The tercentennial of the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Union gave rise to several new studies, mostly revisionist, about this pivotal event in British history. No longer willing to interpret the Union as a result of unscrupulous politicians betraying the popular will of their Scottish constituents, these scholars have rightfully shaken the historiographical stasis. They seek, instead, to demonstrate the broader spectrum of ideas and practices behind the Union's creation and reception. Along similar lines, religion and the complex role that it served is given far more prominence than in the received accounts.

To this end, Jeffrey Stephen's study on the relationship between the Scottish Presbyterian Church and the 1707 Union provides coverage of a topic that has allegedly been widely distorted or marginalized altogether (though the inclusion of an actual historiographical section up front would be most welcome). The Church of Scotland is not presented here as a bulwark of opposition against national union with Episcopalian England, but as an institution that was largely in support of union, one whose position “can be described as political neutrality and ecclesiastical self-interest” (90). At the same time, Stephen never loses sight of the fact that religion remained “a real stumbling block to union, the most dangerous rock of difference upon which it could split” (70). The author also dispels the notion that Presbyterian covenanters and Episcopalian Jacobites were in league with one another, despite the best efforts by the latter to foment resistance.

The book begins with a background chapter on the religious and political contexts of the decade and a half prior to 1707. After briefly addressing Scotland's Revolution Settlement of 1689–90, which overthrew both James II and the Episcopalian model of church government, the author provides an oftentimes dizzying synopsis of competing political parties and their divergent reactions to a series of early union proposals.

The second chapter focuses upon the contentious Act for Securing the Church, passed in November of 1706, which the vast majority of clergymen and statesmen considered requisite before union. Within a British Parliament the Scots would be a minority; as a provision that preserved Presbyterianism beyond the bounds of future disestablishment, then, this act proved to be a decisive turning point in debates over union. The strength of this section, however, lies in Stephen's emphasis on the degree to which the Church successfully affected political deliberations, whether behind closed doors or, more frequently, through public sermons, pamphlets, and fasts.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine the church's reactions at the national and parish level. Stephen argues that contemporaries (and historians past and present) were mistaken in their observations that (a) the union met with widespread resistance centered primarily in the localities or that (b) the act for security of the church was a watershed moment because it neutralized the church's institutional leadership. Most local presbyteries reacted to union debates with silent approbation. They preferred instead to allow the general assembly's commission to act as their arbiter with the state. This commission, as the heart of ecclesiastical influence, was actually the primary locus of clerical contestation (a few radical covenanters excepted) rather than the domain of religious moderates.

This is where the author's interpretive nuances become more difficult to follow. The driving logic behind this chapter is at odds with the previous chapter, which gave a distinct impression that the act for security was indeed a key turning point, and possibly the most important one. Stephen elsewhere approvingly quotes one observer who claimed that “many ministers changed their tune after the passing of the act for securing the church and ‘preached up what not long before they had declared anathemas against’” (152). In this chapter, too, he writes that “the change among the ministry after the act suggested that many [within the church] saw the security it offered as real enough and the consensus at the 1707 Assembly was that the church had never been so secure” (91). Furthermore, even if the church's leadership may not have been entirely silenced after the act, the commission's level of continued criticism appears to have been too negligible to view the assembly as anything but relatively neutralized. As Stephen puts it, “The moderate tone of the commission's various addresses and letters was the result of its determination to remain politically neutral and not to favour one side before another” (105); they “never expressed sentiments for or against union” (102).

Chapters 5–7 reiterate the prevalent theme of consensus: that by 1707 the majority of ministers either favored the union or were distinguished by their silence toward the issue. Even opponents against the final Treaty of Union were only opposed to the precise nature of that union, rather than to the general concept of unification. Virtually all parties “agreed that the status quo in the constitutional relationship was untenable” (181). The few well-publicized incidents of sermon-inspired riots against the union thus prove to be the anomaly, not the norm.

Stephen bolsters his arguments with meticulous research and a healthy balance of archival manuscripts and print literature, capturing public and private sentiments at both the local and national levels. Although the plenitude of local materials and ephemeral literature is impressive, I suspect that consulting archives in England would provide an even richer layer of analysis. Additionally, the Scottish debates need to be set within a more European context rather than a merely British one. Continental developments (particularly those linked to an expansion-minded France) and the theme of international Protestantism receive only a passing mention here, and yet these issues were highly important to Scottish men and women in the early eighteenth century. This is a point that Christopher Whatley and Derek Patrick emphasize in their magisterial study, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006). Next, the impression of consensus between most stripes of Presbyterians lends greater texture to the religious spectrum, but it also tends to blur the very real lines of distinction that did exist. The moderates’ influence in steering the affairs around them, as well as their desire to do so, was more acute than is credited here. Stylistically, the book's writing and organization is unwieldy and a little too dense. The majority of paragraphs are over a full page in length, which also places salient points where they are least accessible. Despite these limitations, this study sheds valuable light on an important topic and provides a welcome companion piece to the recent body of literature on the Anglo-Scottish Union.