A Great Grievance. Laurence A.B. Whitley

whilk being composed of some delegatis from the Kirk-Session of every pareoch, importis in thair Actis the consent of the haill.”48 It must be allowed that Johnston’s claim has validity when applied to those settlements where the presbytery was, from the start, the prime mover in the vacancy process, perhaps sending a leet of candidates to the parish and thereafter canvassing opinion upon it. In such instances, it might actually seek a presentation from the patron as its final step before admission. As A.I. Dunlop has pointed out in his article on the polity of the Kirk between 1600 and 1637, this was not uncommon.49 Indeed, as was the case in the planting of Calder (Edinburgh) in 1617, and St. Andrews (St. Andrews) in 1639, the presentation might even be made weeks, or even years, after the admission had taken place.50 Clearly, in such situations, a congregation’s sentiments would have been reflected in the presbytery’s actions. However, Johnston is noticeably uncertain on the matter of what the presbytery was to do when (as became more common) the patron took the initiative and issued a presentation first. Having said that there should not be an intrusion problem if the presbytery’s privileges are observed, he then, in effect, contradicts himself by conceding that determined, parochial opposition can indeed happen. In such a case, his solution is that the presbytery should not admit the presentee. He then goes a step further, by adding: “And to tell yow my thochtis, as they ay come into my head....I think the pareoch hes quandam speciem vocis negativae [something akin to a negative voice] at the leist, quhilk yit takis no wayes away the patrones right of patronage.”51 He does not, however, provide any references to confirm his view, which itself is complicated by his additional opinion that congregational refusals should be overruled if redolent of obstinacy. Even this statement fits awkwardly with the succeeding argument, which likens the patron’s role to that of a matchmaker: “quhither any freind to the partie, or the partie to thair freindis, be the first proponer of the match, I think thair is no so essentiall a difference...gif the match be maid with consent of parties.”52 The difficulty, of course, with the analogy was that, in the ecclesiastical domain, consent was not unrestricted, nor was there guidance for presbyteries as to what constituted unreasonable refusal.

To be fair to Johnston, however, the whole issue of consent, that is to say, how it could be incorporated into a presentations system and by how much, had been unresolved since the legislation of 1567, as Donaldson mentions: “How, if at all, the patron’s presentation and the superintendent’s collation were reconciled with any right of congregations to choose their ministers is by no means clear . . . and the indications are that the wishes of the parishioners, if not wholly ignored, could be influential only by being made known informally to the patron.”53

      To sum up, the flaw of Johnston’s main argument is that he accepts that patronage is a “thraldome” which the Kirk would be better without, yet, instead of simply saying that it is something which must be endured for reasons of expedience, he also attempts to convey that it is not a burden at all, if properly exercised. This contradiction is one indication that the statement’s author is not entirely confident that he has a sufficient answer to all the issues raised by the Glassford complaint. His declared ill-health and the necessity for haste would possibly have had a bearing on this, but, almost certainly, there were other contributory factors.

In the first place, Johnston’s major difficulty was that he could not bear to think, given the importance of the Kirk’s quickly consolidating the gains of the revolution, that parishes and presbyteries could actually allow themselves to become embroiled in disputes over what were, to him, largely matters of opinion and preference—and this at a time, when, above all, the pressing need was simply to fill vacancies.54 Indeed, he knew there were areas where long vacancies would have been especially damaging. These were centers of influence, like Edinburgh, or parishes where the local magnates were Roman Catholic or episcopal in sympathy. This was why the 1638 Assembly, seeing the urgent necessity to advance to such places men able to “stop the mouthes of the adversaries,” had revived an Assembly Act of 1596, ordering presbyteries to take particular care that this be done.55

      Secondly, it would have occurred to Johnston that Glassford’s challenge to the Kirk’s working relationship with the patrons might well be repeated in other parishes. Glassford’s patronage was in private hands, but the worrying thought was that, since many parishes still had the king as patron, these too might now be emboldened to complain about the level of attention paid to their preferences, thereby creating the possibility of much damage to the Covenant’s professions of respect for the Crown.

      These two concerns would have fuelled Johnston’s anxiety to produce a rebuttal which was both swift and assertive. In the immediate term, he was probably successful, but, as will be seen in the next section, the issues which had risen to the surface at Glassford were not to disappear. If anything, Johnston’s treatise served to stimulate debate about patronage rather than dissipate it. Nonetheless, what is significant about his essay is that it provides not only a revealing insight into the thinking of the Covenanters’ leading legal adviser, but also emerges as the Kirk’s first serious discussion of the tensions involved in attempting to reconcile the ideal of congregational consultation with the interests of a landowning elite, jealous of their rights.

      Attitudes to Lay Patronage in the 1640s

For all his attempts to quash the complaints raised at Glassford, it is clear that Johnston also knew the Church could not afford to ignore them. Having now been voiced publicly, they were not likely simply to go away. That the Kirk was well aware it could not forget about the issue can be glimpsed in the wording of some of the Assembly legislation ratified by Parliament in 1640. Although the rights of patrons were upheld, the Act for planting of kirks unprovided with ministers through the patron’s default reminded presbyteries to use every opportunity to fill vacancies, but at the same time to obtain the consent of the parishioners.56 Again, the Act anent admission of ministers to kirks which belonged to bishoprics reassured patrons of their status, yet took the opportunity of pointedly asserting that presentations had not always been necessary to establish right to a stipend.57

An indication of how matters were now rapidly developing can be seen the following year in a book, The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland, by the prominent Covenanter, Alexander Henderson.58 In the section on the admission of ministers, Henderson (who writes in the guise of a detached observer) suggests by his tone that the principle of popular consent should be regarded as settled in Scotland, and that presentations are, by contrast, merely endured for diplomatic reasons: “liberty of election is in part prejudged and hindered by patronages and presentations which are still in use there, not by the rules of their discipline, but by toleration of that which they cannot amend; in the meantime procuring, that in the case of presentations by patrons, the examination and tryall by the presbytery is still the same. The congregation, where he is presented to serve, is called, if they have aught to object against his doctrine or life, after they have heard him, or [if they have not] that their consent may be had.”59

By 1642, it is clear that the status quo was becoming less and less attractive. At that year’s Assembly, an attempt at reform appeared in the guise of the Act anent the order for making lists to his majestie, and other patrons, for presentations; the order of tryall of expectants, and for trying the quality of Kirks.60 The main feature of this was the revelation that an arrangement had been negotiated with the king, so that, if a vacancy were to arise