you it raised £200,000 annually and the poor didn't see a penny -equally not the richer nobles and importantly the lowly priests. The Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops got that and so did their big fancy expensive cathedrals they were addicted to building.
The church was also involved in a turf war between the leaders of the church Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow and James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews over church jurisdiction. Between the taxes and the internal disputes the Catholic church in Scotland was in a poor way to counter growing calls for reform in Scotland.
King James wasn't interested either way he liked his cash cow but knew better than to promote a blood bath backlash amongst reformers. Scotland was doing well economically and he wasn't wanting anything changed. But those calls were growing some of it from now impoverished priests as well as elements in the nobility and the universities. A faction at court under the Earl of Arran starts to gain some influence.
But the counter-reformation was weak, a few executions and parliament passed some laws regarding support for the Catholic form of worship. You gain the impression the Scot's weren't particularly inserted much either way -very sensible too.
The rough wooing
1542 Henry VIII now tries to force the issue of the reformation in Scotland. He sends armies north the Scots give battle at Haddon Rig with 2000 and kill or capture 2600 of the 3000 strong English army. Furious he send up another army, the Scots come out in force and screw up royaly.
At Solway Moss an army of about 16,000 under a gaggle of incompetent nobles contrives to be beaten by an army of 6000. There are actually only a few hundred dead but 1200 surrender. Sure footed Jamie Five who wasn't there is ill by this time and we are in a regency as he dies. Leaving his daughter Mary as heir -as in Mary Queen of Scots.
The Earl of Arran who grabbed the regency concocts a plan to secure that reformation that few people seem interested in. Sell out Scotland for it, he heads south and parleys with Henry. They will unite the kingdoms by hitching young Edward -to become Edward VI- to infant Mary. They also plan to break the long held treaty with France -the Auld Alliance. So an English king Of Scotland the treaty of Greenwich it's called.
The parliament goes ballistic and repudiates the treaty. Mary's mother Mary of Guise James V French queen starts to assert herself. Arran's next ploy is to approach Mary of Guise with an offer to be Henry's sixth wife -that gets a Non.
Then she moves little Mary to greater safety into Stirling castle and starts to plot with cardinal Beaton the leader on the pro-catholic side of things and campaigning for French aid.
Arran has Beaton imprisoned, but he meets him in prison, gets persuaded that the whole treaty thing is a mistake the scales fall from his eyes and converts suddenly to Catholicism -probably as away of help repudiate the treaty and joins Mary and Beaton's faction.
Down south Henry is furious and launches further wars at Scotland.
"Put all to fire and sword, burn Edinburgh, so razed and defaced when you have sacked and gotten what ye can of it, as there may remain forever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God lightened upon [them] for their falsehood and disloyalty". Henry -mummy says I'm going to be a proper little madame- VIII.
The English attacked Edinburgh and Berwick upon Tweed burning as they went. The Scots defeated the English at the Battle of Ancrum Moor in 1545.
Henry VIII died in January 1547 and
was succeeded by his son Edward who continued the attacks on Scotland. At the Battle of Pinkie in September 1547, a large Scottish army was defeated by the English. 1548 the Scottish parliament ratifies Greenwich. But the pro Catholic French faction fight back Mary of Guise, Beaton at her side becomes regent, little Mary is sent to France to marry the Dauphin. But the war continues swings backward and forward, the large scale looting and burning both sides of the border continue and then a good catholic miracle.
A promised French army actually does appear. 10,000 strong the military balance shifts. The Scots win, the English agree to repudiate Greenwich led by a pro-Catholic faction. Seems like Catholicism secured in Scotland by common consent.
But then Beaton decides he'll become a little Bloody Mary to himself and starts to persecute protestants and tighten up standards in church. In this he's doing the wrong thing, what he is, is what's seen as wrong with the church.
He lived openly with a mistress and eight children just to pop a bit of a dent into the Priestley celibacy thing -while condemning it. He acquires land for his own use from Protestants and lines his pockets good style. Then there was the French sticking their nose into Scottish affairs, never mind the English.
He has a popular Protestant preacher James Wishart burned at the stake (The clan Wishart didn't do well burning at the stake wise in the 16th century). He was assassinated by a crew led by one of the land owners -a Norman Leslie- he'd been taking land off in revenge. His lifestyle demonstrated to the commoners and nobles the problems they had with the original faith hadn’t gone away.
To be frank the persecutions were pretty tame compared to England and the veritable drop in the bucket compared to the Dutch revolt and the later 30 years war -it was the corruption.
Then regent Mary of Guise screws up, she pushes things under the influence of the French and provokes another war with England. Assembles (1557) an army who -led by nobles who would become important in the growing reformation- refuse to cross the border.
John Knox
So here he is the star of the Scottish reformation, the Minister in black tights, the man who put the blue on the nose of old Scotia.
(Actually the term is most probably English in origin and may refer to strict religious trade laws printed on blue paper. But Presbyterian's are referred to as both Blue noses and Blue skins in the USA and other countries).
1514: Born near Haddington, 1530s Studies at the University of St. Andrews or Glasgow, 1540 Ordained as a Roman Catholic priest -sharp intake of breath! Works as an apostolic notary and becomes a tutor to sons of Protestant lairds. Where his conversion to Protestantism seems to occur. 1546; Becomes a follower of the Protestant reformer George Wishart. Wishart was a Calvinist, but it's not clear if at this point Knox was.
However Beaton has Wishart burned. He supports the pro-English faction in the Rough wooing. 1547, Knox joins the garrison at St. Andrew's Castle and becomes a preacher for the Protestant cause. The French take the castle Knox get's to become a galley slave for to consider things awhile 1547–1549.
There is an anecdote Knox was told to give a kiss of veneration, to a picture of the Virgin Mary. He refused seized the picture and threw it into the sea, saying, "Let our Lady now save herself, she is light enough, let her learn to swim." Not the counter-reformation's greatest moment then.
It's not clear why, but Knox is released in 1549. But with the Catholic faction ascendant at home and his support for the pro-English protestant party. He runs to England and is welcomed by Edward VI. There he becomes a famously effective and well liked preacher -indeed is involved in shaping theological matters in the very un-Calvinist English church.
Edward up and dies, next is Bloody Mary and Johnny K he's offski before he get's himself roasted at a stake and ends up in Geneva. Who's in Geneva? John Calvin, with a small clutch of Scottish theologians. It's here the shape of the Scottish reformation is made. Go back
and have a quick re-read of the bit on Calvinism. Knox becomes a fierce follower of Calvin's version of the Reformation.
Back to Scotland
Beaton's activities were abruptly ended when he was stabbed but the slow fuse was lit. The Protestants started to gain more ground many becoming converts. Why? There was no change in the Catholic faith -business as usual. Feeding the complaints of the reformers.
There was a series of attempts to tighten up things from within blaming the advance of the Protestant heresies on "the corruption of morals and the profane lewdness of life in churchmen of all ranks, together with crass ignorance of literature and of the liberal arts". But these failed and the above, the Sea's own view, in a rare moment of honesty.
The regent Mary of Guise is loosing authority and French influence is starting to jar.
the Lords of the Congregation
Next following Beaton's death the Lords of the Congregation was formed powerful Scottish Protestant nobles who banded together in 1557 to champion the Reformation in Scotland, opposing Catholic rule under Mary of Guise. Led later by James Stewart, Earl of Moray. Things start to slip away from the old faith.
The "Beggars' Summons"
The "Beggars-Summons" or ”Beggars-Warning” anonymous notices posted on the doors of friaries in the winter of 1558-1559.
Addressed in the name of the ‘blind, crooked, bed-ridden, widows, orphans and poor of Scotland’.
‘Ye your selfes ar not ignorant (and thocht ye wald be) it is now (thankes to God) knawen to the haill warlde…that the benignitie or almes of all Christian people perteynis to us allanerly; quhilk ye, being hale of bodye, stark, sturdye, and abill to wyrk…hes thire many yeiris…maist falslie stowin fra us…[we] warne yow, in the name of the grit God, be this publyck wryting, affixt on your yettis quhair ye now dwell, that ye remove fourth of our saidis Hospitales...
Translated as --The genuine recipients of alms—the sick, the poor, aged, infirm, widows, etc.—demand that the Friars remove themselves from the realm, as the needs of the poor were greater than those of the Church and were being ignored -is a rough translation from Scots to English. (I told you it was the corruption).
The authors threatened to forcibly remove the friars if they did not comply. The incident highlighted the growing anti-clerical sentiment and concerns, particularly in the burghs, that the Church was failing in its duty to the truly needy.
Knox returns
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. 1558 published in Geneva a pamphlet by John Knox. Arguing that female rule (regiment), unbiblical, and monstrous (unnatural). Calling for rebellion against Mary I of England and Mary of Guise, deeming it against God's order.
1559 The boy is back in town preaching his fiery Calvinism like crazy about the sins of the church -mainly in those burghs. People are listening, riots and tearing down of church idolatry in those towns, particularly Edinburgh. His rhetoric along with other Calvinist preachers galvanising the movement.
The Protestant rebellion
Perth and several other towns go over to Protestantism the Regent sends in the troops. May 1559, 2,500 men from
Ayrshire, under the earl of Glencairn, arrived to defend Perth against the Regent. After negotiation Glencairn ceded control of Perth to Guise, who enforced Catholicism in the town via martial law. This was highly unpopular, and her troops shot dead a boy during the reoccupation.
