It is almost impossible to separate the Church from the State in this period of history in Scotland. In 1540 the reformation changed Scotland from a Catholic country into a Protestant country. Not everyone of course changed but it was only very strong families with high connections that could remain Catholic and even then not openly so. As an example the First Earl of Huntly, George Gordon who had been excommunicated, declared himself to be Catholic on his deathbed in 1636.
The fact that the Gordons were such string Catholics meant that Catholics could probably, at great risk, practice their religion. In the History of the Province of Moray Lachlan Shaw states that Popery still prevails in their lands. It has also been put forward that the Protestant religion took root much quicker in the Burghs where there was trade with Europe and the Calvinist doctrines that were abound at the time. In the rural areas the uptake would have been slower.
In Dipple and in Essil there were however already Protestant Ministers in Place as early as 1574:
| Name | Start | End | Comment |
| Alexander Stronach | 1574 | Reader* | |
| Adam Hepburn | 1574 | Parson | |
| Alexander Watt | 1578 | 1579 | |
| William Peterkin | 1585 | 1586 | Had been removed from Ardintullie and was an Exhorter* in Dipple and Dundurcos |
| Alexander Hay | 1588 | 1624 | Transferred from Rhynie. Died of gout. |
| Walter Smith | 1625 | 1655 | Died |
| 1655 | The parish had no reader or schoolmaster | ||
| Thomas Urquhart | 1656 | 1658 | Transferred to Essil |
| George Innes | 1658 | 1663 | Demitted for Non-conformity |
| Alexander Marshall | 1664 | 1682 | Was the chaplain to the Innes family. Demitted on account of the Test. |
| John Scott | 1683 | 1726 | Died. Had his purse stolen at St. Ruffus’s fair by Egyptians (Gypsies). |
* Readers and exhorters served in local churches where there was no regular ministry they read the lessons and led the prayers. In many respects, they were treated as probationers for the ministry; by their service, their gifts and graces were tested.
Ministers in Essil
| Name | Start | End | Comment |
| Robert Keith | 1567 | Minister Urquhart, Lhanbryde & Essil | |
| John Blinshall | 1567 | Reader in the same three parishes | |
| John Peters | |||
| Alexander Innes | 1588 | Transferred to Birnie 1588/1589 | |
| William Roch | 1601 | 1651 | Died – came from Ogston |
| Colin Falconer | 1651 | 1658 | Transferred to Forres. Later became a Bishop |
| Thomas Urquhart | 1658 | 1663 | Deposed 30th June (See his story below) |
| Alexander Dunbar | 1658 | 1667 | Was admitted 8th July. Transferred and ended up in Dunfermline. |
| Alexander Lindsay | 1670 | 1676 | Transferred to Urquhart |
| George Cumming | 1676 | 1723 | Died aged about 76. |
Once the reformation had taken place different forms of Protestantism were practiced during the period.
The new church that was formed in 1560 was Calvinist and was utterly opposed to all things Papist. In the first decade after the initial reformation the key was to bring the religious doctrine to the people. Given the very rural nature of Scotland at the time and Speymouth in particular, the way the church saw of doing this was at the Parish level. This meant acting locally and in order to prevent popish practices from re-emerging the parishioners were encouraged (told) to elect Elders as well as Readers and Exhorters to control the parish as a whole.
After 1560 because of shortages of appropriate people Readers were allowed to carry out baptisms and marriages. In 1580 the General Assembly declared that “the office of a reader is not an ordinary office in the Kirk of God” and the following year it was expressly ordered that readers should not be. However it is clear that readers continued to be part of the Kirk for a long time after through to 1645.
In 1572, John Knox gave tacit agreement to the appointment of Bishops once again, a weakening of resolve that would have its subsequent consequences.
In 1574 a more strict theology came to the fore with Andrew Melville. His doctrine being much stricter did not allow for Bishops as all Ministers were equal – instead he wanted a life appointed committee of elders to be set up whose principal duty was to appoint new ministers who would have a more elevated role at the parish level. His doctrine also called for a separation of Crown and Church with the latter being above the former. Melville’s influence at first was small with very few Ministers rallying to his cause.
