GLASGOW: J. SMITH & SON; AND MAURICE OGLE. PERTH: JAMES DEWAR. ABERDEEN: A. BROWN & CO.; G. CLARK & SON; AND L. SMITH. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, AND CO. M.DCCC.XXXIX. EDINBURGH PRINTING COMPANY. PREFACE. “BOOKE OF THE UNIVERSALL KIRK.” The printing of this, the earliest Record of the Reformed Church in Scotland, has now reached a period in the history of that Church, which renders it fitting that this impression should be accompanied with a more precise statement than has yet been given of its character and its fate. For many years past, Dr Lee, Principal Clerk of the General Assembly, made strenuous, but ineffectual, exertions, to recover for the Church, the original Record of the period extending from 1560 to 1616. That Record, which is known to historians by the title of the “Booke of the Universall Kirk,” had been surreptitiously purloined, and found its way into the hands of the Trustees of Sion College, in London; and although hopes were latterly entertained that their restoration to the Church might be effected, these hopes are now at an end. During the investigations which were instituted by a Committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of Church Patronage in Scotland, in the year 1834, three volumes of the Record were produced by the official custodier of them, for the consideration of that Committee. Their authenticity was established by the testimony of Dr Lee, and other competent judges; and the Committee having suspended its investigations, and made a report of the evidence which it had obtained, these Books were left in the keeping of the clerks, and perished in the great conflagration by which the Houses of Parliament were consumed, on the 16th of October 1834. Such is briefly the history of the valuable Record of which these pages contain many of the earlier Acts and proceedings in the Church of Scotland.