Then the blood is up and the violence really starts. Congregation ransacked Fife and ‘reformed’ St Andrews in mid-June, and by the end of the month they had taken Edinburgh.
They put out feelers to England for support, and in the meantime consolidated their control over their heartlands in Angus and the Mearns, Fife, and the south-west. By 1560 they control most of Scots speaking Scotland -the south and the East coast. A somewhat puzzled English army arrives, Mary of Guise dies -and that's it really the Prods win. Thankfully with less than maybe 400 dead.
The parliament convenes 1560 without royal authority the Protestant faction well in control. They tell the French and the English to please leave. Parliament outlaws the Mass, renounced the Pope's authority, and established the Protestant faith. (Whilst most Christians -particularly Calvinists believe in the division of state and church. It of course doesn’t mean they don't ask the said state to ban other religions -like in Spain.)
Mary Queen of Scots
Mary arrived from France in 1561, after hubby Henry II died in a jousting accident -actually it was a Gabriel Montgomery from his Scottish Guards that did the jousting accident.
Brought up Catholic she was now swimming in an unknown sea of Scottish Protestantism, popular with the nobles and commoners, preachers like Knox still railing against the old faith. Her only play was to keep her faith on a low gas, marry a suitable and politically savy Protestant, bring a sprog up that way and make a show of smoothing things over between the factions.
But she didn’t do that. At first she bent with the wind, her council was largely of Protestant nobles -even put down a small Catholic rebellion in the north. But there was huge suspicion amongst the people toward her.
Then she screws up royally, Henry Stuart Lord Darnly her new hubby 1556. He besotted Mary on first sight, Tall handsome, dressed up like a New Romantic that can't handle his drugs. “Her Majesty took well with him, and said that he was the lustiest and best proportioned long man that she had seen."
John Knox found out and started preaching that “he danced a galliard -a type of dance- with Mary at night”.
Born in England, lived in England, flip-flopped between claiming he was Catholic or Protestant, a violent temper, dumb as a bag of spanners, a bad drunk and bisexual. Nobody trusted his allegiance, his behaviour was lewd as it was loud in those stern Presbyterian times. Oh how could I forget, Mary had a strong claim to the English throne and this makes it stronger. Was that in fact her long game objective? Good Queen Bess reacted by puting his English rellies in jail -he wasn't going to last long.
John Knox weighs in with his say and preaches the Jezebel sermon at St. Giles. 'I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them: children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.' In another part he referred to God's displeasure against Ahab, because he did not correct his idolatrous wife Jezebel. The very next night a midnight summons to the palace for a detailed explanation -banned from preaching for two whole weeks. Actually Knox was carpeted on several occasions for his preaching even by Mary herself -whom he reduced to tears. Even once arrested for his preachings, standing trial -acquitted by the jury.
Next thing the Prods are up in rebellion, led by Earl Moray. It was was a farce they took Edinburgh but not the castle who lobbed occasional cannonballs at the rebels. Mary, cash strapped -even trying to pawn her jewellery- eventually raised a larger force and chased them round Scotland for a while. Without yer actual battle -indeed the episode is called the Chaseabout Raid. Moray runs to England.
Their complaints; An English king, f**k sake?!!! Too many foreigners at all. Mary was trying to restore Catholicism with Darnly and this was evidenced by increasing church corruption and contact with Rome.
Rizzo's murder
One of those foreigners was an Italian David Rizzio, a clever man and one of Mary's most trusted advisor and she likes him. Despite his Catholic faith he was in the smooth things over camp in regard to the protestants visa the rebellion. Darnly being a born idiot was in the other camp.
Rizzo like Darnly was gay and gay in the biblical sense with each other almost certainly and they have a tiff about this smooth over policy.
English diplomats like Thomas Randolph described Darnley and Rizzio as intimate friends who would "lie in one bed together".
That and Darnly jealousy toward Mary's clear affection to him -she's starting to be embarrassed at his drunken antics and general purpose stupidity.
Rizzo is murdered, Darnly claiming Rizzo is the father of Mary's now six month pregnancy, killing him in front of her. Him and a group of Protestant noble confederates -I told you he was a flip-flopper that way. Darnly already excluded from the succession is now officially estranged. The only good news is Mary gives birth to little James in 1566 and the royal sprog is hale and healthy.
Darnly murdered
10Th February 1567, Darnly is in his house when it blows up. He escapes -hair amuss I'm sure- but not fatally wounded. After him chase either 11 or 13 figures, he flees to a nearby orchard -his body if found soon along with a favourite servant. Dead with the marks of strangulation -plan B presumably.
Bothwell
Enter James Hepburn, 1st Duke of Orkney, 4th Earl of Bothwell and he had a plan or was that plans. Next step in the plan and here historical truth gets very murky.
24th April some months later Bothwell encounters Mary with 800 armed men claiming he was to protect her from some sort of danger. She agrees to go with him, to his castle in Dunbar. There, either she is imprisoned, then raped to secure marriage.
Or they concoct or have concocted a plot to indeed marry under protestant vows. The implication being they had colluded to have Darnly assassinated and turn the whole thing over to the protestant cause.
The evidence is both ways. Bothwell
had been accused of planning exactly this some years earlier at court -it's unlikely Mary wouldn't have known about this.
His aquittal at the trial 12th April was very suspicious, the rest were hung and publicly mutilated into four pieces -that could be interpreted either way, as in no suspicion raising witnesses. They were lying about Edinburgh in rotting bits.
19Th April 1567, eight bishops, nine earls, and seven Lords of Parliament put their signatures to the Ainslie Tavern Bond, declaring that Mary should marry a native-born subject, and handed it to Bothwell.
On the other hand despite this Bothwell had become close personally to Mary she liked him and he was a close advisor to the queen. He had been seen in the very queen's bed chamber in the morning after the Darnly killing by servants -him trying to hide.
` She hated Darnly by the end and the killing of Rizzo in front of her was not to be forgiven and Darnly was a huge political liability. Was it a situation she could play either way and had she helped contrive it? Whatever the true case they were wed under Protestant rites in Hollyrood in May -but Mary in mourning weeds.
John Knox went ballistic preaching Darnley's murder (and the earlier murder of David Rizzio) as God's punishment for Mary's sins, particularly her Catholic practices. Thing is that's how most people seen it.
It went to a rebellion, two armies 2000 strong met at Carberry Hill. It was a pathetic affair, nobles shouting threats of duels answered with excuses based on the particular nobles position in their hierarchy. They stood shouting threats a while, occasionally negotiating, eventually Bothwell took an oath to leave. After one last embrace with Bothwell Mary surrendered herself and was meekly taken into captivity.
All under her Lion Rampant flag that flew over Bruce and Wallace -perhaps they'd joined the Labour Party. She was imprisoned and was forced to hand over the crown to her infant son James. There was a brief disastrous revolt which she lost -then fled to England.
Bothwell had connections in Denmark and fled there but was imprisoned and died mad. Mary would see the next two decades as a prisoner, then the block. Walsingham, Elizabeth's spy master having uncovered her try out a plot. As politically inept and outmanoeuvred as she always was. A sad and tragic figure. A low burn civil war rumbles on for a few years but the issue is over for the time. Scotland has it's reformation and that reformation is Calvinist not Anglican, Episcopal or Lutheran.
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The six Johns and The Books of Discipline
The Books of Discipline (1560) were a foundational documents for Scotland's Reformed Church, drafted by John Knox and five other reformers -all called John. Outlining a Presbyterian church structure with four main roles (Pastors, Teachers, Elders, Deacons) and a social system for education and poor relief, aiming to establish a godly society.
Old Johnny Knox got his way, “Lord, give me Scotland or I die”. Whatever you think, at least “a school in every parish”, has a deep valued importance to Scotland.
He settled down and wrote a history of the Scottish reformation. A widower, he married again, a noble girl of the house of Stewart -meaning ironically he was now distantly related to poor Mary of Scotland. (A seventeen year old mind you, borderline there Johnny, borderline)?
The Wisest Fool in Christendom
Young James is to come under the rod -literally- of a protestant tutor, teaching also of the limits of a king's power -securing the dynasty that way. The more bold start to pose the question if kings need the consent of their people to rule. One would be little James tutor George Buchanan and his rod.
However there were three big loose threads. Across the Highland line those Gaels in their fierce endlessly feuding clans had not converted. Secondly the alliance with France was now in tatters. Scotland looked for alliance with England. The same England that for centuries has tried to conquer, incorporate and colonise Scotland. It would take a century yet, but they get their way and it would start soon. The third thread the unravelling one was soon to emerge.
James VI assumes legal powers as king in 1579 it's not popular. That rod of Buchanan has had the opposite intended effect. James believes that kings are ordained by god to rule both material and spiritual -just like in England.
There is an assassination attempt, he is imprisoned twice but escapes. He claws his way to real power in the face of strong Calvinist suspicions. But he gets his way, the Black Laws are passed. The church is ruled by the king through bishops, it is now as far as the king is concerned an Episcopal church -just like in England.
He had denounced Buchanan's writings on the subject and published his own. The Trew Law of Free Monarchies spouting his own absolutist theory of god ordained monarchs. Whatever the people thought on the subject, irrelevant by gods authority. The king only limited by the extent of his conscience and the fear of gods retribution on him.
There are bloody riots in Edinburgh the government has to withdraw to Linlithgow temporarily. There is another attempt on his life -but the Black Laws stay. 1596 a Presbyterian minister,
Andrew Melville, shook the king by the sleeve, the king startled looked “God’s silly vassal” was the comment and Melville stomped away in disgust. However he ruled with skill and patronage and stayed in charge and unmoved by opposition.