However, in 1610 the Crown reintroduced the administrative role of the Bishops that sparked dissent on a wide scale. Melville’s preachers had been banned from the kirk but had been preaching and teaching in private meetings and in houses. Further threats to take back the tithes and land owned by the Church were further exacerbated in 1638 with the introduction of a new prayer book that basically usurped the role of the spontaneous or extempore prayers that had been part of the reformation in Scotland.
The ill thought through move by the Crown led to one of the major factors that would haunt Charles throughout the Civil War. The National Covenant was signed in Edinburgh in 1638.
What began as a conservative, reactionary backlash against the policies end ruling style pursued by Charles I developed over the course of fifty years into a radical program for political, ecclesiastical and constitutional change. The engine driving this extraordinary, revolutionary impulse was the covenant ideal Although the covenant ideal had enjoyed broad-based, theoretical support in Scotland prior to the late 1630s, attempts to implement it as a guiding principle of public policy in conjunction with concerted efforts to popularize the concept were not launched until the outset of the ‘Troubles’.
Between 1638 and 1689, Scottish political culture was tested and, ultimately, altered by the successes and failures of the covenanters in promoting this vision with each succeeding decade witnessing new challenges for the established order in church and state. Beginning in the late 1630s, petitioning campaign aimed at a redress of specific grievances was launched against the Caroline administration that led to a revolution in church and state. In the 1640s, internal and external threats to the political ascendency of a provisional, covenanting government precipitated outbreaks of war while, during the 1650s, the movement’s military end political inadequacies resulted in the occupation of the country by a foreign, military presence.
From the initial challenge to royal authority with the Prayer Book controversy and the subsequent petitioning campaign of 1637-38 to the near realization of the covenant ideal in the late 1640s when the radical kirk party dominated politics, ministers played a central role in, alternatively, fomenting civil disobedience end reinforcing the objectives and ambitions of the provisional government as its leading advocates. Moreover, after the majority of the political nation had abandoned the covenanting cause by 1651, radical, Presbyterian ministers filled the vacuum in the covenanter’s leadership.
It was a natural alliance for the covenanters to align themselves with the Cromwellian army in the Civil War invading England in 1644 helping win the decisive battle of Marston Moor. However one of the darker notes of Scottish history took place when General David Leslie turned his troops North to take on James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose’s Royalists in the Battle of Philiphaugh. For the first time a Scottish army put to death about 300 women and children in the name of God with cries of “Jesus and no quarter”.
Speymouth also suffered. In February 1645, Alasdair Mac Colla arrived in Garmouth. He was second in command to Montrose and was ordered to burn the lands on Innes:
“The battle of Auldearn was fought, May 9th, 1645. The MacKenzies and Frasers were on the side of the Covenantors. Aladtair MacColla came near losing his life in trying to regain a position behind a garden fence, which he had very unwisely left. ……. Some days after the battle Montrose committed to the flames a good many houses in Elgin, Garmouth and other places.”
In fact in the history of Covenanters in Moray and Ross by the Rev Murdoch McDonald (1875) goes on to state:
“The mansions of Grangehill (now Dalvey), Brodie, Culbin, Innes, and Redhall, are plundered and burnt,; the lands of Burgie, Lethen, and Duffus, are wasted; the village of Garmouth is sacked ,and the nets and cobles on the Spey destroyed”
If discipline under the pre-Covenanter regime had been tough, under the Covenanters life got even tougher. Not only was the practice of the unreformed faith and Catholicism punished severely, but attendance at church and the learning of their flavour of religion, enforced. Even their private lives, people was watched and scrutinized. The behaviour of the congregation, their leisure activities such as they were, their dress snuff-taking, domestic arguments, the behaviour of their children were punished. Children in Garmouth were punished for playing Breks in 1650. The country was under a network of church authorities and spies that would shame totalitarian regimes of later centuries.
