3. The Covenanters: days of power
The Covenanters: days of power 1. A new king: Charles I Charles I (1625–49) came to throne in 1625. He had a higher moral character than his somewhat dissolute father, but Charles' religious convictions were even more hostile to Melvillean Presbyterianism. James had opposed it on political grounds, but shared its Calvinistic theology.
Charles opposed Presbyterianism on religious grounds; his theology was strongly anti-Calvinistic. Charles was a High Church Arminian; he believed that salvation was a joint work shared between the divine and human will, and that God's grace normally flowed through the Episcopal Church and its sacraments. The theology favoured by Charles—"Caroline" divinity (from Carolus, Latin for Charles)—was represented most effectively in Scotland by a group of theologians linked with Aberdeen University: William Forbes
(1585–1634) and Robert Barron (1596–1639) were the outstanding figures.
The Caroline divines not only opposed those in the Church who dissented from royal theology; they also forged a strong political alliance with the Stuart monarchy. Charles protected and promoted Scottish Caroline divinity and its spokesmen, while they taught the highest doctrine of the divine right of kings against all claims that kings were subject to law or to parliament.
2. Charles loses Scotland: a nation in revolt Almost immediately on being crowned, Charles succeeded in badly alienating the Scottish nobility by the Act of Revocation in 1625. By this
Act, he took back into the crown's power all royal and church lands which had been granted to the nobility since 1542. This produced lengthy, complicated, and bitter legal and parliamentary wrangling between Charles and the nobility, which finally ended in compromise. But the blow dealt to Charles' popularity among the nobles was fatal. They no longer trusted their monarch.
In 1633 Charles visited Scotland for the first time. It was a public relations disaster. He was accompanied by his chief advisor on religious affairs, William Laud, Bishop of London (later that year elevated to be
Archbishop of Canterbury). Laud decorated the royal chapel in Holyrood with an altar and candles. At Saint Giles Kirk, Edinburgh's chief church, clergy in ecclesiastical vestments conducted the service from the Anglican
Prayer Book. This was a shock to the system for Scottish Protestants: it all seemed far too Roman Catholic. Were not these vestments, candles, and altars the relics of the papal Antichrist?
Charles further ruined his cause during his visit by holding a parliament.
The king was seen to be noting down the names of all who spoke in opposition to his proposals. The dissenters submitted a supplication to Charles, written in very humble language, complaining about his ecclesiastical policies, but he refused to read it, and ordered it suppressed.
One of the supplicants, John Elphinstone, Lord Balmerino (d.1649), was arrested and tried for treason, when a copy of the supplication with additional comments of his own was discovered. After a long drawn-out trial, Balmerino was convicted of publishing a seditious document (the supplication) and condemned to death. Public opinion was outraged.
Perhaps prudently, Charles pardoned Balmerino, but again it was too late: the trial had inflamed Scottish national feeling against the king. Balmerino was to be a leading Covenanter (see below).
Charles was determined to carry on the remodelling of the Kirk into the image of the Church of England. He asked the Scottish bishops to submit proposals for reforming the Kirk's law and worship to Archbishop Laud, who then revised them. The result in 1636 was Canons and Constitutions
Ecclesiastical. It did not begin very auspiciously for Presbyterians: chapter
one asserted the royal supremacy over the Kirk, and threatened to excommunicate anyone who denied it. In fact, throughout the Canons, it was simply taken for granted that the king had the absolute right to structure the Kirk according to his own arbitrary will. Among the new laws in the Canons, distasteful to Scottish Reformed opinion, was the banning of any prayer in worship except from the authorized liturgy, the requirement to kneel to receive communion, the re-establishment of the confessional, and the forbidding of all meetings in presbyteries and kirk sessions. The Canons also required that worship be conducted according to a novel liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer (not the Anglican one: a new Scottish one), which had not yet even appeared—it would not be published until 1637.
The Scottish Book of Common Prayer was, like the Canons, drawn up by the Scottish bishops, and probably revised by Archbishop Laud. Charles fixed on July 23rd as the day for its introduction throughout Scotland. All ministers in all city churches were instructed to announce this on the preceding Sunday, the 16th. The way the Edinburgh ministers responded to this royal instruction was ominous: one refused to have it read it at all, another read it in a deliberately careless and contemptuous manner, another pointedly refused to read it himself, but handed it down to a Scripture reader to read out.
When July 23rd came, it marked the beginning of the end for Charles' monarchy. The Prayer Book met with a violently hostile reception.
Famously, in Saint Giles Kirk, a riot broke out when the Dean of Edinburgh, James Hanna (or Hannay), tried to conduct the service. This was the occasion when Jenny Geddes, who sold herbs for a living, is supposed to have thrown a stool at Hanna, yelling, "Villain! Do you say mass at my lug [ear]?" In reality, Jenny Geddes (or this particular Jenny Geddes) may not have existed; she may just be a piece of Scottish folklore. The riot itself, however, is well attested. Even the presence of Archbishop Spottiswoode and David Lindsay, Bishop of Edinburgh, could not restrain the hostilities.
There is debate as to whether the outburst was spontaneous or organized, but it was certainly uproarious. Similar antagonism greeted the new liturgy in many other parts of the kingdom. Walter Whitford, Bishop of Brechin, managed to conduct the Prayer Book service in peace only because he read it over a pair of loaded pistols!
Why this hostile reception? It was not really because of any principled rejection of liturgy—that was not yet a feature of Scottish Presbyterianism.
