The Scottish Exile Community in the Netherlands, 1660-1690 (review)

After the Restoration hundreds of Presbyterians left Scotland to go into exile in the Netherlands. Some were ministers who had been removed, taking members of their congregation with them, others left voluntarily, but their motivation was almost always overwhelmingly religious. In The Scottish Exile Community in the Netherlands, Ginny Gardner looks at this group of exiles, who were, in the words of Patrick Hume of Polwarth 'shaken together…in the bag of affliction.' Although many assumptions have been made over the centuries about these refugees, this is the first comprehensive study of them. Taking up the challenge posed by J. Carswell in his The Descent on England: A Study of the English Revolution of 1688 and its European Background (London, 1969), Gardner sets out to examine his claim that 'the world of the Scottish exile in Holland had a peculiar significance as the Revolution's nursery'.

As the title indicates, The Scottish Exile Community in the Netherlands is very much concerned with the idea of community, as much as it is with the political and religious factors that shaped it. The book is divided into two sections. In the first part the author describes and defines the community and its interactions with other Scottish communities in the Netherlands as well as with Dutch society. In the thirty years that they were abroad, they very much lived, in Gardner's words, like a 'community-within-a-community'. Although well connected to the rest of the Scots residing in the Netherlands—merchants, students and members of the Scots Brigade—the exiles formed a tight-knit unit with a separate identity, which was determined by their predicament and their desire to return to Scotland and restore the position of its Kirk and ministers. Throughout their exile, Gardner's men and women remained focused on their return to Scotland, which finally happened immediately before, during and after the Revolution of 1688/9. The second part of the book examines the political development of the exile community, culminating in the events surrounding the end of James VII and II's reign: the 1687 Indulgences, the Revolution that took place a year later, and the return of the exiles.

Gardner's main interest lies with the prosopography and infrastructure of her group of exiles, which she painstakingly divides into three different types: exile ministers, "definite" exiles—mainly the members of the congregation which had followed their ministers into exile— and "possible" exiles—Scots who involved themselves with the first two groups but who were not necessarily in exile themselves, such as students and merchants. Gardner demonstrates convincingly that it was this composition, which determined and influenced both the role of the individual members and the course of events, leading up to the Revolution and the return of the group. During the first twenty years of their exile, the Gardner's Scots were mainly concerned with influencing church affairs. Despite the political engagement of some of the ministers, 'the community provided only a limited threat to the British authorities'. Gardner shows that things changed only after the failure of the1685 invasions and especially during the debates concerning the Indulgences two years later. James' proposed toleration split the community between those who accepted the Indulgences, and subsequently returned to Scotland, and those who remained sceptical and either only returned with William of Orange or continued their radical activities from the Dutch countryside, like the Cameronians. This is a fascinating discovery, which has already been making its wayintothehistoriography of theRevolution and the early 1690s.

Gardner's work provides a wonderful insight into the making and functioning of the exile community. There are two points of criticism, however. Firstly, this work would have benefited from the use of a model or framework. While the descriptions in the first section are richly illustrated with detailed individual accounts and examples—there are helpful lists of exiles in the appendices—Gardner's study...