Series 4 > Stirling Presbytery Records 1581-1587

INTRODUCTION
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ascendancy within the wider church whose statutory recognition
was finally forthcoming in 1592.1 Statutes might still be annulled,
or their force might be nullified, but never again in the history of
the established church were presbyteries to be entirely swept away
as they were by act of parliament in 1584.
The text and method of editing: The text offered below is contained in
the first folio volume of Stirling Presbytery Records, which extends
from August 1581 to February 1589/90, and which is presently
located in the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh.2 The following
transcription, ending in December 1587 (with the experiment of the
commissioner-in-presbytery showing signs of collapse), illustrates
the scope and content of the presbytery’s work from the presby¬
tery’s erection in 1581 till the onset of the ‘Black Acts’ of 1584, its
revival and recovery in 1586 and its reassertion of its powers there¬
after.
The tidy, steady hand of the scribe, James Duncanson, reader at
Stirling, continues throughout the volume, which remains unfoli¬
ated. The minutes seem to have been composed from notes (perhaps
entered in a scroll book) which the scribe took at the meetings and
subsequently wrote up. This would help to explain occasional slips,
such as the misplacing of certain proceedings relating to Bishop
Chisholm of Dunblane which the scribe inserted out of sequence in
December 1587. Occasionally, in certain sessions, the scribe has
recorded the sederunts but has omitted to enter any account of the
proceedings.3 When the volume was later rebound, folios 2 and 3
were transposed, but the correct sequence is preserved in the text
below. Nor is it possible to cross-check any cases in the 1580s with
Stirling Kirk Session Records, whose surviving minutes only begin
in November 1597.4
In transcribing and editing the records, the normal editorial
conventions have been adopted. The original orthography has been
retained, except for the standardisation of ‘i’ and j’; ‘u’, V and
1 See below, 245, 256, 310; sro, CH2/722/1, Stirling Presbytery Records, 16 April
1588; 3 September 1588; 12 November 1588; APS, iii, 341-2
2 sro, CH2/722/1. The records have been assigned for transference to Central Re¬
gional Archives, Stirling
8 See below, 61, 193, 225, 230, 233-4, 239» 294; 296-7, 300-4
4 sro, CH2/1026/1, Stirling Kirk Session Records, 17 November 1597