There were various different ways in which the Kirk punished people. The most drastic was excommunication that was used surprisingly commonly. This was though a last resort and the offender generally had to be non repentant and to have sinned three times or more before excommunication was served. If possible and the sinner repented the excommunication could be lifted (see the case of Margaret Innes in Essil in 1656).
Much more common was public penance. Writing in 1841, the Rev George Tyack (Discipline in the Kirk) took a dim view of the punishments dished out:
“Public penance was also resorted to, often in addition to some other form of punishment; the penance usually involving the use of the “repentance-stool,” or the jaggs, or jougs. The former of these was a wooden structure formed in two tiers or steps, the lower of which, used for less heinous offences, was named the “cock-stool.” An offender, judged to perform a public penance on this stool, was first clothed in an appropriate habit, the Scottish representative of the traditional white sheet, which consisted of a cloak of coarse linen, known as the “harden goun,” the “harn goun,” or the “sack goun.”
Thus arrayed, (he or she) stood at the kirk door while the congregation assembled and during the opening prayer of the service; just before the sermon the penitent was led in by the sexton and placed, according to the terms of the sentence, either upon “the highest degree of the penitent stuill” or upon, “the cock-stool”; where he stood barefoot and bare headed during the discourse, in which his sins and offences were not forgotten. The congregation generally wore their hats during the sermon.
The jagg or jougs consisted of an iron collar fastened by a padlock, which hung from a chain secured in the church wall near the principal entrance. An offender sentenced to the jagg was compelled to stand locked within this collar for an hour or more before the morning service on one or more Sundays. About the time of the Revolution this dropt out of use, chiefly from the fact that the State no longer suffered the powers of the Kirk to be carried with so high a hand.”
Furthermore:
…. Scottish Kirk passed resolutions desiring the bailies to put this or that offender in gyves; magistrates were requested to imprison others, “their fude to be bread and watter;” employers were instructed to fine or chastise servants who used profane language; and town authorities were solicited to procure appliances for “ducking” certain classes of sinners. The brank or scold’s bridle, the stocks, and the pillory, were used by the ecclesiastical, no less than by the civil, authorities; the Kirk also imposed fines, decreed banishment, used the steeples as prisons, and inflicted mutilation, and even death, upon offenders; its power to enforce these sentences being largely due to the fact that civil disabilities followed the pronouncement of excommunication. The excommunicated person was an outlaw; he could hold no land, might be imprisoned by any magistrate to whom he was denounced, and was to be “boycotted” by friends, followers, and tradesmen; any one showing him the smallest consideration, or affording him the least assistance, was liable to a similar punishment. These large powers were only abrogated in 1690.”
In and around Speymouth there are recorded instances of such punishments:
| Name | Parish | Date | Comment |
| James Anderson | Garmouth | 1649 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Alexander Mitchell | Garmouth | 1649 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| James Lovie | Crofts of Dipple | 1649 | Breach of Sabbath |
| Marjory Simpson | Garmouth | 1649 | Breach of Sabbath |
| James Anderson | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Alexander Mitchell | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Anderson Walter | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| James Angus | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| John Brebner | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Andro Bremner | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| James Cruikshank | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Andro Mitchell | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| John Simpson Jnr | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| John Simpson Snr | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Walter Smyth | Garmouth | 1650 | Curracher, fished on Sabbath |
| Elspet Angus | Garmouth | 1650 | Played a the “breks” on Sabbath** |
