Who were The Covenanters?

i'm bruce fumi positives and negatives acids and alkalis ranger celtic yin yang jedi seth lord jacobites and covenanters they're all kind of opposites aren't they and some should never be mixed which may seem a strange thing to say given that jacobites didn't arrive until covenanters had all but disappear but we'll come back to that later today i'm going to show you two places in edinburgh that are inextricably linked by a five-minute walk as i tell you about the anti-jacobites the covenanters if you're interested in the people places and events and scottish history then click the subscribe button at the bottom right in the meantime let me tell you a story scotland in august too hot for a hoodie if an american writer produced a series of books in which a time-traveling english woman goes back to me a dashing hero of a people persecuted forced to swear allegiance to a king that he could never in their hearts support imprisoned until they dead or deported massacred or sent bravely to the scaffold proclaiming their loyalty to a higher cause the books would probably sell better if the hero wore a kill ladies love a man and a kill somber sensible clothes not so much but whilst covenanters and jacobites were opposite sides of a political religious coin some of the parallels are striking the jacobite story was sparked by a tinderbox when the catholic james vii of scotland and the second of england was delivered of a sun seven english parliamentarians invited william of orange to come and guarantee the protestant religion were their fears justified over the next 60 years supporters of james were forced to swear allegiance to this new king or face the consequences the massacre of glencoe jacobite resistance hangings drawings quarterings and a battlefield loss at culloden that was followed by summary execution starvation and deportation now the birth of baby james might have been the spark but the tinder had been drying out in preparation for some time you see 51 years before the ocean of james the seventh in the start of the jacobite cause his father charles the first sparked the tinderbox of the covenanter story when he insisted that the english prayer book be read in scottish churches on the 23rd july 1637 here in singles cathedral jenny garris threw a stool at the minister causing a riot now that may have been the spark but the tinder box had been drying out in preparation for some time ever since the reformation back in 1560 there had been a struggle to decide who was the ultimate authority in scotland the presbyterian church or the monarch the fact that for a large part of that time he was also the monarch in england made things even more complicated a year before the stool was thrown causing the to hit the fan charles the first had won a victory with a new book of canons which said that anyone denying the king's supremacy would be excommunicated pressure had been building so when jenny guinness threw her stool it was because she couldn't hold it in any longer look that's two crappy jokes and we need to go on a later event so come on for the next six months the protestant people of scotland started to organise an edinburgh solicitor and a five minister drew up a document which would become the national covenant and so on the 28th of february 1638 people lined up here in greyfriar's churchyard to sign a document that said that presbyterianism was the national church and it was a community under god and not the crown that was the authority in that church copies of the covenant were sent all over the country many signed willingly some signed in their own blood some sign under duress you see signing this document was tantamount to signing up for military service if you want to know what happened next then i've got a playlist called the war of three kingdoms english civil war you'll find two videos in that playlist that are relevant how the scots started the english civil war and who killed charles the first watch them but i want to jump to the period after charles the first has been executed you see the scots may think that the king can never be above the church but they are appalled at the idea that he should be executed they invite his son charles to be crowned charles ii but only in condition that he sign the covenant accepting that he's not above the church now when charles eventually did become king of england scotland in ireland he conveniently forgot what he'd signed up to within a year the recessionary act was passed in scotland overturning all the legislation of covenant of parliaments placing the king over the church and state and the bishops in between the next year all the churches other than the national church was banned and any office bearer in the church was required to renounce that covenant around a third refused now the later jacobites who fought for james tended to be concentrated in the north these covenanters who stood against his brother were most concentrated in the south and west thrown out of their churches they would meet in open air conventionals thousands of people would turn up to stand and field and mirror in scottish weather to listen to a presbyterian minister the very act of which was seditious law breaking in 1670 parliament issued the act against conventicals any minister who organized an open air church meeting was liable to execution if somebody captured or handed them in they received 500 merks if somebody killed them the killer was indemnified whatever commitments charles had made before whatever bloodshed and atrocities had been visited during the war of the three kingdoms it was the years after the war that became known as the killing times can you imagine a time when a farmer called arthur ingalls of netherton was shot dead whilst looking after his cattle the justification given by the troops was that he was alone in a field with a bible in his hand he must have been up to no good this was scotland in the 1670s in the run-up to that let's be honest murder of arthur ingalls covenanter started to post centuries at conventicals some started to defend themselves on the first of june 1679 john graham of clever house the persecutor of cavanaugh are so hated that he was known as bloody clavers was out looking for conventicles and he found one at drumclog but a century had fired a warning shot to the worshippers as the service came to a close the preacher thomas douglas said you've got the theory now for the practice thus warned by the time bloody cleavers arrived in the scene the men were lined up for violence short skirmish in advances got bigger and bolder until the government troops turned and fled with heavy losses needless to say this buoyed the amateurish covenanters and worried the government a bit like the battle of preston pans in 1745 the covenanters advanced in glasgow but lightly armed and amateur made no headway and so they retreated south crossed the clyde camped in the moon north of hamilton and waited the government issued a proclamation saying that if they didn't give themselves up within 24 hours they'd be treated as traitors to whom no pardon was allowed they were starting to take this ragtag mob seriously on the morning of sunday the 22nd of june the lord's day two forces of five to six thousand stood on either side of bothwell bridge one a poorly equipped group of amateurs who were racked with division but sure god was on their side the other properly equipped government troops it reads like a jacobite tale and yet it's not after stout initial resistance the covenanters broke up in panic hundreds of prisoners were taken after the battle two of them were ministers who were brought to edinburgh and hung but twelve hundred covenanters surrendered that day and they were brought here as the hunt began for anyone else involved now edinburgh didn't have accommodation for this many prisoners so many of them were placed in here some of this has been built on and used for graves and monuments since at the time it was just a free space enclosed by walls leaving the men out in the open from june to a scottish november with almost enough rations to survive some were tried and executed some died here as they waited some were made to sign a bond of loyalty to the crown before being freed and many were transported by november there were 270 remaining and well that's a story for another time i often see our transatlantic cousins comment on how their ancestors were shipped abroad or fled persecution as jacobites i don't tend to hear them talk about those that were shipped as covenanters now in one way that's strange because covenant and protestants seem to have been more prominent than jacobites in the american revolution and another way is to be expected because for some reason i think we here too get more caught up in the romanticism of the swashbuckling kilted highland rebel than his door presbyterian lowland equivalent and yet there are two sides of the same coin it's just that when william of orange replaced james vi in 1688 the coin flipped this memorial commemorates 18 000 covenanters martyred that's a lot that's more than the number of jacobites that started the battles of preston pans folkert muir and colloden combined maybe presbyterian and puritan protestants did have something to worry about in the coming days i'll be telling more covenant entails i'll also tell more jack about tales because teams switch sides at half time until then i'll leave a video on how these covenant and scots started the english civil war one another will be coming up on screen now in the meantime i mean doc is going to be lama alive cheerio

Channel: Scotland History Tours

Views: 43,045

Keywords: tales from scotlands history, key dates in scottish history, stories from scotlands history, stories from scotlands past, help me plan a scottish holiday, smile about scottish history, tales from scotlands past, historic days out in Scotland, day out Scotland, Bruce Fummey, Scotland history tours, Scottish history tour guides, scottish history for dummies, Covenanters, English civil war, Scottish church, Presbyterian, Jacobites, St Giles Cathedral, Greyfriars churchyard

Id: 4b7viuyaIf8

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021