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Ecclesiastical Record Books and Political Legitimacy in Mid Seventeenth-Century Scotland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2025
Abstract
This article explores the ways that ecclesiastical record books produced by national and local Church courts in Scotland were bound up in the contests for legitimacy around the Scottish Revolution. The article argues that adherents to the National Covenant used paper record books and the practices that surrounded them, as well as their printed output, to legitimise their protest movement and to attack their opponents. Reconstructing the Church in paper represented an essential part of the Covenanters’ protest, reconstructing the Church after the fall of episcopacy.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2025
Footnotes
My thanks to the anonymous reviewer and to this Journal's editorial team for their comments. I am grateful to Dr Charlotte Brownhill, Dr Russell Newton, Dr Sara Wolfson and Dr Neil Younger for conversations about drafts of this article and to the staff at the National Library of Scotland and National Records of Scotland for granting access to relevant manuscripts.
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