Scottish Reformation (1560): John Knox and the Kirk

The Scottish Reformation was the revolution in religion that made Scotland a Protestant country, reaching its decisive moment in August 1560 when the Reformation Parliament rejected the authority of the Pope and banned the Catholic Mass. Led by the preacher John Knox and a group of Protestant nobles called the Lords of the Congregation, it created the Church of Scotland, or Kirk, and shaped Scottish society for centuries.

Background

In the early 16th century Scotland was a Catholic kingdom closely allied with France against England. Reformation ideas arrived through trade with Germany and the Low Countries and through Lutheran books. The young scholar Patrick Hamilton was burned for heresy at St Andrews in 1528, becoming Scotland’s first Protestant martyr.

The preacher George Wishart was burned at St Andrews on 1 March 1546 on the orders of Cardinal David Beaton. In revenge, a group of Protestant lairds murdered Beaton in his castle at St Andrews in May 1546. A former priest named John Knox joined the castle’s defenders as their preacher.

When French forces took the castle in July 1547, Knox was sent to the French galleys as a rower for about 19 months. After his release he worked as a preacher in Protestant England under Edward VI. When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne, he went into exile, spending much of his time in Geneva, where he admired the church of John Calvin, described in John Calvin’s Geneva.

The old church in Scotland was widely criticised even by its own leaders. Many parishes had their revenues diverted to monasteries, cathedrals or noble families, leaving poorly paid and poorly educated clergy. Abbeys were often held by laymen, including illegitimate sons of the royal family, as a source of income. Church councils in 1549, 1552 and 1559 tried to reform these abuses, but with limited success.

Meanwhile Scotland was ruled for the young Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been sent to France as a child. From 1554 her mother, Mary of Guise, governed as regent. In April 1558 the queen married the French Dauphin Francis, and many Scots feared that their country would become a French province.

The revolt of 1559–1560

On 3 December 1557 a group of Protestant nobles signed a bond to defend and promote the reformed faith. They became known as the Lords of the Congregation. Mary of Guise at first tolerated them, but in 1559 she moved against Protestant preachers.

Knox returned to Scotland on 2 May 1559. On 11 May he preached a fiery sermon against idolatry in St John’s Kirk in Perth. Afterwards a crowd attacked the church’s altars and images and sacked the town’s friaries. The iconoclasm spread to other towns, and the regent and the Lords of the Congregation took up arms.

In October 1559 the Lords of the Congregation declared the regent deposed. The rebels occupied Edinburgh but could not defeat the French troops supporting the regent. They turned to England. Elizabeth I, alarmed that Mary, Queen of Scots, now Queen of France, claimed the English throne, agreed to help in the Treaty of Berwick of February 1560. An English fleet and army joined the siege of the French garrison at Leith.

Mary of Guise died in Edinburgh Castle on 11 June 1560. The Treaty of Edinburgh in July 1560 provided for the withdrawal of both French and English troops, leaving the Protestant lords in control.

The Reformation Parliament

Parliament met in Edinburgh in August 1560. On 17 August it approved the Scots Confession, a statement of Reformed faith drawn up in a few days by Knox and five other ministers. A week later, on 24 August, it passed acts that abolished the Pope’s jurisdiction in Scotland, repealed earlier laws protecting the Catholic Church, and made celebrating or attending Mass a crime, with death as the penalty for a third offence.

These acts were never approved by Mary, Queen of Scots, in France, so their legal status was disputed for years. The first General Assembly of the new church met in December 1560, and the ministers drafted the First Book of Discipline, a plan for church government, poor relief and a school in every parish. Parliament never fully adopted it, largely because nobles did not want to hand over church wealth.

Key people

John Knox (c. 1514–1572) was the movement’s most powerful preacher and later wrote a history of the Reformation in Scotland. His pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), attacking rule by female monarchs, made him enemies, including Elizabeth I.

Lord James Stewart, later Earl of Moray, was the queen’s illegitimate half-brother and a leader of the Lords of the Congregation. He became regent in 1567.

Mary of Guise tried to balance French interests and Scottish politics until her death in 1560.

Mary, Queen of Scots, returned to Scotland in August 1561 as a Catholic queen of a Protestant country and held several famous confrontations with Knox.

Consequences

Mary’s personal rule ended in disaster. After the murder of Lord Darnley in 1567 and her marriage to the Earl of Bothwell, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James VI. In December 1567 Parliament ratified the acts of 1560, and Protestantism became secure. Mary fled to England, where she was eventually tried and executed in 1587.

The new Kirk was at first run by superintendents and ministers. The fully Presbyterian system, in which the church is governed by elders and a hierarchy of courts rather than bishops, was developed later under Andrew Melville and the Second Book of Discipline of 1578. Struggles over bishops continued until 1690, when Presbyterianism was finally established.

Legacy

The Reformation reshaped Scottish life. Parish discipline by kirk sessions, strict observance of the Sabbath and an emphasis on reading the Bible became defining features of Scottish culture. The ideal of a school in every parish encouraged relatively high levels of literacy in later centuries.

The Reformation also changed Scotland’s buildings and landscape. Many abbeys and friaries were damaged or abandoned, altars and images were removed from parish churches, and church interiors were rearranged around the pulpit. Church lands passed largely into the hands of the nobility and lairds, strengthening their wealth and power.

It also bound Scotland more closely to England. Ending the old French alliance opened the way to the union of the crowns in 1603, when James VI became James I of England.

Timeline

• 1528, 29 February: Patrick Hamilton is burned at St Andrews.
• 1546, 1 March: George Wishart is burned at St Andrews.
• 1546, 29 May: Cardinal Beaton is murdered.
• 1557, 3 December: The Lords of the Congregation sign their first bond.
• 1559, 11 May: Knox’s sermon at Perth sparks iconoclastic riots.
• 1560, 27 February: The Treaty of Berwick brings English aid.
• 1560, 6 July: The Treaty of Edinburgh ends French intervention.
• 1560, 17 and 24 August: Parliament approves the Scots Confession and abolishes papal authority.
• 1567, December: Parliament ratifies the Reformation acts.
• 1572, 24 November: John Knox dies in Edinburgh.

Why it matters

The Scottish Reformation transformed Scotland’s religion, politics and culture, ended the Auld Alliance with France and created a national church whose influence on education and public life endured into modern times.