valuable insights into contemporary attitudes to patronage are found in the papers of Robert Baillie# (1599–1662), who was minister of Kilwinning (Irvine presbytery) until his appointment to the chair of divinity at Glasgow university in 1642. Baillie was a man of moderate principles, and appears as someone who was happiest “straddling to some degree the divide between presbyterian and Episcopalian.”32 This stemmed more from open–mindedness than the desire to trim, and made him willing, on issues like royal authority and episcopacy itself, to modify his views according to the merits of the situation. His opinions on the subject of patronage, however, remained consistent during the period of the revolution, and these were that, although it might be good to give the topic of reform a public airing, the time was “not seasonable,” and to do so would only stir up difficulties, especially with the king, as largest patron.33
Despite its boldness in other matters, the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 shared Baillie’s circumspection. According to Johnston of Wariston, the Assembly avoided making subscription to the Second Book of Discipline compulsory, purely in order to avoid raising “scrouples anent teynds and patronages.”34 Instead, while avoiding any objection to presentations, it simply required that “there be a respect had to the congregation, and that no person be intruded . . . contrare to the will of the congregation.”35 The issue of patronage would not, however, lie down, but instead surfaced for debate at the Assembly of 1639. Alarmed at the damage any prolonged confrontation on the matter would do to the presbyterian cause generally among the landed interest, Johnston hurriedly intervened to emphasize that no harm was intended against the rights of patrons, and he prevailed upon the Assembly not only to affirm that this was their view, but also to express their gladness that parliament had recently ratified “the Act of Parliament 1592, quhairin Laick Patronages ar expreslie reserved.”36
Interestingly, Johnston’s intervention failed to reassure the king’s commissioner to the Assembly, John Stewart, first Earl of Traquair, who felt sufficiently worried to enter a minute in the registers of the Privy Council, disassociating himself from any hurt which might yet occur to the king’s patronal rights, and reserving the Crown’s right thereafter to seek redress.37 Almost certainly, Traquair saw that a popular, reforming movement like the one he was witnessing, would be difficult to control, and that the Covenanting leaders had put themselves in a particularly precarious position on the matter of presentations. On the one hand, they had been rousing the people to assert their spiritual liberty, while at the same time, they were asking them to refrain from challenging the continuation of a privilege like patronage, purely on the expedient that it was “maist convenient for the Kirk at this tyme to silence these questions, and tolerat many thingis (quhairof they wald faine haiff redres) for the setling of the substantiall Governement of this Kirk.”38 Traquair would have seen it as inevitable that those less able to discern the diplomatic niceties of the situation would, eventually, break ranks. In the event, he was correct.
What became the focus of contention was whether or not the Covenant’s reference to the “discipline” of the Church, should be directly equated with what was laid out in the Second Book of Discipline. If so, it was a serious matter, for members of a congregation would therefore be in breach of their sworn allegiance to the Covenant, if they accepted a presentee who had not been elected by them. This was precisely the argument put forward by the people of Glassford (Hamilton presbytery), when they took an aversion to the patron’s choice for the vacancy there, and such was the anxiety it aroused in Baillie, he wrote, in 1639, for help to Johnston, who was legal adviser to the Assembly. On hearing that a similar scenario was unfolding in another parish, Johnston considered the situation serious enough for him to leave his sick-bed to make, as he saw it, a definitive statement of the Kirk’s position on presentations, before things got out of hand.39
Johnston of Wariston’s Statement
Johnston’s paper is lengthy, but it provides a remarkable insight into what the leading figure in the Church at the time was thinking, and is worthy of attention. Its salient points can be summarized:
(i). only fanatics could think of raising, unnecessarily, questions of national significance at a time when the Church is trying to settle after the recent upheavals;
(ii). swearing to maintain the Kirk’s discipline is not the same as maintaining the Book of Discipline; there has been no specific instruction for the book to be subscribed by congregations, and in any case, there are also other guides to doctrine and discipline contained in past Acts of Assembly, which the Kirk could equally refer to—indeed, where an Act and the book conflict, the Act is to be preferred; whatever the Books of Discipline might say, the clear thread of parliamentary legislation since 1560 has been to uphold the rights of patrons, moreover, the Assembly itself has virtually done the same; even the Assembly of 1581, which entered the text of the second Book in its registers, contradicted it soon afterwards, by recording a requirement for all presentations to be directed to presbyteries; repeatedly, in subsequent Assemblies, the language of the minutes seem to suggest that presentations are an accepted fact of life; in summation, it is obvious from observation and from Acts of Parliament and Assembly, that the practice suggested by the Book “hes never come in practise, is obsolet, and the contrarie thairof continuallie tolerated.”40
(iii). the complainers are mistaken about the form of the book; only the first ten chapters contain directives, and none of these expressly condemns patronage; in chapter eleven, abuses are complained of, and in chapter twelve, supplication is made to have matters like patronage reformed; however, the abandonment of presentations was only sought, not enacted; this means the Covenant oath can hardly apply to something that ought to be done, but only to matters which are actually enjoined;
(iv). the complainers are also mistaken about the book’s use of the word presentation; in present usage, a presentation is separate from collation and institution; in earlier times however, it is clear, from Acts of Parliament and Assembly, that a settlement by presentation meant it took place without any collation, admission or examination by the Church at all; this habit of patrons planting benefices pleno jure [with full authority], was an issue of great annoyance to the Church, as may be seen from the resolutions of Assembly from 1563 onwards; yet patronage per se was not condemned, indeed, surely someone whose presentation is directed to the presbytery, who is then tried before the congregation and admitted by the presbytery, cannot be said to be intruded upon that people; be that as it may, Johnston personally thinks that a presbytery should resist implementing a presentation where the people are unanimously averse to the candidate, and that, on the face of it, the congregation has a right of negation (which should not nullify a patron’s right of patronage any more than the presbytery’s limited power of veto does, since, after all, he can continue to present other candidates); on the other hand, if a parish’s opposition is obviously “of will, and not of witt,”41 then presbytery should regulate its obstinacy; in summation, he does not think patronage is incompatible with election— it is like a parent or guardian initiating a marriage for his ward; in such a situation, it does not matter who is the proposer of the match, as long as it proceeds on the basis of consent;
(v). if the complainers wish to invoke the Covenant, let them remember that by it they swore to eschew the type of dangerous and divisive conduct they are now pursuing, “quhairof treulie I know none so great as this war to putt the Nobilitie, Gentrie, and Ministrie, be the eares togider [i.e., at variance];”42 further, the Covenant binds them
