Background: The Road to Revolution

For the generation of Scots born in the early seventeenth century the most important date in Scottish history was 1560, the year when the Reformation Upheaval  finally arrived in Scotland. The complex events leading up to this moment had brought the nation to the verge of a near-apocalyptic religious and civil war. This - mercifully - had been averted at the last moment.

Shaken by how close Scotland had come to disaster the political classes met in Edinburgh to hammer out a blueprint for a more stable social system. One cornerstone of the revolutionary new order would be a Scottish church founded upon the radical new Protestant theology that was sweeping across Europe. Thus did the Reformation of 1560 bequeath to the nation the Reformed Church of Scotland.

This new order was fundamentally different from the old. Before the Reformation Scottish monarchs had been able to exert control over the church, mainly through their power to appoint bishops to it. After 1560 royal power became much more constrained. The Reformed Church of Scotland evolved into a powerful autonomous entity outwith the control of the monarchy.

This was a matter of great pride to the Scots and a source of considerable annoyance to Scotland's monarchs. Throughout the late 16th and early 17th centuries Scottish kings like James VI struggled to re-establish their authority. The church, they well knew, was far too powerful in medieval society to be allowed to operate beyond royal control.

Their efforts to do this were met with dogged resistance. Forged in the white heat of revolution, the church was held in proud esteem by the nation as a hard-won symbol of Scotland's religious and national identity. There was a place for the king and his power; but that place was not in the church. That was the domain of God and His people, the Scottish nation.

The growing tension and distance between the monarch and his subjects was intensified by the king's absence from his Scottish kingdom. When Queen Elizabeth I of England died without an heir in 1603 the English throne passed to the Scottish king James VI in a settlement called the Union of the Crowns. This led to the curious situation in which Scotland and England now shared a single sovereign and similar Protestant-reformed churches; but they remained separate states with their own distinctive political and religious institutions.

England was indisputably the more powerful of the two and James' court was obliged to decamp to London and set up government there. Before his departure he promised his Scottish subjects that he would not neglect them. In reality the demands of ruling England meant that he grew ever more out of touch with Scotland.

Just how out of touch the government had become was demonstrated when James' son, Charles I, inherited the Scots and English kingdoms in 1625. Brought up in distant England, Charles had little understanding of Scottish society. This would have disastrous consequences.

Charles came to the throne determined to increase his power over the religious and political institutions of Scotland. To this end he pressed ahead with a succession of high-handed and spectacularly undiplomatic reforms each of which alienated him from all three classes of his subjects: the nobility, the church and the people.

The nobility found their wealth and power challenged by the Act of Revocation in 1625 which threatened to transfer control of much of their land to the monarchy. The Church of Scotland ministers were disturbed by the way in which Charles was infiltrating his yes-men bishops into the church to gain greater influence over it. The Scottish people bristled at attempts to change their sacred rituals of worship by imposing an unpopular new prayer book on them.

The nation was outraged at these attacks by an absentee monarch on some of their most cherished and hard-won symbols of religious and national identity. Worse, though, was the sinister agenda that seemed to lie behind them: an attempt to return the country to autocratic royal government and Catholicism. This was something that previous generations of Scots had fought and died to overthrow.

Formal appeals by the Scottish nobility to Charles to respect Scotland's unique institutions were insensitively dismissed. This was intolerable. By 1638 the Scottish nation was united in protest against the policies of Charles I. The question now was: What was to be done?
 

Illustration: Detail from the tomb of the Earl of Argyll, in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.

The Covenanter Revolution: 1638-1688

The National Covenant: 1638

On 28 February 1638 a massive crowd gathered in Greyfriars churchyard in Edinburgh to sign and pledge allegiance to the Scottish National Covenant, a carefully articulated protest against the religious and political reforms of Charles I. Copies of the Covenant were then distributed throughout the country and thousands rushed forward to sign, many demanding to do so with their own blood.

Those who pledged to defend the Scottish nation by signing the Covenant became known as Covenanters. It was a bold act of defiance, a direct rebuke to the authority of a reigning monarch and an extraordinary outpouring of national feeling. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before. This was the Covenanter Revolution.

The Bishops' Wars: 1639-1640

When Charles in London learned of the events taking place in Scotland he was outraged. This was treason on a national scale. He sent out orders to the nobility in England to assemble an army. Scotland was to be invaded and pacified. That would cure them of Covenants.

This turned out to be more difficult than he expected. It is often assumed that the history of England and Scotland has always been one of eternal conflict, but this is to oversimplify the complex relationship between the two countries. Charles' high-handed and autocratic government had irritated and alienated his subjects south of the border too. Why should the English go to war against their Scots neighbours in support of a monarch whom many also found objectionable? Charles' demands for an English army - and taxes to pay for it - were met with procrastination and obstruction. There was now widespread support for the Covenanters on both sides of the border.