The England project
James had easily the best claim to the throne of the Virgin Queen ruling south the border -with of course little chance of a direct inheritance there. The church was brought in line with English policy. His foreign affairs were pro-English, he supported England in the events surrounding the Armada, he tried to suppress the Border Reiver clans “shakin loose the border” -when it suited him. England paying him up to £58,000 for the various privileges -which did wonders for his cash strapped treasury.
Elizabeth, -ageing now- was an apple on a tree ripening from green to red. The Wisest Fool in Christendom ever patient, waiting for it to fall -confident in his schemes.
1602 the old queen's health failed, she started to die, secret “coded” negotiations began under England's Secretary of State, Lord Cecil for James to take over. The old fear of a chaotic dynastic struggle, between the old and new faith in play. Plus the rule over their troublesome militarily dangerous border to the north. History had taught them Scotland had won most of it's battles and all of it's wars with the “Auld Enemy”.
In March 1603, Elizabeth fell sick and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end, knowing the end was coming. Robert Cecil told her that she must go to bed. "Must is not a word to use to princes, little man." She died on 24 March 1603, aged 69. The apple fell.
I have gained the impression that James disliked Scotland and it's cantankerous people (kind of like Gordon Brown really). The last James, the filth. Would go in disguise amongst his subjects listening from a distance to their wants and opinions.
His grandson was self absorbed by arrogant thoughts of royal authority and personal ambition.
That and there was a saying throughout Europe. A moderately wealthy merchant was described as “Living like the King of Scotland”. And so it is he sold out his people. It would cost England more than thirty pieces of silver though, he wanted the whole money mint -and he got it. He had played his chess board like a grand master. He got his English crown in 1603.
The Scottish people? They had no say, they hadn’t been ordained by god for that you see.
“Let a thing here be noted, that the prophet of God sometimes may teach treason against kings, and yet neither he nor such as obey the word, spoken in the Lord's name by him, offend God”. John Knox -died 24th November 1572; Five year, before James assumed legal powers?
James VI&I
Swapping a stony couch
So he heads south amazed at the wealth of his new kingdom. “Swapping a stony couch, for a deep feather bed” as they said.
He initially is magnanimous between the Protestant and Catholic factions. But Guy Fawkes tries to blow him up which chilled relations a tad -but he's no
Bloody Mary and allowed Catholics to practice quietly. The English didn't like him. He is considered boorish, his tongue was too big for his mouth. His heavy Scottish accent mocked, he dressed badly, didn't wash enough and fiddled with his cod-piece round good looking men -no I didn't make that up, we are scrupulous in our research here.
He was suspected of being gay, historians are divided. But there was contemporary comment Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Iacobus (Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen). Bess was bellicose James was quiet and scholarly? Seven children, only three surviving however? Nobody's sure.
Abroad he settles on a quiet time bringing wars with Ireland and Spain to a halt. He arranges marriage to the Spanish infanta with his son with the Spanish peace -this would lead to absolute disaster.
Project GB
He start project GB "Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" In April 1604, the Commons refused his request to be titled "King of Great Britain" on legal grounds. In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" anyhow and stuffed it down the throat of both parliaments anyway. Assimilation had begun.
Scots involvement in the Ulster plantation
James comes to London just in time for England to eventually win the Tyrone revolt. The new king is initially magnanimous, the Irish tried again to rebel in a thing called the flight of the Earls, with Spanish aid -it failed.
Jamie hatched a scheme to up the plantation effort of Ireland, increasing the numbers of staunch loyal protestants -half from Scotland. Settling on the devastated and depopulated lands in Ulster. That and take the Catholic churches and land and hand it over to his own with a view to conversion of the natives. Then confiscate and redistribute lands from the rebellious Irish nobles.
Thing was it was only half successful, the Scots were Presbyterian who had issues with the Kings church and were never even near half the number, many of the English were Catholic and became sympathetic. The conversions didn't go well, not least because the English pastors couldn't speak Gaelic. The allocated farm land was poor and the settlers tended to urbanise and go into a trade rather than farm the land. Leaving the isolated pockets of Protestants in a sea of native Catholics.
Statutes of Iona
He tries his hand at the same in the still largely Catholic Highland and Islands. In the 1609 “Statutes of Iona”.
Laws required clan chiefs to send their eldest sons to the Lowlands for English-language education -part of his planned
linguistic/religious/cultural policy of assimilation for Scotland- banned also the carrying of guns and outlawed bards. Bards??? Supported land colonization to dispossess chiefs and impose order, a policy that involved forced land seizures but miserably failed.
It had some effects, some clans thought it was to their advantage -depending on who they hated. To curry favour politically with the crown, by becoming Scottish Episcopal -the king's church. Some remained Catholic -the huge clan MacDonald (well most of them). The Campbells went the whole hog and threw in their lot with the Presbytery, much to the total disgust of the rest of the Ghàidhealtachd.
Most though chose between Episcopal and the old-faith, with the Episcopal slowly gaining ground. Many clans were part Episcopal, part Catholic and welcomed a few Presbyterians as people who could write were necessary for trade. Plus if the clan was on the wrong side of things the errant chiefs could run off to France, new ones suitably swearing fealty to whoever won could take over -that sort of thing.
The king managed to imprison a few chiefs and chieftains forcing them to swear fealty. But they recanted as soon as they got out. Colonises the place? Even in 1700 nearly a century later, if you took out life insurance it was void over the Highland line, such was the violence. The destruction of the Highlands would have to wait a long time.
The Five Articles of Perth
Five liturgical rules imposed on the Church of Scotland by King James VI in 1618 mandating practices like kneeling at communion, private baptism/communion, episcopal confirmation, and observance of holy days, which aimed to align Scotland with England.
King James forcing them down the throat of the Kirk assembly under duress the same year. He talks now about Scotland's cultural/linguistic as well as religious assimilation into England. It sparked significant Presbyterian opposition and not ratified by the parliament till 1621, it would lead a few
years later along with other issues to the Covenanter movement.
James only returns once 1617 exactly to do this. Part of this also the James VI bible a standard state/king authorised text in English. A literary master piece but not in native Scots. The first Scots translation of the New testament was 1983 -the Devil however speaking in standard English. The full bible not till 2023 even then in Aberdeen area Doric. Gaelic was earlier, the New testament in 1767 both books in 1807. Both way behind the curve of the reformation. Knox for instance used mainly the English Wycliffe bible. No wonder our languages died out the way they did.
The Thirty years war
It kicked off in 1618. About 20% of Europe would die with areas of what is now Germany having over a 50% death rate. Up to 8 million died.
See the holy Roman church had found it's champion. Those interbreeding Hapsburg’s and their empire particularly the Spanish empire in the Americas. Though it held vast areas of Europe too. The Holy catholic and Spanish empire, started 1493. Serious colonisation began 1519, by a century later they had committed genocide to the extent of 50 million -in the 1520s south Americas population was about 50 Million by the 1620s about 8. They practised slavery on a vast industrial scale, black and native. Entire native tribes were enslaved and worked to death, up to 5 million and 2.5 million Africans when these started to run out. To be -fair???- they turned to black slavery when laws were passed in the late 16th century regarding the Indians. All with the enthusiastic cooperation, blessing and encouragement of the Holy church.
Spain becoming unbelievably rich and had the most powerful army in Europe -the fearsome Tercios. Between 1503 and 1660, approximately 185 tons of gold was shipped to Spain from its American colonies. Over the same period, about 16,000 tons of silver. That and the rest of the income of it's huge holdings in Europe.
1516 the holy Roman Emperor Charles V also became Charles I of Spain. Bringing the Hapsburg’s uber Catholic loyalism. See the old Trastámara dynasty had ended up in Juana la Loca, (Joanna the Mad). And Hapsburg's moved in, Charlie there being the first son. Roll on time we arrive at Philip II the same as bloody Mary had as hubby. By now Spain is struggling that huge income used to finance loans then the interest started to go out of control to the German and Genoese bankers -the Fugers again- and so does inflation. Manufacturing and agriculture collapse in the face of imports in the face of the inflation.
Why the debt? He needs to finance a war with the Protestant mainly Calvinist Dutch and the super-power the age the Ottomans -the Spanish Hapsburg’s other big cash cow is the rich mercantile Netherlands. Fighting on two fronts it's going bad and Spain goes bankrupt -multiple times- can't pay it's armies who loot and pillage the heretic Dutch till their little hearts are content instead -or even their own loyal cities. Maybe 500,000 were killed in the Dutch Revolt.
1618 The unstable treaty of Utrecht fell apart when some, revolting Bohemian Protestant threw a minor Hapsburg official out a window.
(Protestants say he was saved by landing in a dung hill, Catholics that the Virgin Mary broke his fall with her very cloak). Tak yer pick?
The events of the 30 Years war have a complexity that would give Einstein a migraine and I am attempting to be brief, the ageing Emperor Mathias was trying to keep the peace. But those Bohemians aforementioned up and revolted -this spreads to Germany.
He's replaced by Ferdinand II and he's a traditional Hapsburg and big on counter-reformation -that and it's other traditions stonking debt and inbreeding. He launches armies at the reformers, the Spanish are drawn in under Philip III then IV, so are the Dutch on the other side. The protestants struggle for years and cling on with the Catholics in ascendence.
