The Gospel and the Gun: The Reformation Conflicts in Scotland, 1594
By the end of the sixteenth century, Scotland had been reformed in law, but not in spirit. The Protestant victory of 1560 had stripped altars and shattered icons, but it had not yet tamed the north, nor erased the Catholic loyalties that endured in the shadows of tower houses and Highland glens. In 1594, the embers of the Reformation flared once more—fueled by old faith, fierce pride, and a monarchy dancing precariously between conviction and expediency. This brief but brutal war was not fought for territory, but for the soul of a kingdom. It was a civil war with the Bible in one hand and the broadsword in the other.
The root of the conflict was both ideological and dynastic. While the Scottish Parliament had outlawed Catholicism in 1560, it remained entrenched among the Highland nobility, particularly in the powerful Gordon and Hay families—led respectively by George Gordon, 6th Earl of Huntly, and Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll. These men were no minor warlords but princes in their own lands, commanding vast estates, armed retainers, and hereditary loyalty. They stood not only as lords, but as representatives of a resurgent Catholicism increasingly linked with foreign powers—most ominously, Spain.
Opposing them was the Protestant-dominated Kirk, now politically ascendant and backed by the General Assembly, which demanded the expulsion—or destruction—of Catholic influence. In the middle stood King James VI, a man whose intelligence was matched only by his taste for obfuscation. Desiring unity, yet wary of the Kirk’s theocratic ambitions, James hoped to suppress rebellion without permanently alienating the Catholic lords. “James,” writes historian Jenny Wormald, “had the instincts of a politician, not a zealot; his eye was always on the long game, not the righteous war” (Court, Kirk, and Community, 1981, p. 119).
But politics yielded to pressure. In 1593, the Kirk forced James to issue proclamations outlawing Catholic worship and demanding the exile of recusant nobles. Huntly and Erroll refused, raising their standards in defiance. In response, James declared them rebels and dispatched a royal force to the north under the youthful and ambitious Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll, then only 19. The Campbells, staunch Protestants and hereditary enemies of the Gordons, needed little convincing.
The armies met at the Battle of Glenlivet on 3 October 1594, in the hills of Moray. Argyll led a force of roughly 10,000 men, drawn largely from the Highlands—poorly equipped, but numerous. Huntly and Erroll mustered just 1,500, but theirs was a disciplined, mounted force, with experienced commanders and cannon. The Catholic lords chose their ground wisely, stationing their artillery above the narrow defile the Protestant army had to cross.
As Argyll’s men advanced, Huntly opened fire. The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The Highland levies, unused to artillery, panicked. A decisive cavalry charge, led by Huntly himself, broke their center. The battle was over in less than two hours. Argyll fled. Thousands were killed or routed. The royal standard, borne by Argyll in the name of King James, was captured—a profound humiliation.
But though Glenlivet was a military triumph for the Catholic lords, it was a political catastrophe. James VI, now faced with open defiance and the optics of treason, acted swiftly. He marched north with his own army, forcing Huntly and Erroll to flee into exile. Their castles—Strathbogie and Slains—were demolished by royal order. “It was a king’s justice,” notes Michael Lynch, “swift, symbolic, and sufficiently ambiguous to allow future reconciliation” (Scotland: A New History, 1991, p. 245).
Indeed, by 1597, Huntly and Erroll had returned, re-converted (at least nominally) to Protestantism, and been restored to favor. The Kirk was outraged, but James—who would become king of England in 1603—had secured his objective: the appearance of unity. “He punished rebellion,” writes Julian Goodare, “but pardoned power” (The Government of Scotland, 1560–1625, 2004, p. 202).
The 1594 Reformation Conflict, then, was not a full-scale war, but a flashpoint in a longer struggle for authority between king, church, and nobility. Its scale was regional, but its implications national. It signaled the end of any serious Catholic resistance in Scotland, and the beginning of a new political theology—one in which kings, not kirk sessions, would set the rules.
It, might have written: “In 1594, Scotland was not ruled by scripture, nor by steel, but by a sovereign threading the needle between them—too wise to be a martyr, too cautious to be a tyrant, and too clever by half to be trusted.”
References:
- Wormald, Jenny. Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625. Edinburgh University Press, 1981.
- Lynch, Michael. Scotland: A New History. Pimlico, 1991.
- Goodare, Julian. The Government of Scotland, 1560–1625. Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Dawson, Jane E.A. Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
- MacDonald, Alan R. James VI and the Historians: A Survey of Recent Writing. The Scottish Historical Review, 2003.