ABSTRACT
In the last years of the seventeenth century the Scots found themselves drifting towards full political union with England, but it was a union that few people in Scotland wanted. They feared, rightly as it turned out, that it would be a ‘take-over’, tousea twentieth-century term. And when it did come, most of the advantages were stacked on England’s side. For a century and a half religion had dominated the lives, thoughts, acts, hopes and fears of Scottish people, more so than perhaps any other people in Europe of the time. Everything was considered in terms of religion and its role in their lives. Those who fought for the reformed faith in the sixteenth century had not been in the majority to begin with, but they worked diligently and fanatically to make Scotland Protestant, according to the teachings of John Calvin. The ideals of these Presbyterians stimulated a remarkable response among many Scottish people. Severe though its doctines were, and harsh as its disciplines became, Presbyterianism aroused the very deepest passions. It spread far beyond the belief that people were individually responsible to God, that their every act must be measured against that responsi bility. It spilled over into politics, domestic life and social activities. Even famines and crop failures were looked upon as punishments from God. Presbyterians saw it as their destiny to work to improve every aspect of society: public conduct, private lives, trade and industry, education, farming-all these received their attention. And over these years the ideals became ingrained in the character of the great majority of the Scottish people, and the discipline ‘put steel into the backbone of Scotland’.