But to be furtherly brief, the kingdom of Sweden comes in on the side of the Prods in 1630. Led by their king Adophus Gustavas, a military genius with a killer army trained in revolutionary tactics. It turns the war on it's head, the Protestants start to win big.
There is brief Catholic revival when he gets himself killed, but the Swedes recover, under new generals and the more
pragmatic but still Catholic French. Fresh from putting down their own Huguenot protestant revolt go into alliance with the Swedes because they hate Hapsburg Spain a lot more than Protestants -this alliance brokered by a Cardinal Richelieu. The death toll noted above. It ends in 1648, sort off.
Nothing to do with Scotland? An estimated 10% of Scotland's male population fought in the war as mercenaries. 10,000 in the elite Swedish army alone. Also large contingents with the Dutch, but also the French, Poles even Transylvania -actually a minor player on the Protestant side. Scottish generals like Leslie and Duval important commanders. There are Scottish generals, in Swedish, Danish, French, Dutch and Imperial forces.
On the Catholic side the last major Catholic General Wallensien was killed by two Scots and an Irish, at the behest of the Catholic emperor for not doing enough and suspicion of planning to defect. Ending the Catholic cause by huge political error -that and the Catholic French.
I included the Dutch Revolt and 30 Years War as necessary political and religious background to understand events in Scotland.
Charles I
James VI&I had carefully steered his realm or is that realms, away from continental events. He had brokered peace in Ireland and with Spain and kept a barge-pole distance from events in Holland Germany.
He had constructed a web of careful compromises, through his three kingdoms. These demonstrated his authority but did not push too far.
The English, bah, his church was clearly established, but Catholics and Puritans were largely... largely?? excluded from government but could worship and he kept the Commons on board. Excluding the extremists, Puritan and Catholic.
Ireland, the three factions The Old Irish -Catholic descendants of original Celtic Irish rulers. The New Irish -Catholic descendants of Anglo-Irish rulers. Protestants -from the increasing number of migrants to Ireland (the plantation). Mainly English but some Scots, mainly Anglican but with a big Calvinist streak. Making them reliant on English authority for protection.
Seeing queen Bess's policy in Ireland as a disaster he was far more conciliatory. He increased said English authority, but cautiously, swinging between displaying authority and leniency. Consulting the Irish parliament, but also slowly extending the Plantation and control.
Scotland
It was as mainly run through the Scottish parliament. But he maintained the authority of his own Episcopal bishops over the presbyteries. Like in the Five Articles. Keeping the parliament and church in line as necessary but not to the point of causing an uprising.
Essentially he extended authority but never to the point of provoking rebellion. He also kept tax low by keeping out of wars. A web of compromises that held the peace while gradually extending or at least not threatening his authority.
You have to say the Wisest fool in Christendom was quite a political operator in balancing the issues. But
by 1624 he was ill and on the way out. Like so many clever kings his son was an idiot. No, that's an idiot!!!!!
His son Charles -actually born in Scotland 1600- acted early and stupidly as he always would. Remember as part of the peace with Spain James had arranged to marry his son to he Infanta -the Spanish king's daughter. Both the English people and parliament were suspicious of this and it would have probably been impossible if Charlie's elder brother Henry Fredrick had lived -he was firefly anti-Catholic.
Charles overriding his father set off on his own. Or at least with the Duke of Buckingham -his very chum. To Spain, in disguise to get his very own blue eyed princess to take back home. They are reported to the authorities, as clearly in disguise with wigs and false beards, stealing goats to eat, referring to the local Spanish as the “bastards” and paying a bemused ferryman six months wages for the crossing of a river to just show off.
The authorities for their turn, don't recognise England's heir apparent and think they are mad nobles who have some sort of appointment for a duel somewhere in the peninsular. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” -kind of thing. Eight months he travelled Spain.
Arriving at the Spanish court they yank off the beards and wigs announcing who they are to Spanish incredulity announcing the marriage contract. But the Spanish want a conversion to Catholicism the infanta declared that she would “rather take to a nunnery or die a martyr than marry a heretic”. So that was it over really.
The crafty Spanish essentially asked the pope not to grant the necessary dispensation to marry a Protestant -not their fault you see? The English find out and react with threats. The Spanish try to smooth things over by releasing 300 English galley slaves
-there was a lot of smoothing over in those times.
Charles returned to England to crowds cheering in relief. Ailing, ill James is convinced by Charles and Buckingham, along with parliament to declare war over the perceived slight. But their reason was opposite, Charles was becoming more pro-Catholic, parliament was starting to come under the influence of the Puritans. It wouldn't be his worst mistake by far.
James dies, March 1625 Charles sits on the throne having provoked a war with Europe's greatest power. Before he had even parked his royal backside on it's velvet cushion.
Who's Catholic, but hates Hapsburg Spain more than Protestants, why France? See Charles isn't Catholic he's a high Anglican who though carefully not Catholic, he sees a relationship to the old faith. I mean isn't he is a surrogate, Protestant pope after all, by the divine right of god? He wants to build bridges with the Catholic continent. Particularly as he's pissed off Spain to the point of war.
“Her arms were long and lean, her shoulders uneven, and some of her teeth were coming out of her mouth like tusks... She did, however, have pretty eyes, nose, and a good complexion." Meet Henrietta Maria of France aged fifteen at the time of her marriage to Charles -not unusual for the age. With secret treaties to improve the legal situation for Catholics and provide ships for France's wars particularly with the Huguenots.
This was arranged by big chum Buckingham of course. Who isn't he grating against, the increasingly protestant and Puritan English people and Commons. The Scots, Kirk, parliament and people you'd think it would go down well in Ireland but he makes a mess there too.
Charlie decides he is to be a player in the affairs in Europe. He's already at war with Spain, with failed naval attacks mainly a fiasco under Buckingham at Cadiz, then an attempt to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet by the English, who didn't because the Spanish found out. So the war is a stalemate -an expensive stalemate.
He sends ships to help France with the Huguenots. Then changes sides and starts to help the Huguenots. Buckingham leading the way to another disaster.
Parliament holding the purse-strings is not happy, won't grant the money he wants and act to impeach Buckingham. 1626 bringing formal charges in the House of Commons, accusing him of treason, corruption (bribery, selling offices), mismanagement of naval forces, and ruining England's reputation -that and spreading rumours he was sodomising the very king. To be again fair, while on a sensitive diplomatic mission he's accused of attempted rape on one of the French kings daughters -I mean how does that fit in? Charles dissolves the parliament before thing got more embarrassing. Buckingham was killed by his own soldiers in 1668.
It was the second time he had dissolved parliament he would do so in 1625, 1626 1629, after which he would rule directly till 1640 when he needed money bad.
See parliament held the purse strings with authority on taxation making taxation difficult. But Charlie came up with various schemes.
Ship Money: An ancient tax for coastal defence, forcing inland counties to contribute money -illegal without parliamentary consent. This was the real hated tax.
Forced Loan: In 1626, he demanded loans from his subjects, imprisoning those who refused.
Tonnage and Poundage: He continued collecting customs duties, even after Parliament voted to limit it to one year.
He also has income from royal monopoly companies. Whose monopoly position annoys the merchants -many of whom are attracted to Puritanism.
He tried to fleece the Irish. The "Graces": In 1628, Charles promised concessions (the Graces) regarding land rights and religious tolerance for Catholics in exchange for £120,000, all this did was fuel Catholic discontent.
In Scotland it was The Act of Revocation 1625. The Act sought to recover royal and ecclesiastical property to increase the Crown's income and strengthen his Church in Scotland's revenue and the king's control over it. Alienating many of the Scottish nobility, who were the primary holders of these lands. This is where the Covenant really get's it's first signature -Charles I Rex.
These were dangerous people to hack-off. They weren't rich by English standards, many made their living as mercenary officers in the raging continental wars -and they were acknowledged as being good at it.
​The Covenanters
"De'il gie you colic, the wame o' ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?" Devil give you disease, the effrontery of you, crooked liar, dare you say Mass in my ears. -Jenny Geddes, a Kirk service, St Giles' Edinburgh Sunday, 23 July 1637.
Then flings her stool at the Preacher, Dean James Hannay. There is a roar from the congregation, followed by a reported deluge of more stools, sticks, stones and even bibles taking to the air. Riots start in Edinburgh, -the Prayer Book riots- it spreads thought Scotland,soon a petition of protest is organised -so it is we arrive at the Covenanters.
So what's the issue? The John Knoxian Books of Discipline were to be replaced by, in 1636, a new Book of Canons, which was Episcopal. Equally anyone who denied the king's supremacy in church matters was subject to excommunication. Then followed in 1637 by a new Book of Common Prayer, the reading of which had Jenny's stool take flight. (All six Johns rotating in their graves as one in sympathy, you have to think). Along with the earlier act of Revocation and the Five articles this broke the Camels back. The Presbyterian nature of the Kirk was seen as lost to Anglican, pseudo-catholic, Royal incorporation.
February 28, 1638, Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh. Around 60,000 people attended the initial event of the signing of the Covenant. Copies were circulated round Scotland, in the end over 300,000 signed. Authored by Reverends Alexander Henderson and Archibald Johnston of Wariston.
A commitment to the reformed faith, rejecting Catholicism and the kings new changes. Asserting loyalty to the King only as long as he upheld true religion, essentially limiting royal power in church matters. Next the General Assembly met in Glasgow asserting Presbyterian doctrine and kicking the kings Bishops out of the Kirk. In truth it was only bringing Scotland in line with standard practices on the continent.
