disputed appointment. Outcome The Act was highly opposed by the Church of Scotland because of its intrusion into church elections and was considered lay investiture. The General Assembly of 1712, inserted a clause in the instructions to its Commissioners to protest to Parliament and this instruction was repeated annually until 1784. However, due to the strength of the aristocracy, the Act remained in force for a considerable length of time. It was finally repealed by section 3 of the Church Patronage (Scotland) Act 1874 (c. 82). Eighteenth-century legislation An act of Parliament, 1719, required any presentee to declare his willingness to take up his patron's offer, to prevent a patron from presenting a candidate whom he knew would not take up a post, in order to profit himself from the stipend. Many optimistically thought this was the end of patronage, as no right-thinking Presbyterian would declare willingness to accept a patron's offer, but after an uncertain few years, patronage continued as the norm. 1730 General Assembly An Act by the General Assembly of 1730, by which objectors to decisions of Church courts could no longer have these objections officially recorded, was regarded by Evangelicals as a move to silence their opposition to Patronage. 1732 General Assembly When a Patron failed to nominate a candidate for a vacancy within six months, his right of Patronage fell to the Presbytery. Each Presbytery proceeded as it saw fit, but the General Assembly of 1732 passed an Act which regulated this, by establishing the 1690 rules, granting the Patronage right to the Heritors and Elders, with procedures to be followed if a congregation objected to a candidate. Some members, including Ebenezer Erskine wanted to see the regulations of 1649 applied, by which all heads of families in a congregation called a Minister. The fact that they could no longer have their objections recorded led to the first schism in the Church of Scotland - the Original Secession. Veto Act The General Assembly of 1834 enacted the Veto Act, which prohibited the installation of a patron-presented minister in a congregation if the heads of a majority of member households objected to him and gave their reasons to the presbytery. This event marked the end of the dominance of the Moderates and showed the strength of the Evangelicals. Great Disruption 1843 A series of civil actions in the period 1838 - 1841 in the Court of