People were quite happy to hear the written prayers of John Knox read out in worship from Knox's Book of Common Order. (See section 5.3 for the growth of anti-liturgy sentiment.) There were probably two reasons for the hostility: i. The new Prayer Book was perceived as being the work of Archbishop
Laud of Canterbury. And Laud, in turn, was perceived as a cryptoCatholic. Scottish Protestants were not about to let a popish English bishop dictate to them concerning how they must worship God. ii. The Prayer Book was imposed on the Scottish people merely by the will of the king. There was no consultation, no discussion in the Church, no authorization by a general assembly. The king's arbitrary action was regarded as an outrageous violation of the constitutional freedom of Scotland's Kirk and people.
Charles' response to Scotland's anger was simply to order the Privy Council to enforce the Prayer Book. But the resistance was now becoming organized. Meetings were held throughout the Scottish Lowlands; petitions were signed, largely by the nobility, gentry, and ministers. The leaders of the opposition among the nobility were Sir Thomas Hope (Scotland's Lord
Advocate or chief legal officer), Lord Balmerino, Lord Rothes, the Earl of Loudoun, and the Marquis of Montrose. Among the clergy, the opposition leaders were Alexander Henderson of Leuchars, Scotland's foremost proponent of Presbyterianism in the tradition of Andrew Melville and Robert Bruce; David Dickson, who had been deposed from the ministry by James VI for opposing the Five Articles of Perth; and Samuel Rutherford, minister of Anwoth, who was in internal exile in Aberdeen. (See below for more on these men.) This alliance between Scotland's nobility and clergy proved invincible.
The Privy Council, besieged in Edinburgh by a hostile mob, was forced to negotiate, and invited the city to appoint commissioners. Four nobles, four lairds, four burgesses, and four ministers were elected; this committee, given a powerful de facto authority by the Privy Council, became known as the Tables. Its most influential members were Lord Loudoun, Alexander
Henderson, David Dickson, and the radical Presbyterian lawyer Archibald Johnston of Wariston (1611–63). Johnston, son of a leading Edinburgh merchant, was a graphic blend of legal expert and religious zealot; he was
to alienate almost everyone by the end of his life, through an abrasive and humourless lack of courtesy. There could be no doubting, however, the consuming sincerity of his faith in Christ and in the cause of Presbyterianism.
3. The National Covenant Meanwhile, King Charles (still in London) responded by simply declaring again that the Prayer Book must be enforced at all costs. The anti-Charles resistance, now spearheaded by the Tables, decided to show their strength by binding themselves together in a covenant. This was an old Scottish custom; it had also been given a powerful religious and Protestant sanction at the time of the Scottish Reformation, when the Lords of the Congregation had bound themselves together by a covenant and helped secure the victory of Protestantism.15 Alexander Henderson and radical Presbyterian lawyer
Archibald Johnston drew up a National Covenant. The Covenanting movement had begun.
The National Covenant was divided into three sections: i. Section one was the ultra-Protestant King's Confession of 1580. This served as a rallying cry to an anti-Catholic, solidly Reformed understanding of the Scottish Kirk. It was also an appeal over the head of King Charles to the sacredness of established constitutional law and precedent; after all, the King's Confession had been signed by King
James VI, and (at the order of the Privy Council and general assembly) by the entire Scottish establishment—nobles, gentry, ministers, university lecturers, etc. The Covenanters were therefore claiming to be defending the Scottish constitution against the arbitrary will of Charles. ii. Section two was a comprehensive list of acts of parliament from 1560, against Roman Catholicism and in favour of the Reformed Kirk. iii. Section three set out the obligations the Covenanters were taking upon themselves when they signed the document: to oppose Charles' religious innovations, to uphold the true Reformed religion, and to defend the person and authority of the king. (Obviously they had a strictly limited interpretation of what royal authority involved—
Charles had no authority to ride roughshod over the worship and practice of the Church.) It should be noted that the Covenanters were not fighting for religious liberty. They were fighting for their own vision of a Presbyterian Scotland, in which there would be no place for religious dissent. When the English
Independents later began flying the flag of "liberty of conscience" for all godly Protestants, whatever their views on disputed issues of theology or church government, the Covenanters were both horrified and incensed.
Their leading theologian Samuel Rutherford condemned the whole idea at length in his ominous treatise A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649).16
The National Covenant was read out in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirk on February 28th 1638, to an assembly of nobles and gentry, who then signed.
Alexander Henderson described the scene:
This was the day of the Lord's power, wherein we saw His people most willingly offer themselves in multitudes like the dewdrops of the morning, the day of the Redeemer's strength, on which the princes of the people assembled to swear their allegiance to the King of kings.
The next day, ministers and common people also signed, amid scenes of emotional fervour. Copies were then distributed throughout Scotland, and were signed with great zeal everywhere—except in the Scottish Highlands, where Protestantism had still not taken root at a popular level in many regions. In the Highlands, people's primary loyalty was to their clan chief rather than to any particular set of religious convictions. The only Highland chieftain who was a devout Protestant was Archibald Campbell (1607–61),
Lord Lorne, acting head of the Campbell clan. Lorne was the son of the disgraced Earl of Argyll (he had become a Roman Catholic—the Campbells had been Protestants since the days of John Knox); Lorne succeeded to the earldom after his father's death later on in 1638. He was the most powerful man in Scotland, with 20,000 men of clan Campbell under his personal command. King Charles hoped Lorne would support the royal cause, but after some hesitation, he committed himself completely to the Covenanters.
This brought his formidable, well-disciplined Campbell clan onto the Covenanting side. Lorne was also an artful politician, and used his cunning to promote the cause of the Covenant and (his critics said) his own power.
