Leaving the Church

Ministers of the Church of Scotland at the 1843 Disruption

Abstract

This article presents a dataset comprising biographical, economic and geographical data relating to Church of Scotland ministers of the early nineteenth century. Transcribed from a range of authoritative church and government publications it brings together a number of hitherto unconnected sources. This facilitates a quantitative analysis of the decisions of ministers of the Church of Scotland regarding whether to leave or remain with the Church at the time of the 1843 Disruption. In demonstrating how the dataset might be deployed to statistically model the decisions of these ministers, it enriches existing historical narratives of the most important domestic event in Scotland during the nineteenth century.