Perth Assembly

{{Short description|1619 book published by the Pilgrims in Leiden}}

Perth Assembly was a controversial book published by the Pilgrims in Leiden in 1619.

In the same year, before they departed on the Mayflower for Massachusetts; the book was smuggled into Scotland in wine vats.Soule Kindred Newsletter, Vol.43 No.4, Autumn 2009, pg 4 https://soulekindred.org/resources/Documents/Newsletters/PDF-Newsletters/Vol.-43-No.-4-Autumn-2009.pdf The book was critical of the Five Articles of Perth, a church statute which had been ratified by the General Assembly in Perth in 1618.

The Five Articles forced the episcopacy form of church governance onto Scotland, a change which King James I strongly supported and the Pilgrims rejected. The King considered the book, and its printers, publishers, and distributors, to be subversive.Stewart, Laura A. M. (2007). "The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I's Religious Policies in Scotland". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 38 (4): 1013–1036.

The printer was Johannes Sol ("Soule") and the primary publishers were Thomas Brewer and William Brewster who went into hiding in 1619 before surreptitiously departing for Plymouth to escape threat of arrest. Other Pilgrims, such as George Soule (presumably the brother of the printer Johannes Sol), were also believed to have been involved in the printing of the book, and the controversy caused them to flee on the Mayflower and disguise their origins.Soule Kindred Newsletter, Vol.43 No.4, Autumn 2009, pg 4 https://soulekindred.org/resources/Documents/Newsletters/PDF-Newsletters/Vol.-43-No.-4-Autumn-2009.pdf

Johannes Sol's apprentice, Edward Raban, fled to Scotland in 1620 with Sol's pregnant widow after his death in a printing ink accident.Soule Kindred Newsletter, Vol.43 No.4, Autumn 2009, pg 4 https://soulekindred.org/resources/Documents/Newsletters/PDF-Newsletters/Vol.-43-No.-4-Autumn-2009.pdfSoule Kindred Newsletter Vol. XXXXV, No. 4 Fall 2011 https://soulekindred.org/resources/Documents/Newsletters/PDF-Newsletters/Vol.-45-No.-4-Fall-2011.pdf