Sensing that the mood in England was on their side the Covenanters moved swiftly. In mid-1639 a Covenanter army crossed the border into England. What followed was a series of military engagements known as the Bishops' Wars that culminated in an astonishing victory in August 1640 when the Covenanters captured Newcastle.

With the Royalist forces in Scotland routed, a Scottish army occupying Newcastle and lukewarm support for him in England Charles was forced to make a humiliating journey north and agree to the Covenanters' demands to respect Scotland's church and government. It had been a spectacular victory.

Perhaps too spectacular. The Scots had demonstrated that the power of the monarch could be constrained. For Charles this set a dangerous precedent that he could not allow to go unchallenged. Eventually he would be compelled to re-assert his royal authority in Scotland.

The English Civil War Erupts: 1642

For now, though, Charles was distracted by the events unfolding in England where he continued to overstretch the patience of his English subjects. By 1642 civil war had broken out between the Royalists, who remained loyal to him, and the Parliamentarians, who supported the English parliament against him. In Scotland, the Covenanters watched these developments with mounting concern. If the king was victorious in England he might then be strong enough to invade Scotland and impose his will north of the border too.

The Covenanters realised that they would have to ally themselves with the English Parliamentarians if they were to preserve the revolution in Scotland. The result was an agreement called the Solemn League and Covenant in which the Covenanters agreed to send an army to England to fight against the king's forces. In return the Covenanters demanded that the English church should be reconstructed according to the Scottish Presbyterianism system after the "inevitable" victory.

This was an unpopular policy - the English were as devoted to their own national church as the Scots were to theirs - but by now the Parliamentarians were desperate for support and forced themselves to agree. From the start this was to be an uneasy alliance.

The audacity of the Covenanters' demands revealed something disturbing about the mindset of some. The early and effortless victories in the Bishops' Wars had convinced many that they were embarking on a divinely-inspired crusade to spread the doctrine of the "true" Scottish church, first in Britain, and then throughout the world. Infallibility is a dangerous delusion and in the long term it would contribute to the undoing of the Covenanter cause.

The Covenanters Victorious – Then Divided: 1643-1644

For now, though, the Covenanters were at the zenith of their success and it was with considerable fervour that in 1644 a massive Covenanter army crossed the border into England. It was an extraordinary situation in which one country had invited another to invade it.

Yet now the feeling of national unity that had brought Scotland together to sign the Covenant in 1638 was starting to fracture. Many Scots believed that by recognising the demands of the original Covenant the king had fulfilled his obligations and that Scotland should not become involved in the fight against the king in England. The catastrophic result was a civil war that now erupted in Scotland between the Covenanters and the king's Royalist supporters.

The Scottish Civil War: 1644-1646

The civil wars that now raged throughout both countries over the next few years were violent, bitter and riddled with tortuous plot twists and turns. In England a Scottish Covenanter army fought alongside the forces of the English Parliamentarians against the Royalists. In Scotland another Covenanter army, led by the Marquis of Argyll, fought against a Royalist army, led by the Marquis of Montrose.

As the conflict ground on factionalism and infighting broke out even between those who were supposed to be allies. As with all wars, atrocities were committed in the name of God and country that sullied the honour of all sides. Finally, by mid-1646, the Parliamentarians and the Covenanters had fought the Royalist forces to a standstill on both sides of the border and Charles I  surrendered.

The Engagement: 1647-1648 – The Covenanters Divided Again

Defeated but unbowed Charles I still clung to a belief in his "divine right" to rule. Although a prisoner in England he now entangled himself in a series of convoluted plots by which he hoped to restore himself to power. Amongst these was the Engagement, a scheme cooked up throughout 1647 by a faction within the Scottish Covenanter nobility which promised Charles military support for his campaign in return for his promising to enforce the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant.

Once again the Covenanter movement was divided, this time into Engager and anti-Engager factions. Undeterred by the growing disquiet throughout Scotland at the compromise struck with Charles I, the Engagers assembled a makeshift army and launched an invasion of England in August 1648. Predictably it was a disaster and the Engagement army was routed at Preston.

The Whiggamore Raid: 1648

Defeat left the Engagers reeling and discredited. The Covenanter faction that had opposed them now seized their chance. Across south-west Scotland an army of disaffected Covenanters broke cover and marched on Edinburgh. This was the “Whiggamore Raid”, a radical populist revolution carried out by a combination of the people, a group of fundamentalist church ministers and a handful of nobles led by the Marquis of Argyll.

Regicide: 1649

Unfortunately for the Whiggamore faction events unfolding elsewhere were about to complicate their position. In 1649 the English Parliamentarians, exasperated by Charles' endless political manoeuvring, and fearful of what seemed to be a revival of sympathy for him, placed the king on trial.

