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By Root 1119 0

preferences was a concern for order and decency, something that led him to back the authority of bishops and forms of ritual and church decoration that emphasized the holiness of worship. Under the authority of William Laud, initially as Bishop of London and later as Archbishop of Canterbury, and with the evident sympathy of Charles I, the English church became a safe haven for those opposed to predestinarian views and for those with relatively ceremonial tastes in worship. This was an important connection, too: a suspicion of, or hostility to, predestination gave renewed importance to the visible church as a means to salvation. Finally then, associated with this pursuit of beauty, order and decency in the visible church was a greater emphasis on the dignity and authority of the clergy. This ‘Laudian’ or ‘Arminian’ movement was not as unpopular in England as it would have been in Scotland. The danger, though, was that far from edifying believers this emphasis on holiness was a distraction, something that filled the senses, drawing attention away from the Word, and might even become an object of worship in itself.47

If the crown and bishops were not seen as the natural ally of reformation in Scotland, therefore, Charles I, his English church and Archbishop Laud were regarded with particular suspicion. As war between Protestant and Catholic powers broke out in Bohemia there was violent opposition to anti-predestinarian preaching in the Dutch republic. In England the promotion of ceremonialism was the really divisive issue, although it was also true that preaching predestination became more difficult under the government of Charles and William Laud. For informed and concerned Calvinists the danger was the same – that in the very period in which Protestantism was under sustained military assault, it was being weakened from within by the erosion of some of its fundamental theological commitments. Still worse, the Stuarts failed to intervene on the side of the true religion, despite the fact that James’s son-in-law was at the heart of the political crisis that had precipitated the war.

Popery was not necessarily about Catholics since weak Protestants (variously identified) could be popish too. Nonetheless the dangers of popery were (naturally enough) particularly associated with the Pope, and his agents. Especially reviled were the Jesuits, an order founded directly by the papacy in response to the challenge of the Protestant Reformation, and seminary priests trained in order to regain ordinary Christians for Catholicism in Protestant areas. It was unfortunate for Charles that the popishness of his Protestantism could so easily be associated with actual Catholicism at his court. Charles was married to a Catholic – Henrietta Maria – and under her influence his court was open to Catholic influences. From a certain point of view, therefore, the popishness of Laudianism was associated with an actual Catholic influence, which could only have adverse effects on the true religion under the Stuart crown. On past experience, this could become the basis of a conspiracy theory – that actual Catholics could, through the manipulation of weak and corrupt Protestants, subvert the true religion in England.48

To many Scottish Protestants the English court and church seemed to be betraying the Reformation message and the Protestant cause. This confirmed a lesson of history held with increasing conviction in Scotland – the kirk was not securely under a godly civil authority so long as kings, bishops and the English could determine matters of doctrine and liturgy. As the Prayer Book crisis unfolded, it was these very large issues in Reformation politics, about the constitution of the church and its relationship to secular authority, which came to predominate.

Given the stakes we might wonder why Charles introduced these ceremonial changes in Scotland. The answer, in part, is that since the stakes were so high he could not afford not to. Charles’s relatively ceremonial sensibilities were out of tune with mainstream Scottish opinion and it may