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The following paragraphs
were extracted from a feature in the "Wishaw Press, August 20 1937,
reporting on several sermons and addresses made to the congregation of
Bonkle Church by Rev. James Winchester BD. There are also many references
to Reverend Andrew Scot and his son Reverend James Scott who
between them steered the congregation 101 years of service. This article
in it's full form can be found at,
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| In the year 1688 is memorable in British history as the date of the revolution, when the last of the Stewart Kings, James II, was driven from the throne and Protestantism was firmly established under William and Mary. In the revolution settlement which followed, in 1690 Presbyterianism was finally restored in Scotland and the dark days of the persecution of the Covenanters came to an end | ||||
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| A very important act of the Scottish Parliament in 1690 was the abolition of patronage in the Church. When the Covenanters were in power they made it a law that congregations should choose their own minister, but when Charles II. came to the throne this was set aside and the right of appointing a minister to a vacant congregation was granted to the chief landowner in a parish who was known as the patron. This was now put an end to, and it became the duty of the "heritors and elders to name and propose the minister of the whole congregation, to be approved or disapprove by them." | ||||
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| This was
further confirmed in the Act of Security when the Union of the Parliaments
of England and Scotland came about in 1707. Alas, the hopes of piece and
concord in our land, only five years had passed when the united Parliament
restarted the rights of the patrons. Historians of all schools were united in denouncing this Act of the restoration of patronage. Dr Charles Wrote in his volume "The Presbyterian Tradition" speaks of it as a "shameless act of Parliament engineered by the Jacobite party and in flagrant violations of the Treaty of Union" "by it" he continued , "the church was done one of the most scandalous wrongs in it's much wronged history." 162 years were to pass, in 1874 when Patronage was finally abolished in the Church of Scotland and the last trace of this source of so much heart burning and strife was wiped out.
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