Part 2

Because of “the great dangers which appeared to hang over the kirk and countrie,” a special meeting of the General Assembly was convened on the 6th of February 1587-8. In the fifteenth session, it was agreed that ministers should “travell diligentlie with the noblemen, barons, and gentlemen, to subscribe the Confession of Faith.” In accordance with this resolution, the Negative Confession was again signed by the King, and nearly a hundred other persons, including several of the leading nobles, on the 25th of February, at Holyrood.

[Sidenote: The General Band]

The dread inspired by the approach of the Spanish Armada in 1588 led to the preparation of another covenant, known as “The General Band.” The subscribers did “solemnly swear and promise to take a true, effald and plain parte with his Majestie amongst ourselves, for diverting of the present danger threatned to the said [true and Christian] religion, and his Majestie’s estate and standing depending thereupon.” There is record evidence to show that it was subscribed by the King “and divers of his Esteatis” before the 27th of July 1588.

[Sidenote: Band of 1589]

This was a time of special bands. At Aberdeen, on the 30th of April 1589, the King and many others subscribed a band, by which they bound themselves together “for the defens and suretie of the said trew religioun, his Hienes persone and estate thairwith conjoynit”; and for the pursuit of “Jesuittis, Papistis of all sortis, thair assistaris and pairttakaris,” including the Earls of Huntly and Errol, who had “cum to the feildis with oppin and plane force and displayit baner, for the persute, ruting-oute and exterminioun of his Majestie, and all uthiris his gude and loving subjectis, trew professouris of the Evangell.”

[Sidenote: Covenanting in 1590]

On the 6th of March 1589-90, when King James was still beyond the German Ocean with his bride, the Privy Council, frightened again by the rumours of a foreign invasion, appointed commissioners to receive the subscriptions of nobles, barons, gentlemen, and lieges of every degree, to the King’s Confession of 1580-81, and to the General Band of 1588. Robert Waldegrave was authorised to print these documents for that special purpose; and they were issued by him, in 1590, in book form, with blank pages after the Confession, and also after the General Band, for signatures. The subscribing at this time is said to have been universal.

[Sidenote: Band of 1592-3]

The discovery, in December 1592, of the documents known as the Spanish Blanks, led to another royal expedition to the North in the following February. While in Aberdeen, the King, several of his nobles, and about a hundred and fifty of the prominent lairds, entered into another band. It proceeds on the narrative that, being fully and certainly persuaded of the treasonable practices and conspiracies of some of his subjects, against “the estat of the true religioun presentlie professed within this realme, his Majestie’s person, crowne, and libertie of this our native countrie,” the subscribers faithfully bind and oblige themselves “to concurre, and take an effald, leill, and true part with his Majestie, and each one of us with others, to the maintenance and defence of the libertie of the said true religioun, crown, and countrie, from thraldom of conscience, conqueist, and slaverie of strangers, and [in] resisting, repressing, and pursute of the cheefe authors of the saids treasonable conspiraceis.”

The precise date of this band is not given, but it must have been subscribed between the 1st and the 13th of March 1592-3, that is, in 1592 according to the old reckoning by which the year began on the 25th of March, but in 1593 according to the present reckoning by which the year begins on the 1st of January.

[Sidenote: Covenanting in 1596]

[Sidenote: Bochim]

In March 1596, the General Assembly, anxious “to see the Kirk and ministrie purged,” determined to humble itself for the short-comings and corruptions of the ministry, and resolved that a new covenant should be made with God, “for a more carefull and reverent discharge of their ministrie.” Accordingly, on Tuesday the 30th, “foure hundreth persons, all ministers or choice professors,” met in the Little Kirk of Edinburgh, and there entered into “a new league with God,” promising “to walke more warilie in their wayes and more diligentlie in their charges.” While humbling themselves, “there were suche sighes and sobbs, with shedding of teares among the most part of all estats that were present, everie one provoking another by their exemple, and the teacher himself [John Davidson] by his exemple, that the kirk resounded, so that the place might worthilie have beene called Bochim; for the like of that day was never seene in Scotland since the Reformatioun.” As a great many of the ministers were not present at this action, it was ordered to be repeated in the synods, and in presbyteries by those who were absent from their synod. It was likewise taken up in parishes. In the Presbytery of St Andrews, “for testefeing of a trew conversioun and change of mynd,” special promises and vows were made. These referred to religious duties, in private, in the family, and in public, including “the resisting of all enemies of relligioun, without fear or favour of anie persone”; and also referred to such ordinary duties, as taking order with the poor, and repairing bridges.[1]

