What did it mean to be a Covenanter?

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.

Clan, King and Covenant explores the turbulent history of the Highlands during the seventeenth century. The signing of the National Covenant in 1638 first challenged the powers of Charles I in Scotland, but it was only when Alisdair MacDonald joined Montrose in raising the Royalist clans that the country erupted into civil war. Central to the conflict was the ancient enmity between the MacDonalds and the Campbells, Earls of Argyll, as clan Donald attempted to reclaim their ancestral lands in Argyll. There followed a whirlwind year of spectacular victories for Montrose in the name of the King as the Highland clans emerged upon the national stage, before his campaign subsided into eventual defeat. However it was only after the Restoration of Charles II that a bitter and protracted struggle broke out between Church and Crown, after Bishops were reappointed to the national Church. Political and religious tensions mounted with the acession of James VII of Scotland (James II of England) as a Catholic king ruling over a predominantly Presbyterian people. It reached a climax in the outbreak of the Highland War, when Viscount Dundee won a devastating victory at Killiecrankie on behalf of James VII over the Presbyterian forces of Lowland Scotland, but at the cost of his own life. Subsequently the Crown imposed an uneasy peace upon the Highlands, after the cold-blooded plotting of 'murder under trust' culminated in the Glencoe Massacre. Condoned by William of Orange, few events in the blood-stained history of the Highland clans have quite the dreadful resonance of this act, carried out cynically as a matter of public policy.Also available by the same author: Lost Kingdoms and Feuds, Forays and Rebellions (both Edinburgh University Press)

The English revolution is one of the most intensely-debated events in history; parallel events in Scotland have never attracted the same degree of interest. Rethinking the Scottish Revolution argues for a new interpretation of the seventeenth-century Scottish revolution that goes beyond questions about its radicalism, and reconsiders its place within an overarching 'British' narrative. Laura Stewart analyses how interactions between print and manuscript polemic, crowds, and political performances enabled protestors against a Prayer Book to destroy Charles I's Scottish government. Particular attention is given to the way in which debate in Scotland was affected by the emergence of London as a major publishing centre. The subscription of the 1638 National Covenant occurred within this context and further politicized subordinate social groups that included women. Unlike in England, however, public debate was contained. A remodelled constitution revivified the institutions of civil and ecclesiastical governance, enabling Covenanted Scotland to pursue interventionist policies in Ireland and England - albeit at terrible cost to the Scottish people. War transformed the nature of state power in Scotland, but this achievement was contentious and fragile. A key weakness lay in the separation of ecclesiastical and civil authority, which justified for some a strictly conditional understanding of obedience to temporal authority. Rethinking the Scottish Revolution explores challenges to legitimacy of the Covenanted constitution, but qualifies the idea that Scotland was set on a course to destruction as a result. Covenanted government was overthrown by the new model army in 1651, but its ideals persisted. In Scotland as well as England, the language of liberty, true religion, and the public interest had justified resistance to Charles I. The Scottish revolution embedded a distinctive and durable political culture that ultimately proved resistant to assimilation into the nascent British state.