Presbytery ratified by Parliament

The General Assembly of May 1592

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in May 1592. Its register dates the first sitting to 22 May, and Hetherington agrees; Calderwood and Cunningham give 21 May. The register records: “Exhortation being made by Mr Nicol Dalgleish, the Moderator of the last Assembly, the Kirk [Church] proceeded to the election of a Moderator, and appointed on the leets [the short list] Masters Robert Bruce, David Lindsay, James Balfour and James Nicolson. The said Mr Robert, by plurality of votes, was elected Moderator hac vice [for this time]” [spelling modernised].¹

In its second session, on 23 May, the Assembly put to “the whole brethren” [spelling modernised] whether “the Kirk should make suit” [spelling modernised] for four articles, “forasmuch as the necessity of the time requires that the gravest and weightiest heads be first handled” [spelling modernised]. Calderwood gives them as follows:²

• “That the acts of Parliament made in the year of God 1584, against the discipline of the kirk, liberty, and authority thereof, be annulled, and the same discipline, whereof the kirk hath been in practice, ratified” [spelling modernised]
• “The abolition of the Act of Annexation [of church lands to the Crown], and restitution of the patrimony of the kirk” [spelling modernised]
• “That abbots, priors, and other prelates pretending the title of the kirk, and voting for the same, without their power or commission, be not suffered in time coming to vote for the same, either in parliament or other convention” [spelling modernised]
• “That the country, which is polluted with fearful idolatry and blood, be purged” [spelling modernised]

The register records that “the full Assembly thought most necessary to be craved” [spelling modernised] all four, and named Mr Robert Pont, David Lindsay, Thomas Buchanan and James Melville to put them “in good order” [spelling modernised]. The question “if it shall be thought leisum [lawful] the ministry should succeed in that part in the prelates’ place” [spelling modernised], that is, whether ministers should vote in Parliament for the Church, was held over “quhill [till] the morne [tomorrow]”, and Calderwood adds that “every brother is ordained to weigh and debate that argument with himself” [spelling modernised].³

In its sixth session the Assembly sent the same men, with Mr Nicol Dalgleish, Patrick Simson, Patrick Sharp, John Malcolm and David Ferguson, “to pass immediately to his Majesty to lament the daily decay of religion, disorder and lack of justice within this realm … and gravely to admonish his Majesty, in the name of the Eternal, to have respect in time to the estate of the true religion perishing, and to the manifold murders, oppressions and enormities daily multiplied through impunity and lack of justice” [spelling modernised].⁴

Melville before the King

Calderwood tells how the brethren went to the King “upon Wednesday the 24th of May”. The King “was hot against the ministry, for speaking so freely in the pulpits against him and his nobility, and defending Mr Knox, the Good Regent [the Regent Moray], and Mr George Buchanan” [spelling modernised].⁵

In the afternoon, Calderwood goes on, “Mr Andrew Melville was so earnest in defence of these worthy men, that the chancellor said, That was not his errand he came for. Mr Andrew answered, He would take no discharge at his hand, nor at the hand of any subject in Scotland in that matter, except his Majesty.” [spelling modernised] When the King found fault with Buchanan, “Mr Andrew answered, These men set the crown upon his head. He said, It came by succession, and not by any man. Mr Andrew replied, They were the executioners and instruments” [spelling modernised]. Thomas M’Crie, Melville’s biographer, tells the same exchange and writes that Melville was among the ministers “deputed by the General Assembly, to wait on the King, and to stimulate him to the vigorous discharge of his duty” over the murder of the Earl of Moray.⁶

The King then gave ground. Calderwood records that “upon Thursday, the 25th, he promised to the commissioners of the Assembly, that the acts made against the kirk should be annulled. Upon Friday, the 26th, he purged himself, and laid the blame of all present misorders upon other estates. He granted the kirk should have their own place in Parliament” [spelling modernised].⁷

The Act of Parliament

Calderwood records that “the Parliament began upon Monday, the 29th of May” [spelling modernised], and Cunningham gives the same day. MacPherson writes that the Assembly’s articles on presbyterian government and on the Acts in favour of popery “were agreed to”, while the other two were refused.⁸

Calderwood names the man who carried it: “Mr John Maitland, chancellor, was a chief instrument to induce the king to pass it at this time, and that, to win the hearts of the ministers and people … But the king repented after that he had agreed unto it.” [spelling modernised] He adds that the Act “had cost them much pains in many years before” [spelling modernised], and that he set down its full text “because it is the special evidence of our discipline amongst civil men” [spelling modernised]. Hetherington also writes that the Act was passed “greatly through the influence of the Chancellor Maitland”.⁹

The Act had two titles. Calderwood heads it “The Ratification of the Liberty of the True Kirk, of General and Synodal Assemblies, Presbyteries, and Discipline; and Laws in the Contrary Abrogated” [spelling modernised]. In the printed Acts of Parliament its title is “Act for abolishing of the acts contrary the true religion” [spelling modernised]. It begins by ratifying “all liberties, privileges, immunities, and freedoms whatsoever, given and granted” [spelling modernised] to “the True and Holy Kirk presently established within this realm” [spelling modernised], with the earlier Acts in its favour.¹⁰

