The Westminster Assembly of Divines ignored the office of reader, and when the Westminster Directory for Public Worship was adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1645, it may be said that the service of the reader was ostensibly and almost practically brought to an end in Scotland. It has to be stated, however, that readers were, nevertheless, employed in some parishes long after their office had ceased to be recognised in the constitutions of the church. Mr More, in his account of Scotland in 1715, describes the Sunday service in Scottish churches as follows:--"First the precentor, about half an hour before the preacher comes, reads two or three chapters to the congregation of what part of Scripture he pleases, or as the minister gives him directions. As soon as the preacher gets into the pulpit the precentor leaves reading, and sets a psalm-singing with the people, till the minister by some sign orders him to give over. The psalm over, the preacher begins confessing sins and begging pardon ... then he goes to sermon, delivered always by heart, and, therefore, sometimes spoiled by battologies, little impertinences, and incoherence." The reader was usually also precentor, and it will be a natural transition, therefore, to pass on now to an account of that part of the Sunday service which the precentor conducted. In the Reformed Church of Scotland a very limited space was originally allotted to the service of praise in public worship. "There is perhaps no country in Christendom," says Dr Cunningham, "in which psalmody has been as little cultivated as in Scotland. Wherever the Church of Rome reared her altars, music grew up under her shadow, and gave a new charm to her sensuous services. But Presbytery gave little countenance to such a hand-maid." The use of instruments in the service of praise was repudiated or almost abjured. Organs were not even allowed standing room in church. In 1574 the Kirk Session of Aberdeen gave orders "that the organis with all expedition be removit out of the kirk and made profeit of to the use and support of the puir." On his visit to Scotland in 1617 King James endeavoured to inaugurate a more aesthetic and cultured form of worship in Scotland, after the manner of what he had seen in England. Among other innovations he set up an organ in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood. "Upon Satterday, the 17th May," says Calderwood, "the English service was begun in the Chapel Royal with singing of quirristers, surplices, and playing on organes." The popular feeling, however, that in 1637 was aroused against the service book was turned against the organ also, and among the outbreaks of 1638 Spalding records that "the glorious organes of the Chapell Royall were maisterfullie broken doune, nor no service usit thair bot the haill chaplains, choristis, and musicians dischargeit, and the costlie organes altogether destroyit and unusefull."