In Our Time: S22/25 The Covenanters (March 12 2020)

this is the BBC hello in 1638 a gathering of Presbyterians signed a solemn covenant in Edinburgh in Greyfriars kirkyard in the months after thousands from all ranks added their names an extraordinary show of defined unity they declared the people were subject to the King Charles the first but the King was subject to God just another parishioner and his duty was to maintain the true religion namely there's Presbyterianism a duty he breached when Charles attacked them the Covenant has crushed him in the legend Civil War he surrendered to them they expected Cromwell to spread their form of worship to England but he attacked them and in the 1670s charge ii suppress them jailing many in that same Greyfriars kirkyard executing others in what became known as the killing time with me to discuss the Covenant as our Roger Mason professor of Scottish history at the University of st. Andrews Scott Spurlock professor of Scottish and early modern Christianity at the University of Glasgow and Laura short professor of early modern British history at the University of York Laura Stuart Howard Scotland become Protestant the first thing to know about Scottish Reformation is that it's an act of rebellion involving appeals to the people and that's going to be really important and for our further discussions about where the Covenanters come from many of your listeners will know more about the English Reformation perhaps and we tend to describe that as an act of state henry the eighth breaks with rome and there is a Reformation that's pushed forward by the King and Parliament but in Scotland the situation is very very different I'm going to take us to the 1550s and at that time the ruler of Scotland is Mary Queen of Scots but she's not there she's in France she has been packed off there by her mother of Mary Dee's who is acting as regent in her daughter's name from 1554 onwards and she marries the heir to the French throne he will become Francis the second and that regime in Scotland is one in which the alliance between Scotland in France by the later part 1550s is starting to look like one that's more in favour of France and Scotland so where does this rebellion come from it's important to understand that it's as much about politics as it is about religion so the people who lead the rebellion against Mary DS are objecting to our French regime as much perhaps as they are standing for the Protestant Reformation and the people ended at home she's a Catholic and they behind all of this all the way through is a deep anti-catholicism so when did the Reformation in Scotland and the first bound assigned by the laws the congregation is in 1557 and initially the rebellion doesn't go very well they don't get as much support as they would like so this creates two important features of the Scottish Reformation one is the appeal to the people and so we see the people actively involved in the process of attempting to reform Scotland and we can take an example of the preacher John Knox he goes to Perth and he delivers a sermon which incites the people to access iconoclasm and years later James the sixth when he becomes king of Scotland will form an eight about a reformation in which the people have risen against lawful authority the other thing that's very important is that to all intents and purposes without English support for the Scottish Reformation that rebellion might well have collapsed so the English regime headed by Elizabeth the first who becomes Queen in 1558 provides support for the Scottish Lords of the congregation the crucial thing that happens is that Maggie's dies in 1560 that creates a vacuum and the laws of concussion are able to take power in Scotland and they quickly summon a parliament and it can look as if the Scottish Reformation happens overnight there is a parliament in which the mass is abolished the people jurisdiction is abolished and confession of faith is accepted so on one level it looks like a very quick Reformation but of course there's something more complex going on here a Reformation is not just an active stage there's a process it's going to take yeah can you tell us they kept the bishops didn't they they initially keep the bishops yes so again this is going to be a feature that makes the Scottish Reformation quite different from the English one and it is necessarily the case that a Reformation that has been enacted from below if we want to put it that way has to involve discussions about how the church is going to be governed it has not it cannot be led by the monarch because the monarch is a Catholic medium Scots as a Catholics you cannot be governor of the church as Elizabeth the first is so in the early years of Reformation we see considerable experimentation with different forms of governance but it's important to understand that in 1560 people don't decide that the Scottish Church is going to be a Presbyterian one headed by a General Assembly they decide they're going to be President but they do decide they've decided they're going to be Protestant over there in 1560 they made a first dramatic and rather swift transition as it seems on paper to Protestantism Roger Mason would give a new Presbyterianism and momentum as Laura says it's very much a process rather than an event 1560 is critically important in establishing the legislative framework and platform for what subsequently happens John Knox is a very interesting player in this whole scenario one of the the key things about him is that his formation as it were is his debut as a preacher was actually in England and he developed his Protestantism in England in the 15 late 15 40s early 1550s before being sent into exile when Bloody Mary Mary Tudor came to the throne and when he comes back to Scotland in 1559 60 and the Reformation takes place there he is absolutely determined that it will not have the same as he thought flaws as the English church and the biggest flaw as far as he was concerned in the English church was