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doi : 10.1017/S0009640708001820 Scottish Presbyterians and the Act of Union 1707. By Jeffrey Stephen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. vii + 279 pp. $80.00 cloth.
In the wake of the Revolution and the accession of William III, the Scottish Convention of Estates abolished episcopacy on July 22, 1689, and within less than a year most ejected Presbyterian ministers were restored to their former parishes, thereby setting the stage for one of the more anomalous arrangements of church and state in Europe: with the Act of Union in 1707, two national churches with radically different polities agreed to coexist under the single Parliament of Great Britain in Whitehall. In this important book, Jeffrey Stephen offers the first full-length study of the precise relation of the Presbyterian Church to the Act of Union and the events surrounding it. The book presents a detailed, and at times hourly, account of the debates within the Presbyterian Church over the terms of the union and examines both the highest judicatories of the church and the popular religious response in the presbyteries and shires. Stephen utilizes all the pertinent manuscript sources, especially unpublished correspondence, and he offers a fresh and compelling interpretation of the pamphlet literature and church records. The bibliographic breadth and the judicious analysis make this book the definitive study of the topic.
The opening chapters set forth the debate over an incorporating union at the highest levels of government and church courts (chapters 1-3). After the Revolution Settlement, Presbyterians sought to nurture a common, national presbyterian identity and build a reformed church that would shape and unify moral life. The Presbyterian Church looked to the Scottish Parliament for support in areas such as the security of Presbyterian polity, national fasts, and education; suppression of popery; discipline for profaneness; and supplying vacant churches. The ideal had much in common with parallel developments in England outlined by Tony Claydon in...