The Reformation from Popery—of which the seeds had been sown during the lapse of the half century which preceded the abolition of that system of national religion in 1560—forms the subject-matter of a distinct epoch, which has been amply illustrated in the works of Principal Robertson, Dr Cook, and Dr M‘Crie, and which has been further developed more authentically in the pages of the “Booke of the Universall Kirke;” and it is not within the range of the present compilation to take any retrospect of the events which occurred in reference to the Reformed Church of Scotland, prior to the year 1633, when King Charles I. was crowned King of Scotland. It may be deemed sufficient to note merely, that Popery was abolished, by act of Parliament, on the 24th of August 1560, and the reformed doctrines recognised and tolerated by contemporary statute; that, in 1567, the Protestant Church was established and endowed; that the mixed Episcopal and Presbyterian form of Church government which subsisted during the first thirty-two years of its existence, yielded to the Presbyterian polity, which was established by act of Parliament on the 5th of June 1592; and that Episcopacy having been insinuated through the instrumentality of the General Assembly of the Church,[1] in consequence of the intrigues of King James VI., became, though in a modified shape, the established form of the Protestant Church in Scotland, by virtue of various acts of Parliament.[2] Such was the nature of the Established Protestant Church of Scotland when Charles I. ascended the thrones of both the British kingdoms, at the demise of his father, on the 22d of March 1625; and such it continued to be up to the time that we have selected as the commencement of the period, to the illustration of which the following pages are devoted.