In the past, writers on the Protestant Reformation often tended to emphasize the religious causes of this major upheaval in European history, and, depending on their own sectarian or political positions, sided with one party or another in the momentous events. A number of Protestant authors, for instance, were unsparing in pouring invective on what were regarded as the abuses of the Catholic Church. More recently, historians have come to recognize that the Reformation, like any other period of profound and rapid change, was not a simple set of events, nor did it have just one kind of cause. More ecumenically, and more fair-mindedly, modern historians note that not only were there national and doctrinal variations in the Protestant Reformation; there were also dynastic, diplomatic, and economic motives no less important than the religious ones. A fuller understanding of the Reformation demands an appreciation of the inter-play of motives. Furthermore, the Reformation resulted not only in the disunity of Latin Christendom; it also helped launch many a country on the fringes of Europe from the middle ages into the early modern era. As religious persons went one way or another in the struggles, it was the secular power that gained the most from the Reformation. In the case of the Scottish Reformation, problems of Church lands, aristocratic versus royal power, national independence and international alliances, were mingled with questions of political rebellion and religious reforms. And for a while, the little backward country off the northwest coast of Europe can be said to have held the key to the fortunes of Calvinist Protestantism.

CHURCH AND STATE

To understand the Scottish Reformation, one must appreciate the political structure of sixteenth-century Scotland. One historian has put it succinctly:－

The most obvious fact about sixteenth-century Scotland is that Scotland, unlike her southern neighbour, was still a medieval country, both politically and economically. The power of the nobility, collectively (and even, on occasion, individually, though this was rare), was far greater than that of the King. To this situation chronic wars with England and the dynastic misfortunes of the successors of the Bruce were the major contributors……The Privy Council, the Parliament, and the Convention of Estate had no legal authority independent of the Crown. But the Crown was never independent of one faction, at least, of the great nobles……(1)

There was no powerful burgher class to counterbalance the aristocracy, and hence national politics meant the competition, or manipulation by the Crown, of factions of noble families. Some of these families were the Hamiltons, the Douglasses, and branches of the royal clan of the Stewarts. Several of them were ancient enemies and constant rivals. While the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the gradual rise of a Scottish national identity (provoked by wars with the English), consideration of clan interests usually continued to be of primary importance.

But while politically powerful, the nobility, whose wealth was based on not very productive land, was chronically impecunious. The Church, on the other hand, was wealthy and powerful although the wealth was being sucked away by the Crown and the nobility in the early sixteenth century. The Scottish Church was also very corrupt. In the view of the same historian, perhaps 'no branch of the Church in Europe was more riddled with vice. '(2) Sexual immorality was rampant, although apparently more so among the upper than the lower ranks of the clergy.(3) The lower clergy was too poorly paid to be anything but dull, ignorant, and guilty of unspectaculars.(4) Many priests were illiterate, and totally unable to perform any kind of clerical function except the frequent and indiscriminate use of excommunication or 'cursing'. Benefices were gifted to relatives or sold to third parties in irregular ways, and offices were often passed down from generation to generation to legitimized sons born in concubinage.(5)

But in simony and plurality, as well as in nepotism, the offences of the lower clergy were trivial compared to the carryings-on among the prelates and the nobility. Benefices were regarded almost as family possessions or as honourable outlets for illegitimate offspring, and little children were often appointed to high offices. The most notorious of such cases was when, in 1533, King James V was able to use the example of the looming English reformation of Henry VIII to blackmail Pople Clement VII to legitimize his three bastards and grant them benefices. (6)

At the same time, the Church was coming more and more under royal influence and control. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, conciliarist ideas had gained a dominant position in the University of St. Andrews. In the late fifteenth century, after long struggles with the Pope, King James III won an indult to nominate bishops; and in 1526, the Estates asserted that

quhatsumever persone……takis ony bischeppes placis……but our soverane lordis command letteris or chargis or desyre……, thai sail incur the cryme of tresone and leise majestic.(7)

In 1543, Parliament legislated that

the frutis of the abbacyis and prioryis pertening to the kingis gracis sonnis……be convertit and deliverit to the quenis grace comptrollar for the honorable sustenation of hir grace......(8)

The queen referred to was the baby Mary Stewart. Such legislation was only the culmination of a whole generation of squeezing the wealth of the church by means of the feu-farm.

Feuing was a heritable land-tenure in return for an annual fixed money rent, the feu-duty. While this arrangement brought in hard cash for the person or institution granting the tenure, it also in effect meant the alienation of the land to the grantee. Hence, canon law forbade the feuing of Church lands. In 1531, King James V used the excuse of establishing a College of Justice (and the threat of siding with the Protestant military Schmalkald League of Lutherans and Swiss reformers) to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant an annual tax of £10,000 Scots to be paid by the Scottish prelates. The only way the prelates could meet such payment was by large-scale feuing. Clement thus opened the floodgates for the alienation of Church lands to the Scottish nobility.(9) After holding out for a few more years, the Pope even granted the Archbishop of St. Andrews the right to confirm the institution of feufarms without reference to Rome.(10) In these transactions, it was the nobility, not the yeomanry, that benefitted.(11)

Thus, unlike in England where King and gentry benefitted financially from the Reformation and the Dissolution of monasteries, in Scotland, the King and the aristocracy were able to milk the clergy quite satisfactorily without changing religion, just by waving the Protestant threat. Although Lutheran ideas were introduced into Scotland soon after the outbreak in Germany, in 1525 there was an act of Parliament prohibiting the importation of Lutheran literature, and the Reformation at first evoked little response from Scotland. Some efforts were made by the Scottish Church at internal reform, but without much success.(12)

1)Maurice Lee, James Stewart, Earl of Moray (New York, 1953), 6-8.

2)Ibid., 12. Cf. L. Macfarlane, 'Scotland', The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), xii xii, 1231.

3)William Croft Dickinson, et al., eds., A Sourcebook of Scottish History (London, 1953), ii, 142. Cf. Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: Church and Nation through Sixteen Centuries (London, 1960), 48.

4)Donaldson, ibid., 41-42.

5)Dickinson, op. cit., 99-102. Cf. Sir James Balfour Paul, 'Clerical life in Scotland in the sixteenth century', Scottish Historical Review, xvii (1920), 177-189.

6)Dickinson, 89-90. New Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., 1231.

7)Dickinson, ibid., 81-89.

8)Ibid., 91.

9)R.K. Hanny, 'On the foundation of the College of Justice', Scottish Historical Review, xv (1918), 30-46. Dickinson, 47, 220-221.

10)R.K. Hanny, 'A study in Reformation history', Scottish Historical Review, xxiii (1926), 18-33.

11)Ibid., 33.

12)Lee, op. cit., 13.