Footnote 1:

Row and the younger M’Crie are apparently in error in stating that the covenant of 1580-81 was renewed in 1596. Long before that time, however, it had been assigned a place in the Book of Laureations of Edinburgh University, that it might be subscribed by the professors and students.

[Sidenote: Erection of Episcopacy]

[Sidenote: Articles of Perth]

James the Sixth’s hankering for Prelacy and its ritual continued to increase after he crossed the Tweed in 1603. By the summer of 1610, “the restoration of episcopal government and the civil rights of bishops” had been accomplished; but, according to the best-informed of Scottish Episcopalian historians, “there was yet wanting that without which, so far as the Church was concerned, all the rest was comparatively unimportant.” The Archbishop of Glasgow, and the Bishops of Brechin and Galloway, were sent up, however, to the English court, and on the 21st of October “were consecrated according to the form in the English ordinal.” This qualified them on their return to give “valid ordination” to the Archbishop of St Andrews (George Gladstanes) and the other bishops. Gladstanes seems to have felt duly grateful to the King, whom he addressed as his “earthly creator.” The Court of High Commission had already been erected; and in 1612 Parliament formally rescinded the Act of 1592, regarded as the charter of Presbytery. A General Assembly held at Perth, in August 1618, agreed by a majority to the five articles, afterwards known as “the Articles of Perth”; and they were ratified by Parliament in August 1621.[2]

Footnote 2:

By the five articles of Perth—

(1) Kneeling at the Lord’s Supper was approved;

(2) Ministers were to dispense that sacrament in private houses, to those suffering from infirmity or from long or deadly sickness;

(3) Ministers were to baptise children in private houses in cases of great need;

(4) Ministers were, under pain of the bishop’s censure, to catechise all children of eight years of age, and the children were to be presented to the bishop for his blessing;

(5) Ministers were ordered to commemorate Christ’s birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and the sending down of the Holy Ghost.

[Sidenote: Revolt of 1637]

When Charles the First ascended the throne, in 1625, he found that the northern church still lagged behind its southern sister. He resolved to supply the defects, and the projects which he laid for this purpose had a considerable influence on the events which subsequently brought him to the block. Had he shown more caution and less haste, he might possibly have succeeded in his attempts on the Scottish Church; but in Laud he had an evil adviser. The storm burst in the High Church (St Giles) of Edinburgh, when Dean Hanna tried to read the new liturgy, on the 23rd of July 1637. With this tumult the name of Jenny Geddes has been associated. The Presbyterian party, so long down-trodden, began to assert their rights; and, finding that they would be better able to withstand opposition if closely bound together, they determined to fall back on the plan of their ancestors by entering into a solemn covenant.

As the basis of this covenant the King’s Confession of 1580-81 was chosen, and to it two additions were made, the first, prepared by Archibald Johnston of Warriston, is known as “the legal warrant,” and the second, drawn up by Alexander Henderson of Leuchars, was the bond suiting it to the occasion.

[Sidenote: National Covenant]

With these additions it was, and still is, known as “The National Covenant”; and in that form it was sworn to and subscribed by thousands of people, in Greyfriars Church and churchyard, on the 28th of February 1638, and by hundreds of ministers and commissioners of burghs next day. Copies were sent all over the country, and were readily signed in almost every district. The enthusiasm was unbounded. The King could not prevail on the swearers to resile from their position, and therefore tried to sow dissension among them by introducing a rival covenant. For this purpose he likewise selected the King’s Confession of 1580-81; but instead of Johnston’s and Henderson’s additions, he substituted the General Band of 1588; and so the two documents combined in 1590 were again brought together. This attempt to divide the Covenanters utterly failed. The people now called the covenant completed by Johnston and Henderson, “The Noblemen’s Covenant”; and the one sent out by Charles, “The King’s Covenant.”

