The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1660-1696 (Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, 46) 9781783276042, 9781800105256, 9781800105263, 1783276045

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant
1660: What Was to Be Restored?
The Act of Uniformity and the ‘Great Ejection’
Crisis and Toleration in the 1660s
Exclusion and Association in the Late Restoration Period
The Revolution of 1688 and the Association of 1696
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Other volumes in the STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY series

Citation preview

STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Volume 46

THE NATIONAL COVENANT AND THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, 1660–1696

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History ISSN: 1476-9107

Series editors Tim Harris – Brown University Stephen Taylor – Durham University Andy Wood – Durham University Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1660–1696

James Walters

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© James Walters 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation ‎no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, ‎published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, ‎transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, ‎without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of James Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2022 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-78327-604-2 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-80010-525-6 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-80010-526-3 (ePUB) The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd ‎PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK ‎and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. ‎668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA ‎website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover images: Goldsmid, Edmund, Explanatory Notes of a Pack of Playing Cards Forming a Complete Political Satire of the Commonwealth (Edinburgh: E. & G. Goldsmid, 1886), www.gutenberg.org.

Contents

List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction1 1 The 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant25 2 1660: What Was to Be Restored?

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3 The Act of Uniformity and the ‘Great Ejection’

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4 Crisis and Toleration in the 1660s

102

5 Exclusion and Association in the Late Restoration Period

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6 The Revolution of 1688 and the Association of 1696

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Conclusion178 183 213

Bibliography Index

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Illustrations 1. The Committee or Popery in Masquerade, after Sir Roger L’Estrange, 1680.

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2. Strange’s case, strangly [sic] altered, approximately 1680, London.139

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

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Acknowledgements Many thanks to everyone who has assisted me on this book, and those who have supported me in the years it has been in the making. Firstly, thank you to everyone at the University of Hull, and the North of England Consortium of Arts and Humanities, who allowed me to start on this path in the first place. In particular, thank you to my PhD supervisor Charles Prior for years of encouragement, insight, and constructive criticism. Thank you to the staff at the Bodleian, Brotherton and all other libraries that I consulted along the way. It is a truism that writing a book, in particular an academic one such as this, is an isolating experience, but it never felt that way to me, and I must extend sincere gratitude to all the wonderful friends, family, and loved ones who supported me and kept me sane while I worked on it. To mention everyone individually would take a second book but I am sure they know who they are! The most difficult period, and the only time in which I began to doubt that this work would ever see the light of day, was during the COVID-19 pandemic, so special thanks to Georgie and Cameron for being there for me then, when it felt like the world had ground to a halt (and to Georgie for the feat of reading the whole thing twice!). Thank you also to everyone at Boydell & Brewer who worked hard to get this over the line in this most inopportune of circumstances. Finally, a special mention for my dad, who supported me during some very tough times, and without whom this book certainly would not have happened.

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Introduction The National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) were originally documents that emerged in the context of religious warfare. They were structured by Scottish political and religious theories of presbyterianism and a right to resist arbitrary authority. The National Covenant was a means by which its authors hoped to cement the unity needed to resist reforms imposed on the Kirk by the regime of Charles I. The Solemn League and Covenant was an instrument to cement an alliance formed during the First English Civil War between the dominant Scottish faction loyal to the National Covenant and the English Parliament, which agreed to the reformation of the English and Irish churches in exchange for Scottish military support against the king. These terms were as much driven by military expediency as they were expressions of sympathy for the religious and constitutional position articulated in the Covenants. Yet despite the nature of the Covenants as responses to these specific political crises, and their rigidly Scottish presbyterian origins, they functioned throughout the seventeenth century as living documents through which polemical writers considered contemporary debates around the entangled constitution of church and state in the British kingdoms. The Covenants were prisms through which people approached the issue of the relationship between church and state in a context where there were two churches, and two states.1 They were interpreted as a model for a constitution of church and state where the powers of the king and the government of the church were settled by law, and the people consensually bound to this constitution via solemn oath. While this constitution was never realised, the concept of a settlement of both royal authority and church government under the law, to be secured and defended on the basis of public subscriptions to oaths, re-emerged in the post-1688 Revolutionary settlement, and in the 1696 ‘Association’ by which this settlement was defended. This book will argue that the form and function of the Covenants were reconceived 1 Though the crowns of England and Scotland may have been unified in 1603, the problem remained that English and Scottish conceptions of what the nature of monarchy was differed, and the nations remained divided on the question of religion. Furthermore, as this book demonstrates, such divisions were not defined strictly geographically – there were those in England who favoured ‘Scottish’ conceptions of church and state constitution, and vice versa. See Roger A. Mason, ‘Divided by a Common Faith? Protestantism and the Union in Post-Reformation Britain’, in Scotland’s Long Reformation: New Perspectives on Scottish Religion, c. 1500–c. 1660, ed. John McCallum (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 202–25; Karin Bowie, ‘“A Legal Limited Monarchy”: Scottish Constitutionalism in the Union of Crowns, 1603–1707’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 35:2 (2015), 131–54.