| Janet Anderson | Garmouth | 1650 | Played a the “breks” on Sabbath** |
| Isobel Mitchell | Garmouth | 1650 | Played a the “breks” on Sabbath** |
| Elspet Ritchie | Garmouth | 1650 | Played a the “breks” on Sabbath** |
| Marjory Symson | Garmouth | 1650 | Played a the “breks” on Sabbath** |
| Elspet Steinson | Garmouth | 1650 | Hung out washing on Sabbath |
| Jeane Steinson | Garmouth | 1650 | Hung out washing on Sabbath |
| Helen Barbour | Belnacoul | 1652 | Censured for providing a “testimonie” from the Minister of Dipple (Walter Smith) to say that she had been at church there being technically parishioner of Essil |
| Agnes Furie | Crofts of Dipple | 1652 | Profaned Lord’s Day |
| Katherine Hosack | Crofts of Dipple | 1652 | Curser |
| Christiane Michie | Crofts of Dipple | 1652 | Profaned Lord’s Day |
| William Richie | Essil | 1653 | Found drunk, deposed as Church Elder |
| Thomas Mill | Essil | 1655 | Stood for 2 Sabbath days in sackcloth at the pillar of repentance after being found guilty of swearing |
| Janet Ritchie | Essil | 1655 | Excommunicated for her quadralapse into fornication also being accused as a “curser” – see her sextolapse in Garmouth 13 years later |
| Margaret Innes | Essil | 1656 | Excommunication was removed after she completed her punishments before the congregation and had proclaimed her repentance |
| Anable Kinnaird | Essil | 1656 | Rebuked for continual absences from Kirk |
| Walter Young | Essil | 1656 | Rebuked for continual absences from Kirk |
| James Mitchell | Essil | 1656 | Stood for 2 Sabbath days in sackcloth at the pillar of repentance after being found guilty of swearing |
| Alexander Brander | Garmouth | 1663 | Servitour in Garmouth, censured for rowing a boat on the Sabbath |
| Alexander Hay | Garmouth | 1663 | Servitour in Garmouth, censured for rowing a boat on the Sabbath |
| Walter Chrystie | Garmouth | 1663 | Profaned Lord’s Day |
| Walter Rhynd | Garmouth | 1663 | Profaned Lord’s Day |
| Janet Ritchie | Garmouth | 1663 | Excommunicated for sextolapse into formication with William Steuart in Redhall |
| William Steuart | Redhall | 19th July 1663 | Delated for his quadrulapse* in fornication |
| Elspet Rend | Garmouth | 1663 | In fornication with Alexander Simpson |
| Alexander Simpson | Garmouth | 1663 | In fornication with Elspet Rend |
| David Cui | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| Alexander Petrie | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| John Nicolsone | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| John Rid | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| James Roy | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| James Smyth | Garmouth | 1665 | Gathered Shellfish on Sabbath, punished |
| John Innes | Garmouth | 1676 | Guising in women’s clothing, punished |
| Andrew Logie | Crofts of Dipple | Sept 1683 | There was a complaint that, at the tender age of 18 Andrew, had been absent from church four Sabbaths in a row and had been going around the countryside with Isobel Forseith where there was ale for sale. They were sentenced to stand at the pillar of repentance and pay a fine of 15s. Andrew did not marry Isobel but five years later married Janet Clark. |
*fourth offense
**from the Dictionary of the Scots Language “the breks or barla-breikis, barley bracks. A game generally played by young people in a corn-yard. Hence called Barla-bracks about the stacks, S. B. i.e. northern Sc.. One stack is fixed on as the dule or goal; and one person is appointed to catch the rest of the company, who run out from the dule. He does not leave it, till they are all out of his sight. Then he sets off to catch them. Any one, who is taken, cannot run out again with his former associates, being accounted a prisoner; but is obliged to assist his captor in pursuing the rest. When all are taken, the game is finished; and he, who was first taken, is bound to act as catcher in the next game.”
The 1649 -1650 which characterizes the mood of the country at the time – this was the time of the witch-hunts in Scotland that left many dead, burnt at the stake. Curiously there are no cases from Speymouth.
On Thursday 23rd June 1650 Charles II landed at Garmouth on the coast by Dipple and Essil. Here in order to get the favour a then disenchanted Covenanter movement signed the National Covenant. Local lore has it that he was brought ashore on the back of the Garmouth ferryman, called Milne. To commemorate this part of Garmouth was renamed Kingstoun or Kingston.

