University of Guelph Library
Scottish religious holdings at Guelph
Collections on Scottish religious history from the seventeenth to nineteenth century commenced with the establishment of the History Department in 1965 and its chairman, W. Stanford Reid, who was particularly interested in Scottish church history. Grants from the Macdonald Stewart Foundation in the early 1970s were used to purchase primary materials for the early period of the Scottish Covenanters (1638-51), who had pledged to maintain the Presbyterian doctrine and polity as the sole religion of their country. This collection documents many tribulations endured by the Covenanters during this period and their eclipse after their defeat by Oliver Cromwell.
To expand the collection, in the 1980s a small acquisition concerning the followers of Richard Cameron (c.1648-1680), the Cameronian Covenanters, was made to document the more radical elements of the later covenanting period (1680-90) in Scotland.
Guelph's major religious Scottish collection dates to 1975 with the acquisition of a collection of 110 pamphlets and resources on the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843. Over two decades holdings expanded to about 700 items--broadsides of petitions (signed), notices, monthly statements, and posters. The collection is particularly rich in sources as early as 1817, when initial concerns that led to the Disruption were raised; for tracts by the eventual leaders in the period of reform, such as Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847); and for pamphlets from the post-Disruption era to the 1890s, when attempts were made to re-unite the various splinter churches. Of special importance are the few contemporary works, primarily in pamphlet form, of the Disruption in Canada and particularly in Ontario.
A purchase of 200 items concerning the formation of the Catholic Apostolic Church developed Guelph's holdings for the work of Edward Irving (1792-1834) in the 1830s. Pamphlets, monographs, and a few broadsides are represented in this collection.
Many aspects of Scottish religious and church history are collected to support Guelph's rare book holdings, with two major exceptions. First, Scottish sermons are collected only if they are of interest beyond the purely theological, for example, sermons by the clergyman Samuel Rutherford (1600-61), while primarily doctrinal and theological in nature, are in essence the justification for the actions of the Cameronian Covenanters in the 1680s. A second exception is that Scottish church hymnals are collected only to exemplify important changes in church policy or disputes.
In summary, the greatest strength is the primary pamphlet and broadside material that all sides of the these controversies used to build and defend their cases.