The Life and Works of Robert Baillie (1602-1662)
Title Details

270 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

Series: St Andrews Studies in Scottish History

Series Vol. Number: 6

Imprint: Boydell Press

The Life and Works of Robert Baillie (1602-1662)

Politics, Religion and Record-Keeping in the British Civil Wars

by Alexander D. Campbell

  • Description
  • Contents
  • Reviews
First full study of the life and career of the Glaswegian minister Robert Baillie, establishing his significance and influence.

From 1637 to 1660, the Scots witnessed rapid and confused changes in government and violent skirmishing, whilst impassioned religious disputes divided neighbours, friends and family. One of the most vivid accounts of this period may be found in the letters of the Glaswegian minister, Robert Baillie; but whilst his correspondence has long featured in historical accounts of the period, the man behind these writings has largely been forgotten.
This biography draws together for the first time an analysis of Baillie's career and writings, establishing his significance as a polemicist, minister, theologian, and contemporary historian. It is based on the first, systematic reading ofBaillie's extensive surviving manuscripts, comprising thousands of leaves of correspondence, treatises, sermons, and notebooks. Chapters address Baillie's writings on monarchy, church government, Reformed theology, liturgical change, Biblical scholarship, and Baillie's practice of record-keeping. Overall, the book challenges prevalent understandings of the intellectual landscape of Covenanted Scotland, situating Baillie and his contemporaries on the peripheries of a dynamic, European Republic of Letters.

Alexander D. Campbell is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellow, Queen's University, Canada.
Introduction
Biography and Intellectual Formation
Monarchical Power
Presbyterian Church Government
Reformed Theology
The Five Articles of Perth, the Scottish Prayer Book, and Church Discipline
Biblical Scholarship and the Sermon
Record-Keeping and Life-Writing: the Creation of Robert Baillie's Legacy
Conclusion
Bibliography
"[A] vital account." SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY
"A fresh look at a well-known figure. Nicely structured around a set of central themes, [it] offers many new perspectives that will help scholars to understand not just Baillie himself but the events in which he played a part. It is a careful and impressive piece of scholarship." JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES
"Comprehensive and well researched....[It] should be essential reading for scholars of the covenanting movement and mid-seventeenth century Stuart Britain." ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW
"Not only should this fundamentally change how we use Baillie's work as a historical source, it should also force us to reconsider how we deploy other, edited, works that were processed by the antiquarians of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Like the best biographical studies, the work under review throws light on far more than the subject at the centre of his study." NORTHERN SCOTLAND
"Future biographers would do well to draw influence from Campbell's work on Baillie." INNES REVIEW

Hardcover

9781783271849

February 2017

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Ebook (EPDF)

9781782049265

February 2017

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Title Details

270 Pages

2.34 x 1.56 cm

Series: St Andrews Studies in Scottish History

Series Vol. Number: 6

Imprint: Boydell Press