But King Charlie he didn't see it that way at all, this was treason -and that meant war. He'd ram those bishops down their Presbyterian throats. Only that cost money, stuff he didn't have.
​
Civil War
The Bishops wars
The Scots turned up trained by experienced officer from the European wars, led by a veteran general from the elite Swedish army, Alexander Leslie -and the English didn't.
It was a fiasco English units from the Puritan inclined South murdered their Catholic officers and deserted, an Irish army failed to land -but it's absence destabilised Ireland. An army in the Highlands failed to materialise but areas of Badenoch were burned.
The Scots walked all over the English army taking Newcastle for the first time in it's history with hardly a fight. Cutting of vital coal supplies to the South. Even driving their cattle and sheep onto English lands to graze it flat.
It ended with the king suing for peace, imposing bishops the least of his worries. Agreeing to pay the Scots £850 a day to occupy Northumberland while he slunk of to parliament to look for money. The king was humiliated, the English parliament furious.
They had his man in Ireland Stafford executed, the Archbishop who had concocted the Book of Common prayer and new Cannon dismissed. Then 1641 Ireland revolted, resulting in a massacre leading to the death of perhaps 12,000 protestants.
Civil War
The whole thing spun out of control on him in the Long Parliament and the civil war stated 1642. 20% of England would die, the same for Ireland, Scotland got of light 5-10%. But lost it's liberty to Lord Protector bah dictator Cromwell and his English Commonwealth.
The Presbyterian overreach
1643 Parliament is struggling in the Civil war and the king has an army in Ireland that may intervene. English Presbyterians under Pym who are a majority in the Commons reach out to the Scots for an alliance.
Yes say the Scots but a religious union across England, Scotland, and Ireland under a Presbyterian not episcopal system. Under the authority of parliament and the king. The Solemn League and Covenant -it was an idiotic agreement.
The Scots enter the war it's well trained army swinging it the way of parliament decisively -parliament wins. Kings son little Charlie runs off to France in mummy's hand. The king surrenders to Scots, they try to convince him to sign the covenant -he won't. So the ever fiscally canny Scots sell him to the English for £100,000.
Here the agreement starts to unravel disastrously for the Scots. Parliament may be Presbyterian but the English people and Cromwell's army aren’t. Those Puritans are all sorts of protestant denominations and reject any form of royal authority over religion, they call themselves “Independents”. Cromwell's one and so is his New Model Army as lots of others.
Now up to his eyes in doodoo a desperate Charles signs the covenant. Calvinists believed a 'well-ordered' monarchy was part of God's plan; as a result, the vast majority of Covenanters agreed monarchy itself was divinely ordered.
The “Engagers” they were called, so by gods plan they had to rescue the king. They became a majority in the Scottish parliament. There is a royalist uprising and the Scots send an army south.
Cromwell
Taking a break from slaughtering people in Wales this time Cromwell heads North. The Scots are led by a clown, Lord Hamilton, who gets his army strung along a road.
At Preston Cromwell pounces only about a third of the Scots get into the fight the rest too far away to intervene -flanked on both sides eventually they break.
Hamilton's retreat is chaos, then he deserts them, he orders troops to surrender. Then he get's caught anyway -beheaded later to every bodies relief. A Scots force is cornered at Winick, 4000 surrender and are sold into slavery. (Every time you read the name Hamilton in Scots history just a cold chill enters the room).
Cromwell heads into Scotland and purges the Parliament of Engagers at sword point who run in all directions. Leaving his sympathisers the Independents in charge. Then back to England for the main show, separates Charlie one from his head and enacts a military coup. Then off to Ireland for his rampage there.
The Scottish Parliament, which had not been consulted before the King's execution, declared his son Charles II, King of Britain and set about recruiting rapidly an army to support him. There is a new party in town the Kirk party. And we have the Rule of the Saints.
They aimed to create a truly godly nation, enforcing strict social and religious laws through Kirk Sessions (church courts). Punishments for sin were severe, including public flogging, branding, and even death for adultery.
This time though, they do it right militarily, a well trained army under the veteran Leslie. Cromwell heads into Scotland, Leslie, constantly out-manurers him, his Mosstroopers harrying his supplies. Forces him away from Edinburgh, traps him at Dumbar -takes the high ground about.
The English army begins to run out of food. In wily David Leslie, Cromwell has met his match.
Then the Kirk party sticks in it's beak with a religious purge. In the weeks leading up to the battle, they purged the army of approximately 80 veteran officers and 3,000 experienced soldiers, considering them "Malignants". And badgers Leslie to attack, god being on his side to assure victory.
The Scots attack where and when they shouldn't have, "Now, let God arise, and His enemies shall be scattered!" -Cromwell.
The kirk party weren’t the only people that just knew god was on their side about.
The war wasn't over but the outcome now inevitable, the slaughter started in Scotland. Leslie invaded England dragging Cromwell away. Out numbered he went down at Worcester thousand more captives sold into slavery. Charles II having signed the Covenant was present but escaped.
A general Monke takes over. He captured Dundee and made an example of the city, standing by while his troops sacked it, killing up to 2000. However Monke is a Presbyterian.
Then placed Scotland under military occupation. Cromwell abolished Scotland as a nation, disarming it at the same time. Young Charlie though escaped to France. Scotland is on it's knees, facing utter national defeat in a war for the first time in it's long history. Facing more than defeat -extinction.
Behind that defeat a half baked plan to convert all of the nations of Britain to Presbyterianism, under god anointed half-wit Stewart kings and the Rule of the Saints.
The Restoration
Monke ruled Scotland with a military occupation as part of the Cromwell’s Commonwealth. A string of forts were established along with a spy network and paid informants.
Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 and with the failure of his son Richard's Protectorate, the English government collapsed into disarray. Monke is the central figure in the restoration and he does it through Scotland.
Monke led his army south, crossing the Tweed January 1660 and entering London where he called new parliamentary elections.
The new parliament brought back Charles and re-separated the two nations of Scotland and England with separate parliaments. Charles had to facilitate this and declared at Breda that all crimes against the monarch other than regicide would be forgiven and their would be religious freedom. And as far as the Scots remember he had signed the Covenant.
The Merry Monarch
In England he was the Merry Monarch the restoration popular after drab old Cromwell and son. However not in Scotland. Charles took a very high hand, he believed in High church Anglicanism, bishops, archbishops, a liturgy that said the state should be involved in the very punishments of sins by the church -he too renounced his part in the covenant he signed in 1650. So much for the deceleration of Breda.
The Scots refused to let him be king of Scotland. Actually he signed the covenant back in 1650 because the Scots though declaring him king, wouldn't let him into the country unless he signed saying as king of the three nation and he accepted Presbyterianism for all the nations.
They suspected him too of being far too close to Catholic doctrine and sympathetic with a Catholic wife -and indeed it would seem had a deathbed conversion to Catholicism. He introduced the Clarendon code that attacked the rights of Nonconformists. The king passed The Rescissory Act 1661 repealed all laws made since 1633, this brought back bishops and archbishops, took away from the congregations the right to
appoint their own minister.
Made the Covenant a criminal document and excluded Presbyterians from public office. Over 400 ministers refused to accept this and were effectively sacked from their position. So much for freedom of religion?
The Killing times
So began the Killing times in Scotland, as the king tried to impose his will by force. If you were seen with a bible in your hand outside a church you could be summary executed -some were.
You were required to take an oath of allergen, if you did not, they applied thumb screws or cut your ear off with scissors as an incentive. (Probably my ancestors with the clippers). The Presbyterians took to having secret meeting outdoor, -conventicles. Mounted soldiers would patrol the area looking for these.
7000 Highlanders were recruited by the king and set on the lowlands, plundering as they went -the Highland host. The Presbyterian's armed themselves, there were fights and atrocities.
It was the time of Bloody Clavers, against the militant Cameronians and 18,000 dead. More people fled Scotland, even today one in five Dutch people have some sort of Scottish blood.
Charles and the slave trade
There was another aspect to Charles reign. In 1672, the Royal African Company received a new charter from Charles II. It set up forts and factories, maintained troops, and exercised martial law in West Africa in pursuit of trade in gold, silver and African slaves.
In the 1680s, the RAC transported about 5,000 slaves a year to markets primarily in the English Caribbean across the Atlantic. Many were branded on the chest with the letters "DY" for "Duke of York", the RAC's Governor.
As historian William Pettigrew writes, the RAC "shipped more enslaved African women, men, and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade"..
King Billy
Séamus an Chaca
Charles II died suddenly in 1685, his brother the above mentioned Duke of York became James VII&II was on the throne. Now no kidding he was a catholic, appointed by divine right of his lineage.
It was for sure for nothing else, he was stupid, politically incompetent, as a commander contributing to heavy naval defeats against the Dutch -cowardly not a trait appreciated in a supposed soldier. Utterly immoral he had the Royal Navy try to wrest the African slave trade from the Dutch, which caused the war -and on the throne.
A fool and a catholic on the throne of a predominantly protestant England, that wasn't going to last long.
King Billy
Enter King Billy (pronounced Kung Buhlee by old firm fans). In 1690 he did down the Kaflics by storming ashore at Derry on a white horse while the apprentice boys manned the walls and let him in. Then the Kaflic trahiters tried to get him oot and were beaten at the Boyne -he still had the same white horse.
Then the Irish tried tae fight back by saying he was a pouf, when he wisn'y. A Rangers fan recites world history.