However, despite the factor of clan loyalty in the Highlands, in many places the signing of the Covenant was accompanied by what can only be described as religious revival. John Livingstone (1603–72), minister of Stranraer, recorded the scene thus:
I may truly say that in all my lifetime, excepting at the Kirk of Shotts [where a famous local revival had occurred under Livingstone's preaching some years earlier], I never saw such motions from the Spirit of God. I have seen more than a thousand persons all at once lifting up their hands and the tears falling down from their eyes.
Faced with an entire kingdom in revolt, Charles finally gave in and announced the meeting of a general assembly in Glasgow in November
1638. It was attended by 140 ministers and 98 ruling elders. The elders were mostly members of the gentry and nobility. The assembly was so overwhelmingly pro-Covenanting that the Scottish bishops protested it was not a genuinely free assembly—it was in the pocket of the Covenanters.
Charles' representative in Scotland, the Lord High Commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, dissolved the assembly. But the general assembly refused to recognize his authority to do so, and carried on its proceedings.
Led by its moderator, Alexander Henderson, the assembly abolished Episcopacy, deposed the bishops (and excommunicated some of them), and got rid of the Book of Canons, the new Prayer Book, and the hated Five
Articles of Perth.
Meanwhile, the exalted religious atmosphere that had now gripped large parts of Scotland was nowhere more evident, if in a strange way, than in Edinburgh. Here, Margaret Mitchelson, the daughter of a minister, began falling into trance-like states, during which she prophesied. The content of her prophetic utterances was always in favour of the Covenanters. The National Covenant, she declared, had been made in heaven. She referred to Christ as "Covenanting Jesus". Many were profoundly moved and impressed by her prophecies; Archibald Johnston was so impressed that he took Margaret into his household. Here she delivered her prophecies, which sometimes lasted for hours, to admiring audiences, among whom Lord
Rothes and Lord Lorne were to be found.
King Charles decided that armed force was now his only option to defeat the Covenanters. So began the so-called "Bishops' Wars". Charles raised an English army of 20,000 in summer 1639, and marched it to the border with Scotland. But his path was blocked by a Scottish army of equal numbers, far superior in discipline and generalship, led by Alexander Leslie (1582–
1661), who had gained great military experience and risen to high rank in the Swedish army in the Thirty Years' War. The Scottish Covenanting army marched under a banner on which was printed in gold letters, For Christ's
Crown And Covenant. Faced with this awe-inspiring opposition, Charles gave in again, and signed the Pacification of Berwick. In this treaty, Charles still refused to recognize the acts of the Glasgow general assembly, but accepted that all disputed questions should be settled by another assembly or by parliament. A few weeks later a new general assembly met, and
simply re-enacted all the acts of the Glasgow assembly! The Scottish parliament, when it met, proved to be Charles' worst nightmare: it was even more zealously Covenanting than the general assembly, and had to be suspended by the Lord High Commissioner, Hamilton. He kept prolonging the suspension until finally, after the tenth suspension, parliament lost patience and decided to meet on its own authority. It legally abolished
Episcopacy.
Confronted with this open and complete defiance of his will by both Church and state, Charles responded by raising another army. He got no help from the English parliament, summoned and dismissed with dizzying swiftness between April and May 1640; parliament was so opposed to what it considered Charles' tyranny in England, it treated his troubles in Scotland as the perfect lever to curb his power. So the king dissolved the unaccommodating parliament within three weeks of its meeting; he had to fight on alone against the Covenanters. But his army was a disorderly rabble that had no chance against the well-disciplined, religiously motivated
Covenanting troops; many English soldiers deserted rather than meet Leslie's army in battle. In August 1640 the Covenanters crossed the border, routed the English at Newburn, and occupied Newcastle and Durham. The Covenanters declared they would accept no further treaty from Charles which was not ratified by an English parliament. So Charles was compelled once again to summon England's representative legislature—the most famous parliament in English history, the Long Parliament, which did so much to destroy for ever Charles' ideal of absolute monarchy.
4. The Solemn League and Covenant When the English Civil War between king and parliament broke out in summer 1642,17 the Covenanters at first did not take sides. They watched anxiously while consolidating their own power at every level in Scotland.
But the Covenanters' religious sympathies were with the Puritan-dominated parliament. In 1643, hard pressed by royalist victories on the battlefield, the English parliament appealed to the Scots to join the struggle against the king. This proposed military alliance was made irresistible to the Covenanters by an offer to help undertake a reformation of the Church in England and Ireland by means of an assembly of theologians, already meeting in Westminster, to which Scottish delegates were invited. The Covenanter ministers who were deputed to take part were Alexander
Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, and Robert Baillie (see below). Among the lay deputies who attended was Archibald Johnston of Wariston. The Westminster Assembly was to give Scotland a new confession of faith, the Westminster Confession; a new popular catechism, the Shorter Catechism; and a new manual of worship, the Directory for Public Worship.18
All this flowed from the Solemn League and Covenant, the name of the treaty signed on September 25th 1643, between the English parliamentarians and the Scottish Covenanters, in a new and powerful antiCharles alliance. The Solemn League and Covenant pledged its supporters to the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed
Churches; and shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms [England,
Scotland, and Ireland] to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church government, directory for worship, and catechising.
To the Covenanters, the clause "according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches" could only mean Presbyterianism.
