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4 - The Restoration, the Revolution and the Failure of Episcopacy in Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2013

Alasdair Raffe
Affiliation:
Northumbria University
Tim Harris
Affiliation:
Munro-Goodwin-Wilkinson Professor in European History at Brown University
Stephen Taylor
Affiliation:
Professor in the History of Early Modern England at Durham University
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Summary

The Revolution of 1688-90 brought about the fall of King James VII and the abolition of episcopacy in the Church of Scotland. In some ways, this combination of outcomes was unsurprising. The bishops' authority had been entwined with that of the crown since the re-establishment of episcopacy in the Restoration settlement of 1661-2. Whereas government by bishops was well rooted in England, in Scotland episcopacy seemed unpopular and dependent for its survival on royal support. While Scots remained loyal to their king, as most seemed to be during the Restoration period, episcopacy could survive. But when the Restoration monarchy faced its final crisis in the Revolution, the king and bishops fell together. In the convention of estates, whose meetings in the spring of 1689 settled the fate of James VII and his style of government, the bishops' devotion to the king eroded their credibility. A minority of influential and able episcopalian clergy was willing to recognize the new monarchs, William and Mary. But the bishops' Jacobitism, and that of many of episcopacy's landed proponents, together with the presbyterianism of the Revolution's keenest supporters, left William with little choice but to accept a presbyterian settlement.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy
The Revolutions of 1688-91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts
, pp. 87 - 108
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

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