ABSTRACT
With the rioting in Edinburgh, Scotland shattered the apparent calm of Britain in the summer of 1637. The tumultuous protest against the Dean of St Giles Cathedral, when he attempted to read the king’s new Scottish Book of Common Prayer, took Charles and his council in London by surprise. Until reports reached London from Scotland, ‘there were very few in England who had heard of any disorders there, or of any thing done there which might produce any.’1 Probably even fewer Englishmen cared about Charles’s northern kingdom. The English soon would care deeply about what transpired across their northern border, as the revolt in Scotland provoked a series of decisions by Charles that eventually led to the outbreak of the English Revolution.