But some of the foremost English parliamentarians, notably Oliver Cromwell, did not see the Solemn League and Covenant this way at all.19
They were Independents (Congregationalists), and they believed that the clause "according to the Word of God" left space to argue for Independency as the best system of church government. Here lay the seeds of the future breakdown of relations between the Covenanters and the English
parliament, and the conquest of Covenanting Scotland by an English Independent army under Cromwell.
As 1644 began, a Covenanting army crossed into England under Alexander Leslie. Together with Oliver Cromwell's Puritan warriors of faith, Leslie's Covenanters decisively crushed the royalist army at the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644.
5. Montrose: The nemesis of the Covenanters But while King Charles' forces were being destroyed in England, they made an unexpected and spectacular recovery in Scotland. James Graham,
Marquis of Montrose (1612–50), originally one of the foremost Covenanters among the Scottish nobility, had become disillusioned with what he saw as the self-serving ambition of other Covenanter leaders.
Another factor in his disenchantment was probably the intense rivalry between himself and Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll, who had become the supreme political leader of the Covenanting cause. (Campbell had been Earl of Argyll until King Charles had awarded him the more exalted title of marquis in 1641, in the vain hope of winning him over to the royalist side.) The two great aristocrats simply did not get on with each other; there seemed to be a deadly personal chemistry that made them natural enemies. Montrose felt, or claimed, that Argyll had hijacked the Covenant to advance his own personal power. When the Solemn League and Covenant was signed between the Covenanters and the English parliament in 1643, Montrose regarded it as a treasonable military alliance whose deliberate aim was to destroy King Charles. This was not why
Montrose had signed the National Covenant in 1638. Driven as he always claimed by his conscience, he now switched his allegiance decisively from the Covenanters to the king, although he was an unswerving Calvinist in his theology, and always maintained he was faithful to the National Covenant itself.
Montrose is certainly one of the most colourful and popular figures in Scottish history. This is probably because his life—once he had entered
Charles' service—was one long, breathless adventure, in which he always, or almost always, triumphed against huge odds by sheer personal courage, charisma, and skill. His exploits have gained an added charm for those who see his enemies (the Covenanters) as a gang of grim and sanctimonious persecutors. His ultimate and tragic defeat and death lend him something of a martyr's halo, too.
In August 1644 Montrose raised an army of Highlanders to restore Charles' fortunes in Scotland. In this hazardous enterprise, he was powerfully aided by Alistair Macdonald (1610–47)—or MacColla, as he was known—a native of the Outer Hebridean island of Colonsay, who brought a contingent of Scots-Irish Macdonalds from Ulster to fight for the
king alongside Montrose. MacColla was a Roman Catholic, and there was bad blood between him and the Marquis of Argyll's Protestant Campbell clan; the Campbells had already invaded the Outer Hebrides in 1638 and taken MacColla's father prisoner, forcing the son to flee to Ireland.
MacColla has been called the last and greatest of the Celtic generals: he was the one who perfected the fearsome "Highland charge". In this manoeuvre,
Highland troops would descend at break-neck speed on an enemy force, which had only one chance to fire at them with their slow-loading muskets, before being swept away by the onrushing Highland host.
Under Montrose's skilful leadership, MacColla proved an invaluable military ally. In a series of devastating campaigns, Montrose now defeated
Covenanting armies time and again, at various points capturing Aberdeen, Dundee, and Glasgow. To the appalled Covenanters it must have seemed that the sovereign God they served had mysteriously raised up (or had allowed Satan to raise up) in Montrose an adversary who threatened the destruction of everything they held dear. Yet despite his amazing successes on the battlefield, Montrose was never able to capitalize on this politically.
The Scottish Lowlands not only remained staunchly Covenanting in loyalty, they were also shocked and alienated by the barbarity of Montrose's army of Highlanders and Irishmen—particularly by what had happened in Aberdeen, where Montrose's forces had raped and massacred defenceless civilians.
Even more galling to the Marquis of Argyll was Montrose's victory over a Campbell army at Inverlochy in February 1645, where Montrose's and MacColla's Highlanders gave no quarter and slaughtered something like
1,500 Campbells. MacColla also settled scores with the hated Campbells by going on a rampage and killing as many Campbell men as he could.
Montrose, who was personally a very chivalrous and civilized man, always innocently claimed he could not control his Highland troops when bloody events like this took place; but this claim has been treated with a degree of scepticism by many historians.
Montrose ran rings around the Covenanters for a whole year, humiliating them both militarily and spiritually. But it was not to last. The Covenanters finally had their vengeance on their arch-enemy at the battle of Philiphaugh in September 1645. King Charles had just been completely defeated in England the previous month at the battle of Naseby by Oliver Cromwell's
"New Model Army", a fighting force of radical soldiers, Independent rather
than Presbyterian in outlook. This victory over the English royalists at Naseby freed thousands of Covenanting troops to return to Scotland to deal with Montrose. On 13th September he was caught and crushed by a much larger army at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk. The triumphant Covenanters were in no mood to show mercy to this unholy anti-Covenanting crew; most of the Highlanders and Irish were killed without pity on the battlefield, including their wounded, and their women and children—just one of the atrocities committed by both sides in the war. The few survivors were arrested, tried, and executed. It was a total military disaster for Montrose and the king's cause in Scotland. Montrose himself escaped, but Scotland was now once again firmly in the hands of Charles I's Covenanter opponents.
6. Division in the ranks In 1647, however, a worse disaster than Montrose struck the Covenanters: division in the ranks. They became fatally split by a political treaty called the Engagement. This was made between Charles and one faction of the Covenanters, who were alarmed at the way the English political landscape was increasingly dominated by Oliver Cromwell and his Independent army.
