The Scottish Reformation
Protestant nobles and preachers led by John Knox overthrow the old Church; Scotland's parliament breaks with Rome in 1560, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced from the throne.
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- John Knox — Jane Dawson, Yale University Press (2015)
- My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots — John Guy, Fourth Estate (2004)
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
By the 1550s many Scots resented the wealth of the Church and the French influence at court, where the regent Mary of Guise ruled for her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who was being brought up in France. Protestant nobles, the Lords of the Congregation, rebelled in 1559, encouraged by John Knox’s sermons; with English help they won. In August 1560 the Reformation Parliament rejected the pope’s authority and banned the Mass.
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- John Knox — Jane Dawson, Yale University Press (2015)
The reformers’ First Book of Discipline called for a school in every parish, a goal pursued for generations, which gave Scotland unusually high literacy. The new Kirk was run not by bishops but, increasingly, by assemblies of ministers and elders, the Presbyterian model.
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
Mary returned in 1561 as a Catholic queen of a Protestant country. After the murder of her husband Lord Darnley and her marriage to the prime suspect, the earl of Bothwell, she was forced to abdicate in 1567 in favour of her infant son James VI, who was raised a Protestant. She fled to England and was executed there in 1587.
- My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots — John Guy, Fourth Estate (2004)
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
A liberation from a corrupt church that put the Bible into the hands of ordinary people, built schools in every parish and taught Scots to govern their own congregations.
- John Knox — Jane Dawson, Yale University Press (2015)
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
A revolution by nobles who grabbed church wealth, which destroyed much of Scotland's medieval art and music and left Catholics a suspect minority for centuries.
- Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 — Jane E. A. Dawson, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
Why it matters today
The Reformation made Scotland a Presbyterian country, and the Kirk shaped its schools, its moral tone and its suspicion of hierarchy for four centuries. Today most Scots are not religious, but the legacy lingers in a prized tradition of education and a democratic, sometimes dour, streak. Its darker side, the sectarian divide between Protestants and Catholics, has not entirely disappeared.