The Scottish church’s conflicts with royal authority between 1603 and 1637 represent a critical case study in lawful institutional resistance. The key events of this period — the 1603 Assembly of Aberdeen, the decades-long suppression of General Assemblies, and the explosive rejection of imposed liturgy in 1637 — demonstrate that organized resistance to government overreach can be principled, limited, and consistent with legitimate political order rather than anarchic or revolutionary. These episodes are central to the arguments advanced in Lex Rex and form the historical backbone of the broader Reformed resistance tradition.
The 1603 Assembly of Aberdeen
When King James VI consolidated the English and Scottish crowns in 1603, he moved aggressively to bring the Scottish Kirk under royal control. Central to this effort was the abolition of General Assemblies — the governing bodies through which the Presbyterian church exercised self-governance, discipline, and doctrinal authority independent of the crown.
At the 1603 Assembly of Aberdeen, godly men directly challenged the king’s claim to override ecclesiastical governance. Their argument was not that the king had no authority whatsoever, but that he had no authority over Christ’s prerogative in the church. This distinction matters enormously: the Aberdeen assembly defended a specific jurisdictional boundary rather than rejecting monarchy as such. The church had its own lawful sphere of government, and the king’s encroachment into that sphere was itself the unlawful act.
This line of reasoning — that institutional rights exist independent of and prior to the crown’s pleasure — directly parallels the political arguments in Lex Rex about the law standing above the king. If ecclesiastical bodies possess inherent jurisdiction that the king cannot lawfully abolish, then the principle extends naturally to civil bodies, parliaments, and lesser magistrates. The church’s defense of its assemblies was a live demonstration of constitutional limitation on executive power.
Decades of Suppression and the Episcopalian Imposition
Between 1603 and 1637, the Stuart kings systematically attempted to reshape the Scottish church along Anglican and episcopalian lines. General Assemblies were suppressed or packed with compliant members. Bishops were imposed as instruments of royal control over a church that had explicitly rejected episcopal governance in favor of presbyterian polity. A High Commission was erected — a court of ecclesiastical jurisdiction answerable to the crown rather than to the church’s own representative assemblies.
This period illustrates a recurring pattern in the relationship between church and state: the consolidation of political power often begins with the absorption of independent institutions. When the crown controls the church’s courts, assemblies, and appointments, no institutional counterweight remains. The Scottish experience between 1603 and 1637 demonstrates why the existence of independent, self-governing bodies — whether ecclesiastical, judicial, or civic — is essential to preventing tyranny. This is the practical meaning of popular sovereignty: the people’s institutions must have genuine authority that cannot be dissolved at the pleasure of a single ruler.
The High Commission was particularly objectionable because it represented not merely bad policy but a usurpation of jurisdiction. The commission claimed authority over church matters that properly belonged to the church’s own courts and assemblies. Rutherford cites the 1637 Glasgow Assembly’s formal rejection of the High Commission as a “usurped church judicature” — meaning the commission was not merely inconvenient or unpopular but was illegitimate by nature, exercising powers it had no lawful right to hold.
The 1637 Edinburgh Uprising
The crisis came to a head in 1637 when attempts to impose the new service book (closely modeled on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) provoked violent resistance in Edinburgh. When prelates attempted to force the liturgy on Scottish congregations, the people physically resisted. Rutherford treats this episode not as mere mob action but as the defense of institutional rights by the people who constituted those institutions.
The Edinburgh riots of 1637 are often caricatured as spontaneous disorder. In context, they were the predictable result of decades of institutional suppression. When lawful assemblies are abolished, when appointed courts replace representative ones, and when the final step is the imposition of alien worship forms, the question is not whether resistance will occur but what form it will take. The Scottish experience suggests that maintaining lawful channels of institutional resistance — assemblies, courts, representative bodies — is the best safeguard against both tyranny and disorder. When those channels are destroyed, resistance becomes less orderly, not less likely.
Lawful Defense, Not Revolution
The critical interpretive point — and the one Rutherford insists upon — is that these acts of Scottish ecclesiastical resistance were consistent with monarchy. The men at Aberdeen, the commissioners at Glasgow, and the people in Edinburgh were not rejecting kingship. They were defending specific institutional rights against specific royal overreach. The distinction between resisting a tyrant’s unlawful acts and overthrowing legitimate government is the core of Reformed resistance theory.
This framing draws on the broader tradition articulated by Calvin’s doctrine of lesser magistrates — the principle that subordinate authorities (church courts, assemblies, parliaments) have not merely the right but the obligation to resist unlawful commands from superior authority. The Aberdeen ministers, the Glasgow commissioners, and the Edinburgh congregations were each exercising this principle in their respective capacities.
The Scottish experience also informs the later development of English constitutional traditions around institutional checks on royal power. The baronial resistance that produced the Magna Carta and the Scottish ecclesiastical resistance that produced the Covenanting movement share a common logic: legitimate authority is bounded, and those who hold subordinate authority are duty-bound to defend those boundaries.
Relevance to the Prepared Citizen
For the modern prepared citizen, the Scottish church history of 1603–1637 is not antiquarian curiosity. It demonstrates a principle directly relevant to the citizen-soldier tradition: that defense of institutional independence and lawful self-governance is not merely compatible with legitimate political order — it is essential to it. The prepared citizen’s commitment to bearing arms, organizing locally, and maintaining independent capability outside centralized control is the modern expression of the same principle the Scottish Presbyterians defended: that free institutions must be able to resist absorption by unchecked executive power.
The deeper lesson — explored further in Rutherford’s own biography and the Westminster Assembly that followed — is that institutional resistance must be rooted in principle, limited in scope, and directed at restoration of lawful order rather than destruction of order itself. This is the standard by which the line between kingship and tyranny is drawn, and it remains the standard by which the prepared citizen evaluates the legitimacy of political authority today.