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 residual 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 back to the Apostles.
Ebenezer Erskine was a Scottish minister whose actions led to the establishment of the Secession Church.
The Presbyterian Church in Canada is a Presbyterian denomination, serving in Canada under this name since 1875. The United Church of Canada claimed the right to the name from 1925 to 1939. According to the Canada 2021 Census 301,400 Canadians identify themselves as Presbyterian, that is, 0.8 percent of the population.
Knox College is a postgraduate theological college of the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1844 as part of a schism movement in the Church of Scotland following the Disruption of 1843. Knox is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in Canada and confers doctoral degrees as a member school of the Toronto School of Theology.
David Welsh FRSE was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and academic. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1842. In the Disruption of 1843 he was one of the leading figures in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland.
John Cook was a minister at a Presbyterian Church in Canada and educator associated with Quebec.
Thomas M'Crie was a Scottish biographer and ecclesiastical historian, writer, and preacher born in the town of Duns, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. He became the leading minister of the Original Secession Church. His work: "Life of Knox" (1813) was a means of vindicating the Scottish reformer John Knox who was a unpopular figure at the time. It was followed by a "Life of Andrew Melville" (1819). Melville was Knox's successor as the leader of the Reformers in Scotland. M'Crie also published histories of the Reformation in Italy and Spain. He received an honorary degree of D.D. in 1813, the first Secession minister to receive such an award.
Thomas M'Crie was a Presbyterian minister and church historian. He was a Scottish Secession minister who joined the Free Church of Scotland and served as the Moderator of the General Assembly to that church 1856/57.
The Rev William Miller (1815–1874) was a Scots-born minister of the Free Presbyterian Church of Victoria who served the John Knox Church, cnr Little Lonsdale and Swanston streets, Melbourne 1851–64, and was the first Chairman of the council of Scotch College, Melbourne.
Ralph Robb was a Scottish clergyman, the first Free Church of Scotland minister in the New World.
James Fisher (1697–1775) was one of the founders of the Scottish Secession church. He was born at Barr, on 23 January 1697, the second son of Thomas Fisher, minister of Rhynd. He was educated at University of Glasgow. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Perth on 31 October 1722 and subsequently called and ordained on 23 December 1725. He dissented and joined with his father-in-law Ebenezer Erskine in his appeal and complaint to the Assembly of 1733. He was one of the four original members of the Associate Presbytery founded at Gairney Bridge on 6 December 1733. He was deposed by the General Assembly on 15 May 1740, but continued to preach in the parish church till 13 August 1741, when he was forcibly ejected on a sheriff's warrant. He then preached in a tent on Kinclaven brae during the time he remained in the district. On 8 October 1741 he became minister of Shuttle Street Associate Congregation, Glasgow. He was deposed by the Associate (Antiburgher) Synod on 4 August 1748 over the question of the Burgess Oath. He was appointed Professor of Divinity by the Associate (Burgher) Synod in 1749. He died on 28 September 1775.
David Brown was a son of bookseller who was twice Provost of the city. He was a Free Church of Scotland minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly 1885/86. He was co-author of the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary on the whole Bible.
Hugh Watt was a Scottish minister and historian. He served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1950. He was president of the Scottish Church History Society 1938 to 1941.
John Smyth (1796–1860) was a Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly for the Free Church of Scotland 1853/54.
James Chalmers Burns was a Scottish minister, who served as Moderator of the General Assembly for the Free Church of Scotland 1879/80.
Alexander Topp (1814–1879) was a Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland who emigrated to Canada and twice served as Moderator of the General Assembly to the Presbyterian Church of Canada.
William Binnie was a presbyterian minister. He was Professor of Systematic Theology to the Reformed Presbytery Synod as well as being their minister in Stirling. On the breach in the Reformed Presbytery he joined the Majority Synod. In 1875 he was appointed to the Church History chair at the Free Church College in Aberdeen. He was an author publishing works on the Psalms and on the church.
Peter Lorimer (1812–1879) was a historian, religious author and minister of the Church of Scotland in London who became Moderator of the Synod of the English Presbyterian Church.
George Lawson D.D. (1749–1820) was a Scottish minister of the Secession Church, known as a biblical scholar. Thomas Carlyle, in an 1870 letter to Lawson's biographer John Macfarlane, called him "a most superlative steel-grey Scottish peasant ".
