THE year 1560 is noted in history as the year of the Reformation in Scotland. That is because the so-called Reformation Parliament held in August of that year effectively ended the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

Yet the previous year had seen the start of what is often called the Reformation Rebellion and Glasgow was to play a huge part in that uprising of Protestantism, not least because it became the headquarters of the many nobles who were driving the reform process.

As we have seen, the Lords of the Congregation included aristocrats with considerable interests in and around Glasgow so it was natural that they should choose the city as their base.

The Lords were headed at first by Archibald Campbell, 4th Earl of Argyll, Alexander Cunningham, 4th Earl of Glencairn, and James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton. A second Archibald Campbell succeeded his father as 5th earl of Argyll in 1558 , and if anything he was even more of a campaigner for the Protestant cause, along with his brother-in-law, Lord James Stewart, later the Earl of Moray, the illegitimate son of King James V.  The latter two would become instrumental in gaining English aid for their cause.  

Yet it was the conversion of many clerics and ordinary Scots to Protestantism that really moved the Reformation onwards despite the powerful opposition of Mary of Guise, then regent for her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who was at the French court awaiting the ascension of her husband, the Dauphin Francis, to the throne of France.    

In late 1558, some gatherings of Protestants met mainly in the east coast burghs and began to use the English Prayer Book for their services, due mainly to the fact that Elizabeth I of England had gained the throne on November 17 and was committed to the cause of Reformation.  

An even more spectacular demonstration of the pace of reform was the astonishing event of Ne’erday, 1559.  On January 1 “The Beggars’ Summons” or “Beggars’ Warning” was posted on the doors of all the monasteries, abbeys and friaries across the land. These were seen as among the worst offenders of the Catholic Church due to the tithes and other forms of income they took from the local gentry and common people. 

The Summons threatened the violent dispossession of friars. We know what it said: addressed in the name of the “blind, crooked, bed-ridden, widows, orphans and poor of Scotland,” it read as follows: “Ye your selfes ar not ignorant (and thocht ye wald be) it is now (thankes to God) knawen to the haill warlde…that the benignitie or almes of all Christian people perteynis to us allanerly; quhilk ye, being hale of bodye, stark, sturdye, and abill to wyrk…hes thire many yeiris…maist falslie stowin fra us…[we] warne yow, in the name of the grit God, be this publyck wryting, affixt on your yettis quhair ye now dwell, that ye remove fourth of our saidis Hospitales, betuix this and the Feist of Witsunday next, sua that we … may enter and tak posessioun of our said patrimony, and eject yow utterlie fourth of the same.”

It is a remarkable document, basically a warning to tell the clerics to quit their establishments by the feast of Pentecost or Whitsun just a few months hence.   Or else…

By that Ne’erday, Glasgow was already in turmoil as the city’s university had ceased to function due to the clashes between the reforming Lords and the city’s clergy, mostly still loyal to the Catholic Church. There are accounts of churches and church buildings being burned and ransacked in 1558-59, and there is some evidence of this – at least three churches ceased operating in the first half of 1559, but the Collegiate Church of St Mary and St Anne definitely survived as it was converted for Protestant use in the 1580s. Glasgow Cathedral, however, was untouched, at least at that time.

Into the middle of this ferment strode a man whose legacy we are still living with – the greatest Reformer of them all, John Knox. Encouraged by the Lords of the Congregation he had made his way from Geneva to arrive in Scotland on May 2, 1559.

Some may see him as a wrecking ball of a man, other as a great liberator, but no-one can deny the effect he had on Scotland in 1559. He preached first at Dundee and then at Perth and incited his congregations to tear down the décor and symbols of Catholicism.

This they did with considerable glee, so much so that Regent Mary ordered a small army of her French soldiery to Perth where Knox was effectively besieged.

Now the people of Glasgow intervened and by doing so swung events in Knox’s way. The Reformers of Ayrshire under the Earl of Glencairn marched north to Perth to relieve the siege of the Protestants despite Regent Mary’s orders to the people to stay home.

Knox himself tells us what happened when the Earl came to Glasgow. The Earl had said at Craigie:  “Let every man serve his conscience. I will, by God’s grace, see my brethren in Perth; yea, albeit never man should accompany me, I will go, were it but with a pike upon my shoulder; for I had rather die with that company than live after them.” 

Knox recounts: “These words so encouraged the rest that all decided to go forward, and that they did so stoutly that, when Lion Herald, in his coat armour, by public sound of trumpet in Glasgow, commanded all men under pain of treason to return to their houses, never man obeyed that charge, but all went forward.”         

According to Knox, then, the ordinary people of Glasgow were supporting the Reformation Rebellion, and Glasgow’s central role was made even more prominent when after the Lords of the Congregation failed to oust Regent Mary and her French soldiers from Edinburgh and Leith, the Earls of Argyll and Glencairn, as well as Lords Boyd and Ochiltree  plus the former Regent James Hamilton, the Earl of Arran and Duke of Chatelherault, took up residence in Glasgow in November of 1559. And in Glasgow they planned the triumph of the Reformation and how they were going to achieve it.