Anti-Catholicism in Scotland, 1688–1750 : Popery, Politics and Protestant Identities

Situates anti-Catholicism in Scotland within a 'long Reformation', demonstrating that opposition to 'popery' was influenced equally by the changing culture of Scottish Protestantism and the external threat of Jacobitism.

Situates anti-Catholicism in Scotland within a ''long Reformation'', demonstrating that opposition to ''popery'' was influenced equally by the changing culture of Scottish Protestantism and the external threat of Jacobitism.


The revolution of 1688-90 brought about the overthrow and exile of the Catholic James VII and II, and an abrupt end to the unprecedented freedoms that Catholics had enjoyed under James''s reign. But the revolution had equally profound consequences for Scottish Protestantism, overturning Episcopacy and re-establishing Presbyterian government. Over the subsequent half-century, Scottish Protestantism underwent a series of significant transformations, evolving from a culture that emphasised religious unity and uniformity to one that was increasingly pluralistic. Anti-Catholicism was an important part of those transformations: opposition to ''popery'' was shaped by Scotland''s changing religious culture, and shaped it in turn.

Situating this topic within bigger frameworks of long Reformation in Britain and Ireland after 1689, the book demonstrates that opposition to popery in this period was influenced as much by the changing culture of Scottish Protestantism as it was by the external threat of Jacobitism. As such, it had a much more significant role in the shaping and reshaping of Scottish religious culture than has hitherto been recognised. Reframing opposition to popery in this way reveals the continued potential for anti-Catholicism to precipitate divisions between individual Protestant confessions and, increasingly, within them. The book thus reveals the multi-faceted, disruptive and destabilising nature of opposition to popery and its role in forging multiple Protestant identities. By reconstructing the ways in which popery informed contemporary religious politics, Protestant confrontations with the Catholic community, and the significance of popery as a discourse for navigating confessional divides, this monograph makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of religious intolerance, and the development of Protestantism in Scotland in a period of confessional upheaval, political change and intellectual transformation.