WRITING FRAMES
How far was the Reformation in Scotland characterised by
religious reform rather than religious conflict?
Religious reform
Religious conflict
Religious reform or religious conflict?
This list of points can be edited and points can be pasted unde r religious
reform and/or religious conflict or left out as being inconclusive.
 A series of provincial councils of the Catholic Church in Scotland was
held in 1549, 1552 and 1559, accompanied by the production of a
catechism in Scots, the Hamilton Catechism (1552), and the so-called
‘Twopenny Faith’ of 1558 – a simplified version for parish clergy.
 The First Book of Discipline of 1560–61 (called at the time the Book of
Reformation) had six authors: two of the six (John Winram and John
Douglas) were former Catholic reformers, based in St Andrews in the
1540s and early 1550s.
 Some parts of the Book of Reformation, especially as regards schooling
and teaching and preaching in Scots, continued the patterns set by the
Catholic reform programme of the 1540s and 1 550s.
 The Protestant programme tried to grasp the nettle of finance by laying
claim to all the revenues of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.
 From the 1580s there was a need for further reform and this led to more
claims on the income and property of the pre-Reformation Church.
 Evangelical activity in the late 1530s, part of it at or near the royal court,
led to a minor wave of persecution and the exile of most early Protestant
activists – most fled to the continent and did not come back (Wishart was a
notable exception).
 There was little sign of Protestant activity from 1547 until the setting up
of fledgling ‘privy kirks’ in a few places in the mid –1550s.
 22 Protestants were burned in the period 1528 –58, a fraction of the total in
England.
 The number of Protestants who were pursued by the authorities or were
otherwise detectable in sources appears small (Margaret Sanderson traced
some 161 names in the period 1528–50).
 In 1560, iconoclasm (ie breaking up churches, altars, religious relics, etc)
is more readily detectable than outright violence against Catholic clergy
(although some of that did undoubtedly take place in and after 1560).
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 Violence against ex-Catholic clergy and concerns about a renewed
outbreak of religious conflict are more detectable fro m 1565 onwards,
against a background of religious wars in France (1562 –4) and the
Netherlands (1566 onwards); the aftermath of the Catholic Council of
Trent (1562–4); and suspicions of an international Catholic conspiracy
against Protestants.
Any other relevant factors
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WRITING FRAMES
To what extent was Mary responsible for the loss of her
throne?
Mary secure
Mary insecure
Was Mary secure or insecure on the Scottish throne?
This list of points can be edited and points can be pasted under Mary secure
and/or Mary insecure or left out as being inconclusive.
 There was an orchestrated campaign of propaganda against Mary, Queen
of Scots, begun at first by the exiles (John Knox prominent among them),
who had not been impressed by a trio of Catholic female rulers – Mary in
England (1553–8), Mary of Guise as regent in Scotland (1554 –60), and
Catherine de Medici, the effective ruler of France after the death of Henry
II in 1558.
 In Scotland, Mary of Guise had been relatively popular amongst her
nobles, who were mostly glad to see the back of Arran as governor.
 There is little to suggest, beyond Knox’s rants, that Queen Mary’s
reputation was affected by the fact that she was a female ruler.
 Another variant of the alleged weakness of a female ruler is to try to think
of a ‘reversionary interest’ after she gave birth to a male heir: that the
infant Prince could act as a recruiting sergeant for disaffected nobles.
There is little evidence to back this up.
 One view is that Mary remained in control until 1565, achieving a le vel of
harmony amongst her nobles unknown since Flodden (1513).
 Another view points to her success in seeing off not one but two noble
conspiracies – the Chaseabout Raid of 1565 and the Riccio murder of early
1566. This view emphasises her success in rehabilitating the Chaseabout
conspirators to gather support around her after the Riccio murder and then
detaching the fringe Riccio conspirators from the main plotters.
 By the end of 1566, and the triumphal baptism of her son at Stirling Castle
in December 1566, Mary had largely regained the initiative and detached
herself from Darnley.
 Another view is to regard the Bothwell marriage and its aftermath as the
key to Mary’s fall. Some see the Bothwell marriage as the marking the
inevitable road to Mary’s fall: even her Catholic nobles were disaffected
by the fact that it was a marriage conducted by Protestant rite.
 Most of the ‘confederate lords’ who assembled at Carberry in 1567 wanted
to separate the Queen from Bothwell, not to depose her.
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 There was, immediately after Carberry, a coup within a coup, which was
what brought about her imprisonment on Loch Leven and Mary’s eventual
deposition.
 Even after she was deposed in what was an illegal coup, Mary enjoyed
majority support amongst the Scottish nobility. Her army at Langside in
1568 outnumbered the supporters of her infant son by almost two to one.
