Scotland’s Last Blasphemy Trials: Popular Unbelief and its Opponents, 1819–1844

Abstract

Abstract This article provides the first detailed historical analysis of Scotland’s last blasphemy trials (1819–1844). During this period, numerous booksellers and publishers were convicted for selling printed works that denied, ridiculed and vilified the scriptures and the Christian religion. Despite their significance as the last cases of their kind in Scottish history, these trials are almost entirely absent from the existing scholarship. The article positions them as a response to the unprecedented rise of popular unbelief in the Scottish religious landscape, a phenomenon that has itself been overlooked or dismissed by historians. In doing so, it demonstrates their significance in the campaign to extend religious toleration to unbelievers and identifies the early nineteenth century as an important transitional period, in which public attitudes towards the right of unbelievers to express openly their disavowal of Christianity underwent a significant transformation. As the article shows, debates over Scottish blasphemy legislation intersected with wider debates between Scottish Christians over the validity of an established church protected by law, and with contemporary campaigns from English unbelievers and their liberal supporters for the unfettered freedom of opinion. By 1844, conflicting attitudes over the desirability, utility and legitimacy of policing unbelief deepened divisions between different groups of Scottish Christians, while opening new areas of common ground between certain kinds of Christians and unbelievers.