Not really it, though William III or is that III&I was gay. It was the Glorious revolution, 1688, KB marches ashore at Torbay invited by parliament, with 20,000 veterans, James army of 19,000 just melts away. James throws the great seal England into the water and runs for it. James tries to come back in Ireland, but can’t even besiege Derry properly which lets in William with a fleet.
His badly led, badly equipped and
trained troops were no match for the Dutch-British forces, who crush him at the Boyne, then complete his defeat a Aughrim. There is bloodshed but William is no Cromwell, the Irish were spared the worst of war. He rules as a joint monarch with his wife Mary. Nonconformists are now given rights of religious freedom, well mostly. After the killing Times you can see how Dutch William was generally welcomed in Presbyterian Scotland.
Surprisingly he was lenient on the Catholic population guaranteeing freedom of worship if they swore allegiance to the crown.
In Scotland however Wiliamite forces are crushed by Bonnie Dundee's (also known as Bloody Clavers) heavily outnumbered clansmen at Kilikrankie but Dundee is killed and it all peters out. With the freedom to non conformist thing however, the Kirk is back in business. Séamus an Chaca -James the Shit-head went into exile as the Old pretender.
Did the Pope bless King Billy
on his venture on the Boyne?
I'm afraid he did, Winston Churchill described King Louis XIV as “a good Catholic who wanted to be his own Pope”. The French king set out to control the Catholic clergy in France. Much to the fury of the Vatican. He wanted the same deal as the English king a state church at his command -without actually declaring himself a protestant.
It provoked the Nine years war (that's 680,000 military deaths, twice that of civilians over the niceties of who controlled bishops in France). King Billy's adventures in Britain, a detail in a greater war where he lined up with the Pope as anti-French and Pope Innocent did bless KB's little jaunt into Ireland.
The Broke nation
The kirk may have got back it's trade but business it's self is bad. Scotland's traditional trading partner France is excluded.
Up North Séamus an Chaca, reaches out for support. The Scottish Episcopal church takes the view William is not a god anointed king, but an ungodly usurper. Catholics ally, the Jacobites are born. King Billy has the Highlands garrisoned with 6-8000 troops. Their turn for English occupation.
The Darien expedition I won't go into the horrid details but basically an insane attempt to build a trade short cut where the Panama canal sits now. It bankrupted Scotland leaving huge debt, cut off from trade and recovering from a severe famine. The Seven Ill Years, 12% of Scotland dies 10-15% migrate mainly to Ireland.
The clearances start in the south about 1670, farmers are left starving to death with their families by the walls of the enclosed fields, tens of thousand urbanise, others migrate. The remaining farmers left in debt peonage, many look for comfort in their Calvinist faith -for what that's worth.
The massacre of Glencoe 1692, again I won't go into the detail but the overly honest investigation by the Scottish parliament did not go down well in London and was one of the factors in making the crown think about the incorporation of Scotland.
The Scotland project
In February 1702 William III sent a message to both houses at Westminster
urging consideration of "a firm and entire union" - a union of the two kingdoms with a single parliament.
“Here's to the wee man in the grey velvet coat”, 1702 King Billy has his encounter with the mole hill, breaks his collar bone, dies of complications.
The throne goes to Queen Anne the last Stuart monarch, a High Anglican, she takes over the project. Scottish parliament won't cooperate, Scottish opinion overwhelmingly against. The Kirk suspicious organises opposition, the Scots even threaten to put a new monarch on the throne of Scotland.
The Alien Act 1705 was passed in the English parliament, designating Scots in England as "foreign nationals" and blocking about half of all Scottish trade by boycotting exports to England or its colonies, unless Scotland came back to negotiate a Union.
Now there's ane end o'ane auld sang.
1707 the act of union. An unelected parliament, was bribed -those brasic nobles after Darian. Armies waited at Carlisle and Ulster to invade, Scotland carefully disarmed by Cromwell had a bare four regiments.
The only democratic part of the process the 97 popular petitions. As the Treaty passed through the Scottish Parliament, opposition was voiced by petitions from shires, burghs, presbyteries and parishes, all against our incorporation and ignored. The Scots people protested furiously outside the parliament as they debated.
James Hamilton (that cold in the room again), the 4th Duke of Hamilton. The leader of the anti-union "Country Party" and a popular figure among the protesting crowds in Edinburgh.
Opposition leaders planned a final protest where they would propose an alternative act and, if rejected, walk out of Parliament to delegitimize the proceedings. Hamilton was expected to lead this walkout but failed to appear, claiming to be incapacitated by a severe toothache -bribed.
The feisty Scots Kirk? They had made a deal. The people, their nation, bought and sold for English gold, their protests nothing to bribed traitors.
The act passed, as Lord Seaforth signed he remarked “Now there's ane end o'ane auld sang”.
The scam
There were two main concessions granted. First the English would pay the national debt. Not one blind penny was ever paid. It took Scotland 30 years to repay.
Second the Kirk would be left to run it's self. 1711 in the Church patronage act they took from the congregation the power to appoint the minister and handed it to a local landowner of the
Parliament’s choice. Against perhaps the central tenet of Presbyterianism -worse then than the king's bishops. His clearing ba****rd Lairds. The Kirk would gain notoriety in it's complicity in the clearances -north and south. The root of that pretty clear. What would those brave people nailing their Beggars' Summons's to the Friaries doors in defence of the poor andagainst the corrupt church that refused it's responsibilities to them -have thought now of the thing they started?
Perhaps they should have consulted an Englishman instead of the authority of the run off south King Jame's bible. Christopher Marlowe -as in Faust?
A group split away called the Associate Presbytery and later the Secession Church in 1732, when minister Ebenezer Erskine from Achterarder broke away from the established Church over issues of patronage and doctrinal purity.
But most just gave in. Led by what minister, any trouble makers we have the appointed Laird on hand?
That and there were to be 45 MPs (1 more than Cornwall) and 16 for the House of Lords. At that time Scotland was about 20% of the population of England the parliament was 513 MPs, you do the maths.
Scotland after the Union
The Jacobites
Up north though they were made of sterner stuff. I'll be very brief here I think. The king across the water, the risings, 89, 15, the 45, the kings in London usurpers to the god chosen house of Stuart.
The Highlands Sympathetic Episcopal mainly and some Catholic, their source of soldiers for their ambitions to take back the crown of the three kingdoms. They had their moments, sweeping the fields at Kilikrankie, Prestonpans and Falkirk Muir, claymore in hand.
But they were Stuarts, with that idiot gene. Boddin' John, the very indecisive Earl of Mar in the 15 could have won but didn't. Charlie convinced by a dubious English spy to turn back at Derby.
Then Culloden, the ending of a culture, no quarter even to the wounded, the burnings, killings and rapes as the Highlands was pacified with fire and sword -”they are less than the common level of human”.
Weapons banned, the language banned, wearing Highland clothing illegal, even the pipes banned. The coward nobles fled, where the small folk could not, Those remaining nobles becoming British sycophants and clearing improvers.
The Jacobites by Victorian times became the tartan shortbread tin lid, TV box-set and Hollywood film mythology they have become. I have Jacobite blood, my lot might have survived Glencoe -now that's august blood to have. I whistle Jacobite airs, I cheer on the Clans in films -Black Jack Randal is clearly a metaphor for the Blessed union.
But I know the real history of vainglorious wana'be kings, bickering, internecine, blood soaked clans, mad religions and the dirty capitalism of the English Empire on the rise, in it's violent, genocidal military practice -else and I am a fool.
With the debt of Darian saddled round it's shoulders. The Scots looked to Holland for banking practices. A bank was formed to consolidate the debt -the Royal bank of Scotland.
There no actual money or property, but credit to the equivalent of the debt issued. (As a wee aside the over draught was invented in Scotland). The Scots used this for trading and investment capital. Slowly the Scottish economy recovered. The Royal bank very clever in controlling that debt that might easily have spun out of control.
Later and soon the principles of debt without securing capital or realistic business model would nearly destroy England in the South Seas Bubble. Then did destroy France, in Scotsman, John Law's Mississippi scheme. Both now what we call Ponzi schemes -as was Darian.
With imperial markets now open, the Scots became great merchant -the farming land having been taken by the English. The incredibly lucrative fur trade in Canada became dominated by Scots. The the Virginia tobacco trade and the Glasgow Tobacco Lords dominated that.
There was money to invest in the agricultural revolution, then in manufacturing -weaving and ship building. But at human cost as Scotland urbanised and of course continued mass migration.
The Enlightenment
Scotland may have been poor, but it was rich in universities England had two, Scotland four. St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen -and these studied, politics, history, philosophy and the sciences. It too was as a legacy at least, of old John Knox there. Male literacy rates that exceed 70%. The minds of it's people became it's riches.
Three disciplines pretty much founded. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. Adam Ferguson, considered a primary founder of sociology. James Hutton, the father of modern geology.
David Hume (1711–1776): A towering figure in empiricism, scepticism, and philosophy, profoundly influencing Western thought. Critical analysis his particular baby.
Hume along with the Irishman Francis Hutchison -who worked in Scotland. Challenged ideas of state and religious authority and how it functioned -Hume challenged the very existence of god as irrational. Mind you he's not the first there.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not all-powerful.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is evil.
Is he both able and willing? Then why is there evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God (Dose he exist)?”
-Epicurus The Problem of Evil 270BC or so.
Voltaire, the French Enlightenment giant, said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization," Implying Scotland ran ahead of even France as the key intellectual hub of the broader European Enlightenment.
