This collection of essays fills some useful lacunae in the relationship between liturgical practices and politics in Scotland between 1510 and 1764, though there is a curious lacuna in the collection itself; furthermore, some of the essays seem reluctant to engage with liturgical books and texts, and with the evidence that certain prayers might offer on this subject.

An introduction by Allan I. Macinnes offers an overview of the scope of the essays, which include the Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and Episcopal traditions. Liturgical scholars will find the very second sentence of the introduction extremely odd: ‘Relatively little has been done on modes of worship, and even less on liturgical practices.’ This is simply not the case. Older scholars such as Donaldson and Grisbrooke made significant contributions to our liturgical knowledge. More recently the present reviewer has covered the Presbyterian and Episcopal elements; the non-jurors’ contribution was succinctly examined by James David Smith; and Presbyterian worship has been treated by Timothy Duguid, and in the doctoral thesis of Martin Ritchie. Although liturgical scholars try hard to take account of the recent historiography relating to their subject matter so that the text has context, all too frequently historians pass over liturgical works and texts, and at times attempt to re-invent the wheel though without a hub. The result in this collection is that the essays dealing with the Roman Catholic context, and a few on the Episcopal non-juring divines are a significant contribution, whereas the Presbyterian material is more of a general survey.

Macinnes's introduction has other curiosities. Did pre-Tridentine practices really find a home in Episcopal worship? The Episcopal tradition, like the Durham House divines, found it both theologically and politically more expedient to appeal to the Early Church and the Eastern tradition rather than to Western medieval Catholic usage. Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica may have fourteenth-century material (the material is impossible to date) but it is Hebridean, and Carmichael felt free to edit and change the oral tradition of the folk prayers and charms. Were ministers to be confirmed by bishops? Surely this is about episcopal ordination. That having been said, any ambiguities and curiosities of the introduction are more than made up for in many of the essays. Stephen Holmes has already made an important contribution in his Sacred signs, and his valuable essay continues his argument that the pre-Reformation Scottish Church was far from being moribund, and it had its own Catholic reformers. He also dispels the belief that there was a distinct ‘Celtic’ rite, and illustrates that, as in England, Sarum use was extremely influential in Scotland. Essays on the post-Reformation Catholic Church include the missionary strategies of the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and are a reminder that in parts of Scotland, as in the north-west of England, Catholicism was never entirely displaced. Kieran German paints a comparable picture for episcopal allegiance and its liturgical predilections in the diocese of Aberdeen. Tristram Clarke probes the divide between the English episcopal party in Scotland and the non-juring Episcopalians, and their liturgico-political preferences. The role of the 1718 liturgy of the English non-jurors is over-stated by Richard Sharp. Brett's liturgy drew on Apostolic constitutions 8, and the liturgies of St James and St Basil, and as the essay of Douglas Kornahrens notes, these texts were a stretch too far for Episcopalians, and it was the 1549 Book of Common Prayer via the abortive 1637 liturgy that was eventually used, and that in turn was only minimally used in the American book of 1789/90. Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner looks at the contribution of the brothers George and James Garden, who were reluctant Jacobites; A. Emsley Nimmo examines the important role of Archibald Cameron; Darren Layne considers the involvement of clerics in the Jacobite Rising of 1745–6, under the amusing title ‘Clerics behaving badly’; and Douglas Kornahrens gives an important study of Thomas Rattray and his liturgical work and legacy.

The major lacuna is the failure to look at the same depth at the Scottish Presbyterian tradition. How were references made to rulers in the later editions of the Book of Common Order? Were the metrical Psalms used in a political manner in any new translations? The biggest puzzle is why Samuel Rutherford's work on Covenant with its theological and political ramifications, and his role in subverting the Book of Common Order in preference for a Directory, receives no treatment. The essays shed light on Catholic and Episcopal liturgy, but the Presbyterian part of the picture remains somewhat in the shadows. Liturgical scholars, though, will particularly welcome the new insights into the Episcopal tradition in this period.