 Mary’s majority support – the Queen’s Men as opposed to the King’s Men
– lasted for a time, even after she fled to England (and captivity).
Any other relevant factors
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How successful was James VI in his efforts to control the Kirk
to 1603?
Successful
Less successful
How successful was James VI in his efforts to control the Kirk to 1603?
This list of points can be edited and points can be pasted under successful
and/or less successful or left out as being inconclusive.
 James was the godly prince whom the new Kirk had longed for – and
lacked – until he was crowned as an infant in 1567.
 The idea of a ‘godly prince’ solved various problems, especially for nobles
anxious about social change driven by radical preachers from the lower
orders in society.
 James was raised strictly and had great expectations attached to him by
different sections of Protestantism – expectations that were inherently selfcontradictory.
 By the late 1570s, the sense of frustration felt by the Kirk, still deprived of
the revenues and income of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, still
under-staffed and poorly paid for the most part, was enormous.
 The Second Book of Discipline (1578) represented an effort by the Kirk to
reorganise parishes in experimental groupings known as presbyteries.
Another major focus of the Book was an even more ambitious – and even
more unrealistic – claim to the revenues and property of the old Church.
 The Kirk became caught up in the political struggles of the early 1580s: a
significant number of leading ministers fled into exile in England, along
with dissident nobles, after the failure of a second noble coup in 1584, and
the introduction of the so-called ‘Black Acts’ of the same year.
 One element of the re-establishment of royal authority from 1584–5 took
the form of an attempt to curb the excesses of Presbyterian ministers.
 James tried to maintain a cosy relationship between himself and many of
the more prominent ministers. It was only when this broke down that some
radicals, prominent among them Andrew Melville, came out into open
opposition to the king.
 The worst crisis came in 1596, with a riot in Edinburgh, seemingly
orchestrated by the radical ministers in the capital. The decisive victor in
this episode was James VI.
 It is worth bearing in mind that, because of the circumstances of the
Reformation and the failure of the Kirk to achieve a satisfactory financial
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settlement, many ministers depended on the crown as their paymaster. This
gave the king a measure of control but also exposed him to a continuing
frustration of expectations amongst the clergy, often expressed in the
General Assembly.
Any other relevant factors
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What impact did the Reformation have on Scottish society and
culture to 1603?
Moves towards greater social
control
Break with the past
What impact did the Reformation have on Scottish society and culture to
1603?
This list of points can be edited and points can be pasted under moves
towards greater social control and/or break with the past or left out as
being inconclusive.
 The fear of instability was increased by the fact that the population, in
Scotland as elsewhere, was sharply rising in the 16th century, making
elites and magistrates nervous about the rapidly growing lower classes.
 The fear of popular unrest already existed before the Reformation 1559 –60
as seen in the banning by parliament of Robin Hood celebrations in 1555.
 John Knox and the new (minority) Protestant regime in Edinburgh shared
the same fears: he accused the capital’s craftsmen of ‘playing Robin Hood’
during a craft riot in 1561.
 The civic rituals and religious processions that had emerged in towns in
the century after 1450 – such as the Corpus Christi procession, crafts
processions on the saints’ days, craft altars in the burgh church etc – were
brought to a sharp end by the Reformation.
 The new forms of discipline offered by the Kirk Sessions, which were
everywhere dominated by local elites – in both urban and rural society –
went hand in hand with the tightening judicial grip exercised by both
urban magistrates and rural landowners.
 From the mid–1580s onwards in some towns, and from the early 17 th
century elsewhere, there were signs of a new popular radical ism which
would eventually point to the Covenanting protests of the 1630s and
1640s.
 Protestantism was in two minds about many forms of culture: on the one
hand, radicals wanted to make a sharp break with a past which they viewed
as corrupt and ungodly; on the other hand, in what was a deeply
conservative society, there was a deep vein of cultural nostalgia which – as
in notions such as the long line of Scottish kings stretching back into pre history, or new emblems of ‘Scottish identity’ (such as the thist le and the
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 ‘honours of the kingdom’) – sought to maintain contact with a glorious
past.
 In literature, the best works of late medieval writers, including Dunbar,
Henryson and Lindsay, were more widely available (in print) than they had
been in their own lifetimes.
 On the other hand, censorship was increasingly exercised by the Kirk from
1567 onwards, so this was a highly selective cultural continuity.
 New Protestant religious literature took a long time to emerge after 1560.
Until at least 1600, and probably long after, Protestants depended on
imported English religious works and texts. Most notably, Scots had to
rely on the Tyndale translation of the Bible and English prayer books –
either the 1552 book of the reign of Edward VI or the Geneva prayer book
(the Book of Common Order) produced by English exiles in Geneva in the
late 1550s. One result was an anglicisation of religious culture until at
least the 1620s.
Any other relevant factors
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