Scottish Jacobitism, Episcopacy, and counter-enlightenment

Abstract

Acknowledging the considerable degree of identity which developed between Episcopalianism and the Jacobite movement in Scotland, this study investigates the character of Episcopalian thought at the end of the seventeenth and in the first decade of the eighteenth century, making particular use of the writings of Bishop John Sage (1652-1711) and Principal Alexander Monro (d. 1698). It comments on the origins of that thought, with reference to both locally and temporally specific circumstances and the intellectual traditions of the seventeenth century, notably an increasing emphasis on historical method and the cultivation of neo-Stoicism. In commenting on the content of this thought, it centrally seeks to explain the relationship of the dominant theological theme of the writings examined to the intellectual, social and political threats to theocratic order offered by the period in general and the revolution of 1688-1689 in particular. It argues that it is chiefly in this way that Episcopalian Jacobite thought can be placed in the context of Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debate. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.