the royal supremacy the role of the crown in determining the pace and extent of religious reform and so that key principle of Presbyterianism the independence of the church from the state is built in right from the start by John Knox and it's even kind one counts as I understand you tell me you can't we can't stress this more firmly that they thought that God you the God rule the church and the king ruled the rest of it as it were but in the eyes of God he was just another parishioner yes they talked about the two kingdoms the temporal kingdom the spiritual the king or queen is head or governor of the temporal realm but she or he can only be a member of the church the head of the church is Christ and Christ alone so in the in this spiritual sphere everybody is equal and everybody is subject to ecclesiastical control and discipline when James at the age of Warren became James the sixth of Scotland he and from the North when he got to be able to think for himself he supported Presbyterianism when he came to England in 1603 and became James the first of England he began to turn against it that's very wrong but it's got a lot of truth in it well I have to take issue with you there because I'm not sure he ever really supported the fundamental principles of Presbyterianism with the separation of church and state in one of the first acts of the parliament of 1584 is the reestablishment of the royal supremacy in other words the recognition of the King as head of the church and although did you they don't about this then yeah I mean this is public everybody knows there's a dispute going on in the 1580s and 90s and James is determined to reassert his authority over the church and and that means the acknowledgement by his subjects of his supreme authority over church as well as state in the same way as Elizabeth in England where it becomes a little bit more ambiguous perhaps at least initially was whether or not he was it determined to reestablish bishops of the church a full-blown diocesan Episcopacy but even that begins well before 1603 and just because it's after 1603 that it is fully established doesn't mean to say it was because of 1603 in because of the influence of the English church and it's very much in James's interests as a ruler to be able to say that I am supreme over the church as well as the state I mean any self-respecting ruler would want to be able to say that we have to move one swiftly sconce pillock I'm afraid to charge the first and son of James II what did he start to do that inferior his cross Scottish Presbyterians he came in the mid-twenties 1620 whereas his father was able to negotiate his own will with the responsive expectation of his people in Scotland Charles did not have any sense of subtlety or of half-measures so from 1625 he becomes king of both kingdoms he doesn't arrive in Scotland until 1633 as part of Royal Prerogative he introduces a parliament those contemporary accounts by Scots suggest that of the 30-plus acts that will be addressed in that Parliament maybe three of them are not detrimental to the rights of the Scots he's coronated in a very Anglican ceremony in Holyrood from 1636 he begins to introduce ecclesiastical change including an assertion that those who questioned royal authority will be excommunicated from the church and then in 1637 famously he introduces liturgical reform that Scottish Presbyterians think look like an English mass book yes so not that private mass book was a change a lot can you just explain your listeners why it was so influential and why it was so central seems around the recondite King at the moon yeah to us now but why so what was almost wording wasn't it wording an action yes wording action a lack of the extemporary preaching under Presbyterians was longer was less liturgical was less structured but was much more rooted in the word Presbyterians felt like what was being introduced was something that pulled people into perhaps a space of worship but there was detach from the word being preached and that was seen as a major step back from the advances of the Reformation and one of the issues with Scotland from the time that there the Reformation takes hold as they theologically very much framed themselves in line with the people of Israel and therefore they feel that there is an expectation that write worship and write religion is an imperative in the eyes of God it's the same covenant that God hundra user lunch's that they're drawing that onto themselves yes yes and there's the business of kneeling which seems to figure largely in the note why is that so important because viewed as a Catholic practice there is a sense that if you kneel in front of the sacrament that you were ascertaining a presence in the sacrament that Presbyterians don't think is their press trains think there is no presence of Christ and the bread instead they'll sit at a table they'll break the bread they'll share it so it's a community like the Last Supper an active community something important does happen drawing on Calvin's theology they think that Christ is present but they think that the people are lifted mystically into the presence of Christ but Christ is not present the elements so therefore do not kneel to the elements yeah I mentioned earlier that the Catholicism was a back close to what was going also a back both estranged backed off was that the Scots like to destroy 'el to the Stuart dynasty before the Stuart's or Scotch so Charles is he's playing on home ground if he'd chosen to if he could recognize that the Stuart's are of Scottish origin which he was really poor at doing but the issue about Catholicism is important because in 1558 John Knox wrote to the nobility in Scotland and said any nation where Christ is preached is a nation that is in covenant with God he immediately went on to say that a nation in coming up with God cannot stand or tolerate idolatry and he immediately identified the mass as idolatry so he created a very clear picture for people in Scotland that the people