Five Articles of Perth

The Five Articles of Perth was an attempt by King James VI of Scotland to impose practices on the Church of Scotland in an attempt to integrate it with the episcopalian Church of England. This move was unpopular with those Scots who held Puritan views on worship, and with those who supported Presbyterian church governance.

The articles provided for

• kneeling during communion
• private baptism
• private communion for the sick or infirm
• confirmation by a Bishop
• the observance of Holy Days "enjoined the ministers to celebrate the festivals of Christmas and Easter" (see Christmas in Scotland)

The articles were reluctantly accepted by the General Assembly of the Church at Perth in 1618, and were not ratified by the Scottish Parliament until 1621. The approving Act was repealed by the Confession of Faith Ratification Act 1690.

Further Reading

• lan R.MacDonald, "James VI and I, the Church of Scotland, and British Ecclesiastical Convergence," Historical Journal, 48 (2005), 885-903.

• Laura A.M.Stewart, "'Brothers in treuth': Propaganda, Public Opinion and the Perth Articles Debate in Scotland," in Ralph Houlbrooke, ed. James VI and I: Ideas, Authority and Government (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006), 151-68.

• Laura A.M. Stewart, "The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I’s Religious Policies in Scotland," in The Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXVIII/4 (2007), 1013-36.

• Jenny Wormald, "The Headaches of Monarchy: Kingship and the Kirk in the Early Seventeenth Century" in Julian Goodare and Alasdair A.MacDonald, eds., Sixteenth Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Brill: Leiden, 2008), 367-93.

See also

• Bishops' Wars
• Episcopalianism in the Church of Scotland

References

• Schaff-Herzog article