What happened next sent shockwaves across medieval Europe: Charles I was executed and the monarchy was abolished. England was now a republic under the control of the army headed by Oliver Cromwell, a minor landowner whose stunning military prowess during the civil war had catapulted him to national leadership.

The Scots were aghast. Charles I had brought disaster upon both his kingdoms, but he was still king and, in the eyes of many, ordained by God; and to kill a king, even one as flawed as Charles I, was an affront to the will of God. What had begun in the small kirkyard of Greyfriars in Edinburgh as an earnest protest against arbitrary royal power had escalated out of everyone's control.

The Covenanters Crown Charles II: 1651

Horrified by the radicalism in England, the Scots sought some kind of return to the old, stable, divinely ordained world of monarchy and tradition. So now, in 1651, the Covenanter government crowned the late king's son Charles II, King of Scotland. It was a shocking compromise for the Covenanter movement, but one which circumstances had forced them into.

For Charles II it was not a dignified ceremony. The Covenanter leadership, embittered and vindictive, subjected him to a lengthy religious harangue, demanding that he accept the Solemn League and Covenant and sign a declaration denouncing his late father. Charles would neither forgive nor forget this humiliation. One day he would exact a terrible revenge upon the Covenanters.

The Cromwellian Invasion: 1651

For now, though, there were more pressing problems. By restoring the king to the throne the Covenanters had created an intolerable threat to the new republican regime of Oliver Cromwell. With an Anglo-Scottish conflict now inevitable, the Covenanters set about raising an army; but the tortuous politics of the last few years had divided the movement and it was no longer capable of acting as a united national force.

Aware of the dissent in the Covenanter ranks, Cromwell's forces seized the initiative and invaded Scotland, determined to forestall any Royalist revival. They routed the Scottish army at Dunbar before moving on to subdue the rest of the country, a task they completed with breathtaking speed and ruthless efficiency. Charles II was driven into exile in Europe, his brief return to power over.

There is no doubt that for Cromwell it was an extraordinary achievement. What a succession of English kings had failed to do for centuries this English republican general had achieved in a matter of months: Scotland had been conquered.

The Restoration was the period after 1660 when King Charles II was invited to return from exile to be “restored” to the thrones of England and Scotland. It was hoped that this return to traditional monarchical rule would bring peace and stability after years of conflict. To some extent it did. The English army withdrew and almost overnight Scotland became an independent state once again - and all without a shot being fired.

Unfortunately Charles II had learned little from the disasters that his father's policies had inflicted and persisted with attempts to influence church and politics in Scotland. These attempts to impose new social and political reforms were seen by many as an affront to the principles of the National Covenant for which thousands had died.

The Covenanters were no longer a coherent national movement, but enough sympathisers still existed throughout lowland Scotland to spark off a new crisis and give Charles II a major headache throughout his reign. This time it would focus round the Conventicles.

The Conventicles

The Conventicles began when hundreds of Scottish church ministers walked out of their churches in protest against the policies of Charles II, often taking their congregations with them. Exiled from the regular church community the ministers resorted to preaching to their sympathisers in the open countryside. These gatherings, known as Conventicles, began as religious ceremonies but soon became the focus of political discontent as huge numbers gathered to hear strident denunciations of the government. Amongst these illegally assembled crowds were thousands of heavily armed men.

This was a potentially explosive situation. The government reacted by persecuting the dissenters, often harshly, then relenting to allow periods of toleration. Neither policy proved effective in appeasing the hardliners. As tensions escalated two attempts at a national uprising were made: at Pentland in 1666; and a far more serious insurrection at Bothwell Bridge in 1679. Both were crushed mercilessly. In a bitter historical twist the survivors of Bothwell were marched to Edinburgh and imprisoned in Greyfriars Churchyard where the Covenant had first been signed more than forty years before. The dark events that followed would become known as the Killing Time.

The Killing Time

As a coherent and effective national force the Covenanters were now finished, but some simply refused to accept defeat. For a few more years a loose handful of militants continued to prosecute a desperate guerrilla war against the government. Some carried out brutal assassinations whilst others issued a succession of uncompromising manifestos like the Queensferry Papers and the Sanquhar Declaration - open declarations of war on the state.

This escalating extremism and displays of bravado only partially concealed the hopelessness that pervaded the scattered remnants of the movement. The government responded with tough, indiscriminate crackdowns on anyone even suspected of involvement with Covenanter groups like the Cameronians. It was a period of intense persecution and suffering for many ordinary people swept up in the wave of arrests and summary executions which followed. It would come to be enshrined in collective folk memory as the Killing Time.

Government terror was effective but what really killed the movement was the evaporation of the widespread national support that had sustained it in its long-ago beginnings in Greyfriars in 1638. By the mid-1680s the few remaining Covenanter extremists were largely seen as the last remnants of a discredited movement. Persecuted and marginalised the Covenanters succumbed to the inevitable: what had once been a mass national movement was extinguished.