are like Israel and when do you get punished by God when you partake in idolatry so we're we race through since we were last oh who dear Laura 1638 in Greyfriars kirkyard well the Covenant was first signed what was it and who signed it yes so Scott has already mentioned the prayer-book riots of 1637 and they don't just drop out of a summer blue sky they are organized and people Presbyterians have been organizing against the prayer-book since its first mooted around about 1635 so these riots are not certainly not spontaneous and they're people who organize it are building on years and years of opposition to royal policy I think building on what Scott's been saying what's important I think is not so much opposition to bishops in the early part of the 17th century Presbyterians are opposed to bishops but most people will probably never see a bishop in their whole lives we are James and then Charles interfere with worship that's really what upsets people and Scott has absolutely rightly said the issue with the prayer book is twofold one is that it it has a set liturgy which detracts from X temporary preaching but the other thing is that the actual business of putting out the prayer book is so badly handled the Presbyterians are able to say this prayer book is the mass well it isn't and it's been modified by Scottish bishops and Scottish clerics so although Charles personally is involved with the prayer book and his Archbishop of Canterbury William Lord is involved with it the actual process of putting it together occurs in Scotland so the riots are meant to be a demonstration of how opposed Scotland is to the prayer book and in the immediate wake of those riots the people who've organized them pullback and they start a petitioning campaign and they do this so to speak by the book they put petitions into the Privy Council so that asking the Kings Privy Council to mediate for them they don't print them so they're not publicizing these petitions and they're not circulating them as far as we know all around the country for signatures but it's clearly the case that the campaign is designed to mobilize more people to start organizing people outside Edinburgh and the central belt of Scotland but to get as many people as we're told came to the kirkyard to sign this Roger Roger Mason was that a trigger or was that as we suggested an accretion what was going on I think it's very much an accretion I mean I think they've put in the broader context for this you need to go back to 1603 at the union of the crowns which is a union of the crowns not of the kingdoms so James and subsequently Charles are monarchs over three kingdoms each of which constitutionally technically is run on its own terms and Scotland retains its Privy Council it retained its Parliament so it is England so it is Ireland in its own own way however complicating that is a drive on the part of the crown and actually everybody else to create religious uniformity there everybody across the Three Kingdoms ought to worship God in the same way but what was the same way well that's precisely the issue because then you get these conflicting truth claims if you like and what truth what's a truth claims these are thee this is the truth and what complicates this is that Charles and his Archbishop of Canterbury William Lord we're actually pursuing a religious policy that antagonized a great many of their English subjects as well as the Scots and this is known as Arminianism it's a highly ritualized ceremonial beauty of holiness high church Anglicanism if you like and two Puritans in England and two Presbyterians in Scotland it was crypto Catholic at best and Catholic at worst and what's happening in 1636 seven is that this new prayer book whatever its contents is perceived as high Church Anglican stroke Catholic but they flowed into this kirkyard which is still laughing yes and did somebody say let's meet here did one of the leaders was it a specific action realized for us all to know more happened that they all turned up that day to do this thing but it's all very carefully orchestrated and goes back sometime and that it involves not just those who have religious quarrels with Charles but also the nobility who may or may not favor Presbyterianism but have been excluded from government than whose landed estates have been attacked through various measures introduced by Charles remember in England that's the so-called 11 years tyranny of personal rule of Charles the first when he rules without parliament is imposing all kinds of taxations on the english people and he's doing similar sorts of things in Scotland the except that one remove as it were he's doing it from a distance and there are all kinds of discontent brewing and the religious one it becomes the trigger the flash point because it affects everybody it's like Lauren Scott was saying earlier you can Bishop's well who really cares but if you mess around with how people are worshipping and these are Scots have been told since 1560 that they have the purest Church in Christendom that their salvation depends on not nearly for communion and now they were being told that that is how they must worship I mean I'd be up in arms too but you weren't up in arms Scott but a lot of people were who were they and why did they go to that place to do that thing so there's a wide breadth of the population I'm sorry to be Shepherd done by a number of nobles who organize themselves into an alternative government called the tables but to particular individuals are asked to produce an ideological justification for this resistance to the crown and that's Archibald Johnson war stand and Alexander Henderson a lawyer and a cleric probably a dangerous combination at any time but what they're really doing is they're constructing a line in the sand that establishes that Protestantism is nonnegotiable the National Covenant sets out by saying in its early paragraphs basically Catholicism will not be tolerated it asserts the right of the king but in doing that we'll