The Story of the Scottish Covenants in Outline

by David Hay Fleming

Conventicles

Between these two tragedies, the Scottish Parliament of the new King distinguished itself by passing three harsh Acts. One of these declared it treason to give or take the Covenants, to write in defence of them, or to own them as lawful or binding; the second declared the procedure of the Privy Council to have been legal in fining husbands “for their wives withdrawing from the ordinances”; and by the other the penalty of death and confiscation of goods was adopted as the punishment to be inflicted on hearers as well as on preachers at either house or field conventicles. Yet even with this stringent Act it was impossible to put down conventicles. It was not for the mere satisfaction of opposing a tyrannical and bloodthirsty Government that the frequenters of conventicles were willing to risk so much. Renwick’s sermons show that he was a faithful preacher of the Gospel; and those who had realised in their own experience that it was the power of God unto salvation were anxious at all hazards to listen to the Word when proclaimed by such a devoted and fearless messenger.

Dunnottar Prisoners

In order to cope more successfully with the expected rising of the Earl of Argyll, 184 captive Covenanters, collected from various prisons, were, in May 1685, marched from Burntisland to Dunnottar. A few escaped by the way. The others suffered a rigorous and cruel imprisonment. For several days they were, male and female, confined in a single vault, dark, damp, and unfurnished. During the course of the summer some escaped, some died, some took the obnoxious oaths. Of those who were brought back to Leith and examined before the Privy Council, on the 18th of August, a considerable number were already under sentence of banishment, and now 51 men and 21 women were similarly sentenced, and forbidden to return to Scotland, without special permission, under pain of death.

The Toleration

Argyll’s rising was a failure. He was captured, brought to Edinburgh, and there beheaded on the 30th of June 1685, not for the rising, but because in November 1681 he had ventured to take the Test with an explanation. Being dissatisfied with Argyll’s Declaration and with his associates, Renwick and his followers stood aloof from that rising; but, on the 28th of May 1685, they had, at Sanquhar, formally protested against the validity of the Scottish Parliament then in session, and also against the proclamation of James, Duke of York, as King. They also refused to take any benefit from the toleration, which he granted, by his “sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power,” on the 28th of June 1687—a toleration which was gratefully accepted by many of the less scrupulous Presbyterian ministers. Although Argyll’s attempt to overturn the throne of James the Seventh was unsuccessful, the time came, in December 1688, when he had to escape from the country, which was no longer to be his. Next April the Scottish Convention of Estates pointed out that he had assumed the regal power in Scotland, and acted as king, without taking the oath required by law, whereby the king is obliged to swear to maintain the Protestant religion, and to rule the people according to the laws.

The Revolution

Renwick, who glorified God in the Grassmarket on the 17th of February 1688, was the last Covenanter who suffered on a scaffold. He and his followers, by maintaining an unflinching protest against the reign of James, had helped to hasten his downfall. When the Convention of Estates met in Edinburgh, the Cameronians gladly volunteered to defend it; and showed their loyalty by raising in a single day, without tuck of drum, eleven hundred and forty men as a regiment for King William’s service.

Episcopacy was abolished by the Scottish Parliament (22nd July 1689) as an insupportable grievance; and (7th June 1690) Presbytery was re-established, and the Westminster Confession of Faith ratified; but the Covenants were ignored, and on that account the sterner Cameronians still stood apart, and, with that dogged tenacity which had distinguished them in the past, they held together, although for many long years they had no minister.

The Martyrs’ Monument