Memorial stone on the site of the Battle of Culloden
Many Episcopalian clergy were involved in the Earl of Mar's 1715 Rising in support of a Stuart rather than a Hanoverian succession to the throne. After the Rising was over the Government took firm action and, for example, in the Diocese of Aberdeen 30 clergy, of whom 20 had responsibility for Parish Churches, were removed from office.
In 1719 the first Penal Act came from Parliament by which no Episcopal priest could minister to more than nine people at any one time - in addition to his own family - unless he took an oath renouncing the exiled King and promising to pray for King George.
The Rising of 1745, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, had less direct Episcopalian involvement than the 1715, although there were Episcopalian Chaplains in the Prince's army. The total number of priests in Scotland in 1745 was 200.
The Burning of the Episcopal Churches
Following the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden the Government army burned the Episcopal Churches and where this was unsafe made the congregations demolish them. A harsher penal law was introduced in 1746 by which all priests who did not swear allegiance to King George, pray for him by name and register their Letters of Orders were forbidden to minister to more than four people at any one time.
The penalty was imprisonment or banishment. Penalties for lay people worshipping at Episcopalian services included being prevented from holding any public office, deprivation of the right to vote, and being barred from admission to the universities and colleges.
Further persecution followed quickly - no clergyman ordained by a Scottish bishop could 'qualify' to conduct ordinary and open worship. The clergy thus banned from conducting public worship held services in their own homes with not more than the prescribed number present.
However, they had many ways of increasing 'the prescribed four'. Sometimes the congregation stood outside the windows of the priest's house, sometimes four people were in each room with the priest in a central passageway. Services were repeated time and time again, on all days of the week. It was not unusual for a priest to conduct fifteen such services on Sundays.
In deference to the royal prerogative of the exiled Stuart king the bishops left vacant dioceses unfilled and then, when this became unworkable, consecrated 'non-ruling' bishops. When Bishop Rose of Edinburgh, the last remaining diocesan bishop, died in 1720 the non-ruling bishops formed an Episcopal College with jurisdiction over the whole church and chose Bishop John Fullarton as Primus inter Pares (first among equals). The exiled James III continued to nominate college bishops and some of them were eventually elected to specific dioceses. In time diocesan episcopacy prevailed, although the concept of a College of Bishops, and a Primus, continues to this day.
The Consectation of Samuel Seabury and an End to Persecution
During this time of persecution the Scottish bishops consecrated Samuel Seabury as the first bishop in the United States. It was a significant act. Before the establishment of the United States, following the War of Independence, clergy serving in America had been ordained in London. The clergy of Connecticut elected Samuel Seabury as their bishop and he sought consecration in England.
Samuel Seabury, the first bishop of the Anglican Communion
The oath of royal supremacy proved too difficult a problem, however, and he came to Scotland and was consecrated in Aberdeen on 14 November 14 1784, the first Anglican bishop to serve outside the British Isles. It was the beginning of the world-wide Anglican Communion of Churches.
The reign of King George III, which began in 1760, saw a relaxing of the rigorous enforcement of the penal laws and the clergy began to hold services more openly, and some chapels were built. When Charles Edward Stuart, Charles III, died in 1788 he was succeeded as the last Stuart king by his brother, Henry IX, who was the Cardinal Bishop of Frascati in Italy.
The Primus, John Skinner, Bishop of Aberdeen, led the church out of its legal difficulties. The bishops and clergy agreed to pray for King George III and in 1789 the Primus and two other bishops travelled to London to petition for the repeal of the penal laws. A Bill passed in the House of Commons but not in the Lords. However, at the second attempt, in 1792 it passed into law and the oppression of the Church ended.
The years of persecution had taken their toll, and it was only in the north-east in Aberdeen and Buchan that significant numbers of Episcopalians remained. The measure of the cost of the penal years is that at the Revolution in 1689 there was a bishop in each diocese and 600 clergy ministering to the two thirds of the population of Scotland, while 103 years later, in 1792, there were four bishops and forty priests ministering to just five percent of the population.
