The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 7. Scottish records
Of the two kingdoms whose destinies were interwoven with those of England, the one was not brought into personal union with her till near the beginning of the period treated in this chapter; whereas the other, for centuries, had been riveted to the side of her dominant partner by conquest and reconquest, and was perpetually striving to burst her bonds asunder. Though Scottish history had to tell of a long series of conflicts with the neighbouring kingdom, and of periods of subjection as well as of revolt and war, yet it ran its own course in both church and state, and the ecclesiastical history of Scotland in particular, the interest in which outweighed that of all other kinds of history north of the Tweed, covers a field of its own. The earliest record of the Scottish reformed church is The Booke of the Universal Kirk of Scotland, of which a most important portion was consumed at the fire of the two houses of parliament in 1834. But what remains is an invaluable document for much of the national history, and, so far as the history of the church is concerned, testifies at once to the conservative spirit of the Scottish reformers and to their firm adherence to the presbyterian form of church government set up by them from the first. One prelatical and one anti-prelatical history of importance belonging to this period deal with the material at the command of the writers.