The Literary Gazette And Journal For The Year 1830 has a romantic notion of this landing:
“The descendants of a man of the name of Milne, who carried his majesty ashore, are still in existence; and the family have been distinguished ever since by the appellation of King Milne, from the service then performed by their ancestor. Thomas Milne, or, as some will have it, John Milne, was ferryman here in 1650. The vessel which brought Charles to Scotland could not come into the harbour, but rode at anchor in the bay, whilst a boat was sent to land the king. The boat could not approach the shore sufficiently near to admit of Charles landing dry-shod ; and Milne, wading into the tide, turned his broad back to the king at the side of the boat, and resting his hands on his knees, very quietly bade his majesty ‘ hup on.’ ‘ Nay, friend,’ said the king, smiling, though somewhat alarmed at the proposal, ‘ I am too great a weight for so little a man as you.’ ‘ Od ! I may be leetle o’ stature,’ replied Milne, looking up and laughing in Charles’s face, ‘ but I’se be bound I’m baith strong an’ steedy ; an’ mony’s the weightier burden I’ve carried i’ my day. Amused with the man, and persuaded by those around him that there was no danger, the king mounted on Milne’s back, and was landed safely on the boat-green. It does not appear that Milne received any reward for this piece of service.”
The extension of the Covenanters that truly politicised their beliefs was the formation of the Kirk Party that ruled Scotland through 1649 – 1651.
By 1653 Cromwell abolished the General Assembly and allowed for more tolerance within the church’s beliefs although the Catholics were still not allowed to practice. Even Cromwell’s hard-line troops were surprised by the severity of Puritanical punishment in Scotland and removed many of the jougs.
By 1663 Charles II was back on the throne and he bought back the episcopacy although not the General Council. He restored the rule of Bishops with a more Presbyterian form of church organisation. He was tolerant of the more Puritan forms of worship however nonetheless over 400 clergy were removed from their posts. As a result of this most the congregations who worshipped in the parishes followed suit and worship started to take place in houses, other private buildings and on the open moorland. These services became known as conventicles. A conventicle has been defined as religious assemblies of more than five people outside the auspices of the Kirk.
Charles II issued a proclamation in 1665 against the holding of conventicles, with the intention of making people attend the churches that were not being supported because they had adopted his restoration of the Bishops. He described a conventicle as being ‘a most dangerous and unlawful practice.
Amongst these were Rev. Thomas Urquhart, Minister of Dipple and Essil. In 1663 he was deposed because he would not “own or submit to the present established government in this Church and Kingdom”. He was subsequently imprisoned in Forres for “preaching in his own house and keeping Conventicles” in 1668. Clearly the time in prison did not go well with him as he died around 1676, having lost both speech and reason for some time.
18th Century
The Church continued it’s change and the keyword was fragmentation. These divisions were in the main the fruit of difference in the governance of the Church and the question of patronage or the issue of lay persons having the right to put forward clergy for their locality. The first major division took place in 1733, known as the First Secession and led by figures including Ebenezer Erskine, William Wilson of Perth, Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy and James Fisher of Kinclaven. They were all suspended from the ministry by the Commission of Assembly in November of 1733 and they formed the Associate Presbytery which during the rest of the century continued to split into yet smaller factions in the Second Secession.
Episcopalianism had retained supporters through the civil wars and changes the changes of teh 17th century. They found themselves as part of the common support for the Jacobite cause with the consequence that ironically they found themselves allied with the Catholic Highlanders. As a result of the failure of the Jacobite cause with the battle of Culloden the Episcopalian Church suffered as well.
Although the Kirk had abolished the draconian measures and control over the populace of the 17th Century, Scotland was still a deeply religious country had considerable control over the lives of the people, with a major role in the Poor Law and schools and over the morals of the population. Kirk Sessions show how the church basically became the moral police of the parishes only referring criminal case to the courts. This practice seems to have been little challenged. Sermons and church services on the sabbath were still hours long. In the second half of the century there was a movement towards singing during the service. Initially this was an extension of one person singing a line which was then repeated by the congregation and later a full choir.