[Sidenote: Glasgow Assembly]

The General Assembly which met at Glasgow on the 21st of November 1638 was dissolved by the Royal Commissioner; but Henderson, who was moderator, pointed to the Commissioner’s zeal for an earthly king as an incentive to the members to show their devotion to the cause of their heavenly King; and the Assembly continued to sit until it had condemned and annulled the six General Assemblies held between 1606 and 1618, and had made a clean sweep of the bishops, their jurisdiction, and their ceremonies.

Next summer Charles marched with an English army into Scotland, only to find a strong force of Covenanters, under Alexander Leslie, encamped on Duns Law. Deeming discretion the better part of valour, the King entered into negotiations, and the Treaty of Berwick followed. By it he agreed that a General Assembly should be held in August, and thereafter a Parliament to ratify its proceedings. The Assembly met, and by an Act enjoined all professors and schoolmasters, and all students “at the passing of their degrees,” to subscribe the Covenant. By another Act it rejected the service-book, the book of canons, the High Commission, Prelacy, and the ceremonies. Parliament duly met, but was prevented from ratifying the Acts of Assembly by the Royal Commissioner, who adjourned it from time to time, and finally prorogued it until June 1640.

[Sidenote: Assembly of 1639]

As that time drew nigh, the King tried again to postpone or prorogue it; but it nevertheless met, and in the space of a few days effected a revolution unexampled in the previous history of Scotland. It set bounds to the power of the monarch. It ratified the Covenant, enjoining its subscription “under all civill paines”; it ratified the Act of the General Assembly of 1639, rejecting the service-book, Prelacy, etc.; it renewed the Act of Parliament of 1592 in favour of Presbytery, and annulled the Act of 1612 by which the Act of 1592 had been rescinded.

[Sidenote: Parliament of 1640]

The King had been preparing for the Second Bishops’ War, and the Covenanters marched into England, Montrose being the first to cross the Tweed. Again there were negotiations, and an agreement was at length come to at Westminster in August 1641. Charles now set out for Holyrood, and in the Scottish Parliament ratified the Westminster Treaty; and so explicitly, if not cordially, approved of the proceedings of the Parliament of 1640.

The Scots had now got all that they wanted from their King, although many of them must have doubted his sincerity, and feared a future revocation should that ever be in his power. This fear, coupled with a fellow-feeling for the Puritans, and gratitude for the seasonable assistance of the English in 1560, accounts for the readiness of the compliance with the proposal of the Commissioners of the Long Parliament who arrived in Edinburgh in August 1643.

[Sidenote: The English ask Help]

These Commissioners desired help from the Convention of Estates and from the General Assembly, and proposed that the two nations should enter into “a strict union and league,” with the object of bringing them closer in church government, and eventually extirpating Popery and Prelacy from the island.

[Sidenote: Solemn League and Covenant]

The suggestion that the league should be religious as well as civil having been accepted, Henderson drafted the famous Solemn League and Covenant.[3] It was approved by the Convention of Estates and by the General Assembly on the 17th of August; and (after several alterations) by the Westminster Assembly and both Houses of the English Parliament.

Footnote 3:

An international Protestant league was not a new idea. The Convention, which met at Edinburgh on the 20th of October 1572, had suggested that a league and confederacy should be made “with our nychtbouris of Ingland and uther cuntries reformit and professing the trew religioun,” that we and they be joined together in mutual amity and society to support each other, when time or occasion shall serve, “for mantenance of religioun and resisting of the enemies thairof.” In 1585, the Scottish Parliament (understanding that divers princes and potentates had joined themselves, “under the Pape’s auctoritie, in a maist unchristiane confederacie, aganis the trew religioun and professouris thairof, with full intent to prosecute thair ungodlie resolutioun with all severitie”) authorised the making of a Christian league with the Queen of England, to be, in matters of religion, both offensive and defensive, even against “auld freindis and confederatis.” The league, or treaty, was finally concluded by commissioners, at Berwick-on-Tweed, on the 5th of July 1586.

