stirling-1963-vol-1/05_042

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : GENERAL
Carron, alludes ¹ to "two great furnaces frightful to behold ... blown with bellows of monstrous
size ... which expand and contract by the motion of wheels driven by water, and the sound
of their blast is most hideous". Nimmo also notes that the coming of the works "quite altered
the face of the country", as it led to the building of "several villages for the convenience of the
workmen", to the enclosure and improved cultivation of neighbouring lands, and to a con-
siderable increase in rents. Again, Faujas de St. Fond, who visited Carron in 1784, writes of
the heating of the air by an outdoor process used for making of coke, of the brilliance of
the coke-fires at night, of the "sheaves of flame, darting to a great height above the high
furnaces", and of "the noise of the heavy hammers as they strike on resounding anvils,
mingled with the sharp whistling of the blast-pumps". ² A cartoon of 1797 depicts an unpopular
local character as reduced to panic by the flaring Carron blast-furnaces. ³
In conclusion, something should be said about the divisions that arose among the
Presbyterian churches during the 18th and 19th centuries. It is true, or course, that these
affected the country as a whole, and not Stirlingshire in particular, but, as mention of one or
other of the seceding bodies is made fairly frequently in the Inventory, it will be well, while
dealing with the social background, to indicate briefly the course of the more important religious
movements. ⁴
The Revolution Settlement of 1690 re-established Presbytery in Scotland, reviving the
system of 1592; but there was dissatisfaction with a settlement in which the Covenants and
claims for ecclesiastical independence were set aside and Parliament continued to legislate
for the Church. Toleration, for example, was granted to Episcopalians by an Act of the Union
Parliament in 1712, and the rights of lay patrons in the appointment of ministers were
restored in the same year. The dominant trends in theology also caused dissatisfaction, for
"Moderate" ministers, concentrating on ethics, tending to ignore the supernatural and
condemning "enthusiasm", alienated the conservative "Evangelicals", who adhered to the
rigid Calvinism of the 17th century. Crisis was reached in 1732, and in 1733 the Rev. Eenezer
Erskine, of Stirling, and four other ministers, formed the Associate Presbytery in permanent
separation from the Church. They were deposed in 1740.
In 1747 the seceded body, now called the Associate Synod, was itself split in two. The
parties disagreed over the oath by which the burgesses of certain towns undertook to support
"the true religion presently professed within this realm, and authorised by the laws thereof",
and the sects formed by their separation were known respectively as Bughers, who admitted
the oath, and Anti-Burghers. who rejected it. Each of these in turn split into an "Auld Licht"
and a "New Licht" faction, the former in 1799 and the latter in 1806. In 1792 there were said
to be 1415 Burghers and 172 Anti-Burghers in Stirling parish, as against 2795 members of the
Establishes Church. ⁵ In 1820 most of the New Light Seceders reunited as the United
Original Secession Church.
Meanwhile a second Secession had taken place, more specifically as a result of disputes

1 History, 462.
2 Caddell, The Story of the Forth, 181, quoting St. Fond, Travels in England and Scotland, 1784, ed. Geikie, i, 177-86. Caddell
gives a short general history of Carron Company, ibid., 143-94; see also S.H.R., No. 124 (Oct 1958). 136 ff.
3 Reproduced from Kay's Original Portraits by Caddell, op. cit., facing p. 182.
4 The account here given follows, in general, W. Law Mathieson, Scotland and the Union, chs. V-VII, and G. D. Henderson,
The Church of Scotland, chs. XII-XV, XVII, XVIII.
5 Stat. Acct., viii (1793), 282.

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