Servants to St. Mungo: The Church in Sixteenth-Century Glasgow by Daniel MacLeod A Thesis presented to The University of Guelph In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Guelph, Ontario, Canada © Daniel MacLeod, May, 2013 ABSTRACT SERVANTS TO ST MUNGO: THE CHURCH IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GLASGOW Daniel MacLeod Advisors: University of Guelph, 2013 Dr. Elizabeth Ewan Dr. Peter Goddard This thesis investigates religious life in Glasgow, Scotland in the sixteenth century. As the first full length study of the town’s Christian community in this period, this thesis makes use of the extant Church documents to examine how Glaswegians experienced Christianity during the century in which religious change was experienced by many communities in Western Europe. This project includes research from both before and after 1560, the year of the Reformation Parliament in Scotland, and therefore eschews traditional divisions used in studies of this kind that tend to view 1560 as a major rupture for Scotland’s religious community. Instead, this study reveals the complex relationships between continuity and change in Glasgow, showing a vibrant Christian community in the early part of the century and a changed but similarly vibrant community at the century’s end. This project attempts to understand Glasgow’s religious community holistically. It investigates the institutional structures of the Church through its priests and bishops as well as the popular devotions of its parishioners. It includes examinations of the sacraments, Church discipline, excommunication and religious ritual, among other Christian phenomena. The dissertation follows many of these elements from their medieval Catholic roots through to their Reformed Protestant derivations in the latter part of the century, showing considerable links between the traditions. This thesis argues that although considerable change occurred through the establishment of a Presbyterian Church polity and the enforcement of new conceptions of Church discipline, many elements of popular devotion remained stable throughout the period. The research in this project challenges many of the traditional narratives of Scottish Reformation historiography. It disputes notions of the decay of the Church in the years previous to the Reformation parliament, and it questions the speed with which the goals of the Reformation were achieved in the town. It also challenges traditional interpretations of the martyrdom of John Ogilvie, a Jesuit executed in the town in 1615. In this way, the dissertation offers an alternative approach to the period that could be applied to research done on other Scottish or European towns. For my parents, who know their history. And for young Alistair, who will learn it. iv Acknowledgments The completion of this project could not have been achieved without the support of many people who aided it along the way, professionally and personally. Robin Urquhart from the National Archives of Scotland provided me with access to the “Scottish Documents” online resource, saving me significant money and time in the process. Generous archivists at the Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow and the unfortunately former Scottish Catholic Archives, Edinburgh, were also kind and helpful. The Scottish Studies Foundation provided me with much appreciated travel grants and institutional support for my work. I have also been supported by friends and colleagues from the world of Scottish history and beyond. John Sherry has provided support from all angles, from supplying a place to stay in Glasgow to advice on the project itself, and his friendship has been unwavering throughout the process. Friends in Windsor and Guelph have provided helpful distractions from sixteenth- century Glasgow. The faculty and graduate students at the University of Guelph have also been kind and supportive through the ups and downs of the process. Barb Mitterer has always been kind, patient and tremendously pleasant in dealing with my administrative worries. My advisory committee has been superb. Dr. Greta Kroeker has provided good advice on the project. Dr. Jacqueline Murray has been supportive and kind throughout my time at Guelph. Dr. Peter Goddard has provided me with countless insights into the Reformation world that have improved this project significantly, and he has been very helpful in guiding the project towards completion with financial, intellectual, and moral support. His perceptive ideas about this period encouraged me to see the big picture, and to consider how Glasgow related to the larger world of Early Modern Christianity. Dr. Elizabeth Ewan has been unflinchingly kind and generous throughout my time at Guelph. The thoroughness and speed with which she examined this project at all stages is remarkable and much appreciated. She has provided support at all times and in all ways. Her knowledge of Scottish history is only surpassed by her generosity in sharing it with her graduate students, and it has been my privilege to experience her kindness and witness her example. Thankfully my family has encouraged me throughout this process. Family in Goderich, Ont. have shared patience and kindness with their historian son in law, while my brothers and sister have consistently shared their good cheer with me. My wife’s contribution to this project’s completion is immeasurable, as is my love for her. The difficulties experienced by sixteenth- century families have been a constant reminder of my great fortune, and I am certainly glad I live in this century so I can be married to Amy. My parents have always been encouraging, in school and in life. Their interest in history, particularly Scottish history, is largely responsible for my interest in history. I dedicate this project to them and to their grandson with love, respect, and thanks. v Table of Contents: Introduction: Let Glasgow Flourish – 6 Chapter 1: The Sacraments the Senses and Social Structure in Early- Sixteenth-Century Glasgow – 30 Chapter 2: “These Two Archbishops Sing Not One Song”: Exemption, Heresy and the Medieval Church – 60 Chapter 3: Suspect Places and Superstitious Times: Reformed Discipline in Post-Reformation Glasgow – 97 Chapter 4: The Benefits of the Kirk: Real Presence, Real Sacraments and Popular Devotion in Post-Reformation Glasgow – 141 Chapter 5: Declining from the Truth: Post-Reformation Catholicism in Glasgow – 181 Conclusion: Finding the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Glasgow – 238 Bibliography - 242 vi Map of the town, 1547. Source: A Tale of Two Towns: A History of Medieval Glasgow ed. Neil Baxter (Glasgow: Glasgow City Council, 2007) 48. vii Introduction: Let Glasgow Flourish This study is an attempt to understand the religious lives of people in sixteenth-century Glasgow. In this way, it is a contribution to larger efforts seeking “the return of religion” into our understanding of the early modern past, or of history more generally.1 Religious belief is, of course, still very much with us in the western world and globally and we would be wise to remember, as Alister Chapman has, that “diminished importance does not mean no importance.”2 Yet, the massive influence of economic and social understandings of history in academic circles has rendered religious beliefs something like feudalism – a way of thinking and acting that existed in the past, but which has since been replaced, even overcome, by the thought processes and progress of the present.3 Although it did not do so antagonistically and made major contributions to our understanding of the period, the explosion of economic and social history writing in the later twentieth century contributed to the isolation of religious history. In Scotland, the “Church history” written in the 1960s by Gordon Donaldson or the hagiographical biographies of John Knox written in the 1970s by Stanford Reid gave way in the 1980s to more socio-religious understandings of the past written by Ian Cowan and Jenny 1 Alister Chapman, John Coffey and Brad Gregory eds. Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009); Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti, “The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies” Criticism vol.46, no. 1, (Winter, 2004). 167-190. 2 Alister Chapman, “Intellectual History and Religion in Modern Britain” in Seeing Things Their Way, 226-239. 226. 3 Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, (London: Bell, 1963). 1 Wormald.4 Social history also led historians to the towns, and as Ian Cowan led the way again, Scottish historians were exposed to the Reformation’s “regional aspects” as the degrees of the Reformation’s success became clearly tied to region and local governance.5 The dominance of socio-economic understandings of Scottish history in much of the 1980s demonstrates the isolation of religion as an academic subject. In collections of essays on “the medieval town” “the early modern town” and “Scottish society” in the period, religious ideas hardly figured into the narrative at all. In their place, one found discussions of “urban society”, “merchants and craftsmen”, “mercantile investment” and “occupational structure”, or “population mobility” “women in the economy” and “agrarian improvement.”6 These studies vastly expanded our understanding of the period. They revealed a sophisticated Scottish past that stood in contrast to views, especially from the English perspective, which “treated Scotland as a geographically peripheral nation about which