Independency was as repellent as Episcopacy to the Presbyterian Covenanters, and they saw Cromwell's rise to power as a grave danger to all they had fought for. Given the choice between English Independency, with its horrifying belief in complete religious toleration, and King Charles who at least shared the Covenanting ideal of a single Church enforced on all citizens by the state, this faction of Covenanters opted for Charles. Hence the Engagement. Charles proved so desperate for any ally against Cromwell's army, that he was ready to swallow his Episcopalianism and agree to give England a Presbyterian Church.
But the Engagement did not commit Charles to a permanent establishment of Presbyterianism in England, only to a three year trial period. So the more full-blooded Covenanters refused to have anything to do with the iniquitous treaty. The anti-Engagement zealots were led by the Marquis of Argyll and Archibald Johnston, the lawyer who had drafted the National Covenant. The Engagement also opened up a destructive breach between the estates (the committee representing parliament when it was not in session) and the general assembly: most members of the estates approved of the Engagement, but the assembly condemned it. The anti-Engagement party were totally vindicated when Cromwell annihilated the Engagement's army at the battle of Preston in August 1648. Covenanter hardliners seized their opportunity, marched on Edinburgh in the so-called "Whiggamore
Raid",20 overthrew the discredited pro-Engagement government, and made the Marquis of Argyll master of the land.
At first Argyll and Cromwell, the two religious and political giants of their respective countries, cooperated; the Scottish parliament passed the Act of Classes, which prevented anyone who had fought for the king from holding office. But everything was transformed overnight through the execution of King Charles on January 30th 1649, by a purged English parliament controlled by Cromwell's army. A shudder of shock and horror convulsed all of Scotland. The Covenanters regarded the beheading of
Charles as an unholy violation of the Solemn League and Covenant; had it not committed its supporters "to preserve and defend the king's majesty's person and authority"? So when Cromwell's victorious army seized power, executed Charles, and abolished the monarchy, the Covenanters responded by denouncing the godless new English Republic.21 As for Cromwell, he was from that moment "the Judas of the Covenant" in the eyes of Scottish
Covenanters. They rallied fervently around Charles' son, proclaiming him their king as Charles II (Charles was at that point in virtual exile in The Hague, capital of the Dutch Republic). The Covenanters, suddenly royalists, had drawn their swords against the English Republic. The Civil Wars had become a war between two nations.
However, to get the practical support of the Covenanters against the might of the English Republic, Charles II had to become a Covenanter himself. In proclaiming him king, the Scots had stipulated that he could not actually exercise the powers of a king unless he first "should give satisfaction for religion and peace". That meant signing the Covenants; and Charles was initially unwilling to do this. He had a profound distaste for all things Presbyterian, and unlike his late devout father, could not even comprehend religious motivation—the new king had an essentially secular mind.
So instead of submitting to the wearisome Covenants, Charles commissioned the Marquis of Montrose to resume his adventures: to invade northern Scotland with foreign mercenaries and an army of recruits from the Orkney Islands, and try to deliver Scotland to his king without Covenanter support. It was, however, a forlorn hope. Montrose did not have enough men, and all his military brilliance and personal charisma were in vain. He was defeated by a Covenanter army at Carbisdale (north of Inverness), paraded all the way as a prisoner to Edinburgh, and publicly executed as a notorious villain by the grisly method of being hanged for three hours and then quartered (sliced up). The humiliating treatment backfired; it merely turned the mob's affections toward the dashing, dignified marquis. They sobbed rather than cursed, as he died with an unearthly serenity.
7. The English conquest of Scotland Montrose's death left Charles with no alternative: he signed the National
Covenant, and the Solemn League and Covenant, sailed from the Dutch Republic, and landed in Scotland in summer 1650. Not all the Covenanters were happy with this; John Livingstone, for example, felt that Charles had subscribed the Covenants insincerely, and that the Covenanters were making themselves partners in the young king's hypocrisy. Still, the deed was done. Oliver Cromwell, in a pre-emptive strike, promptly invaded
Scotland with his republican army. The Scots who confronted him at Dunbar lacked thousands of Scotland's best and most professional soldiers, excluded from military service by the Act of Classes because of their theological impurity—they had fought for Charles I (either under Montrose, or with the pro-Engagement Scots defeated at Preston). This was an army of none but the purest Covenanters, relying not on guns or strategies, but on God.
It was one of the most heart-breaking scenes in the wars that had engulfed Britain. Two intensely religious armies faced each other: the most committed of the Covenanters against Cromwell's God-fearing Independents. Each side prayed and sang psalms to the same Lord. But only one side could win. On September 3rd 1650, Cromwell smashed the Covenanters at the battle of Dunbar, in one of his most stunning victories
(he attacked uphill after a daring night manoeuvre, against a force twice as strong as his own). Nearly a thousand Covenanters lay dead. Some 5,000 were taken prisoner, of whom 3,500 died of ill-treatment. The 1,500 survivors were shipped out as slave labour to English plantations in America or the Caribbean Yet the humiliated Covenanting government of Argyll refused to learn its lesson. Argyll personally crowned Charles II king at Scone on January 1st
1651. Argyll's day of power, however, had faded; the Scottish parliament defied the marquis by repealing the Act of Classes, in order to combine all
Scotland's fighting men into a single great army, whatever their degree of theological purity. This provoked a savagely bitter and enduring schism between the Resolutioners, who were willing to cooperate with those who had fought for Charles I, and the Protesters, who were not willing. The Resolutioners got their name from two public resolutions passed in December 1650 and March 1651, which declared it lawful to reinstate all
but a small minority of those whom the Act of Classes had excluded from the Scottish army. The Protesters were the ultra-orthodox Presbyterian zealots; they regarded the Resolutions as acts of religious apostasy against the Covenants, an unholy alliance between Covenanters and those who had fought for Covenant-hating Charles I. This schism between Resolutioners and Protesters utterly wrecked the unity of the Covenanters throughout the rest of their time in government. A celebrated treatise by Covenanting divine James Durham (1622–58), The Dying Man's Testament to the Church of Scotland; Or, A Treatise Concerning Scandal (1658), written as the title suggests while Durham was dying, was intended to heal the breach between Protesters and Resolutioners. A glowing testimony to Durham's belief in the vital significance of church unity, it did nothing to accomplish its aim.
