The Revolution Settlement

Prelacy abolished, 1689

After the Revolution of 1688 the Estates’ Claim of Right declared “that Prelacy [government by bishops] and the superiority of any office in the Church above presbyters is and hath been a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to this Nation and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation (they having reformed from popery by presbyters) and therefore ought to be abolished”. In 1689 Parliament passed an “Act abolishing Prelacie”: “Our Sovereign Lord and Lady the King and Queen’s Majesties with advice and consent of the Estates of Parliament do hereby abolish prelacy and all superiority of any office in the church in this Kingdom above presbyters” [spelling modernised].¹

M’Crie gives the policy of the Earl of Craufurd, whom he calls “the good old president”: to secure the Presbyterian government, “they should recur to the act 1592, usually called the charter of Presbytery, making no mention of the second reformation period from 1638 to 1650. The next thing was to get quit of patronage.”²

The Act of 7 June 1690

The Parliament met in April 1690. Its first Acts rescinded the Act of Supremacy of 1669 and restored to their churches the Presbyterian ministers still living who had been ejected since 1 January 1661.³

On 7 June 1690 came the “Act ratifying the Confession of Faith, and settling Presbyterian Church Government”. In it the King and Queen and the three Estates, “conceiving it to be their bounden duty, after the great deliverance that God hath lately wrought for this Church and Kingdom, in the first place to settle and secure therein the true Protestant religion”, “ratify and establish the Confession of Faith now read in their presence, and voted and approven [approved] by them, as the public and avowed Confession of this Church, containing the sum and substance of the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches”.⁴

The Act established “the Government of the Church by Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and General Assemblies, ratified and established by the 114 Act James VI., Parl. 12, Anno 1592”, “to be the only Government of Christ’s Church within this kingdom; reviving, renewing, and confirming the same in the whole heads thereof, except that part of it relating to Patronages, which is hereafter to be taken into consideration.” It rescinded the Acts that had set up bishops, among them the Act of 1662 “for the restitution and re-establishment of the Ancient Government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops” [spelling modernised].⁵

It declared that “the Church Government be established in the hands of and exercised by these presbyterian ministers who were outed [put out] since the first of January 1661 for nonconformity to prelacy or not complying with the courses of the time and are now restored by the late Act of Parliament and such ministers and elders only as they have admitted or received or shall hereafter admit or receive” [spelling modernised], and allowed their general meeting, or visitors appointed by it, “to try and purge out all insufficient, negligent, scandalous and erroneous ministers by due course of ecclesiastical processes and censures” [spelling modernised].⁶

The Confession itself was recorded in full: it “was this day produced read and considered word by word in presence of their Majesties High Commissioner and the Estates of Parliament and being voted and approven was ordained to be recorded in the books of Parliament” [spelling modernised]. M’Crie and Cunningham note that the Catechisms and the Directory were not ratified with it.⁷

Of the ministers ejected after 1661, Hetherington writes that “only about sixty survived to see the restoration of Presbytery”, and Cunningham that “only sixty now remained”. M’Crie writes that they were “reduced to ninety”.⁸

Patronage abolished, 19 July 1690

On 19 July 1690, M’Crie and Hetherington write, Parliament passed the Act concerning Patronages. Both quote its rule for a vacancy: “the heritors [landowners] of the said parish, being Protestants, and the elders, are to name and propose the person to the whole congregation, to be either approven or disapproven by them”, the congregation’s reasons, if they disapproved, to be judged by the presbytery.⁹

In return the patrons were to receive 600 merks from each parish (a sum Hetherington gives as “£33. 6s. 8d”), and the teinds [tithes] to which no one else could show a title.¹⁰

Hetherington writes that the Act was drawn up by Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, “assisted by three ministers, Gabriel Cunningham, Hugh Kennedy, and Gilbert Rule”, and gives Goodtrees’s own explanation, as reported by Wodrow: “they were very careful to abstract the word present, which might have imported something like this, and of design put in the word propose in its room.”¹¹

The General Assembly of 16 October 1690

The Assembly’s register opens: “This day, being a day of solemn fasting and humiliation, the General Assembly of the ministers and elders of this Church did, after sermons, (in the forenoon by Mr Gabriel Cuningham, Moderator of the last General Meeting, and in the afternoon by Mr Patrick Sympson, Moderator of the preceding General Meeting,) convene in the Assembly-House at Edinburgh, according to the indiction [appointment] of an act of the current Parliament, dated the 7th day of June last”. John, Lord Carmichael, produced the commission making him the King and Queen’s High Commissioner. The Assembly sat until 13 November.¹²

The King’s letter, read in the second session, told the Assembly: “We never could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, neighbouring churches expect from you, and we recommend to you.” The Assembly’s answer was signed by “Hu. Kennedie, Moderator”; Hetherington names him as Hugh Kennedy, one of the ministers of Edinburgh.¹³

