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16th and 17th CenturiesHome > History > 16th and 17th Centuries
Following the Reformation, James Beaton, Glasgow's last Roman Catholic archbishop, fled to Paris in 1560, taking many of the Cathedral's records and treasured relics. Beaton's exile marked a significant move towards greater civic power and the emerging influence of the city's merchants and craftsmen. In 1639 the National Covenant was confirmed by the General Assembly of the Kirk at Glasgow Cathedral. The Covenant had been signed in 1638 in Edinburgh, and was crucial in hastening the end of Charles authority, leading to his eventual execution some ten years later. Arguably the General Assembly's deliberations were the most significant in political terms of any meeting ever held in Glasgow. Glasgow's foreign trade had also begun in earnest, traceable back to the 1530s, and it was undoubtedly booming by the time that Oliver Cromwell, hammer of the Stuarts, visited the city in 1650 just after he had invaded Scotland and defeated the Scots army at Dunbar. Cromwell stayed at Silvercraigs House in the Saltmarket, and his agent Thomas Tucker recognised Glasgow's great potential were it not 'checqed and kept under by the shallowness of the water'. By 1649 Glasgow had become the country's fourth largest burgh, rising by 1670 to the position of second largest behind only Edinburgh. Glasgow's position was ideal for access to Edinburgh, the Highlands and Ireland, and her wealth continued to grow through a ready supply of natural resources, especially coal and fish. The first cargo of tobacco arrived in Glasgow in 1674, and by the later 1690s the city had risen from its medieval slumber |
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