The following article written by me was first published in the UK's Your Family History magazine in 2011. I've made a few tiny updates, as there have been some developments since then!
Researching Church of Scotland Records
Chris Paton
Prior to the advent of Scottish civil registration in 1855, the most important records to consult are those of the parish churches. The main denomination was, and still is, the Church of Scotland, though there were many other nonconformist churches also in existence. In this article we will look at the history and records of the established ‘Kirk’, as it is known, and turn to the nonconformist and other faiths next month.
The Celtic Church
The Church of Scotland has always differed from its counterpart south of the border. Although the religion had reached Scotland by the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it was the establishment of Iona as a monastic centre by the Irish missionary Colum Cille (Columba) in 563AD that would see a beacon created which would shine a light on Europe for centuries to come. Although an earlier missionary called Ninian had sought in the 5th century to convert the southern Picts, one of the main Celtic peoples within Scotland, it was from Iona that the mission was finally accomplished in all of Pictland. With a common religion, the Picts, and the descendants of the Irish Gaels, who had settled in the west within what they termed ‘Alba’, eventually united to form the basis of what was to become ‘Scotland’ (with the word ‘Scoti’ used by the Romans to denote the Irish colonists who settled in 'Argyll', or ‘the coast of the Gael’).
For centuries Scotland maintained its independence from Rome, holding many theological differences such as the date of Easter, and the right for priests to marry. It would not be until the 11th century that the Celtic Church was finally integrated within the Roman Catholic order, a situation which would continue for the next five centuries.
The Reformation
The Scottish Reformation of 1560 occurred following years of decline within the Catholic Church as it continued to operate within the country. The cause of the revolution was centred firmly on a desire to get back to the older forms of the Celtic Church. The reformers had for decades been unhappy at the corruption of the institution and the evolving use of hierarchies and practices for which they could see no evidence in the early church. A healthy dose of politics was also involved, with at this stage Scotland slowly becoming a puppet state of France and under the rule of a French regent, Mary of Guise, during the minority of Mary Queen of Scots. There were many reformers involved both before and after the Reformation, such as George Wishart and Andrew Melville, but the catalyst for the event itself was a firebrand Roman Catholic priest called John Knox.
Knox had been a protégé of Wishart prior to his being executed for heresy in St. Andrews in 1546, as a martyr to the ‘protestant’ beliefs then in circulation. Following the subsequent murder of Cardinal Beaton, who had authorised his execution, protestant activists had taken refuge within the town’s castle. Although uninvolved, Knox had found himself caught up alongside them, and was subsequently arrested and prosecuted also. After a short period on the French galleys he fled to the city state of Geneva, where he soon fell under the influence of a reformer called John Calvin.
Calvin had created a new protestant order in his city based on the concept of ‘the Godly Commonwealth’, with the church responsible for the moral discipline and education of its flock, working in partnership with the state. Upon his return to Scotland Knox helped the anti-French nobles and protestant reformers to rally and to oust Mary of Guise and her French forces from the country. Along the way statues were torn down as ‘idols’ in abbeys and churches across the land, and out of the flames and rubble a new Church of Scotland was born.
Presbyterianism
In its earliest ‘Calvinist’ form, the new Church was not exactly the happiest of institutions, with ministers instructing people that they were all damned to hell unless they had been predestined to join God in the afterlife as one of the pre-destined, chosen ‘Elect’. Despite a bumpy beginning, however, it was to become a very democratic body. A key criticism of the old order was the idea that there should be a controlling hierarchy with a pope, cardinals, archbishops and bishops. In the English Reformation of the 1530s, despite some reforms Henry VIII had to all extents and purposes just kicked the papacy’s influence out of England and taken the pope’s place as the head of the new Anglican Church. Scotland instead went for a much more thorough re-ordering of its basic institutions.
Under the new concept of ‘Presbyterianism’, the congregations of each parish were invited to choose their own ministers and elders to run their churches. Just for good measure, the landowners on which the churches were built, in the role of ‘heritors’, were required to pay a stipend to the ministers accepting such a ‘calling’ on their patch, being essentially required to break out the cheque book to keep the whole thing financed (with little in return). To the Kirk, it was not the concern of either the nobles or the monarchy’s business who would preach in every parish. The monarchy, however, under the rule of the House of Stuart, begged to differ.
Following the Reformation, Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, briefly returned to Scotland from France and clashed with just about everyone, before being deposed in 1567. She was then replaced by her son James VI, and for the rest of the 16th century he and his nobles sparred with the Kirk over its constitution and the role of bishops, which James wished to bring back to allow him direct control over the body. It was not until the Union of the Crowns in 1603, however, that tensions between the two dramatically escalated. As James I of Britain, the Scottish king now had control of the much larger Anglican Church south of the border, and wished to impose its conditions in his northern kingdom. His policies for doing so, such as the introduction of bishops in 1610 and the ‘Five Articles of Perth’ of 1621, which brought in alien practices such as kneeling during communion, confirmation by a bishop, and the observance of holy days such as Christmas, led to Scotland temporarily becoming episcopal i.e. under the rule of bishops.