On 29 October the Assembly approved an overture that “all probationers [men licensed to preach but not yet ordained] licensed to preach, all intrants [men entering] into the ministry, and all other ministers and elders received into communion with us, in church government, be obliged to subscribe their approbation of the Confession of Faith, approven by former General Assemblies of this Church, and ratified in the second session of the current Parliament”. On 12 November it appointed a national fast, with a long statement of its causes.¹⁴

Shields, Linning and Boyd

Three ministers who had served the United Societies, the “suffering remnant” who, in the words of their clerk’s record, “subsisted in select societies, and were united in general correspondencies during the hottest time of the late persecution, viz. from the year 1681 to 1691”, came before the Assembly: Thomas Linning, Alexander Shields and William Boyd. On 25 October the Committee of Overtures reported on their two papers. It recommended that the shorter be read, in which they promised to subject themselves “to the cognizance of the respective judicatories of this Church”; the longer, “though there be several good things in it”, it judged to “contain several peremptory and gross mistakes, unseasonable and impracticable proposals, and uncharitable and injurious reflections, tending rather to kindle contentions than to compose divisions.”¹⁵

The Act records that “the Assembly did conclude, by one single vote, that the foresaid longer paper should not be read; and that the abovenamed persons should be received into the fellowship of this Church”. In their shorter paper, dated at Edinburgh on 22 October 1690, the three wrote that they had waited “for an opportunity to bring our unhappy differences (of which all parties concerned are weary) to a happy and holy close”, and bound themselves “faithfully to live in union, communion, and entire subjection, and due obedience in the Lord, to the authority of this Church, in her respective judicatories”.¹⁶

The United Societies

The Societies’ own record was kept by their clerk, Michael Shields. It notes that “the settling of church government, as in the year 1592, and not as it was in the years 1648, and 1649, gave occasion of discontent, and complaint.” At their General Meeting at Douglas on 4 June 1690 it was resolved “that a Paper should be written, subscribed, and given into the ministers containing a representation of our grievances, wherein we might be free, shewing [showing] the grounds of our former withdrawing from them, with our earnest desire of union at the time, upon good terms; Also, to contain a Protestation against defections”. Hutchison adds that the resolution was adopted “though not without strenuous opposition; Sir Robert Hamilton protested against it, refused to have anything to do with the movement, and withdrew.”¹⁷

Hutchison describes their petition to the Assembly, “The complaint and humble petition of many Presbyterian people living in certain shires of Scotland”, which asked the Assembly formally to condemn the defections of the past years. Hutchison’s outline of it lists among the things to be rectified that “the Covenants are ignored” and that “the attainments of the Second Reformation lie under the Act Recissory”. He writes that it “was never given in to the Assembly; the Committee on Bills and Overtures refused to pass it on”, and that the papers were instead passed to those drawing up the causes of the fast. Shields records the result: “the refusing to read it in open Assembly hath created scruples and jealousies, and not a little retarded union.”¹⁸

The General Meeting met again at Douglas on 3 December 1690. Linning and Shields told it how they had united with the Church, and advised the people “to hear those ministers who were most free and faithful”. A form of protestation was drawn up for those who joined, but, Shields records, “not coming to any agreement, it was left to people’s liberty and freedom to give it or not as they thought fit. However the ministers insisted for it.” The meeting agreed that, since “debates did not much good, but rather hurt, it was fittest to leave them off, and part”.¹⁹

Hutchison writes that the meeting “refused to recommend union with the re-established Church”, and that afterwards “many of them had fallen in to the Established Church, others were perplexed as to the path of duty, while many more were convinced that they ought to maintain the old position of protest against the Constitution both in Church and State.” Hetherington writes that “though the ministers were admitted, the people recoiled, continued to remain aloof, and ultimately succeeded in obtaining a sufficient number of ministers holding similar opinions to form themselves into a separate body, since known by the designation of the Reformed Presbytery.”²⁰

How the settlement was judged

M’Crie writes that the settlement “may be regarded, in many respects, in the light in which they received it— as a great boon”, but also that “the defects of the Revolution settlement unhappily bear a full proportion to its advantages”. The chief of these, in his view, was that the attainments of 1638 to 1650 were left “buried under the infamous ‘act rescissory,’ which, standing as it does in the statute-book to this day, brands them with the charge of rebellion.”²¹

Kerr, writing from the Reformed Presbyterian side, holds that “the Acts Rescissory were permitted to remain on the Statute-book, and the Covenants to lie under the infamy to which the King and the Royalists had consigned them”, and concludes: “Yes! the Revolution came but not the Reformation.” He writes that the minority “continued to meet in ‘Societies’ for sixteen years”, until they were joined by John M’Millan.²²

The Reformed Presbyterian historians date their Church from before 1690. Hutchison writes of the Sanquhar Declaration of 1680: “In Richard Cameron and his associates we see the founders of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Sanquhar Declaration was the first public announcement of its separate position.” In his account it was at the Revolution that the Societies divided, some joining the Established Church and others keeping “the old position of protest”. Kerr writes that “the minority who thus preserved an unbroken relationship with the pre-Revolution and Martyr period” went on in the Societies, which in time became the Reformed Presbytery.²³