tease out with the limitations of monarchy our and it sets out that it's about maintaining the stability in the sovereignty of Scotland so there is a wide proportion of the population but it's very cleverly constructed because in its first iteration from February 1638 there's no reference to aunty Episcopacy it's only about Protestantism so you're drawing in people to sign what is viewed by many as an articulation of the unwritten Constitution of the nation so what do they think they're going to achieve by shining this they think that they're coming together in solidarity to in some sense help Charles to help himself there's a sense in which Charles is ruling in such a bath or terian and unbridled way that actually what they're doing is they're they're establishing the status quo and saying these are these are the rights these are the laws these are the obligations and now we have in some sense a clear sense of the the playing field Charles himself adopts the idea of a covenant and produces a king's covenant but for him he prioritizes the rights of the King rather than these three separate factors that then have a difficult process of finding equilibrium so so Laura what do they think they're going to achieve I think I'm going to take a very small issue with with Scott here I actually think the covenants more threatening than he's suggesting because they're not just saying Charles we're going to help you it's also Charles you were wrong and four subjects to tell a king that he's wrong isn't if I'm the king of believes in divine right absolutely yes I'm so there are there are lots of different people with lots of different views I think on what they've done when they've signed this covenant and I think in some sense is what's important for people is not just what's in it and Scott's given us a flavor of some of the text itself but what they do when they swear it and and there are there are two ways of reading this which are interacting with one another one is that it's an enormous Lee radical and subversive thing to do there is nothing like the cover in the Hall of Europe this document goes out to parishes all over Scotland and it's very very explicit that people of all social ranks are going to take it and we know that in some parishes shockingly that also includes women so we have a situation here whereby people are signing and swearing a covenant and that may be the first possibly the only time in their lives where they've been asked to give consent to the the religion that that they they have faith in but also it has implications for politics because it includes the definition of the church by acts of parliament so that's one reading another reading is it's people of all social ranks but they swear the Covenant according to their social rank again as Scot has rightly said there's no doubt that the nobles and their clerical friends are in charge of this process and so many of the defenders of the covenant see oh it's not as radical as some people are thinking this is it's not a subversive as all that because what we're doing is maintaining the social order what we want to achieve with this um also has obviously a spiritual dimension I think that many people in Scotland feel that they are reuniting their country reuniting their congregations and renewing the covenant with God and there are a series of covenants that are described in the Bible that provide a framework for people in their relationship with God and that's what people think they are doing so Roger Mason this was by the sign of it a very powerful can we almost be described as an even a mass movement how would you describe its influence on the people at the time in 1638 we have just been and signed the covenant what did they expect to come after that it's hard to know exactly what because the the thing about the Covenant is it's astonishing the ambiguous wonderfully ambiguous deliberately ambiguous I think and it's also very long very dry and very dull and I can actually imagine parishioners sitting down and reading it but in what we now call bullet points it well the bullet points are one it's fundamentally anti-catholic we are defending Protestantism from Catholicism implicit in that though it's never made explicit is an attack on what we call wicked hierarchy by which they mean bishops but the second part of it is a list of statutes basically statutes in support of the Presbyterian Church and of the independence of Scotland from English jurisdiction basically but it is a list of statutes it's readily dry and boring and then that the last part is a renewal of the Covenant which brings in all the sort of apocalyptic element you know we we are the people of Israel we are engaged in a struggle with the Antichrist so we have to it is our bound and duty under God to sign this contract this covenant and to do whatever is necessary to preserve our religion the true religion despite the ambiguities and the dullness what was it about to come that that made Charles think he ought to go to war I mean it's right however ambiguous it may be I don't think there's any doubt in Charles's mind that this is an act of defiance of his will and that's not how Charles operates any defiance of his will as seen as treasonous so that in his view it's his subjects declaring war on him and it gets worse of course the following year when are they with this one year at a time he tries to get an army together be difficult because he hasn't got any money he hasn't called Parliament for digit ten years they're not inclined to give him money because it means her but it does go up there and then watch Scott Spurlock well the the first vicious war is very short affair that called the bishops wars yes and hardly a shot is fired and Charles I think Charles often thinks he's being magnanimous Lee gracious and the people will think what a lovely King but he allows Parliament and the General Assembly to meet to reconsider the radical nature of some of what they've done and the Scots really ferm all of their