Formation Anne, the second daughter of James II, was Protestant. She had become queen after the death of King William in 1702 (William’s wife, Queen Mary, died in 1694). Anne died without heirs only two years after being crowned, however, ending the Protestant Stuart line. Since Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement of 1701 that restricted the monarchy to Protestants, they had to locate the Stuarts’ nearest Protestant relatives. They found them in the German House of Hanover, and King George I began the new Hanoverian line. However, Anne had a Catholic half brother, another James, living in France, who claimed hereditary right to the throne. British leaders were doing everything they could to keep James out of the picture and strengthen the new dynasty. One tactic was to restore the right of patronage to landowners who would pledge loyalty to the Protestant line of succession. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland still opposed patronage in theory, but they opposed a Catholic monarch coming to the throne even more. They accepted the reintroduction of patronage with the understanding that local presbyteries had the right to overrule any patron’s appointment of a minister. In 1730, however, the British Parliament took that right away, and a number of presbyteries protested strongly. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland overruled the protesters and continued to sanction patronage, the dissident presbyteries seceded to form their own Associate Presbytery in 1733. By 1745 the Seceders had grown large enough to form the Associate Synod. These staunch Scottish Presbyterians saw themselves as the true church, in contrast to the compromisers in the main body of the Church of Scotland. It was not long, however, before the Seceders themselves divided into two groups labeled Burghers and Anti-Burghers, over another issue rooted in anti-Catholicism. In 1745, the grandson of James II, Charles Stuart (known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) backed by his cousin Louis XV of France, tried one last time to take back the throne of England for the Catholic Stuarts. The attempt failed, but a significant number of Scots had supported the uprising, raising fears that there might be yet another rebellion. To stop that from happening, burgesses (city officials) in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Perth, cities where support for Charles Stuart had been high, were required to take a loyalty oath.13 In addition to swearing allegiance to the monarch George II and a list of other British authorities, they were required to declare that they held to “the true religion presently professed 13. Callum G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 23.
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