The new Covenanting army of Resolutioners invaded England—but it was a trap set by Cromwell. Exactly one year after the battle of Dunbar, the English general caught and shattered the Scots at the battle of Worcester on September 3rd 1651. Charles II himself was one of the few who escaped the catastrophe. It proved to be the final defeat of the Covenanters on the field of battle. Their armies destroyed, Scotland was now at Oliver Cromwell's mercy, and became a conquered land, ruled by Cromwell and his English soldiers. The Scottish parliament was dissolved, the Scottish Privy Council was replaced by a committee of eight English officials, and the Court of Session (Scotland's supreme legal body) was replaced by seven English judges. New English fortresses were built at Leith, Perth, and Ayr to keep the conquered Scots in subjection.
In 1653, Cromwell forbade the general assembly from meeting; it had in any case degenerated into a sterile ecclesiastical battleground, in which Resolutioners and Protesters fought each other tooth and nail over ministerial appointments and points of technical procedure. James Kirkton
(1628–99), the ultra-Covenanting minister and historian of that period, acknowledged that Cromwell's dissolution of the strife-ridden assembly was no bad thing! Indeed Kirkton says of the whole Cromwellian era in Scotland, "I verily believe there were more souls converted to Christ in that short period of time than in any season since the Reformation." This has been attributed to the enforced silence on political and party matters, which left the clergy no option but to preach exclusively on spiritual matters.
In 1654, for the first time in history, a combined Anglo-Scottish parliament met in Westminster, with 30 Scottish MPs taking their seats
alongside their English counterparts. Cromwell had incorporated Scotland into the English system far more effectively than King James VI or Charles
I had ever managed. Still, unlike the Stuart monarchs, Cromwell allowed the Covenanters the freedom to preach and practise their Presbyterian worship; to the annoyance of the Covenanters, he also allowed all other
Protestants to preach and practise their brand of worship too. For the first time, Scotland had complete religious freedom for Protestantism in all its forms. Baptist churches, for example, first made their appearance in Scotland at this time, founded by English soldiers stationed in Scotland.
8. Other key figures Alexander Henderson Alexander Henderson (1583–1646), unofficial leader of the Covenanters, we have already met in section 2.4; he was the young minister forced on an unwilling church in Leuchars who had been converted under the preaching of Robert Bruce. A native of Creich in Fife, he studied at Saint Andrews
University from 1603, and then taught philosophy and rhetoric there until 1613. After his conversion under Bruce, Henderson became a zealous
Presbyterian. In the general assembly of 1618 which enacted the notorious Five Articles of Perth, he was one of the opposition leaders, for which he was reprimanded before the court of high commission. Over the next 20 years, Henderson became the focal point of Presbyterian resistance to the Episcopalian policies of James VI and then Charles I.
When Charles I's religious policies provoked Scotland to rebellion in 1637, Henderson stepped forth as the universally acknowledged chieftain of the Presbyterian party. Samuel Rutherford wrote to him, "As for your cause, my reverend and dearest brother, ye are the talk of the north and south"— everyone was looking to see what Henderson would do. When Charles ordered all ministers to buy copies of the new Prayer Book for use in their churches, Henderson agreed to buy a copy, but refused to use it. Threatened with prison, he lodged a petition with the Privy Council to suspend the king's order, on the grounds that the book had not been approved by a general assembly nor by parliament. The council upheld his appeal.
This act of defiance by Henderson was instrumental in consolidating the opposition to the Prayer Book, and in propelling Henderson to the foremost place of leadership in that opposition. He became the chief architect of the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643).
The revolutionary 1638 Glasgow assembly unanimously elected him moderator. The same year he moved from Leuchars to be minister of Saint
Giles Kirk in Edinburgh. He was also made Rector of Edinburgh University.
When the Westminster Assembly was convened in 1643, he headed the Scottish delegation, and was regarded on all hands as their undisputed head.
Despite constant ill-health, Henderson provided wise and statesmanlike leadership to the entire Covenanting movement throughout its first decade, without which it is hard to see how it could have achieved so much.
Certainly after his death it seemed to lack that quality of leadership, as the movement succumbed to internal disintegration and conquest by Cromwell.
Henderson's thoughtful moderation and warm piety commended him even to Charles I—Henderson was perhaps the only Covenanter that Charles genuinely liked and trusted.
Henderson's legacy of spiritual writings is unfortunately almost nonexistent (there is a collection of papers on public affairs), so that he is undeservedly forgotten by most evangelicals today. This is in vivid contrast to our next figure, who is globally famous.
Samuel Rutherford Samuel Rutherford (1600–61) was probably the greatest theologian of the Covenanters, although some would award the title to George Gillespie (see below). Beyond question, however, Rutherford was their greatest devotional writer, and indeed one of the greatest from any era in the English language.