[Sidenote: The Covenant enjoined]

In October the Commission of the General Assembly ordered that it should be forthwith printed, and gave instructions for the swearing and subscribing, presbyteries being ordered to proceed with the censures of the kirk “against all such as shall refuse or shift to swear and subscribe”; and the Commissioners of the Convention ordained that it should be sworn by all his Majesty’s Scottish subjects under pain of being “esteemed and punished as enemyes to religioune, his Majestie’s honour, and peace of thir kingdomes.” In Scotland it evoked more enthusiasm than in England; and, for a time at least, produced marvellous unanimity.

[Sidenote: Montrose’s Army]

The Scots took part against the royal army in the battle of Marston Moor (2nd July 1644); and soon afterwards Montrose, who had not approved of the Solemn League and Covenant, made his way into Scotland with the object of creating a diversion in favour of the King. Having raised an army in the Highlands, which was strengthened by an Irish contingent, he won a series of brilliant victories over the Covenanters at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford, and Kilsyth.

Of Montrose’s army, Patrick Gordon, a royalist, wrote: “When God had given there enemies into there handes, the Irishes in particulare ware too cruell; for it was everiewhere observed they did ordinarely kill all they could be maister of, without any motion of pitie, or any consideration of humanitie: ney, it seemed to them there was no distinction betuixt a man and a beast; for they killed men ordinarly with no more feilling of compassion, and with the same carelesse neglect that they kill ane henn or capone for ther supper. And they were also, without all shame, most brutishlie given to uncleannes and filthie lust; as for excessive drinkeing, when they came where it might be had, there was no limites to there beastly appetites; as for godlesse avarice, and mercilesse oppression and plundering or the poore laborer, of those two cryeing sinnes the Scotes ware alse giltie as they.”

[Sidenote: Retaliation]

The same writer tells how the Irish were repaid for their cruelty by the victorious army of David Leslie at and after the battle of Philiphaugh (13th September 1645); and how their sin was then visited, not only upon themselves, but most brutally and pitilessly upon their wives and followers.[4]

Footnote 4:

The various accounts of the slaughter are rather contradictory in their details. It may be noted, too, that—while Patrick Gordon says that fifty Irishmen were promised safe quarter and yet were killed—it was urged, in defence of the four prisoners condemned by the Scottish Parliament, that the quarter they had received was not against the orders of the Commander-in-Chief at Philiphaugh, as he only forbade the giving of quarter to the Irish. Nearly a year before (24th October 1644) the English Parliament had declared that “no quarter shall be given hereafter to any Irishman, nor to any Papist whatever born in Ireland, which shall be taken in hostility against the Parliament,” either on the sea or in England or in Wales; and ordained that they should be excepted “out of all capitulations, agreements or compositions,” and when taken should be forthwith put to death. The massacres of 1641-1642 had not been forgotten.

[Sidenote: The Engagement]

On the 26th of December 1647, when the King was in Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight, he entered into an agreement in presence of three Scottish Commissioners—Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark—in which he intimated his willingness to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant, by Act of Parliament in both kingdoms, provided that no one who was unwilling to take it should be constrained to do so; he was also to confirm by Act of Parliament in England, for three years, presbyterial government and the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Worship, provided that he and his household should not be hindered from using the service he had formerly practised; and further, an effectual course was to be taken by Parliament and otherwise for suppressing the opinions and practices of Anti-Trinitarians, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Brownists, Separatists, Independents, Libertines, and Seekers.

