Turning to the nobility and lairds, these followed the Crown’s example in encroaching on the Church’s wealth and privileges even to the extent that, for some families, the headship of a particular abbey or priory became their own, private preserve.55 However, as already mentioned, for all their dilapidation of the religious houses’ patrimony, comparatively few laymen by the end of the 1570s had also troubled to take over their right of presentation to parochial charges. In the 1580s, the situation began to change.
Temporal Lordships
The lynchpin of the change was James’s Act of Annexation of the Temporalities of Benefices to the Crown 1587,56 and it was certain consequences of this measure that were to have a profound effect on the identity of those who were to hold the majority of patronages throughout the following centuries. Instead of the Crown possessing all but a handful, such was the reversal that, by the time of the Patronage Act of 1712, private rights of presentation outnumbered the Crown’s by two to one.
The 1587 Act laid down that all the Roman Church’s temporality, that is its lands and their rents, were to be appropriated by the Crown, although various exceptions were made. Manses and glebes were to be exempted, as were the mansions of the bishops, the latter probably being kept by James in preparation for a full restoration of episcopacy later. Teinds were also largely exempted from annexation, which may have provided the Kirk with some small comfort, given that the temporality was now beyond their grasp, but financing the Church through the teinds remained far from satisfactory until the issue was set on a firmer footing by the Revocation scheme of Charles I.
There were other exemptions, and it was these which were to affect the issue of lay patronage thereafter. The first was those church lands already held through lay commendators or erected as temporal lordships.57, This meant that the noble families to whom this applied now had the security of a heritable right to these assets. Through a judicious beneficence, James continued to create these “lords of erection” to such an extent that, “At James’s death in 1625, 21 abbeys, 11 priories, six nunneries and one preceptory, either separately or conjointly, had been erected into temporal lordships. Indeed, of the 54 major ecclesiastical foundations in Scotland, only one—Dunfermline Abbey—had been retained, but not wholly preserved, by the Crown.”58 It was, however, the final exemption within the 1587 Act that was to prove crucial: namely, that all lands and rents of any benefice in the gift of a lay patron were to be excluded as well. Suddenly, the issue of patronage, previously of little particular concern to landed families, was of real significance. As they consolidated their lands as a heritable possession, they also took steps to assert the heritable rights that went with them—of which patronage was one. The newer temporal lords decided it was only wise to follow their example. Some idea of the number of benefices recorded as being in the gift of landed families from this time, can be derived from Kirk’s investigations: “The patronage of 29 churches annexed to Paisley, for example, fell to Claud Hamilton by 1592; Kelso with the right to present to more than 40 churches became the heritable property of Francis Stewart in 1588; Kilwinning, with 16 annexed churches, was assigned to William Melville in 1592; Arbroath, with 37 specified churches, was bestowed in 1608 on the Marquis of Hamilton ; and Alexander Lyndsay, created Lord Spynie with the erection of the lordship out of the temporality of the bishopric of Moray, came to possess the patronage of some 40 churches.”59
The General Assembly’s reaction was one of alarm, and the following year, petitioned the king to cease bestowing patronages, since it was “to the evident hurt of the haill Kirk.” The plea was repeated in 1591 with equal lack of success.60 It is possible that these displays of anxiety on the Assembly’s part, were not altogether justified by its experiences of patronage from the Reformation up to this time. Indeed, there is little evidence to contradict the impression that presentations had, on the whole, been exercised with sensitivity.61
On the other hand, it must be admitted that the Crown had been the main source of presentations before 1587, and, after such consistency, there may have been nervousness that nomination was now in the hands of a heterogeneous collection of “Earles, Lords, Barrones, and uthers.”62 More importantly, the Kirk would hardly have been reassured to witness the ways in which grantees could manipulate the law in order to give themselves a patronal status to which they were not entitled. Thus, instead of simply gifting land and its patronage, the Crown might award someone the right to all the parochial teinds. The result of this was, in effect, to transform the grantee into a benefice holder, and any minister admitted to the charge could therefore only be his vicar, not his presentee. In this instance, as with any of the vicarages which the king chose to erect into benefices, the favored grantee simply awarded himself the title of patron, whether merited or not.63 Such a practice predictably left the Assembly with a strong sense of unease, and in 1593, they were expressly asking “That his Majestie will consider the great prejudice done to the haill Kirk by erecting of the teynds of diverse prelacies in temporalitie . . . be the quhilks the planting of Kirks is greatly prejudged.”64
All was not gloom for the Church, however. An historic upturn in fortunes had undoubtedly come the previous year, when Parliament with James’s assent passed its famous “Golden Act” which finally recognized and established the presbyterian system of government through kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods and assemblies. The limitation was that the Black Act (1584) asserting the Crown’s authority in matters spiritual and temporal was not cancelled; and, crucially, the king retained his right to convene, and to determine the meeting place of General Assemblies. Not unexpectedly, patronage was also retained, but presbytery was unequivocally recognized as the appropriate body to which all presentations were to be directed. If the patron did not present within six months, the jus devolutum [devolved right] was to come to the presbytery. If the presbytery did not induct a properly qualified presentee, the patron was allowed to keep all the teinds.65
Summary
It is perhaps ironic that the Early Church saw lay patrons as ideal agents for the work of expansion and consolidation: everywhere, patrons would provide, build and endow, then, having done so, exert themselves to protect their investment. The problem for the Church was that succeeding generations inherited the land, but not necessarily their forebears’ piety or generous instincts towards the faith. They were prepared to continue a paternal custody over the churches on their property, but increasingly, it took the form of a guardianship that threatened to marginalize ecclesiastical authority, rather than serve it. The Church’s ultimate response was Pope Alexander’s judicious portrayal of admission to benefices as a joint venture, valid if both church and layman recognized and respected each other’s role. For all the merits of such an arrangement, however, the large–scale appropriation of parish churches by religious institutions, and the anxiety of the Crown to defend and expand its rights, were sufficient, in Scotland, to upset the balance necessary for this to survive in credible form. The classical question of who, then, should have the greater say in appointments to the nation’s ecclesiastical benefices, Crown or papacy, also colored Scottish relations with Rome down to the Reformation. In this, the papal concessions of the Indult of 1487 were crucial in settling who emerged the stronger, although, as can be gleaned from Vatican archives, in reality, the Crown had gained the advantage long before: “on the basis of the supplications . . . it may be concluded that by the reign of James I, if not earlier, there can be little doubt that benefice appointment was effectively controlled in Scotland.”66