His nickname "the saint of the Covenant" is well-merited. Born at Nisbet near Roxburgh, Rutherford studied at Edinburgh University from 1617 to 1626. He then became minister of Anwoth in Galloway in 1627; many anecdotes clustered around his decade of ministry there, illustrating his spiritual-mindedness and his profound influence over the parish. Famously he was described as "always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying." But he got into trouble for his publication in 1636 of an anti-Arminian theological work, which outraged the new Bishop of Galloway, Thomas Sydserff, an ardent
Arminian. The bishop prosecuted Rutherford, resulting in his being barred from preaching, and a sentence of "internal exile" in Aberdeen.
When liberty for Presbyterians dawned anew and the National Covenant was signed, Rutherford returned briefly to Anwoth. His Covenanter brethren, however, would not allow him to hide his brilliant light under a bushel in an obscure parish, and the general assembly appointed him professor of divinity at Saint Mary's College, Saint Andrews, in 1639, although Rutherford insisted on the freedom to preach to ordinary folk every Sunday In 1643, Rutherford was one of the Scots commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, where his learned contributions were manifold.
Afterwards he went back to Saint Andrews, becoming rector of the college in 1651. In the bitter Protester-Resolutioner schism, Rutherford was an
outspoken Protester—which rather isolated him in Saint Mary's, leading to much tension and unhappiness. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Rutherford was a marked man; he was summoned by name to appear before parliament on a charge of treason (as well as being sacked from his job and put under house arrest). However, he was already in the grip of his final illness, and in his own words, he went to appear before a higher tribunal than a mere earthly parliament.
Rutherford's most famous non-devotional writing was his political treatise Lex Rex ("The Law and the King") published in 1644. Rutherford here promoted the philosophy of George Buchanan (see section 1). With massive erudition, bristling with quotations from ancient philosophers and the Bible, the treatise argued that kings did not have unlimited sovereignty; they could rule only under God's law, and in accordance with the constitution of their country. The citizen body was at liberty to resist a tyrant, by force if necessary. Needless to say, Lex Rex was massively popular among both Covenanters and English parliamentarians during the Civil Wars: here was one of Britain's most learned theologians giving overwhelming sanction to the armed struggle against Stuart tyranny. Also needless to say, Lex Rex was abominated as a piece of devilish incitement to treason once the monarchy had been restored in 1660. The book was publicly burnt by order of the triumphant royalist regime. It enjoyed an unexpected revival of popularity in the late 20th century, when Reformed philosopher Francis Schaeffer made it the basis of his own political philosophy in A Christian Manifesto (1981).
Rutherford's theology and politics paled into near non-existence beside the impact of his devotional writing. This came after his death in a collection of his Letters published in 1664. These had mostly been written during his internal exile in Aberdeen back in the 1630s. They had not been intended for publication; the letters were collected and printed in the Dutch
Republic by Rutherford's former student, Robert McWard, under the original title Joshua Redivivus ("Joshua Reborn", "Joshua Alive Again"): the idea was that Rutherford had been a spiritual Joshua, spying out the heavenly promised land and reporting on its glories to God's pilgrim people. Once the Letters had seen the light of day, they for ever secured
Rutherford's reputation as possessing and communicating a rapturous Christ-centred spirituality. The volume was easily his most popular work, and it has been more or less continuously in print to the present day.
There are about 365 letters (there is some variation depending on the edition); they are addressed mainly to Anwoth folk, especially godly ladies.
Their style is pastoral, modelled on the letters of Paul, and their overriding theme is "the loveliness of Christ". One of the most celebrated anecdotes about Rutherford brings out the centrality of this idea in his spirituality:
An English merchant said of him [Rutherford], even in days when controversy had sorely vexed him and distracted his spirit, "I came to Irvine, and heard a well-favoured, proper old man
[David Dickson], with a long beard, and that man showed me all my heart. Then I went to St.
Andrews, where I heard a sweet, majestic-looking man [Robert Blair], and he showed me the majesty of God. After him I heard a little, fair man [Rutherford], and he showed me the loveliness of Christ."
Rutherford commended Christ with the passion of a lover, utilizing the lush and picturesque language of the Song of Songs. Many readers have found the piety of the Letters reminiscent of Bernard of Clairvaux. Critics have objected to some of Rutherford's expressions as crude and tasteless, e.g. his exhortation to spiritual drunkenness: let us come near, and fill ourselves with Christ, and let His friends drink, and be drunken…
Drink, and spare not; drink love, and be drunken with Christ!
Such language, however, is not peculiar to Rutherford. It is found in other great spiritual writers, such as Augustine. The "God-intoxicated" soul is a recurring theme in devotional literature through the ages.
Rutherford's Christ-centred ecstasies were not some form of false mystical escape from earthly trials. He continually spoke of the cross, not as something Christ alone endured, but as the necessary experience of all
Christ's people. Nothing was clearer in Rutherford's Letters than the centrality of crucifixion for the believer here below. It was not easy to be a Christian, Rutherford warned: "No man hath a velvet cross." The way to heaven was only and ever through being conformed to the suffering of Christ. To forsake Christ because of suffering betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of a true relationship with Him: ye contracted with Christ, I hope, when first ye began to follow Him, that ye would bear His
Cross. Fulfil your part of the contract with patience, and break not to Jesus Christ.