assertions which leads to a second Bishop's war which is much more militaristic and involves the Scots occupying New Castle bit difficult cousins winter and we dependent in London depending on your castle for coal but that's almost a solid issue absolutely absolutely but there's very much a sense in which the Scots are continuing to uphold what they think is not an innovation when they say they were you knew the National Covenant they can look back at 1581 and the negative confession which says the crown will not accept anything that smacks of popery it's it's signed by all senior officials of Scotland it's signed by a number of boroughs so the Scots do not think what's happening is something new and radical they think that it's a perfection of a much longer trajectory Archibald Johnson divorced and calls it the signing of it the the wedding day between Scotland and Christ so the events that follow with Charles are about not imposing their will on Charles but defending what they've already established as the legal standing alone so we're drifting into driftin going towards a civil war and the parliamentarians and the English side seem to see the commoners or bow each sees the others our natural ally what's going on that the English Parliament by 1642 is of course at war with the king by this time there's been a revolution in Scotland the Scots have got everything they want Charles the first had come to Scotland in 1633 as as a monarch who was in charge of his country he comes in 1641 and he has to sign off all the legislation that essentially Repat treats the prerogative to Scotland so the Scots are are sitting on the sidelines watching very carefully what's happening 42 they won yeah but when war breaks out between Charles and his English Parliament the Scots the Scottish Covenanters are really really worried that Charles will defeat his critics in England and then he'll be more powerful than ever so they feel they have to intervene and it is the work of the English parliamentarian John Pym that brings the Scots in to the English Civil War in 1643 with the signing of the solemn leading covenant and that's an extremely important moment that Bond's the critics of Charles the first government in England with the Scottish Covenanters was there any appetite in England to put in English to go Presbyterian just actual Lobby in the English House of Commons with Presbyterians yes and when the Long Parliament one that isn't dissolved by Charles as soon as it meets weather goes on until 1651 wasn't 1642 it's the one that really initiates the civil war and in between Parliament and the crime they say yes but they hold him to run some insight inside the Constitution in a way there are they say they will not fund wars fund charles's armies until they settle the grievances that have been building up during the eleven years of personal rule but and yes there are substantial numbers of Presbyterians in the in the House of Commons and it's the English House of Commons that sets up the Westminster assembly that actually redefines what Presbyterian doctrine is and the new confession of faith catechism and so on but what makes the Scots so important in this is that they're the ones with the best army in the thirty their men have forges mercenaries in the thirty years we won't come back very well-trained and so on that they're incredibly well organized in 1638 thirty-nine and all these officers from Gustavus Adolphus his army are decommissioned and come back to Scotland and amongst them is Alexander Leslie who's a field marshal in the Swedish army and as a brilliant general and he is effectively leading the Scottish armies during the bishop's Wars and Charles's militia as his local musters are no no competition for this kind of semi-professional army so the parliamentarians when war breaks out with the King looked Scotland as that's the army we need that army and the Scots are willing to go along with this on certain conditions and that's the background to the drawing up of the so-called solemn League and covenant between Scotland and England of English parliamentarians and the Scottish Covenanters so there's the parliamentarian in which Cromwell plays a large part in linking up with the Covenanters which would seem like a natural linking up but is it is it does it come about unexpectedly no III think there's a lot of disingenuous nasaan the part of particularly some of the English parliamentarians but in that the real problem here is that yes there are substantial numbers of Presbyterians in the in the House of Commons but there are also what are now known as independence people who didn't like any kind of clerical organization and Cromwell was one of those Oliver Cromwell's one of those and what that means is that they were highly critical of this league between Presbyterians Scotland and the Parliament and it Cromwell as a result of this goes off and makes his owner the the New Model Army so that they're not so dependent on this presbyterian army in 1645 Charles surrendered to the governmentís why did you do that and what were the consequences Nora and Charles's surrender to the Scots comes as a shock to many people not least some of the Scots of the army by this time Oxford has fallen there isn't an effective or one of the stymie yeah Royal City the headquarters of the royalist army and Charles is playing for time Charles is doing what Charles always does which is trying to divide the people who are fighting him by 1646 the the Scottish Covenanters and English parliamentarians are not getting on as well as they had done in 44 the Scots have not made the decisive military breakthrough there was expected of them and their army is costing the English Parliament a fortune now they don't pay as much money as the Scots are expecting but nonetheless if you were paying for an army you're expecting it to do the business and so the Alliance is starting to fracture as Roger has already said the other thing that's happening is that their disagreements within