Jeffrey Stephen has produced a second book about the Church of Scotland during the time of the later Stewarts. Previously, in 2007, he published Scottish Presbyterians and the Act of Union 1707. The book under review takes a broader perspective, and looks at the church from the Glorious Revolution up to the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and slightly beyond. His bibliography indicates wide research in church records, especially those of the general assembly held in the National Archives of Scotland and elsewhere, along with presbytery and synod records from a range of localities. He has also consulted Privy Council records and the papers of various families, along with the indispensable Wodrow papers in the National Library of Scotland. There follows a twenty-page list of printed primary sources, suggesting a real thoroughness in the research, though the same cannot be said of secondary sources, which sometimes misses important publications, such as Anne Skoczylas’ Mr. Simson's Knotty Case (missing from 102).

What is obviously lacking in this book is front matter—acknowledgements, preface, prologue. It is almost the same with Stephen's first book where there is but a half-page preface. One wonders about the thinking behind this. Front matter is an important part of books. One identifies with a broad academic community in words of appreciation for those with whom conversations and debates have been held, societies to whom parts of the book have been read, colleagues who have assisted in one way or another. There is none of that here. But even more troubling is the lack of a preface or prologue where the author tells the reader what is coming. At no point in the book does Stephen articulate what he is about, and there is very little in the text to signal what is to be found in a particular chapter and how it fits into the totality of the book. This is particularly significant in the case of chapter 6, “Home and Foreign Missions,” which does not so obviously belong here. The other five chapters have a heavily political interest, but that focus does not appear to the same extent in this chapter. While it contains a very useful discussion of presbytery in the highland and colonial settings, the author ought to have made a fuller argument for its inclusion here.

Fundamental to understanding the book is the great and enduring divide between Presbyterians and ultimately defeated Episcopalians, on the debates between whom one may now consult Alasdair Raffe's Religious Arguments in Scotland (2012, presumably appearing too late to be considered in Stephen's book). Episcopalians might well have won the day in 1689, but they were not organized like the Presbyterians, and in the West curates were expelled from their parishes. Stephen does not supply a consolidated and detailed literature review, but he makes it clear that his book differs from other treatments in that he argues that the Glorious Revolution and its sequels actually represented a grand triumph of the Presbyterianism in its earlier historical manifestations. The covenants were not renewed under the new regime, but the substance of those covenants was effectuated, and thus Stephen concludes that negative assessments of the Presbyterianism of the Revolution, as having given up a great deal for the sake of King William's favor, are incorrect. Presbyterians were encouraged by William to be moderate with regard to remaining Episcopalians, which they were, and it was actually the Episcopalians themselves who brought their interest down in 1715 by their allegiance to the Old Pretender, the representative of the Jacobite faction. One of the pressing issues that had to be resolved was that of Erastianism, or the role of the magistrate in the life of the Kirk, including the calling of assemblies. Eventually the Kirk established its independence of the magistrate, though it also had to reckon with the loss of the Scottish parliament in 1707, and its subsequent exposure to the whims of the union parliament, which led to the passage of unwelcome legislation in London. In 1712 toleration was granted to Episcopalians wanting to use the English liturgy, and also patronage was restored, which became the bane of the Kirk and the basis for various schisms over the next century and more. But despite the defects of the Union and its parliament, it was a protestant institution and Presbyterians refrained from joining in the anti-Union activities of the Jacobites, and sought to make it work more effectively in behalf of the Kirk.

There are a number of unfortunate errors in the book, mainly of a grammatical nature, though there is also an inaccurate definition of Socinianism (102). The deficiencies of the book's structure and composition notwithstanding, Stephen has written an essential work on the revolutionary period of the later Stewarts and historians will long be in his debt for a well-researched guide to the establishment of Presbyterianism in the wake of the Glorious Revolution.