On the other hand, Scotland was, in a peaceable way, to endeavour that the King should be allowed to go to London in safety, honour, and freedom, there to treat personally with the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners; and should this not be granted, Scotland was to emit certain declarations, and send an army into England for the preservation and establishment of religion, for the defence of his Majesty’s person and authority, for his restoration to power, and for settling a lasting peace.

This agreement was known as “The Engagement”; and the same name was applied to the expedition which, in furtherance of its object, the Duke of Hamilton led into England, only to be crushed by Cromwell at Preston in August 1648.

[Sidenote: Charles II. proclaimed King]

The Scottish Commissioners in London did what they could to prevent the execution of Charles the First, and on the 5th of February 1649—six days after the scene in front of Whitehall—the Parliament of Scotland caused his son to be proclaimed at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, as King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. The Scots were determined that he should be their King, but they were as determined that he should not override either the General Assembly or the Parliament.

He did not like their conditions, and the first negotiations were abortive.

Montrose organised another expedition, which collapsed at Carbisdale on the 27th of April 1650; and on the 21st of May the gallant Marquis was ignominiously hanged at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and his dismembered body buried among malefactors in the Burgh Muir.

[Sidenote: King and Covenants]

The Prince had “already endeavoured to procure assistance from the Emperour, and the Electours, Princes, and States of the Empire, from the Kings of Spaine, France, and Denmarke, and most of the Princes and States of Italy,” and had only obtained “dilatory and generall answeres.” All his friends, he said, advised him “to make an agreement upon any termes with our subjects of Scotland”; and he took their advice as the only means of obtaining this crown and recovering his other kingdoms. He offered to subscribe and swear the National Covenant, and the Solemn League and Covenant, before landing at the mouth of the Spey, and he accordingly did so on the 23rd of June 1650.

On the 16th of August he agreed to the Dunfermline Declaration, deploring his father’s opposition to the work of reformation, confessing his mother’s idolatry, professing his own sincerity, declaring that “he will have no enemies but the enemies of the Covenant, and that he will have no friends but the friends of the Covenant,” and expressing his detestation of “all Popery, superstition, and idolatry, together with Prelacy, and all errors, heresie, schism and profaneness,” which he was resolved not to tolerate in any part of his dominions.

[Sidenote: Dunbar and Scone]

Notwithstanding Cromwell’s notable victory at Dunbar on the 3rd of September, and the dissatisfaction of the more rigid Covenanters, now known as Remonstrants, Charles was crowned at Scone on the 1st of January 1651, when he again swore and subscribed the National Covenant, and also the Solemn League and Covenant. The Marquis of Argyll placed the crown on his head, and Robert Douglas preached the sermon. The attempt to counteract Cromwell’s power in Scotland by an invasion of England was unsuccessful. The Committee of the Scottish Estates was captured at Alyth before the end of August; and Cromwell obtained his “crowning mercy” at Worcester on the 3rd of September. The young King, after many adventures and narrow escapes, was glad to find himself again on the Continent.

[Sidenote: Resolutioners and Protesters]

In December 1650, after obtaining the opinion of the Commissioners of the General Assembly, the Scottish Parliament had “admitted manie, who were formerlie excluded, to be imployed in the armie”; and in June 1651 had rescinded the Acts of Classes, by which certain classes of delinquents had been shut out of places of public trust. Those who were in favour of admitting these men were known as Resolutioners; and their opponents, as Protesters. This unfortunate dispute split the Presbyterians into two sections, and their contentions had not come to an end when the Restoration of Charles was effected in 1660.

[Sidenote: The Restoration]

That Restoration was mainly brought about by General Monk. When it was seen to be inevitable, the leading Resolutioners sent James Sharp, minister of Crail, to London, to look after the interests of the Scottish Church. He was diplomatic and astute, and, in the opinion of his brethren, honest and trustworthy. His letters, bristling with devotional expressions, “seem,” as Hugh Miller puts it, “as if strewed over with the fragments of broken doxologies.” After it was too late, they found that he had betrayed his trust, and completely hoodwinked them.

[Sidenote: The King’s Honour]