Scotland in 1603
The impact of the Reformation on
Scotland to 1603
The social, cultural, educational and economic impact of the Reformation on
Scotland to 1603.
In 1603 James VI, the first Protestant King of Scots, became James I, King
of England and Ireland. When he died in 1625, the union of the kingdoms
had become acceptable to Scots, despite their initial fears and hostility.
Scotland had both a state Kirk and a new kind of state that some would
claim were more intrusive and authoritarian than their counterparts
before the Reformation.
The Second Book of Discipline (1578) had set forth a vision of a
Presbyterian Kirk but the ‘Black Acts’ (1584) had clearly stated the
supremacy of the monarch in all matters. They had also tried to promote
bishops in the Kirk. At the same time, James was reluctant to enforce antiCatholic laws, although General Assemblies continually called for the
crown to take action against Catholic nobles and Jesuit missionaries. The
so-called ‘Golden Act’ (1592) had allowed for Presbyteries to be set up but
the monarch had the power to say where and when General Assemblies
would meet. James would have the General Assembly meeting in Perth or
Aberdeen, where he could expect more ministers to support the monarch.
James VI attended every General Assembly from 1597 to 1603 and by the
late 1590s General Assemblies had become more agreeable to the
monarch’s aims.
A riot in Edinburgh (1597) had erupted after a sermon preached against
the monarch. James VI had the ministers of Edinburgh briefly imprisoned,
and the king ordered that no minister was to be appointed without his
consent. The town council was fined. In his ‘Basilikon Doron’ James VI
advised his son to allow no meetings of the Kirk without his approval. It
was clear that the monarch’s preferred form of Kirk government was by
bishops and in 1600 James VI reintroduced three bishops into parliament.
The Kirk Sessions of Protestant Scotland were instruments of moral and
religious control. Before the Reformation, the Catholic Church had
possessed a rudimentary organisation at congregational level and this was
extended to all Protestant parishes from 1560. Kirk Sessions consisted of
elders and deacons who were elected annually until the Second Book of
Discipline developed the idea of ‘once an elder, always an elder’. Kirk
Sessions exercised the right to fine, imprison and excommunicate
offenders against their authority in moral matters. There were ambitious
plans to provide for the poor from the revenues of the old church but
vested interests thwarted those ambitions and funds proved to be
inadequate.
Great emphasis was laid on attendance at both daily and Sunday services,
and every effort was made by Kirk sessions to ensure that no possible
diversions existed which might detain a congregation from their duties.
Kirk Sessions enforced acts relating to the possession of Psalm Books and
Bibles printed under the strict supervision of the General Assembly. The
Second Book of Discipline led indirectly to the development of the
‘exercise’, ie a regular meeting of ministers from 10 to 20 parishes for
discussion of doctrine, which became the presbytery; Kirk Session elders
were excluded from presbyteries 1586–1637. Presbyteries heard appeals
from Kirk Sessions, delegated commissioners to General Assemblies,
examined candidates for the ministry, visited parishes and approved
schoolmasters.
In 1603 Scotland could be a bright and colourful place with many larger
homes having coloured exterior walls, and elaborate painted ceilings, as
well as stone carvings produced by skilled masons. The interiors of most
parish kirks were plain and whitewashed, with few reminders of Catholic
styles of decoration, but a few altars and other treasured objects from the
pre-Reformation period remained in some places. The Kirk decided to
remove all organs from places of worship in order to cleanse parish
churches of all ‘monumentis of idolatrye’. However, there is evidence that
instrumental music continued to play a part in some services. Kirk Sessions
were constantly occupied in their attempts to keep wedding and other
celebrations under control. The observance of Catholic festivals and saints’
days, and the performance of plays were actively discouraged, and this
suggests that they remained relatively popular with many Scots, at least
for a generation.
There were no playwrights in Scotland on a par with those in England,
such as William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson. In fact only one Scots play
survives from the period between the 1560s and 1603. Courtiers rather
than priests and monks were responsible for producing poetry and verse,
and many of these poets followed James VI to his new court in England.
Prose writers tended to follow the lead of John Knox and wrote in English
rather than Latin or Scots. A similar trend towards English forms of
expression can be observed in sermons that survive from the period.
A range of issues, including Kirk attendance, behaviour at communion and
other church services, the poverty of individual parishes, and poor
standards of preaching, suggest that the Kirk shared many problems with
the Catholic Church of the 1550s. However, Scotland’s parish school
network had been placed on a more secure foundation than before the
Reformation and more than half of the 800 schools recorded in Scotland
were sited in or next to kirks. The pre-Reformation provincial council in
1549 had reminded Scots of the need for a school in every parish, at a
time when there were only 100 schools in Scotland.
