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‘Laudianism’ in Scotland? St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, 1633–39 — A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Andrew Spicer
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Extract

The liturgical and sacramental policies of the 1630s had a direct impact upon the architecture and furnishings of English cathedrals and parish churches. Archbishop Laud, in particular, was associated with the restoration of altars, which meant the rearrangement of church interiors and the removal of pews so that communion tables could be erected at the east end of the church. There was also a concerted effort to take down seating galleries and, externally, to remove buildings and shops which encroached upon the churchyard or abutted the church. The impact of these religious policies on the architecture and the literature of the period has been the subject of detailed examination by historians such as Peter Lake, Stanford Lehmberg and John Newman. Yet the authorship of these policies remains hotly contested, with some historians seeing them as deriving directly from the king, while others have argued that the responsibility lies firmly with Archbishop William Laud. Nonetheless ‘Laudian’ provides a convenient shorthand term when discussing these differing ecclesiological strands of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 46 , 2003 , pp. 95 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2003

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References

Notes

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37 Edinburgh City Archives, Dean of Guild accounts, 1552-67, pp. 123, 124, 277; Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 3, pp. 27-28, 42-44, 45, 49, 70; A. Spicer, ‘Iconoclasm and Adaptation: The Reformation of the Churches in Scotland and the Netherlands’, in The Archaeology of the Reformation, ed. D. Gaimster and R. Gilchrist (2003).

38 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 3, p. 66.

39 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 4, p. 87; Stevenson, D., The Scottish Revolution, 1637-1644: the Triumph of the Covenanters (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 401-02Google Scholar.

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41 Lynch, M., ‘Introduction: Scottish Towns, 1500-1700’, in The Early Modern Town in Scotland, ed. Lynch, M. (London, 1987), p. 28 Google Scholar, 35. See also the attempts to extend the East Kirk ‘for there was not sufficient rowme for people resorting to that kirk, nor for commodious ministratioun of the Lord’s Supper’. Booke of the Universali Kirk, p. 861; Calderwood, , The History of the Kirk of Scotland, 6, p. 739 Google Scholar; Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 6, pp. 221, 224, 228, 235, 239, 249, 251, 260.

42 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 6, p. 197.

43 Hannay & Watson, ‘Building of the Parliament House’, pp. 17-18.

44 Works of William Laud, 5, pp. 143, 207; Newman, J., ‘The Architectural Setting’, in The History of the University of Oxford. IV Seventeenth-Century Oxford, ed. Tyacke, N. (Oxford, 1997), p. 161 Google Scholar. See also Geraghty, A., ‘Wren’s Preliminary Design for the Sheldonian Theatre’, Architectural History, 45 (2002), p. 275 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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46 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 8, p. 134.

47 Edinburgh City Archives, List of subscribers to the repair of St Giles’, 1636 to 1637; Howard, Scottish Architecture, pp. 191-92; Gifford, Edinburgh, pp. 172-75.

48 Works of William Laud, 3, p. 315.

49 Edinburgh City Archives, Dean of Guild Accounts 1568-1601, p. 399; Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 3, p. 173, 7, p. 142; Spicer, ‘“Accommodating of thame selfis to heir the worde”’.

50 Register of Royal Letters, 2, p. 797.

51 Brown, P. Hume, Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1891), pp. 83–84 Google Scholar.

52 Works of William Laud, 3, p. 315.

53 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 8, pp. 134,136,137,147,154,155.

54 Edinburgh City Archives, Treasurers Accounts 1636-50.

55 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 8, p. 191.

56 Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 8, p. 213.

57 Atherton, I., ‘Viscount Scudamore’s “Laudianism”: the religious practices of the first Viscount Scudamore’, Historical Journal, 34 (1991), pp. 567-96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merritt, J. F., ‘Puritans, Laudians, and the phenomenon of church-building in Jacobean London’, Historical journal, 41 (1998), pp. 935–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newman, ‘Laudian Literature and the Interpretation of Caroline Churches’, pp. 168-88; Spicer, The Reformation Church.

58 Row, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, pp. 369-70.

59 See Harris, J. and Higgott, G., Inigo Jones, Complete Architectural Drawings (New York, 1989), pp. 238-47Google Scholar; Summerson, J., ‘Inigo Jones: Covent Garden and the Restoration of St Paul’s Cathedral’, in his The Unromantic Castle and other essays (London, 1990), pp. 54–62 Google Scholar. The restoration included the refitting of the choir which was undertaken in c. 1632, Newman, ‘Laudian literature and Caroline churches’, p. 172.

60 On Ireland, see Capern, A. L., ‘The Caroline Church: James Ussher and the Irish Dimension’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 69–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Works of William Laud, 6, pp. 361-62.

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66 Spicer, A., ‘“To the glory of God and for his worship”: the consecration of post-Reformation churches in Scotland’, in Sacred Space: The Redefinition of Sanctity in post-Reformation Europe, ed. Coster, W. and Spicer, A. (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

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69 Fincham, ‘The Restoration of altars in the 1630s’, pp. 922-28.

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73 [Balcanquhall, Walter], A Large Declaration concerning the late Tumults in Scotland (London, 1639), p. 23 Google Scholar. On the redefinition of sanctity in post-Reformation Scottish churches, see Spicer Ȉ“To the glory of God and for his worship”’.