ABSTRACT
By 1560, England’s and Scotland’s political establishments were committed to the Protestant Reformation. In particular, they were committed to the Reformed Protestantism of Zürich and Geneva and to making that Reformation a reality in the lives of the people. And that was where agreement ended. The debates over exactly what kind of Reformations there would be in England and Scotland were bitterly divisive. English Protestantism contained a vocal and energetic minority, who called themselves the ‘godly’ or the ‘elect’ but whose many mockers and enemies called them ‘Puritans’ or ‘precisians’. These ‘Puritans’ believed that England was divided between a truly Christian minority (that is, themselves) and a wider population still sodden in the dregs of popery. Neither the structures nor the morals of the English Church had yet attained the purity for which they hoped. But to understand their world-view, we need to begin with the country that many of them saw as the ideal to be followed: Scotland.
