| Summary: | The relations between the Scottish reformed church and the English were at first entirely cordial, mainly because the reformers did not differ in their views on ecclesiastical polity. The forms of government and of worship in the two countries were less dissimilar than has sometimes been supposed, and for a time the constitution of the Scottish church showed a tendency to approximate to that of the Church of England. The later divergence was due to the appearance of ideas on church government which were formulated by Beza and introduced into Britain by his disciples, Cartwright and Melville. In each country a vigorous party demanded equality among pastors and government by a system of courts, and their programme was widely accepted because it promised to remedy many undeniable abuses. Both presbyterians and episcopalians soon became aware that an identical struggle was in progress in the two countries, and the first evidence of this consciousness appeared about 1580, as a result of personal contacts made in the preceding years. In 1584 the archbishops of Canterbury and St. Andrews became allies in their defence of episcopal government and in 1584 and 1585 a number of Scottish presbyterian ministers exiled in England, associated closely with their English brethren. in 1586 and 158? the English presbyterians were encouraged by the success of the Scots in overthrowing episcopacy, and in the succeeding years Scotland provided a refuge for English ecclesiastical rebels - Udell and Penry. Meanwhile, Bancroft, with greater zeal and less discretion than Whitgift, continued the policy towards Scotland which the primate had initiated, and the last decade of the century was a period of increasing tension. While the Scottish ministers were suspicious of the English bishops, the English puritans looked forward to the accession of a monarch who had sometimes been the ally of their Scottish friends.
|
|---|