First, it made General Assemblies lawful every year. The Act “ratifieth and approveth the General Assemblies appointed by the said kirk; and declareth that it shall be lawful to the kirk and ministers, every year at the least, and oftener pro re nata [as occasion requires], as occasion and necessity shall require, to hold and keep General Assemblies” [spelling modernised]. The King or his commissioner, if present, was to “nominate and appoint time and place, when and where the next General Assembly shall be holden” [spelling modernised]; if neither was present, “it shall be leasome [lawful] to the said General Assembly, by themselves, to nominate and appoint time and place” [spelling modernised].¹¹

Second, it ratified the synods, presbyteries and kirk sessions, and said what each should do. It ratified “the Synodal or Provincial Assemblies to be holden by the said kirk and ministers twice in the year” [spelling modernised], and “the Presbyteries and Particular Sessions appointed by the said kirk, with the whole jurisdiction and discipline of the kirk” [spelling modernised], setting out the business of each. Of the presbyteries it says: “It appertaineth to the eldership [the presbytery] to take heed that the Word of God be purely preached within their bounds, the sacraments rightly ministered, the discipline entertained, and ecclesiastical goods uncorruptly distributed.” [spelling modernised] Of particular congregations: “if they be lawfully ruled by sufficient ministry and session, they have power and jurisdiction in their own congregation in matters ecclesiastical” [spelling modernised].¹²

Third, it set these courts above any law to the contrary, and repealed the old laws made for the Church of Rome. All these courts, “jurisdiction and discipline thereof” [spelling modernised], were declared “to be in all times coming most just, good, and godly in the self, notwithstanding of whatsoever statutes, acts, canons, civil or municipal laws made in the contrary” [spelling modernised]. The Act annulled the old laws made “for maintenance of superstition and idolatry” [spelling modernised], among them the Act of 1443 commanding obedience to Pope Eugenius and the licence “for holding of Pasch and Yule [Easter and Christmas]” [spelling modernised].¹³

Fourth, it protected the Church’s own censures, and sent ministers presented to parishes to the presbyteries, but it kept the patron’s right to present. It declared that the Act of 1584 on the King’s authority “shall in no wise be prejudicial, nor derogate any thing to the privilege that God hath given to the spiritual office-bearers in the kirk, concerning heads of religion, matters of heresy, excommunication, collation [admission of a minister to his charge] or deprivation of ministers, or any such like essential censures, specially grounded and having warrant of the Word of God” [spelling modernised]. It annulled the Act of the same year that gave commissions to bishops, and ordained “all presentations [a patron’s nomination of a minister] to benefices [church livings] to be directed to the particular presbyteries in all time coming, with full power to give collations thereupon … providing the foresaid presbyteries be bound and astricted [obliged] to receive and admit whatsoever qualified minister presented by his Majesty or laic [lay] patrons” [spelling modernised].¹⁴

On 7 June, in its twenty-third session, the Assembly took up “the act made concerning deposed Ministers or Persons [parsons] at this last Parliament” [spelling modernised]. M’Crie writes that “this important act was not obtained without a struggle; the royal consent was given with reluctance; and the representatives of the Church, who were waiting for it with trembling anxiety, were not relieved from their fears till they heard it proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh.”¹⁵

The Church’s charter

The historians agree on its place. M’Crie calls it the Act “which still continues the legal charter of the Church of Scotland” and writes that it “has been always regarded by Presbyterians as a great step in the national Reformation. It was never, indeed, viewed as the basis of her ecclesiastical constitution, which is to be found in her Confession of Faith and Books of Discipline; but it was a clear civil recognition and ratification of that constitution”. Hetherington writes that it “has ever since been regarded, as the Great Charter of the Church of Scotland”. Cunningham notes that “it is frequently spoken of as the Magna Charta of the Church”, and that it “legalized the most important parts of the ‘Second Book of Discipline,’ for which the Church had so long contended.” MacPherson calls it “the constitutional charter of the Presbyterian Church government in Scotland”.¹⁶

They also name its limits. M’Crie, in his life of Melville, writes that “the supreme court was deprived of the right which it had hitherto possessed of appointing its own meetings; and the power of presbyteries and the liberties of the people were fettered by the continuance of lay patronage.” He adds that patronage was not then attended “with very serious evils at a period, when the church courts held, that the consent of the people was to be obtained previous to the settlement of a minister among them”. Hetherington judged more sharply: “the most injurious part of the act 1592 was that which imposed upon both the Church and the people the intolerable yoke and enslaving fetters of lay patronage.” He writes too that the Church received it, “defective as it was, without opposition, and even with gratitude.”¹⁷

The Act of 1592 came back into force a century later. On 7 June 1690 Parliament settled the government of the Church as “ratified and established by the 114 Act James VI., Parl. 12, Anno 1592, entitled Ratification of the Liberty of the Kirk, &c.”, “reviving, renewing, and confirming the same in the whole heads thereof, except that part of it relating to Patronages”.¹⁸