Scottish Reformation
Scotland's Reformation of 1560 was at once a religious transformation, a constitutional realignment, and a geopolitical pivot. The Lords of the Congregation, a Protestant noble faction inspired by John Knox's preaching and backed by English military and naval support, overthrew the French-backed Catholic regency of Mary of Guise. The Reformation Parliament of August 1560 repudiated the authority of the pope, banned the Mass, and adopted a Calvinist Confession of Faith, establishing a reformed Presbyterian Kirk. This top-down legal restructuring of the national church ended the Auld Alliance with France as a functioning policy and bound Scotland's future to Protestant England. The settlement was institutionally fragile: the nobility retained the seized church lands, leaving the new Kirk without a secure revenue base, and the Highland Gaelic regions resisted reform far longer than the Lowlands. The imminent return of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, from France fused the questions of confessional identity, personal monarchy, and the English succession into a single combustible problem.
- Year: 1560 CE
- Category: Political