the English parliamentary alliance between Presbyterians and independents and everybody is now going into print to fight with one another for their particular corner so this is indeed so it's very very exciting but also incredibly destabilizing and undermines the possibility of getting a settlement and because all these divisions are right in the open so Charles's surrender to the Scots and one sense is an opportunity maybe the Scots can find they make a deal with him and do as they set out to do which is settle on the basis of the song leading covenant but it also looks like it's going to tear the parliamentary alliance apart why did the government to give charge back to the English because Charles was their King as well so in some sense the Scots had attained what they wanted in Scotland after the National Covenant they had increased the the game with the Somme leading conent which put a requirement that the best form of reformed religion would be implemented across the three kingdoms they I think wanted the the English Parliament to come to terms with their own King but alongside this at the same time the Scots looked south of the border and the once Reformed Theological gel that held together Puritans and independence was now fragmenting into Baptists the Quakers are not far down the road and the Scots are horrified at this breadth of religious possibility that was being unleashed in England and the Scots I mean one of the interesting things about the Covenant in period in Scotland the National Protestant settlement is never questioned there's not a debate about the diversity of religion they don't want independent congregations they don't want a fragmentation of religion and this is a terrifying prospect it's the Scottish Covenanters looking south of the border now you've been valiant in galloping through over 100 years with fractures and fissures it's just gonna get worse because me Charles goes back he is taken by the English then he is executed which sends ripples right through Europe the ex a king who believed in divine right and his son immediately is declared Charles a second by the Covenant is after he said that he has sworn that his father's a heretic knew his mother was a [ __ ] but there is and then some years later he becomes king Charles a second well as Cromwell when that's happening Laura Cromwell already has past form with the Scots and we've heard a little bit about this Cromwell actually has arguments with his Scottish under officers and during the middle of the 1640s in 1648 before Charles is executed Cromwell is involved in a coup which reestablishes the most radical of the Covenanters back in power and I won't go into the complexities of that but Cromwell thinks at that moment that the Scottish Covenanters are onside and they will acquiesce in the execution of Charles the first but the English unilaterally execute the King of England and just seemed to pretend that the same man isn't wearing the crown of Scotland so the Scots immediately crown Charles the second because they really don't have any other choice Charles the second thinks that he is by birthright King of Britain had Charles second not being proclaimed by the Covenanters somebody else in Scotland would have done it there would be a civil war which is what it's got to be trying to avoid for ten years the other thing of course very obviously is that the Covenant is a defense of monarchic authority it says in the Covenant that everyone has bound themselves to preserve the body as well as the authority of the King so this is the only sensible thing the Scots can do but of course what it does is put the Scots on warpath with the nascent English Republic and when charles ii comes in roger he is as anti covenant as it's possible to be can you tell the listeners how he operates and how with the end of the covenant as his in size but i think he finds that the whole coronation business rather humiliating or it's a cold january but it was January the 1st he crowd that school is freezing cold he has to listen to a sermon for two hours and there's obliged to sign the covenants and almost certainly as his fingers crossed behind his back when this is going on I mean he he does not want to be a covenanted King I think it interesting to speculate though it is no more than speculation on what would have happened if the Covenanters had simply declared Charles King of Scots and left England as a republic with its Irish attachment I doubt it would would would have worked out because Cromwell would always have felt threatened by Scottish Stuart Scotland on his northern frontier particularly if the shirts continued to pursue or to try and reclaim their British Thrones but what Charles does finally come to the road in 1660 he both Scotland England and indeed Ireland are war-weary they've had 20 years of conflict and the the idea really is to undo everything that's happened in the 40s and 50s and go back to their position before the outbreak of the the troubles as they're called and Scotland so would it be fair to say that he set out to eliminate the comtesse there's this killing time where the murders this suppression later I mean yes we can we can speed up a video that is what he's trying to do he doesn't like what he's been forced to swear to do they are not friends therefore he thinks of them as enemies and by the time his reign is well underway there they're on the way out as a force yes and it in the 1660s things like Bishop's re-established among supremacy as we established and the clergy are obliged one way or another to conform to the new regime but there's a like a thousand parishes in Scotland so a thousand Ministers three-quarters of them do conform in the 1660s leaving about maybe 250 you don't over the next ten years or so there are various accommodations and indulgences and that brings in another 100 150 you see they're about a hundred who will not conform because they are committed to maintaining their allegiance to the government's and they are partially