Reformation on the battlefield

‘The Reformation of the Church of Scotland’ (as it was being described even while it was still in progress) was, like its English counterpart, a political event. ¹ In England, however, the fixed point of religious change was always the crown’s authority. The Scottish Church’s 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 no less decisively shaped by its political contexts than was the case in England; 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.