The attempt to make Scotland Anglican continued under James’ successor, Charles I, and was one of the causes leading to the Civil Wars in Britain, following the Kirk’s rejection of episcopacy in 1637. The Scots were nevertheless appalled when Charles’ head was eventually removed from his body prior to the establishment of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Although they considered him a pain, he was still their pain, the rightful king of Scotland from a long line of Stuart kings. They therefore immediately pledged allegiance to his son, Charles II, and agreed to help with his restoration to the English throne if he would guarantee Presbyterianism in Scotland. The king agreed, but upon his eventual restoration in 1660 he completely went back on his word, sending the hated bishops north once more. Three hundred ministers of the kirk abandoned their charges in protest, and thus followed one of Scotland’s darkest chapters, when people found secretly found worshipping at illegal Presbyterian based outdoor services called ‘conventicles’ were shot on sight. The period became known as the ‘Killing Times’.
It was not until James VII & II, successor to Charles II, was forced to flee soon after during the events of the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688), that Presbyterianism was finally secured as the state church in Scotland.
Parish Records
There were just over 900 Scottish parishes, though the number varied across time as some were occasionally split or merged. Registers for baptisms and marriages were in fact first introduced prior to the Reformation following a decision of the Edinburgh based Provincial Council of the Scottish clergy in the early 1550s, with the earliest surviving register that for Errol in Perthshire, from 1553. Burial records were not compulsory, though some parishes did record burials for accounting purposes, detailing the hire of services such as the use of the parish mortcloth. There is in fact a reference to burials being recorded as early as the 14th century, with the Synod of St Andrews instructing local parishes to list those who had died to help in subsequent probate matters, but these have sadly not survived. It is worth knowing that one key difference between England and Scotland following the Reformation lies in the Scottish equivalent of the probate procedure. Known as ‘confirmation’ in Scotland, this became an entirely civil process through the consistory courts (and later the sheriff courts), and not through various levels of ecclesiastical courts as in the case of the Anglican Church south of the border. The upshot of that is that it considerably easier to source the relevant records in Scotland.
Despite further instructions from the Kirk’s General Assembly in
1616 and 1636, most parishes did not keep registers until the 17th
century or after, with some parishes in the Western Isles not recorded
until well into the 19th century. The surviving ‘old parochial records’
(OPRs) as they are now known, have all been digitised and made available
up to 1854 on the pay-per-view ScotlandsPeople website (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk),
but can also be accessed on microfilm at many libraries, or through the
FamilySearch family history centres across Britain. To establish which
records have survived to the present day, visit the ScotlandsPeople
website at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/help-and-support/guides/church-registers.
You can also consult William B. Turnbull’s Scottish Parochial
Registers: Memoranda of the State of the Parochial Registers of
Scotland, written in 1849, to find what became of many others. The book
is available online at http://tinyurl.com/4swm4zx.
Some records may not have been recorded until a particular date, some
may have been destroyed accidentally, or at times even deliberately –
such as in 1802 when parish registers were used to help prove the age of
potential conscripts following the Militia Acts, provoking the ire of
some in certain parts. Some baptisms and marriages were also not
recorded between 1783 and 1794 because a tax of thruppence was required
to register them following the Stamp Act.
The records up to 1854 have also been largely indexed by FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org)
and made available through the site’s Historic Records collection.
Never attempt to research your tree purely from the indexes alone,
however, as you may well find additional information in the original
entry. An extreme example lies with the christening of Margaretta Sarah
Tyrwhill Brown in Perth on December 26th 1807. FamilySearch notes her
parents as Jonathan Brown and Julia Anna Craddock, but the original
record in fact describes several generations of her family! You may also
find that a child was a foundling, illegitimate, and witnesses may be
listed or a place of residence.
Bear in mind also that whilst a
marriage was completely legal if performed in the Church after the
regular proclamation of banns, it was also possible to be wed by other
common law means in Scotland. With burials, note also that many people
chose not to be buried in the parish where they lived and died, but
rather in the parish of their ancestors. If you have a job finding
someone’s burial, whilst it may be that a record was not kept, it may
also be that you are not thinking laterally enough!
Other records
The
day to day business of the parish, such as poor relief (prior to 1845),
communicants’ lists, parish discipline (including an obsession with
‘antenuptial fornication’), illegitimacy cases, and more, was kept
within the kirk session records. These are essentially the equivalent of
vestry records in England, and are mainly held at the National Records
of Scotland, with many now digitised and made available on
ScotlandsPeople. There was an ecclesiastical court structure, with parishes grouped together in presbyteries, then within synods and ultimately under the General Assembly. Records for presbyteries and synods can also be found indexed in CH2, as can records for parish heritors (sometimes containing payments to local tradesmen or for poor relief), though General Assembly papers are listed under CH1.
If your ancestor was a minister, you will also find data on him within a series of biographical volumes known as ‘Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae’. These can be accessed online in digitised format at www.archive.org or www.ancestry.co.uk.
For more on Scottish kirk session records, please sign up for my Scottish GENES Webinar on Saturday, 25 July 2026, with details on how to sign up available at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/p/webinars.html.
Chris
Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. To purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
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