ABSTRACT
On 28 March 1620, Mr John Fergushill, minister of Ochiltree in the presbytery of Ayr, became one of 48 ministers known to have been charged by the Scottish court of High Commission for their refusal to conform to the Five Articles of Perth.2 As with most of those who resisted the Articles, Fergushill was primarily opposed to kneeling at communion. When interviewed by the high commission, the minister stated that he thought that ‘thir things were scandalous, unexpedient, destroying the thing which we were building, turning from a better to a worse’.3 In this, as we shall see, Fergushill clearly and concisely expressed the prevailing view of James VI and I’s religious reforms across much of Lowland Scotland.