Rutherford's Letters also attained renown for their homely, proverbial language and images; he was especially fond of sea imagery, and metaphors drawn from the weather and seasons. In one of his most celebrated sayings,
"Grace groweth best in winter." More surprisingly, he tells us that Christ, as
the representative of sinners, went through the fiery baking oven of God's wrath, and came out as fresh hot bread for the King's table!
Rutherford's Letters became an immediate favourite with all evangelically-minded people; the great English Puritan, Richard Baxter, spoke for many when he said of Rutherford's Letters, "Hold off the Bible, such a book the world never saw." Two centuries later, Charles Haddon
Spurgeon would say:
When we are dead and gone, let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men.
Perhaps the best summary of the piety and language of the Letters is the 19th century poem Immanuel's Land by Anne Ross Cousin (1824–1906), based on the Letters and on Rutherford's deathbed sayings.
George Gillespie George Gillespie (1613–48) was arguably the greatest theologian of the Covenanters, if we do not grant the distinction to Rutherford. A radical
Presbyterian well before the National Covenant was drafted, he trained for the ministry of the Kirk, but refused to accept Episcopal ordination. He responded to the Scottish Prayer Book with the anonymously published A Dispute Against the English-Popish Ceremonies Obtruded Upon the Church of Scotland (1637). The treatise was banned by the Privy Council, but it made Gillespie's name as the brilliant young author. After the Covenant had been unfurled as a flag of Presbyterian revival, Gillespie signed it, and was ordained (non-Episcopally) to the parish of Wemyss. He was appointed a Scottish commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, where he became one of its most valued members; the theological quality of his contributions in debate was unsurpassed.
Gillespie died young of tuberculosis in 1648, but left behind a large literary output. His most famous work was Aaron's Rod Blossoming (1646), which discusses with erudition, incisive logic, and careful exegesis the nature and relationships of civil and ecclesiastical power. It remains a tour de force to the present day, expounding the classical ideal of a Reformed
Church in a Reformed state.
Robert Baillie Robert Baillie (1602–1662), son of a Glasgow merchant, and distinguished graduate of Glasgow University, was minister at Kilwinning in Ayrshire
when the Scottish revolt against King Charles erupted. He began as a moderate Episcopalian, but opposed the imposition of Laud's Prayer Book, played a part in drafting the National Covenant, and was a member of the revolutionary 1638 Glasgow Assembly, although he retained something of his moderation, arguing against the decision to make Episcopacy illegal. In 1642, he was appointed professor of divinity in Glasgow, and then from 1643 to 1646 he was one of the Scots commissioners at Westminster
Assembly. After Charles I's execution, Baillie became an ardent supporter of Charles II. In the schism between Resolutioners and Protesters, Baillie was a leading Resolutioner; he regarded the Protesters as traitors for not rallying to the support of king and country against the godless English
Republic of Oliver Cromwell.
Baillie helped negotiate the restoration of Charles II to power in 1660; the king offered him a Scottish bishopric, but Baillie declined. He opposed the re-establishment of Episcopacy in the Scottish Kirk, prophesying that it would lead to the dire persecution of many conscientious Presbyterians—a prophecy fulfilled in blood. It was reported that Baillie died of a broken heart. His gossipy letters and journal are one of our most valuable sources of information about the earlier half of the Covenanting era. He was also one of the most learned scholars of the day, knowing some 13 languages, including Ethiopic and Chaldee.
James Guthrie James Guthrie (1612–61), nicknamed "the short man who could not bow" by Oliver Cromwell, was a dominating figure in the Covenanting general assemblies.22 Born at Guthrie in Forfarshire, and educated at Saint
Andrews, he became one of its regents; his philosophy lectures earned him much distinction. He was at first an ardent Episcopalian, but Samuel
Rutherford won him over to the Presbyterian cause after Scotland's spiritual revolution of 1637. Guthrie signed the Covenant in 1638, apparently prophesying, "I know I shall die for what I have done today, but I cannot die in a better cause." In 1642 he became minister of Lauder in Berwickshire, and thereafter found recognition as one of the most active and well-known of the Covenanting clergy. In 1649 he moved to the parish church of Stirling. He wrote a judicious Treatise of Ruling Elders and Deacons in 1652.
During the controversy between Resolutioners and Protesters, Guthrie was a leading Protester. He published a tract in 1653, Causes of the Lord's
Wrath Against Scotland, in which he asserted the supreme duty of upholding true religion (by which he meant the Covenants), and denounced the exercise of unchecked, unconstitutional power in the state as the chief source of Scotland's maladies. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, this tract was publicly burned alongside Rutherford's Lex Rex.
That same year of 1660, Guthrie and nine other Protesters met in Edinburgh and published a "humble petition" to the restored Charles II, declaring their loyalty to him and reminding him of his obligations to the Covenants. However, Guthrie was arrested and tried for treason. Presiding at his trial was the Earl of Middleton, whom Guthrie had mortally offended in 1650 by excommunicating him for plotting to turn Charles against the Scottish parliament. Despite his vigorous defence at the trial, where his knowledge of Scots law and his eloquent final speech electrified the proceedings, Guthrie was condemned, and hanged on 1st June 1661. He made a huge impression by his dignity in dying. "I take God to record, I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain", were among his final words. Some said they had experienced more of God's presence in Guthrie's death than they had in most celebrations of holy communion. Almost immediately, miraculous stories became attached to Guthrie's remains: it was said that a few weeks after his execution, fresh blood gushed out of his head (which was on public display on one of the city gates), falling on the coach of his arch-enemy,
Middleton, and that the blood made stains which could by no means be washed away.