The directory decreed that the power of electing was placed in the hands of the session, who would then intimate their choice to the presbytery, the congregation having given concurrence. The act of election was to be moderated [that is, guided, supervised] by a minister from the presbytery.
To begin with, there was variation in the ways a word like “call” was used. Some presbyteries (in common with the directory) did not speak of a call at all, but only of election. Others, like Cupar presbytery, used the term to describe the choice that had taken place and which was now being intimated to the presbytery.60 If any documentation was produced, it would frequently be in the form of a petition to the court, signed by some prominent parishioners (not necessarily elders), requesting it to proceed to the next stage in filling the charge.61 Some presbyteries spoke of a “call and invitation”62 as if they were two separate activities. In Paisley presbytery, a call is a signed document to be lodged with the court, specifying the person sought to be minister.63 By contrast, the word call could be used in courts like the synod of Aberdeen or the presbytery of Strathbogie, simply to mean a request for an expectant to come and be heard.64 How use of the word “call” came to develop will be considered later.
There was also the matter of an election’s moderation by a member of presbytery. Although the directory specified that this should be done, little attention appears to have been given to the regulation. Usually, presbytery minutes record only that a session had met and made choice. Repeatedly, as in the case of South Leith, the elders seem to have been left to organize such elections by themselves. Again, at Paisley presbytery on the 27 February 1655, when a call from Houston was suddenly refused by the candidate named, some parishioners immediately appeared with another call to someone else. Presbytery proceeded on the basis of the second call, although neither it nor the first one had been moderated.
Mention of the Houston parishioners raises the question of whether or not the session were indeed the sole electors in every instance. Once again, it is clear that the practice varied. In general, sessions were not especially concerned to protect the exclusivity of their privilege. Similarly, if it meant vacant charges could be filled more quickly, the church courts were not inclined to be fastidious about the details of the directory’s injunctions, as at Kemback (St Andrews presbytery) in 1653, where the session, heritors and heads of families were invited jointly to elect.65 Flexibility could not, however, be allowed to drift into irresponsibility, and Aberdeen synod were shocked to discover, in April 1660, that the elders of Innernochtie (Alford presbytery) had meekly handed over their right of choice to the Earl of Mar. They were immediately instructed to elect a minister for themselves and thereby “preserve their owne liberty of nomination as iff ther hade never been done any thing theranent.”66
Some sessions were to find, however, that they had never possessed their right in the first place. In June 1654, the session of three congregations that made up the High Kirk of Aberdeen (St Nicholas) discovered that the magistrates had, without any consultation, elected and called the minister of Ellon, John Paterson, to fill the third charge. Their protestations sparked off a period of strained relations between the two bodies, which was not ameliorated when, in December 1658, the city Council nominated Paterson again, and demanded the session’s concurrence. When the controversy climaxed before the synod of Aberdeen on the 20 April 1659, the Council produced a charter from 1638 which showed that election had been given to the provost, bailies and the people of the city. Accordingly, since the Act of 1649 had taken away the right of patronage in order to give it to the people, “thie act of Parliament doth nowayes concerne us, becaus our nomination was still befor in thie people’s hands, and could not fall under that act as bieing taken away.” The session’s response, that the directory had been commissioned in order to provide a uniform system for the whole country, failed to impress the synod and the Council won its case.
The subject of magistrates’ rights in planting churches in Scotland’s major burghs became a matter of national debate in the mid–eighteenth century, and will be discussed in a later chapter. However, it will be noted that the Aberdeen controversy is of interest in that it exposed a question that would certainly have arisen again, had the Restoration not occurred: were council members truly interchangeable with elders as representatives of the people in church affairs? If not, then, logically, they belonged in the category of patrons. In 1690, when a system for vacancy filling without patronage was next considered for legislation, the regulations recognized this was a delicate area, and so were careful to bring urban councils into the camp of the former by pairing them with kirk sessions. However, after the return of presentations in 1712, they acted on their own and often in the same manner as Aberdeen. By way of contrast, kirk sessions in the 1650s tended to follow the opposite pattern. Although there was no formal requirement upon them to consult with other bodies, it was usually accepted that if there were powerful interests connected with the parish, then these could not easily be ignored. In most towns, the kirk session were happy to respect the sentiments of those magistrates who were not already elders, and as at Cupar in 1657,67 the line between consultation and effectual joint election was commonly blurred. Another, but parallel, situation applied at South Leith, second charge, in 1657, when the election was by the session and the Four Incorporated Trades.
In the more remote areas, consultation was not just a matter of courtesy but necessity. At Birnie (Elgin presbytery) in 1658, for example, when the session decided to assert their independence over the choice of minister, the presbytery and synod hastily stepped in and suppressed the call, stating as one of their reasons that it had been “without the consent of the heritors.”68 Since neither the directory nor Act makes any reference to heritors, the statement is extraordinary, and yet it gives an indication of the niche heritors had been establishing for themselves within the election process. As lesser landlords grew in status and importance through the rest of the century, it became obvious that when next the identity of ministerial electors came to be debated, the role of the heritor could not be ignored.
Summary
The Westminster assembly did not close finally until the 25 March 1652. The original vision of ecclesiastical uniformity between the two nations, based on a presbyterian system, withered away, especially after 1645, when the military importance of the Scots diminished. In the end, its enduring significance for the Scottish Church lay in its fostering of a confession of faith, larger and shorter catechism, directory for public worship and psalter, all of which were adopted by the Kirk and retained through the ensuing centuries.
When in 1644, the agenda turned to the subject of election and ordination, the floodgates opened within the Kirk to a debate that was to continue to the end of the decade. The discussions focused upon how, in filling a vacancy, the roles of presbytery, eldership and congregation should be apportioned. The majority view was that the people should be given a voice, but the question was, how loud a voice should it be? In the end, it was felt that it could safely be no more than a dissenting voice, but the weight accorded that disagreement was the vexed issue.
Although the matter continued to stimulate debate within the Church, the Westminster Assembly did not formally condemn patronage nor was the Kirk in a position to bully the Scottish Parliament into removing it. However, the Engagement and subsequent defeat at Preston in 1648 altered the political landscape sufficiently for the 1649 abolition to take place. The procedure for vacancy–filling now had to be decided. George Gillespie’s view that an intransigent congregation could be worked upon until brought round was rejected as being impractical. As a result, the 1649 Act of abolition stated baldly that no one should be obtruded against
