ABSTRACT
Like the English Reformation, the Scottish Reformation was a political event. In England, however, the fixed point of religious change was always the crown’s authority. In Scotland, the Reformation happened despite and in opposition to that authority. The result was that Church and state in Scotland were at odds with one another for a century and a half, and that Scottish Protestantism came to nourish a myth of pristine, apolitical purity. Yet the Scottish Reformation was as deeply political as its English counterpart, with which it was so closely entwined. And while it began as a movement of opposition to the state, it eventually led to the Scottish crown asserting its authority more effectively than ever before.
