In search of dissenters

If your ancestor broke away from the Kirk, then you may have to dig a little deeper to find their records

Words by CHRIS PATON

Although the state-based Church of Scotland (‘the Kirk’) was established at the Reformation in 1560, it has had a tortuous history. Over the last four centuries there have been many doctrinal based splits from the body, leading to the creation of smaller, equally Presbyterian, denominations.

Between 1560 and 1690, the greatest threat to the Kirk’s cohesion was the issue of episcopacy, the rule of bishops. The Presbyterian notion of church governance was entirely democratic, with congregations calling their own ministers and electing elders to serve their needs. In the aftermath of the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the Stuart monarchs, King James VI and his successor King Charles I, were in favour of imposing a more Anglican style of governance, as found in England; here the head of the Church was the monarch, who controlled the national flock through a system of archbishops and bishops. It was the diametric opposite of the Presbyterian system.

In 1638 a National Covenant was signed by Scottish nobles and lay people supporting Presbyterianism, with these ‘Covenanters’ challenging the episcopal desires of Charles I, leading to the Bishops Wars and the Wars of Three Kingdoms – the outcome was an English Commonwealth and the separation of Charles I’s head from his body.

After the Restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, the Presbyterian form of governance was targeted by the Crown, and episcopacy imposed. Congregations that refused to renounce the Covenant were persecuted and forced to meet in secret outdoor ‘conventicles’; those found preaching in such a manner could be executed. Following the Sanquhar Declaration of 1680, which renounced allegiance to any monarch, a wing of the Covenanters called the Cameronians, led by Richard Cameron, resisted militarily, leading to open warfare and the ‘Killing Time’ of the 1680s. The issue of episcopacy was finally defeated by the Glorious Revolution, with Presbyterianism restored in 1689 as the form of the Scottish church. The hard line Cameronians refused to join the settlement and created the Reformed Presbyterian Church, while the wing of the Kirk in favour of episcopacy split away to become the Scottish Episcopal Church. Following the Act of Union of 1707, many landowners wished to have a say in which ministers might be appointed to churches on their patch. The 1712 Patronage Act enabled this, leading to further schisms from dissenters, with the Original Secession Church formed in 1740, and the Relief

The issue of episcopacy Church in 1761. The issue lingered for a century, with the biggest split occurring in 1843, when a third of the Kirk’s was finally defeated by the members walked away to form the Free Presbyterian Church. It would not be until 1929 that most of these bodies re-joined

Glorious Revolution the main Kirk, although some denominations and congregations remained independent. For family historians, the parish records of some of these dissenting congregations can be found on ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople.gov.uk) in the ‘Other Records’ category, whilst others are found at the National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk), local archives, or in private hands. Records from the Scottish Episcopal Church (scotland. anglican.org) are held across the country, with large collections in Aberdeen, Dundee, and St. Andrew’s. S

Chris Paton runs the Scotland’s Greatest Story service (scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk) and is author of ‘Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records’ and ‘Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet’. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Genealogical Studies from the University of Strathclyde, and blogs at scottishgenes.blogspot.com