Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 17 on 29/11/2004.

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No compromise

James Irvine Robertson on the struggles of the Covenanters

The Covenanters are not in the conventional mould of Scottish heroes. There’s no romance here, just hard people willing to fight and die for a hard religion that eschewed symbolism – no Easter, no Christmas, no altars, no crucifixes.

Theirs was the God of Calvin. The Word of God was in the New Testament; no priest was required to intercede. Believers were destined for Paradise; everyone else for Hell.

They emerged from the Scottish Reformation whose Presbyterianism created one of the most democratic churches in Europe. But politics and religion were inextricably intertwined.

In 1603, James VI, King of Scots, inherited the throne of England where the monarch was head of the church and he saw the control that he could exercise through his bishops. This was the blueprint he wished for Scotland.

His son Charles I tried to introduced a new Prayer Book in 1637. In Edinburgh, an Orchestrated riot followed in St Giles Kirk when it was first read from the pulpit. And in 1638 this led to the signing by some 300,000 men of the National Covenant of Scotland which affirmed the independence of the Scottish church.

In the Bishop’s Wars of 1639-40, the King tried to seize control by force but was defeated. In 1643, during the Civil Wars between King and Parliament, the Scots Presbyterians and the English Puritans signed an alliance, the Solemn League and Covenant.

This should have established a theocratic state after the King’s defeat but Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector – a polite .....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish History

Page number : 24