delvis and they are increasingly harshly dealt with I mean the pendulum tends to swing between attempts at accommodation bringing them into the church and attempts at suppression but by the end of the century Scottsboro queer comment as a not not much in the books now they know they become well they're quite marginal through the 60s and 70s actually small numbers and you can have some sympathy for both sides those who are continuing to meet in the fields are arming themselves to protect them against government troops from the Crown's perspective there are armed insurgents who refuse to recognize royal authority over religion it seems that there is some degree of greater sympathy from the wider population by the time you get in to the the killing times but by the end of the century while 1690 when Protestantism and Presbyterianism is Presbyterianism is re-established in Scotland there's no mention of the covenants and it's only a very small minority followers of Richard Cameron and the United societies who keep this going as something that is binding the nation even though most of the the country is happy to be Presbyterianism without the covenants well thank you very much that was a very gallant attempt Thank You Laura Stuart larger mission is good Spurlock next week it's the great Portuguese poet the sower who explored the idea of the self writing in the names of over 70 different selves thank you for listening and the inner time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests well thank you for that that was to be tough for you that we missed out is it important for you to say now we didn't talk very much about the 1650s we went from the covenant being this incredibly important defining event in the lives of Scottish people in the 1640s to only 20 years later it seems much more marginal yes there's going to be a minority of people who remain out we committed to it but I wonder how important the 1650s are for undermining the authority of the Covenant certainly for the majority of the nobility of Scotland and perhaps for many of the middling sort as well and I know this is something that Scots done more work than me on well it's pretty difficult for a population to be told for more than a decade that they are chosen people and that God is looking to bless them and then to be absolutely humiliated at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 it causes some very deep introspection about how to understand what's happened and within mainline Presbyterianism in Scotland you get the formation of the protesters and the resolution errs who are both equally committed to Presbyterianism but are struggling to interpret why God is judging the nation in in light of the failure at numbar in 1650 the Covenant is an outlawed but toleration is introduced and the English regime protects both the Presbyterian hierarchy below the General Assembly at least and but also protects independent ministers so we don't know very much about what that does in terms of what people are thinking people in the pews think about what's happened to the government might add is that for covenant or is the introduction of toleration in Scotland is about the worst possible situation you can find themselves in because the Covenant tours are hell-bent on preventing other forms of religion other than Presbyterianism majority people liberals believe and they believes that the magistrate wields the sword and defense of religious unity and uniformity so the Covenant has aren't akyuu you're not view they just hold it rather for strong I think some people do I think it is actually important to recognise that you know we value toleration as a as a virtue in the Septon century it was a vise toleration was a thoroughly bad thing and what was required was uniformity of religious practice and what's really significant I think about the Glorious Revolution the overthrow the Catholic Stewart's and so on it's not so much that there is our Toleration Act that's passed but that's actually less important I think than the just a pragmatic recognition that you can have a plurality of protestantism swith in the British Isles that we don't all have to worship the same way as long as you are all Protestants and the the other factor in this I think that's really important is that after 1690 Scotland is a Presbyterian Kingdom and the winners right history so the history of the 17th century for the next three centuries was written by Presbyterians so the killing times mean that that's a very very judgement Laden term look at another perspective these people are not defenders of Christian Liberty or terrorists in the assassinate Archbishop sharp they rebelled in 1666 I mean these these one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist and the whole history of the 17th century is essentially written by Presbyterians in ways that highlight in historically dubious terms the extent of which the Covenanters and going back actually to the Reformers in six 1560 are defending Liberty so that they fit into a Whig kind of constitutionalist pattern but it's simply not the case and these people who are defending Christian Liberty only in the sense of their Liberty to develop their church and to eliminate everybody else's Church there's a huge point isn't it huge could I follow up on that and just say that the strength of the Reformation has gone also proved to be its weakness because in taking this very much old testament model of Israel they committed while keeping the secular state and the church they basic conflated the population into being subject to both the secular Authority and the church and required basically all Scots to be members of the church just like all Jews were subject to religious law and in doing that while holding at the same time a doctrine of reprobation they expected all people to be obedient and godly and believed that most of them couldn't which is one of the reasons that Presbyterian discipline is so important because you need to maintain a godly