was practiced before the recent novations, however, they should remember, (a), settlements without presentations were not established as a part of that liberty before now, and indeed, the opposite custom has been tolerated; “All that can be said, that it [abolition] was wishit for and supplicated for; and so aucht we to doe, even as much as they did, to compleine of the abuse, and supplicat superior poweris,”43 (b), it is for the Assembly or parliament to declare whether or not something is a corruption, before it can be said that the Covenant implies it should be abjured, (c), on such a national issue as this, it is not for individuals to question what the Assembly expressly allows, and they should properly be censured for it, and (d), for all their fervor, they are in fact only binding themselves “to recover that quhilk was never had, and so was never lost.”44
In conclusion, he hopes his statement will be used, not to defend patronage—for he will labor, by all lawful means, to free the Church from it—but only for removing the objections that the complainers have to it.
Critique of Johnston’s Arguments
Taken as a whole, Johnston’s statement is coherent and persuasive, except for his fourth point, much of which is confused, if not questionable. It is important to consider this in detail, since some of the matters it covers reappear in later controversies.
The first part of his argument appears to be that the Church has never been opposed to presentations as such, only the particular way in which presentations were understood to operate in earlier times, that is, as a process by which a vacancy could be filled without deference to ecclesiastical examination and admission. He substantiates this claim by referring to the frequency with which the Assembly, from the beginning, called for its collation rights to be upheld, yet, by contrast, was silent on the subject of patronage’s abolition. To this it must be answered, however, that there is little indication that the early Reformers collectively entertained a different definition of the word presentation from that used by the next generation. It is certainly difficult to derive such an impression from the text of either Book of Discipline, and Gordon Donaldson makes no allowance for it: “Between 1560 and 1567 . . . while the crown showed a certain hesitation about making presentations and usually preferred to dispone benefices by simple gift, other patrons in general adhered to the traditional procedure of presentation followed by episcopal collation.”45
As for the existence of actual dialectic about the issue of lay patronage during the early Reformation period, Johnston is right when he alludes to its paucity. Nonetheless, it is still justifiable to conclude that the early Reformers’ ideal vision of “lawful election” did not include presentations (of any kind) by lay patrons.46 That there was not more attention paid to a campaign for actual abolition, was due to a pragmatism which obliged them to stifle such ambitions until a more favorable climate showed itself. In this respect, for example, a particular inducement to tread warily seems to have taken place in 1565, when the Queen took the opportunity of warning the Assembly that the Crown was not prepared to make compromises on the patronage issue. Since the Church was in need of the queen’s assistance in trying to resolve its increasingly desperate financial crisis (see chapter 1), the incentive would have been overwhelming for the Assembly to soften its position on presentations, and, instead, focus on the vital, but less confrontational issue of collation rights.
Johnston’s next argument is that patronage and the Kirk’s freedom of election need not be incompatible, since the crucial issue is always whether or not a forced intrusion takes place. In his view, such intrusions should not happen so long as presentations are channeled through presbyteries, where the candidate can again47 be examined and then admitted. He forms this conclusion on the grounds that, “the Presbyterie, 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.
