Series 4 > Stirling Presbytery Records 1581-1587

xiv STIRLING PRESBYTERY RECORDS I581-I587
strictly in accord with the Second Book of Discipline’s under¬
standing that an elder ‘ anis lauchfullie callit to the office and having
giftis of God meit to exercyse the same may not leave it agane’, but
he was not of course expected to serve continuously without release
from his duties.1
The size of the presbytery, in practice, turned out to be consider¬
ably larger than the ‘thrie or four, ma or fewar, particular kirkis’
commended in the Second Book of Discipline, but noticeably
fewer than the 25 constituent churches envisaged in the assembly’s
scheme of April 1581 which assigned to the presbytery 14 churches
from the diocese of Dunblane, 9 churches from St Andrews diocese
and 2 detached parishes from the diocese of Dunkeld. The assembly’s
plans seem to have been based not on any earlier units of adminis¬
tration either secular or ecclesiastical (other than the parish) but on
the need to create a streamlined, compact and localised system of
supervision adapted to meet the changing needs of society. Both
crown and church in 1581 agreed that no ‘formal order’ could be
achieved until ‘ the ancient bounds of the Diocies be dissolved, where
the parishes are thick together, and small be united; and where they
are too great and large bounds, be divided, and thereafter Presby¬
teries or Elderships constituted for a dozen of parishes or thereabout,
some moe, some fewer, as the commodity of the Countrey lyeth,
where the Ministrie and Elders in these bounds conveening may
commodiously exercise Ecclesiastical Discipline, and take order with
affairs of the Kirk’. The large and populous parish of St Ninians near
Stirling was earmarked for division, though this was not so readily
effected. Besides, the presbytery still lacked its complement of
constituent churches.2
Although one of the ministers of Dunblane had attended the
presbytery’s inaugural meeting and took his place as a member, the
other minister of the city - Bishop Andrew Graham - seems only to
have been present as a commissioner from the assembly for erecting
the presbytery and was accordingly admonished, along with the
ministers of Aberfoyle and Kilbride, at the presbytery’s second
meeting in August to give attendance ‘ becaus thai ar appointit be
1 See below, I, 4-5, 8, 23 ; Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 192
2 Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 199; BUK, ii, 484 (where Stirling is mistakenly
omitted from the list of 24 churches); Calderwood, History, viii, 36; see below, xlii