The Glasgow Assembly

How it was called and who sat

On 22 September 1638 the Privy Council recorded the King’s order “that a free General Assembly be indicted [summoned], kept, and holden [held] at the City of Glasgow the 21 of November next” [spelling modernised], and ordered it proclaimed “at the Market Cross of Edinburgh and the head burghs of this Kingdom” [spelling modernised]. The Acts call it “The Solemn General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, indicted by the King’s Majesty, and convened at Glasgow, the 21 of November, 1638” [spelling modernised].¹

Robert Baillie, a member, describes the commissions: each gave “a power from the Presbytery to the three Ministers and one Elder to reason, vote and conclude in their name … according to the word of God and the Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland” [spelling modernised]. There came also commissioners from the burghs (for Edinburgh, James Cochrane and Thomas Paterson) and from the four universities. Cunningham writes that it “met in the Cathedral Church.”²

“On Wednesday, the 21st of November,” [spelling modernised] Baillie writes, “with much ado could we throng into our places” [spelling modernised].³

Moderator and Clerk

Of the choice of Moderator Baillie writes: “We were somewhat in suspense about Mr A. Henderson; he was incomparably the ablest man of us all, for all things … we resolved Mr Henderson of necessity behoved [had] to be taken. Mr Johnston, to us all, was a nonsuch [one without equal] for a Clerk” [spelling modernised]. Five were put on the leet [short list]: John Ker, John Row, James Bonar, William Livingston and Alexander Henderson. The Assembly’s minutes record that Henderson “was chosen Moderator by the votes of all the votes, not one contrary except his own” [spelling modernised].⁴

Archibald Johnston was then chosen Clerk “by all save one”, and admitted “to all the rights, profits, privileges, which any in former time by that place had enjoyed” [spelling modernised]. He produced the Assembly’s lost registers, from 1560 to 1590, and the Assembly “all in one voice approved these books … as the true and authentic Registers of the Kirk of Scotland” [spelling modernised].⁵

The Commissioner leaves

On Wednesday 28 November the King’s Commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, declared “that nothing done here in this Assembly shall be of any force to bind any of his Majesty’s subjects; and I in his Majesty’s name discharge [forbid] this Court to sit any longer” [spelling modernised], and left. Baillie writes that the Moderator then put it to the vote whether they would “remain still to the end, till all things needful were concluded” [spelling modernised], and “All did heartily promise to abide on all hazards, except some three or four Angus men” [spelling modernised]. A royal proclamation dated the next day, 29 November, ordered the members to leave Glasgow within twenty-four hours.⁶

What it decided

The Assembly’s principal Acts, from its printed record (spelling modernised):⁷

• 4 December: the six Assemblies of 1606 to 1618 declared “unfree, unlawful, and null Assemblies” [spelling modernised]
• 6 December: the Service Book, the Book of Canons, the Book of Ordination and the High Commission rejected and condemned
• 8 December: Episcopacy declared “abjured by the Confession of Faith, 1580, and to be removed out of this Kirk”
• 10 December: the Five Articles of Perth declared abjured by the same Confession
• 13 December: fourteen bishops deposed, and eight of them excommunicated (M’Crie counts eight excommunicated, four deposed and two suspended)
• Kirk sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods and general assemblies restored “as they were constituted by the foresaid Book of Policy” [the Second Book of Discipline] [spelling modernised]
• 19 December: ministers barred from civil offices, “as to be Justices of Peace, sit and decern [judge] in Council, Session, or Exchequer, to ride or vote in Parliament” [spelling modernised]
• 20 December: the Kirk’s power “to assemble and convene in her yearly General Assemblies, and oftener, pro re nata [as occasion requires]” [spelling modernised] declared, and the next Assembly appointed for Edinburgh in July 1639

On Thursday 13 December, Baillie writes, “before noon, to a great multitude, the Moderator had a good and learned sermon on the 1st verse of the 110th Psalm, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.’ Thereafter, in a very dreadful and grave manner, he pronounced their sentences” [spelling modernised]. The Act names among them “Mr John Spottiswood, pretended [so-called] Archbishop of St Andrews” and “Mr Patrick Lindsay, pretended Archbishop of Glasgow”.⁸

The close

“This was our last day, Thursday, 20th of December; a blithe [happy] day to all,” [spelling modernised] Baillie writes. M’Crie: “The Assembly having now sat from the 21st of November to the 20th of December, and held no less than twenty-six sessions, Henderson addressed them in an eloquent concluding speech.”⁹

In that speech, as M’Crie gives it, Henderson said: “And now we are quit of the service-book, which was a book of slavery and service indeed; the book of canons, which tied us in spiritual bondage; the book of ordination, which was a yoke put upon the necks of faithful ministers; and the high commission, which was a guard to keep us all under that slavery.”¹⁰