In 1893 a sizeable number of the most conservative Free Church members and adherents followed two ministers out of the Free Church to form a body which soon became known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The motivation for this action was the refusal of the Free Assembly in its jubilee year to repeal the Declaratory Act passed at the 1892 Assembly. The Act altered the terms of subscription to the Westminster Confession for office-bearers and was designed to give liberty of opinion to the many liberal voices in the Lowland Free Church calling for theological change and credal revision. But to Donald Macfarlane, formerly of Moy and now on the isle of Raasay, to Donald Macdonald of Shieldaig, Wester Ross, and to thousands of others who followed them, the Declaratory Act was a betrayal of the theological position of the Reformation. Whilst the Free Presbyterians represented only a minority of the Free Church in the north, the events of 1893 crystallised the deep division which had become more and more apparent since the 1860s between the Highland and Lowland sections of the Free Church.

Neither Macfarlane nor Macdonald left any comments on record concerning the land question although it was reported that Macfarlane criticised the Land League at the Stratherrick Communion in 1886. We do know, however, that a number of early Free Presbyterians were vocal in their advocacy of the crofters’ claims. At a meeting to rally support for the fledgling Free Presbyterian movement at Flashadder, Skye, an elder, John Macaskill, claimed, ‘for some years back, we had been fighting against aggressive land laws, but now it is Church laws we are fighting against – a much more serious cause of complaint’.