There had been a shortage of trained ministers and schoolmasters (in
1580 the General Assembly had considered reducing the number of
parishes from more than 900 to 600 due to the shortage of ministers). The
poverty of ministers in the immediate post-Reformation period is one of
the most striking features of the Kirk. However, not all ministers were
poverty-stricken and by 1603 most ministers were reasonably well off.
Also, a minister’s means could not be measured in terms of money alone,
and the produce of the glebe ensured that the minister and his family
would not go hungry. Parish schoolmasters were paid from parish
collections, teinds, or annual rents, and they were expected to take on
extra duties as readers, session clerks or precentors (to lead psalmsinging). They were often only able to teach children up to the age of
seven.
The only Protestant Bibles available to lowland Scots were in English, a
similar but nonetheless foreign language, and cheap Bibles would not be
available until the 1630s. However, the catechism could be used by
ministers, schoolmasters and elders to teach the basic principles of
Protestantism to young Scots.
The provision of poor relief had been largely neglected by the preReformation Church. One element in the growth of reformed or Protestant
opinions had been the apparent wealth of many of the clergy and religious
in contrast to the relative neglect of the poor by the pre-Reformation
Church. In 1559 the ‘Beggars’ Summons’ had threatened to dispossess the
friars, who appeared to be prospering at the expense of the poor, and this
proved to be a decisive event in the course of the Scottish Reformation.
The Protestant reformers’ ambitious plans to provide for the poor, as set
out in the First Book of Discipline, had been thwarted by vested interests
and available sources of revenue had proved to be inadequate to meet the
needs of the poor. Individual burghs were forced to make their own
piecemeal arrangements to provide some poor relief.
The Kirk distinguished between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
The able-bodied or undeserving poor were not to be helped and neither
were vagrants and unlicensed beggars In fact, they were often punished
by whipping and branding. Poor relief was to be provided in the parish
where you were born or lived in for some time. The destitute were only
allowed to beg in their own parish after being issued with a beggar’s
badge and becoming a licensed beggar or ‘gaberlunzie’. Church collections
and payments for use of parish mort cloth, as well as fines from those
disciplined by the Church, were used for poor relief. An Act of 1587
allowed magistrates to assess the inhabitants of the parish to provide for
poor relief. Unfortunately, income for poor relief was always short of what
was needed.
In times of crisis, parish poor relief was probably a small proportion of
total income of the poor, who were aided by multiple inputs from formal
and informal charity, including friends, neighbours, landlords, relatives,
begging and private charities. Few Scots stayed on poor relief for very long
since it was regarded as a temporary measure rather than a permanent
support, as it became increasingly in England.
The Reformation in Scotland did not lead to any significant transfer of
wealth from the Church (or Kirk) to nobles and other individuals, as
happened in England. Much of the wealth of the Catholic Church had
either been looted by English invaders and their supporters or was in the
hands of nobles and their extended families before the Reformation.
After 1560 the Kirk demonstrated considerable tolerance in their
treatment of Catholic clergy. Isolated cases of ill-treatment can be found,
but the evidence of cruelty is often more apparent than real. It proved
impracticable to dispossess the Catholic clergy of their benefices so they
were allowed to retain two-thirds of their revenues for life, while the Kirk
was to be maintained from some portion of the remaining one-third.
Monks and friars were equally well treated, being granted pensions and
allowed to make use of their quarters for rest of their lives. Concessions
made to Catholic clergy, on the grounds of old age or ill-health, were
frequently recorded in contemporary records.
In 1603 Scotland’s foreign trade remained firmly rooted in tried and tested
trade routes and markets. Scots merchants continued to trade with
England and the trading ports across the North Sea as they had done
before the Reformation. The chief exception was in the Low Countries,
where the Catholic Spanish Netherlands (basically present-day Belgium)
were divided from the Protestant United Provinces (the present-day
Netherlands) and the Scots focused on trading with the Protestant Dutch.
The Scots exported farm produce, fish, lead and coal, as well a limited
range of manufactured goods. They imported raw materials such as iron
and timber, as well as a wide range of manufactured and luxury goods.
It was the relative peace and political stability established during the
minority of James VI that was the Protestant monarch’s greatest
contribution to the Scottish economy. When James VI moved south to his
English kingdom the Scottish burghs, especially Edinburgh, were able to
enjoy a short-lived economic boom that lasted until the 1630s. From the
1640s, political instability and civil war led to a dramatic decline in the
economic prosperity of the Scottish nation.