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Deposition of Ministers in the Church of Scotland Under the Covenanters, 1638–1651

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David Stevenson
David Stevenson
Affiliation:
Mr. Stevenson is lecturer in history in the University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen, Scotland
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Extract

The period 1638–1651 saw the first major purges of the ministry of the reformed kirk in Scotland since the Reformation. These were the forerunners of the later great purges associated with the Restoration (of monarchy and episcopacy) in the 1660s and with the Revolution and re-establishment of presbyterianism in 1688–1690. Before 1638, for all the conflicts within the kirk and in its relations with the state, deposition of ministers had been rare. J. K. Hewison's estimate of 49 deprivations or depositions in 1560–1638 is probably too low, but is of the right order. No detailed study of depositions under the covenanters has ever been made. Hewison calculated that 138 ministers were deprived in the whole of the period 1638–1660. but this figure is far too low. More recentestimates (again covering 1638–1660) of about 200, and of about 210 depositions come much nearer the truth, but they also are too low; there were more depositions than this even in 1638–1651. Considering the importance attached to the depositions after 1660 and after 1688 as indicating the acceptability to ministers of the religious changes then introduced and the extent of persecution, it is rather surprising that so little attention has been paid to the predecessors of these purges— though James Bulloch's two useful local studies of depositions do cover the whole of the seventeenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 321 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1975

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References

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84. In a few instances it is not certain within a year or two when a minister was deposed; in these cases the deposition has been assigned to the most likely year.

85. Figures given in parentheses after the names of synods indicate the approximate number of ministers in each in about 1645. It must be emphasized that these figures can only be approximate since the information in the Fasti is not sufficient to enable a full list of ministers at any given time to be calculated. To avoid giving any false impression of precision the figures have been rounded up or down to the nearest five.

86. In 1646 the Synod of Orkney and Shetland was merged with that of Sutherland and Caithness, but in 1648 the Presbytery of Scalloway (Shetland) was declared to be immediately dependent on the general assembly, belonging to no synod. For the sake of convenience these changes have been ignored in the Table.