society to prevent being punished by divine wrath in pass the English one is there is an awful lot of consensus around doctrine and there are far more arguments because the nature of the English Reformation about what the doctrine of the church should be in Scotland the arguments are over this key issue that Roger talked about which is the relationship between the monarch and the church and the autonomy of the church this theory of the two kingdoms and this is where you see there's the story of the 17th century ruling itself out but Rogers point about the winners writing history of course is very important but in the 17th century what what I think's going on is Presbyterians competing with other people to say that the Reformation moment itself was Presbyterian and so an understanding of how fluid thought is about the Scottish Church and in the the later of mid to later part of the 1700 16th century story is really important too and that's an important point because Andrew Honeyman who is a full-blown covenant or becomes bishop of Orkney after the restoration and when he tries to justify why this happens he looks back and says yes Scotland is a covenant the nation on the grounds of the 1581 negative confession and the first draft of the National Covenant but once they add an anti Episcopal line into it they've changed the game so he can look back and see a continuity from the Reformation through 1581 through the first draft of 1638 and he sees that actually the departure and the anti Episcopal dominant radical covenant errs as being the departure from right religion in Scotland we didn't talk that much about is that the covenant is also a response to the union of the crowns in 1603 an attempt to work through the complexities of the relationship between Scotland and England and I think that's also part of the reason that the Covenant doesn't go away and we talked about it being politically far less significant in 1690 then perhaps we might think it would be but keeps popping up again in the 18th century into the 19th century even the 20th century there is attempt a secular covenant and to drive home rule and it gains millions of signatures it's not a religious document it's a secular ones so the Covenant remains this idea about what it means to be Scotland long after it's lost all the associations the legacy was would you go along with Alaura saying absolutely yes I think there are two legacies one is that them that the the sense in which a covenant remains an important thing in Scotland important concept which can be taken out of its religious context and repurposed as it is in the Covenant of the it's hidden in early 1950s I think something like 2 million people signed this covenant which was really about home rule for Scotland not independence home rule but the other thing is that I think the tradition of constitutional thinking that is read back and includes the Covenanters I mean it's often conceptualized in terms of constitutionalism against royal absolutism and that the Stewart's are absolutist monarchs and the members of the Kirk are defenders of religious freedom and you can take that back to Knox but actually you can take it back to the medieval period and you can establish this narrative of the Scots being a peculiarly democratic egalitarian people who would never ever countenance absolute monarchy and it's perhaps worth mentioning that this is the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 and that becomes part of that story not the foundational document of that story which declares the Robert Bruce will only be allowed to rule in Scotland if he continues to maintain Scotland's independence from England and it so that there's a conditional constitutional element to his monarchy but is kind of written into this narrative of Scotland constitutional legacy do you think that the civil mourning the Civil War killed the civil would have gone in the direction it went with without the Scottish interventions no Scottish power at the beginning their military power there wouldn't have been a civil war in the way that there was a civil war I mean the English are quite capable of having their own Wars and with Charles the first they've got a lot to be upset about the Charles the first but it certainly would not have taken the path that it did with if the Scots had not galvanized themselves on the streets of Edinburgh in 1630 would have been a difference of the path that they did well the English Parliament wouldn't have been able to establish itself in opposition to the crown so 1640 that that established that Parliament only happens because Charles has to deal with events in Scotland Irish rebellion of course but that as they say is another program program but I think the other thing that I briefly alluded to were the print debates that take off in the 1640s and the the role of the Scots as allies of English Presbyterians arguing with English independence in print about True Religion and about what the relationship between the kingdoms ought to be I think that's an extremely important thing that needs much more work done on it that's absolutely the case but it's also very interesting that the Scots are at the leading edge of fostering debate in England through the newspaper the Scottish dove and other avenues but they censor any of that entering into the Scottish space so they are happy to stir the pot in England but there's strict censorship under Archibald Johnson Morrison from 1638 as to what can be allowed into the print market in Scotland because debate is not something they want for its own sake debate is about establishing truth yeah well I think the producer is now gonna make his grand entrance so I mean Coffee please coffee I don't see can I let's just have some more water thank you thank you thank you very much

Channel: In Our Time

Views: 2,365

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: BBC, Radio, Four

Id: mL8uGPgGUIY

Length: 53min 3sec (3183 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020