ABSTRACT
The provision of ministers to parishes was a gradual process, even in a relatively central and prosperous county like Fife, and for several decades there were insufficient ministers to provide the sort of preaching in every parish desired by the reformers. By the time there was a preaching minister in every pulpit and a strict kirk session in place, laypeople had already had time to adjust to a transition in religious belief and practice, rather than an overnight revolution. The parochial church created by the middle of the seventeenth century was an impressive realisation of much of what had been envisaged in the early 1560s, in preaching, worship, ministry and discipline. By the seventeenth century, the ministers and elders were also imposing a comprehensive and strict programme of discipline, albeit with sensitivity to local context. After the initial establishment of the Reformation, a Protestant church developed in Fife in a far from straightforward manner.