The New Lichts V's The Old Lichts
Anyway back to religion, all this enlightenment stuff stated to percolate down to the Presbytries. The "New Lichts" appeared, particularly within the Secession Church, who emphasized personal salvation and religious experience. Over strict adherence to traditional Covenants and ways, differing thus from the "Old Lichts". Objecting also to state control and patronage -those Lairds.
The New Licht got re-branded the New Light after it crossed the border. Then over the water to the American colonies, where it thrived in Evangelical big time.
The Jacobite scare
The Jacobite's with their perceived Episcopal and even Catholic leanings and back to hostile Stuart kings, the Highland host and the Killing times. The country in civil war, or is that expensive civil war. Besides the Union was starting to become good for trade.
After the 45 the threat abates. There is a wee peek over the parapet, some discussion about looking for change as in the New Licht
​
The horrid Revolutions scare
The American Revolution -in which mostly Scottish Enlightenment ideas sparked into life. Was viewed with suspicion by these sensible folk of the Presbytery. But the soon after, the violent, regicidal, French revolution scared them to their very livers.
The Edinburgh Mobiles rioting for change. In what became known as the King’s Birthday Riots, thousands protested for three days from the 4th of June, 1792. They burnt effigies of the Home Secretary, Robert Dundas, and attempted to burn down the Lord Advocate‘s house. Only an army-command to open fire on the mob managed to suppress the riot.
Later the still born plan for revolution under the United Scotsmen. The Tranent massacre, 22 dead over conscription. 1797 a 10,000 strong revolutionary Dutch army on the way. The same army that later kicked the British all over the place in the 1799 Dutch campaign -then again in 1808.
Thwarted by the skin of his teeth by loyal old admiral Duncan at Camperdown -the Dutch navy fighting like crazy before it went down. While the United Scotsmen waited for a landing, 4-10,000 strong -nobody's sure, it was a secret society you see. Thomas Muir touring the world looking for French and American help.
Then a strange thing happened, a trembling Presbyterian hand, reached to a shaking Catholic hand, a frightened Episcopal hand clasped the two free hands.
They knew who they really feared -and it wasn't god. There was a sudden bonhomie between the old rivals. A C-of-E hand? Christ no, we all hate them worse than revolution! 1815 Waterloo and a peek over the religious parapet again.
The changing society
The reason for Scotland's poor agriculture was found, a clay substrata that allowed for flooding. The solution very big ploughs to cut it up, suddenly we had top quality land. Improvements in agricultural techniques, principally enclosure, selective breeding and crop rotation as well as new farm machinery were implemented. Agricultural production soared.
The industrial revolution; Scotland was at the apex of the revolution, It's slow success in imperial trade through lack of capital stymied Scotland's trade. However modern banking was innovated.
Scientific innovations in manufacture notably the division of labour and innovations in production technology along with increased agricultural output to feed readily available cheap labour from the clearances -made for a boom in factory production and population levels.
Linen cloth led the way in the 18th century as an export commodity and American Tobacco as a traded commodity -every Scottish city sat on a port.
The place urbanised, Glasgow 1755, 32,000 people, by 1855, 360,000, Edinburgh, 57,000 to 207,000, same period, by 1800, the most urbanised nation in the world.
The smaller religions
Catholics; Scotland was treated as a mission field, governed by Prefects or Vicars Apostolic, not a local hierarchy of bishops.
The Catholics were technically illegal until 1781, disenfranchised and faced discrimination for public office -other than the army where they did well fighting for the king? A series of Catholic relief bills, finally the catholic emancipation act in 1829 and the Scottish Catholic church was back in business -sort off.
By the 1800's the religions in Scotland worked together to the extent of several Catholic schools even Chapels being paid for by enlightened protestants. All that philanthropic activity without self interest? Nope the French Revolution terrified them and they were in need of Catholic allies -as noted above.
The problem they have is by then, maybe 8% of Scotland remained Catholic -concentrated mostly in the north about 2% in the South. Scotland was not re-established by the Vatican till 1878 with Pope Leo XIII restoring the hierarchy of
bishops, ending centuries of being a mission territory. It was nearly another 100 years before Scotland had its first post-Reformation cardinal appointed, in 1969 Archbishop Gray of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Before that the authority of those Cardinals came from Ireland -as was the character of the re-established Scottish Catholic Church.
The Episcopal's; 1788 With the death of the last Stuart heir, they threw over the role of any monarchy. 1792 (Episcopalians Relief Act) Penal laws were repealed, ending official repression and allowing the Scottish Episcopal Church to rebuild. But by this time it was loosing out in membership to the Kirk bad time in their Highland stamping ground. But thrived in America not being associated with the German-George Hanoverians. (In all of this you will notice nothing for the Kirk).
By the early 1800's the Kirk, Episcopals and the old faith were in an alliance under the newly formed liberal party that garnered up to 85% of the Scottish vote. Looking for reform.
The Disruptions
The Auchterarder Case
In 1834, a group called Evangelical party attained a majority in the General Assembly. They passed the Veto Act, which gave parishioners the right to reject a minister nominated by their Laird patron.
This was illegal, and set it on a collision course with the government. The first test of the Veto Act came with the Auchterarder case of 1834. The parish of Auchterarder unanimously rejected the patron's nominee and the Presbytery refused to proceed with his ordination.
The nominee, Robert Young, in 1838 appealed to the Court of Session. He won. They declared Church of Scotland was a creation of the state and derived its legitimacy from acts of Parliament.
The Disruptions
It took 132 years but finally the Kirk had enough of the 1711 settlement. They weren't going to wait for governmental change and took matters into their own hands. In 1841 it split neatly 50/-50 in two.
A new Kirk was formed the Free Church of Scotland, shorn of the Episcopal idolatry and Popeish ways forced on them by 1707 and the 1711 Church patronage act. It was no longer tied to the British state and it's kings, laudably the congregation now chose it's own minister.
474 of about 1,200 ministers left the Church of Scotland for the Free Church along with just short of half it's membership. With them went most of the Kirk's provisions for welfare to the poor -which the Free Kirk made a show of improving. The Kirk according to John Knox was back -the spirit of the Covenanters was reborn. The holy vitriol flew in the press as stern faced, white knuckled Scotch Presbyterians in their plainest black suits pointed long bony fingers of treasonable accusations at each other.
Despite fracturing into several divisions the Wee Frees thrived. It was 1921 exactly 200 years after 1711 Church patronage act -200 years of direct foreign Westminster control. Before Westminster caved in, in the Church of Scotland act and they started to reunify.
But by then the authority of the Kirk had been irreparably damaged and it then became heavily infiltrated by the masonic Orange Lodge. Bringing it's Irish Episcopal monarchical leaning and virulent Anti-Catholic ways into the Kirk admittedly for a minority mainly in the South West.
The Free Kirk was particularly popular in the Highlands as standing against the clearances. Where the Laird appointed Minister from the state church did little but give a blessing to those boarding the typhus ship for Canada.
The Irish Inflence
The Irish Famine
The Irish famine 1846---51 12% of Irish die, 12% migrate during this period. About 1 million die, due to the staple potato crop failing. 1 Million forced into migration. Falls most heavily on the 80% of Ireland that was Catholic.
Leads to mass migration to Scotland 80-100,000 migrate during this period, with total migration about 180-200,000.
Irish arrive in terrible conditions there is a large typhus outbreak the poor relief system is overwhelmed. To Scotland’s credit, more taxes however raised and this resumed. Fever hospitals are set up and help given. 13 medical personnel and 4 priests ministering to their flock also die.
The re-established Catholic Church
However there seems to have been no large scale unrest outside the UK wide 1850 “Anti-popery movement” anti catholic disturbances, led by the still small LOL quickly abated (the re-establishment of the Catholic church in England. Scotland waited till 1878, just in time for the LOL to arrive in force).
The situation was partly alleviated by also large scale Scottish migration leaving lower paid jobs to the Irish. Manly mining, steel and shipbuilding.
In 1841 Scotland’s population was just under 3 million, between that date and 1931 2.75 million migrate.
1851 Irish Catholic migration tails off. The migrants spread about the Glasgow and Lanarkshire principally to represent 20--30% of the population employed mainly in the heavy industries of the Industrial revolution.
However the strong hostility to Protestants of the Irish catholic priesthood as the now more numerous Irish Catholic hierarchy asserts it's self. And they try to section off the migrants and their descendants from the Scottish population.
They place adverts in papers warning that socialising with them would lead to their “denationalisation” and the dangers of being tempted away from the faith by such interaction, by people "poisoning and corrupting their hearts".
Universally Irish nationalists The priesthood oust the local Scottish hierarchy of the church as soon as they die off and systematically replace it with the identity of the much larger Irish church. That identity is also profoundly anti-protestant. As in won't cooperate with them.
However in these early decades of the migration, the main objection was not religious. It is that the rich bosses under cut wages with “We'll bring in the Irish”.
That rich man's cry to the sons and daughters of Scotland's own famine, it's own forced migration and the similar processes of still ongoing clearances to that of Ireland. To a different set of religious and cultural discrimination from London. I reiterate however there seems to have been little large scale unrest. Trouble in this period very sporadic.
Enter The Loyal Orange Order
In the 1870's patterns of Irish migration changed, Catholic migration started to be replaced by Protestant migration from the north.
Previously in the 1830's about 25,000 Protestant Irish migrants were important as skilled textile worker.
