Scotland: Notable Policies and Documents

1560 - Scots Confession (All Facts)

• Protestant Confession of Faith drafted by John Knox and accepted by the Scottish Parliament under the reign of Queen Mary of Guise, it

  • renounced and abolished the Pope’s authority in Scotland

  • forbade the saying of Mass

  • rejected the rituals of Rome

• Document which aimed to embrace the “elect of all ages, realms, nations, Jews or Gentiles”

1638 - National Covenant (All Facts)

• Agreement signed by many Presbyterians of Scotland in order to preserve the purity of the gospel and that opposed the proposed reforms of the Church of Scotland by King Charles I and Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud

• Agreement in which hundreds of thousands of Scottish people from all walks of life had subscribed to a “covenant with God” to resist to the death the attempt to destroy their Calvinist traditions

• Agreement in which Scottish nobility and clergy signed in order to defend the kirk (Scottish Presbyterian Church) against the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer of England

1643 - Solemn League and Covenant (All Facts)

• Agreement between the leaders of the Scottish Covenanters and English Roundheads (Parliamentarians) during the First English Civil War

• It

  • was a national oath by both England and Scotland to increase the pace of religious reform

  • guaranteed Scottish support of the Roundhead (Parliamentarian) cause of the English Civil War in England

• The Scottish Covenanters saw it was a way to

  • impose Presbyterianism in England and Ireland

  • preserve the constitutional liberties won by both England and Scotland’s Parliaments

1707 - Acts of Union (All Facts)

• Passed by Parliament under Queen Anne of England and Scotland,

  • it

    • united England and Scotland, and united the English and Scottish Parliaments, effectively establishing Great Britain

  • it

    • included a clause which safeguarded the privileges of the Presbyterian Church

    • allowed the Scots (Scotland) to keep their (its) own legal system, set apart from England’s

  • it

    • was opposed in Scotland

      • by last-ditch opposition from a faction of the Jacobite supporters of the Stuart claim to the English crown, which by the point of the namesake was seen as a lost cause

      • by those who took the discovery of 31 dead whales on the sands of Kirkcaldy in May of the year of the namesake’s passing as an evil omen

    • was supported in Scotland

      • in which those who supported it far outnumbered those who opposed it

      • by those who likened to its clause which safeguarded the privileges of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland

      • by those who looked forward to an economic boom for Glasgow, which was strategically placed to exploit the growing Atlantic (slave) trade

    • was ignored in Scotland

      • in which some 40 members (a fifth of the Scottish Edinburgh Parliamentary House at the time) did not both to vote on the namesake treaty with England

  • it

    • was opposed in England

      • by the (High) Tories, who were dismayed by the prospect of a phalanx of rough Scottish Presbyterians taking their seats in the English Parliament

    • was supported in England

      • by a far greater number than those who opposed it