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The Restoration

Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, and the power–base he had built up began slowly to crumble. With disorder mounting in the south, General Monck1 decided at the end of the following year to remove his army from Scotland and march to London. Arriving early in 1660, he restored Parliament to its full membership which then dissolved itself in order to elect a Convention Parliament. Since the latter was dominated by those in favor of the monarchy, the way had now cleared for its restoration. Charles was duly affirmed as king on 8 May 1660, and he returned from exile two weeks later.

Since 1654, the cause of the Resolutioners had been promoted at London by the minister of Crail (St Andrews presbytery), James Sharp#. He continued this role through the change from commonwealth into royal rule, and after initially reporting that Charles was resolved to be coy about ecclesiastical arrangements for Scotland, eventually returned north bearing a letter from the king for circulation to the presbyteries. Dated 10 August 1660, the letter promised to protect and preserve the government of the Kirk as settled by law, recognized the Assemblies of 1651 (a signal to the Protesters of royal disfavor) and gave notice that another would be called as soon as possible.2 It was to be a false assurance.

When the Scottish Parliament re-convened on the 1 January 1661, a programme of legislation ensued which began to dismantle most of what the Covenanters had gained since 1638. Its initial enactment was to approve an Oath of Allegiance which bound the subscriber to acknowledge the king as supreme governor “in all causes.”3 On 9 February, the passage of the Act approving the Engagement 1648 and annulling the parliament and committees 16494 meant that patronage was no longer abolished. Then on 28 March, the Act Rescissory annulled the “pretendit” parliaments of 1640, 1641, 1644, 1645, 1646, 1647 and 1648.5 On the 18 June, the Act anent presentation of ministers not only warned patrons to be careful about whom they presented, but specified that entrants must take the oath of allegiance or the presentation became void.6

Meanwhile, progress towards the restoration of episcopacy continued, and Sharp himself and three others were consecrated in London on the 15 December. At the new Scottish Parliament in May 1662, bishops and archbishops were formally restored, after which an Act was approved which condemned the Covenants.7 The measure which acted as a watershed, however, came on the 11 June, with the Act concerning such benefices and stipends as have been possest without presentations from the lawful patron.8 Under its terms, if anyone had been settled since 1649, they had no right to the stipend, manse or glebe and their charge was to be regarded as vacant. However, any minister who applied to his patron, received a presentation (which the patron was bound to bestow) and received collation from the bishop before 20 September,9 could enjoy his position as before. Failure to comply gave the patron the right to present another by 20 March, otherwise the presentation fell to the bishop, jure devoluto.

To be fair to Charles, his original instructions to his commissioner to Parliament, John, Earl of Middleton, did not include the requirement for episcopal collation and it is possible that it was added simply out of malice by the fiercely anti-presbyterian Earl.10 Either way, if the original intention of the Act had been—apart from reinforcing the principle of patronage—to rid the Church of a few Protester radicals, Middleton’s addition, together with the severity with which he prosecuted recalcitrants, triggered a large-scale exodus of ministers from their parishes. Instead of isolating and dispersing those whom Middleton saw as extremists, the policy united them and drew in support from Resolutioners as well. Over the next five years, between a quarter and a third of the country’s approximately 952 ministers were deprived of their livings,11 mostly south of the Tay. Their places were often filled with candidates imported from elsewhere, particularly the more conservative and conformist north-east.12 The new presentees were widely known by the derogatory term of “king’s curates,” and it is noticeable, in areas like Dumfries and Galloway where feelings ran highest against them, that the lay patrons opted to deflect popular opprobrium away from themselves by eschewing their right to present and leaving the bishops to inherit the jus devolutum.13

The outed ministers, meanwhile sought sustenance where they could, many taking part in “exercises” or theological colloquies, out of which field meetings or conventicles were to evolve. As increasingly punitive attempts were made to suppress these irregular services in the Act against conventicles and An act against separation and disobedience to ecclesiastical authority,14 attitudes hardened on both sides.

Through the following twenty-five years, the government attempted to resolve the fact that it had helped to create what was, in effect, a schismatic church, by alternating between repression and conciliation.15 Although some ministers took advantage of the indulgences of June 1669, September 1672 and June 1679, such defections simply reinforced the determination of the remnant who endured. For them, the true Church of Scotland had been driven into the wilderness by a corrupt establishment, which was now in the pocket of a sovereign whose rule they could no longer accept. Thus the root cause of their dismay was not so much the actual existence of bishops, but the Erastian implications which their appointment and presence brought to the nature of the Church.16 More will be said below about how elements of this understanding of the condition of the Church surfaced after the Revolution and in the patronage disputes of the following century. First, however, it is important to consider how prominent a part, if any, patronage played in the philosophical war of words that was also conducted in the period subsequent to the return of presentations.

The Patronage Issue After the Restoration

Whereas patronage had its place (albeit a small one) in the tide of polemical literature of the 1660s, it was to become marginalized as other issues, such as the permissibility of resistance to tyrants, moved to the centre of attention. The notable works that did pay attention to the question of lay presentations were that of John Brown#, who was minister of Wamphray (Lochmaben presbytery) until he was exiled to Holland in 1663, James (later Sir James) Stewart of Goodtrees#, James Stirling#, minister of Paisley second charge (deprived 1662) and Andrew Honyman#, bishop of Orkney.

In 1665, Brown published An apologetical relation of the particular sufferings of the faithful ministers and professors of the church of Scotland since August 1660. As its twenty-three sections were a comprehensive repudiation of the conduct of the Restoration regime since 1660, Sharp unsurprisingly labeled it “a damnable book,”17 and blamed it for turning mere grievance into defiance of the Crown. In section nine, Brown sets out the reasons why ministers refused to seek presentations under the 1662 Act, and these afford an insight into whether the basic arguments against patronage had altered greatly since their expression in the preamble to the 1649 Act. These had been that it was unscriptural, popish, contrary to the second Book, prejudicial to the liberty of the people and restricted freedom of choice.

Brown opens by rehearsing the familiar argument that presentations were supported neither by Scripture nor the best Reformed tradition. Similarly, he claims that the 1649 Parliament had simply completed the work of reformation, by restoring the Church’s original rights. To seek a presentation, therefore, would be to approve what the state had done in removing those rights. He next points out that receiving a presentation now meant taking the Oath of Allegiance as well, which right–thinking ministers could not do.

At this point, he attempts to answer two counter–arguments that had been leveled against the outed ministers. The first one challenged them to agree that since ministers admitted before 1649 were not elected, they must surely be classed as intruders. Brown’s curious reply is to say that although patronage was sinful, this was “not so fully seen and perceived before” and, in any case, “there was no other way of entry . . . practicable by law.” No doubt sensing that he has just weakened his own case,18 he thereupon goes on the offensive by claiming that any fault on the pre-1649 entrants’ part was small compared with that of those who have seen the evil reformed, yet “now again lick up that vomit.”19

Secondly, he deals with the point that since post-1649 entrants have already had a call from the people, then they cannot become intruders by now accepting a presentation. Brown this time has a more convincing answer. He suggests that for an incumbent now to accept a presentation would be to imply that he was not properly called on the first occasion. Moreover, the criticism itself is fatally flawed in that it suggests that election and presentations can be complementary to one another when in fact they are mutually exclusive: “the patron’s presentation is not cumulative unto, but privative and destructive of the people’s liberty of free election, because where patrons do present, the people’s suffrages are never asked, and, where people have power to elect, patrons have no place to present.”20