The Free Church of Scotland is a Scottish denomination which was formed in 1843 by a large withdrawal from the established Church of Scotland in a schism known as the Disruption of 1843. In 1900, the vast majority of the Free Church of Scotland joined with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church of Scotland. In 1904, the House of Lords judged that the constitutional minority that did not enter the 1900 union were entitled to the whole of the church's patrimony, the Free Church of Scotland acquiesced in the division of those assets, between itself and those who had entered the union, by a Royal Commission in 1905. Despite the late founding date, Free Church of Scotland leadership claims an unbroken succession of leaders going all the way back to the Apostles.
Robert Smith Candlish was a Scottish minister who was a leading figure in the Disruption of 1843. He served for many years in both St. George's Church and St George's Free Church on Charlotte Square in Edinburgh's New Town.
The United Free Church of Scotland is a Scottish Presbyterian denomination formed in 1900 by the union of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the majority of the 19th-century Free Church of Scotland. The majority of the United Free Church of Scotland united with the Church of Scotland in 1929.
The Church of Scotland Act 1921 is an Act of the British Parliament. The purpose of the Act was to settle centuries of dispute between the British Parliament and the Church of Scotland over the Church's independence in spiritual matters. The passing of the Act saw the British Parliament recognise the Church's independence in spiritual matters, by giving legal recognition to the Articles Declaratory.
The Church Patronage (Scotland) Act 1711 or Patronage Act is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The long title of the act is An Act to restore the Patrons to their ancient Rights of presenting Ministers to the Churches vacant in that Part of Great Britain called Scotland. Its purpose was to allow the noble and other Patrons in Scotland to gain control over the Church of Scotland parish churches again, having lost that custom in the Glorious Revolution.
Robert Gordon FRSE was a Scottish minister and author. Originally prominent in the Church of Scotland, and serving as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1841, following the Disruption of 1843 he joined the Free Church of Scotland and became a prominent figure in that church.
Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop was a Scottish church advocate and Liberal Party politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Greenock from 1852 to 1868. He was a very influential figure in the Disruption of 1843 which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. For that denomination he drafted the Church-State papers: the Claim of Right and the Protest. He became known by the nickname the Member for Scotland.
Scottish religion in the nineteenth century includes all forms of religious organisation and belief in Scotland in the 19th century. This period saw a reaction to the population growth and urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution that had undermined traditional parochial structures and religious loyalties. The established Church of Scotland reacted with a programme of church building from the 1820s. Beginning in 1834 the "Ten Years' Conflict" ended in a schism from the established Church of Scotland led by Dr Thomas Chalmers known as the Great Disruption of 1843. Roughly a third of the clergy, mainly from the North and Highlands, formed the separate Free Church of Scotland. The evangelical Free Church and other secessionist churches grew rapidly in the Highlands and Islands and urban centres. There were further schisms and divisions, particularly between those who attempted to maintain the principles of Calvinism and those that took a more personal and flexible view of salvation. However, there were also mergers that cumulated in the creation of a United Free Church in 1900 that incorporated most of the secessionist churches.
Sir Henry Wellwood-Moncreiff, 10th Baronet, originally Henry Moncrieff was a Scottish minister, considered one of the most influential figures in the Free Church of Scotland in his time. Henry Wellwood Moncreiff, tenth baronet, born in 1809, was ordained minister of the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, in 1836, and at the disruption, in 1843, he joined the Free Church. He was afterwards translated to St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. He married in 1838, Alexina-Mary, daughter of Edinburgh surgeon George Bell. He is one of the two principal clerks of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Patrick Clason, being the other; and on the death, in 1861, of James Robertson, professor of divinity and church history in the university of Edinburgh, he was appointed his successor as secretary to her majesty's sole and only master printers in Scotland.
The evangelical revival in Scotland was a series of religious movements in Scotland from the eighteenth century, with periodic revivals into the twentieth century. It began in the later 1730s as congregations experienced intense "awakenings" of enthusiasm, renewed commitment and rapid expansion. This was first seen at Easter Ross in the Highlands in 1739 and most famously in the Cambuslang Wark near Glasgow in 1742. Most of the new converts were relatively young and from the lower groups in society. Unlike awakenings elsewhere, the early revival in Scotland did not give rise to a major religious movement, but mainly benefited the secession churches, who had broken away from the Church of Scotland. In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century the revival entered a second wave, known in the US as the Second Great Awakening. In Scotland this was reflected in events like the Kilsyth Revival in 1839. The early revival mainly spread in the Central Belt, but it became active in the Highlands and Islands, peaking towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Scotland gained many of the organisations associated with the revival in England, including Sunday Schools, mission schools, ragged schools, Bible societies and improvement classes.
George Smeaton (1814–1889) was a 19th-century Scottish theologian and Greek scholar.
Thomas Brown (1811–1893) was a Scottish minister in the Free Church of Scotland who rose to its highest rank, Moderator of the General Assembly in 1890. He was a noted geologist and botanist. He wrote prolifically on the history of the Disruption of 1843.
George Cook (1772–1845) was a Scottish minister, author of religious tracts and professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews University. He served as Moderator of the Church of Scotland in 1825. He was the leader of the "moderate" party in the church of Scotland on the question of the Veto Act, which led to Disruption of 1843 and the formation of the Free Church by the "evangelical party.
Patrick MacFarlan was a Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1834 and as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1845.
Robert Buchanan (1802–1875) was a Scottish minister and historian who served as Moderator of the General Assembly to the Free Church of Scotland in 1860/61. He was one of the leading figures in the Disruption of 1843.
Charles John Brown (1806–1884) was a Scottish minister, who served as Moderator of the General Assembly for the Free Church of Scotland from 1872 to 1873.
William Wilson was a Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1866/67.
Alexander Campbell Cameron, known as Alexander Campbell until 1844, was a British Conservative politician.
George Buchan was a civil servant who was shipwrecked on his first passage to India as a teenager. Born into an elite family, his career progressed in the Indian Civil Service rising to the rank of Chief Secretary. After retiral he came home to Scotland and had a Christian conversion. After several years as an elder in the Church of Scotland, he left at the Disruption and joined the Free Church of Scotland. He was an author writing about shipwrecks, Madras and about duelling as well as about church-state relations. He also wrote about God's providence illustrated from his own biography. Buchan was also an office bearer for a number of charity organisations.
Alexander Earle Monteith trained as a lawyer in Edinburgh and became Sheriff of Fife in 1838. He is remembered as one of the Disruption Worthies - those church leaders who, at the Disruption of 1843, left to set up the Free Church of Scotland. Monteith was an active member of many commissions involved in reforming Aberdeen University, prisons and treatment of those then called lunatics for example. Monteith was also photographed by Hill & Adamson and by his second wife, Frances, who herself was an early pioneer of calotype photography and some of whose pictures ended up in an album by David Brewster.
