What did it mean to be a Covenanter?

Examines how the form and function of the Covenants were shorn of religious implications and repurposed, serving a pluralistic vision of the role of religion in politics and public life. Until now, scholarship on the Covenants has mainly focussed on their role in the conflicts of the 1640s, with discussion of the Covenants after 1660 mostly limited to the context of violent Scottish radicalism. This book moves beyond a rigid focus on Scotland to explore the legacy of the Covenants in England. It examines the discourse surrounding key events in the Restoration period and traces the influence of the Covenants in the context of radical Presbyterianism, and in mainstream debates around politics, church government, and the constitution of the British kingdoms. The Covenants continued to have relevance in two primary respects. Firstly, the Covenants were used as reference points for discussing the competing legacies of the English and Scottish Reformations and the confused issues of church and state that defined the Restoration period. Furthermore, the form of the Covenants as solemn individual subscriptions to a constitutional and religious model, and the political ideas that underpinned them, were emulated by those seeking to resist royal authority during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, and during the events surrounding the Revolution of 1688. Thus, this book holds particular interest for students of constitutionalism, legal pluralism or civil religion in seventeenth-century Britain, and for those seeking to deepen their understanding of the intellectual origins of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Revolution of 1688-9.

A Companion to the Reformation in Scotland deals with the making, shaping, and development of the Scottish Reformation. 28 authors offer new analyses of various features of a religious revolution and select personalities in evolving theological, cultural, and political contexts.

This incredible history presents a precise overview of the events of 17th-Century Scotland. The author, David Hay Fleming, delivered an accurate report on The National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), the defining agreements of two different phases of the mid‐17th‐century Covenanting Revolution. The National Covenant was signed by the people of Scotland in 1638, resisting the suggested reforms of the Church of Scotland by King Charles I. On the other hand the Solemn League and Covenant was an agreement between the Scottish Covenanters and the heads of the English Parliamentarians in 1643 during the First English Civil War. Fleming included the names of the famous personalities linked with the events and the several places and dates of their occurrence. In addition, he wrote several unknown facts about the subject that keep the readers curious throughout. It's a perfect read for history beginners and enthusiasts.

A solemn agreement inaugurated by Scottish churchmen, in the Greyfriars' churchyard, Edinburgh. It rejected the attempt by King Charles I and William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, to force the Scottish presbyterian system to conform to English liturgical practice and church governance. The National Covenant was composed of the King's Confession (1581), additional statements by Alexander Henderson (a leader in the Church of Scotland), and an oath. The covenant reaffirmed Reformed faith and Presbyterian discipline and denounced the attempted changes, but it also urged loyalty to the king. It was signed by many Scotsmen.