Episcopal Church of Scotland

Scotland had no territorial episcopate before the 12th cent. and no archbishoprics before the late 15th cent. Although the church assumed an increasingly presbyterian accent after the Reformation, bishops remained a lively issue in the conflicts bedevilling church and crown between 1560 and 1690. Thereafter Scotland's remaining episcopalians formed links with English non-jurors, participating in 1711 in a joint consecration of bishops. An Act of Toleration (1712) gave them legal standing provided their ministers took the oath of allegiance to Queen Anne. The 19th cent. saw substantial reconstruction: seven dioceses by 1837, a doubling of churches and clergy by 1857, a Church Council since 1876, and a Consultative Council on Church Legislation since 1905, the whole later enhanced by a General Synod.