Then in 1870 or abouts this started to increase, by just after the turn of the century this was about 45-60,000 come to Scotland. Part of roughly 1 million strong historical migration.
They drag with them the Orange Lodge. Founded in Ireland 1795, the government turned to them to help quell the 1798 mostly protestant led rebellion. First Lodge in Scotland 1807, First 12th in Glasgow 1821
1835 The Cumberland scandal an attempt to oust queen Victoria from inheriting the throne banned for treason to the crown. 1836 reconstituted as the Loyal Orange Lodge.
Heavily associated with Irish Protestant migration to Scotland 1836-45 4 rising to 12 lodges in Glasgow there is also no Lodge building in Scotland. Scotland actually dominated by the Liberals in this era who were in favour of Catholic emancipation. The Lodge is not a significant presence at this point and remains very closely associated with Irish Protestant Migrants.
Heavily associated with Irish Protestant migration to Scotland 1836-45 4 rising to 12 lodges in Glasgow there is also no Lodge building in Scotland. Scotland actually dominated by the Liberals in this era who were in favour of Catholic emancipation. The Lodge is not a significant presence at this point and remains very closely associated with Irish Protestant Migrants.
Much of the at this stage sporadic trouble however reflected this group, who were militantly anti-catholic. The native Scots much less and were banned by the council from marching in many towns in Lanarkshire in the 1850's.
1871 The first physical Orange Lodge building built in Scotland equates with the rise of Protestant migration replacing Catholic as the primary Irish group migrating to Scotland. 80% of the Irish migrants Ulster Protestants during this period. 1870-1900 with them is comes an exponential increase in the Orange lodge.
By 1901 there were about 35,000 members of the LOL in Scotland, rising to 40,000 in the inter-war years, dipping during the war but recovering by the mid 1950s and rising to 60-80,000 during the late 70's to the late 80s buoyed by the troubles, then declining steeply to about 5000 at present. Most actually
women but that's another story. They maintains strong connections including familial to Ulster in 1881 72% of office bearers were Irish born even up to the 1930s the vast majority had Irish antecedence, either Irish fathers or grandparents this obviously has thinned out in modern times as Ulster migration has declined.
Their bombastic platform, anti-Catholicism, unquestioning loyalty to the union and the monarch. Imperialism, the civilising British, the commercial exploitation of other nations in famines and imperial wars -or indeed drug dealing-where the crown's perfect religion could be proselytised, while they bleed the place white.
They are masonic and use techniques of entryism to take over other peoples institution and promote themselves. Saddling Scottish Protestantism with their bigotry. First there was the King and his Bishops, then the Lairds, now the Orange Lodge to impose the British state.
Political implications
This section is about Scotland's religious history and I have others that talk about the migration patterns and the politics of religion. But to these groups religion and politics become mixed together -confused really.
They both follow Irish politics, the Catholic group follow nationalist politics Irish home rule movement in the 1870s to the early 20th century initially under under Charles Stuart Parnell also the Fenian brotherhood the attempted rebellion of 1848 and 1867. Later the Irish revolution.
The lodge follow Irish unionist politics, they aligned with the Conservatives and Unionist parties helping to depreciate the working class vote toward reform even Socialism and helped deliver Unionist votes. "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" Lord Carson and his Volunteers. Later opposed to the Irish revolution.
The Scottish identity crisis
The Kirk, was it the Scottish Church of Knox or Anglican betrayal of that via Lord Carson, or the Chapel, was it Irish or Scottish? What were you? Your nation, which nation Britain, Ireland, if Ireland, which Ireland, Scotland where you lived? A confused identity emerged, a bit Scottish a bit Irish a bit British in different measures and religious affiliation.
The attached Secret Societies, the Masons, the Orange lodge the various and numerous Irish societies, the Knights of Columba, the Ancient order of Hibernians.Those societies and churches bullied you into line. Forced you to assume the identity that suited their purposes -associational group corruption.
The effects of the Old firm, football reinforcing religious hate politics. Providing a focus for violence and conflict to convert into group loyalty. (I have another pamphlet on the Old firm for more details).
The 1918 act setting up the state funded Catholic education system segregating society.
Just to add to the confusion intermarriage was very common, 30% of Scottish Catholics married outside the faith in defiance of social pressure not to -still do. And have been doing so since 1846 -180 years. The people mixed quite freely anyway despite the raft of social pressures, to live in the carefully socially engineered religious apartheid.
More Modern Times
The Kirk of the Old Phogies
In more modem times. The Church of Scotland’s influence starts to wain. Associated with the hated Tory party and Protestant bigotry all a gift of the LOL.
It in fact embraced the changing culture, Divorce, Contraception, Abortion, Ordained women back in the 70's, allowed gay marriage and the ordination of gays more recently -but one look at an Orange Parade and why bother.
One has to wonder did this organisation’s influence on the Kirk prevent a situation where the Kirk was seen as a powerful liberal socially modernising influence on society by the influence of Orange Ulster bigotry.
To the Orange Lodge Rangers fan it is Anti-Catholicism, the Union flag and King Billy on the Boyne. Bound by that masons job, and the threat of Catholic retaliation.
More recently an organising point for Anti-Migrant, Reform-led racist behaviour. Both groups are involved with.
The Scottish Catholic re-brand
During the 80's into the 90's Scottish Catholic culture went in for a bit of a make-over. Apparently a bohemian artsy culture in bleakly Presbyterian Scotland. New Labour, with it's army of Glasgow Catholic MPs shedding a crocodile tear to clause four -all organised in London of course.
So goodbye to Socialism and it's horrid atheism. Very popular -well at first. Of course the Good Friday agreement why the English were so busy forcing their Glasgow Irish ducks in a row -everybody in the communities shoulder to the plough now. Lots of use of the word peace and community, jaunts to Faslane with a CND banner.
The rose tinted view of that other Eden, across the water, the land of Saints and poets. How rich the Old place has become with it's Leprechaun Economics -actually they are playing with economic fire. All those Eurovision wins, U2, Rock and Rollers presented to the very Pope. And the man from Rome
himself in Scotland twice -even visited Parkhead.
Not of course Bob Geldof's view who was banned by the government for a "denunciation of nationalism, medieval-
minded clerics and corrupt politicians" in a memorably controversial 1977 interview/performance on Ireland's The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne.
Compared the Easter Rising to Islamist suicide bombers and saying it was the Original sin of the Irish republic. The song Banana Republic addresses a backward Ireland stuck in the Politics of conservative religion in the late 20th century. And how right he was.
Ireland the disappointing Revolution
The Irish revolution may have been founded under the leadership of James Connelly (actually from Edinburgh), a radical socialist but it fell into the hands of De Valera who emphatically wasn't.
The Republic was extremely socially conservative, under De Valera particularly in relation to women. The catholic church became a surrogate state church and was out of control. Controlled schooling and many of the social services.
Terrible incidents of repression, The Magdalene Laundries. (The Magdalene Sisters. A great film by the way by our own Peter Mullan, talks about this).
A huge issue of paedophilia and the priesthood emerged involving thousands. More than 11,000 people have placed claims with the Residential Institutions Redress Board -which was set up to deal with claims of abuse at “caring institutions”. For the purpose of some sort of redress to the victims.
The death between 1925 and 61 of 796 children by members of the Bons Secours order at Tauma Galway, starved to death for their crime of being born out of wedlock. The bodies thrown into a disused cesspit -staggering in it's depths. The church which hid the thing till it was discovered in the 80's, didn't even deny it, just apologised.
Women forbidden to work in industry, no married women could work for the Govt. Divorce and contraception banned.
Large scale censorship, 1600 books banned, The committee for evil literatures.
De Valera, discussed sending Irish army troops to Spain as part of a catholic alliance against Communism. Refused an offer of a united Ireland during WW2. It was started by radical Socialists but ended up in the hands of extreme Catholic Conservatives.
The Fascist connection
A strong Fascist movement (the Blue Shirts) that claimed 48,000 members developed, (Mosley had 40- 50,000 in the whole of the UK). They were considered the largest Fascist group in Europe that didn't form the government.
Who tried two coups and were later central in founding Fiana Gael Ireland's principle party of opposition -as say the Labour party is in the UK is the party of opposition. Sent a brigade to fight for Franco, the O'Duffy brigade.
Extreme Catholic Conservatives and even Fascists -little wonder there are reports of Celtic fans giving fascist salutes and making pro-Nazi chants in WW2 at Parkhead.
In modern Ireland the connection between an Irish identity and Catholicism has been broken. 60% of modern Ireland has declared it's self atheist. With the young that rises to above 70%. The above history and the catholic church fighting every liberal reform, divorce, contraception above all abortion tooth and nail. Combined to create a mass disenchantment and
rejection of the church. reform, divorce, contraception above all abortion tooth and nail. Combined to create a mass disenchantment and rejection of the church. In Scotland far less serious cases of abuse -at least in number. Led to the Scottish government taking over all Catholic run care institutions. Then there was of course the paedophile scandals at Celtic.
But none of this means anything to the carefully conditioned Celtic fan Catholic. They live in blind-faith denial, make threats if you point out the above and repeat over and over that “Abortion is murder” as their mantra of moral-crutch security.
Bound to the faith by the associational-group wee job and the still present threat of the Lodge. Yes, their doppelgänger relationship to the LOL is symbiotic in the extreme.
So there we have it a brief history of Scotland's religion -how we got into this state. It seems likely the majority of Scots are now atheists, like Ireland -thank god.