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

of in service to an emerging pluralistic vision of ‘Protestantism’. This was Protestantism in a broad sense, defined more by civic, political, and strategic concerns than ecclesiology, in effect, a civil religion, rather than the jure divino religion embodied in the Covenants. While both Covenants centred around Scottish presbyterianism and a conception of contractual kingship which emerged from the Scottish reformation, there was, as Edward Vallance has demonstrated, appreciation of the idea of a national covenant throughout England and Scotland as part of a shared Protestant intellectual culture.2 Such ideas emerged primarily from the context of an exchange of ideas between Marian exiles and Scottish Protestants such as John Knox, though English and Scottish concepts of what this Covenant meant would evolve differently in the contexts of their respective reformations and the different relationships between church and state in the two kingdoms.3 The Solemn League and Covenant complicated this picture further by committing many in England via a solemn oath to reform the church. There was ambiguity, however, in the precise meaning of this ‘reform’. The Scottish architects of the Solemn League and Covenant intended it to mandate for reforming the English and Irish churches in the image of the Scottish Kirk. Not all its English signatories necessarily understood it in this way, however. The Restoration period saw many undergo a crisis of allegiance as a result of tensions between their loyalty to the Covenant and the Restoration regime. While presbyterian supporters of the Covenant played a significant role in the Restoration of the monarchy, they were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts to restore it on a covenanted basis. Instead, the monarchy was restored along with episcopacy, which the Covenants were widely seen as rejecting, despite a degree of ambiguity as to whether a ‘reformed episcopacy’ might be compatible. Furthermore, many supporters of the king considered the Covenants as instruments of sedition, as they had been used to underpin resistance to the crown, and were based on a model of presbyterian mixed monarchy which was thought to undermine royal power. The efforts of the crown to suppress the Solemn League and Covenant were a partial success, but many people still considered themselves bound to the Covenant by oath or continued to discuss it as an alternate model of church and state to that created by the Restoration. The issue of whether one was, or was not, bound by the Solemn League and Covenant after the Restoration was a means for contemporaries to address a wide range of religious and constitutional questions. It had implications for a person’s conception of the nature of royal authority, as absolute or based on an original contract, and how this original contract, where present, interacted with 2 Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), ch. 1. Though Vallance’s work is the most up to date, more on the idea of a ‘British context’ for the National Covenant can be found in John Morrill (ed.), The Scottish National Covenant in its British Context, 1638–1651 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990). 3 Vallance, Revolutionary England, pp. 6–16.

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INTRODUCTION

subsequent ones. It also had implications for the debate about civil power over the church. Despite the Solemn League and Covenant’s origin as a document to impose jure divino presbyterianism on England, support for the Covenant could encompass a range of views on church government.4 Indeed, the religious demands embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant had, in practice, only ever functioned as the starting point in negotiations with English divines at the Westminster Assembly.5 After the Restoration, loyalty to the Covenant could mean support for jure divino presbyterianism. However, it could mean a view whereby the Long Parliament which subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant had a right as the embodiment of the nation to swear an oath on behalf of the people, such as in the thinking of Zachary Crofton.6 To others, such as Theophilus Brabourne, it meant a personal duty to endeavour to bring the English church closer to presbyterianism, while still respecting royal authority over church matters.7 Others, particularly in Scotland, maintained a loyalty to the Covenants which they were willing to defend with violence. Armed risings by Covenanters occurred in 1666 and 1679, and 1679 also saw the assassination of Archbishop James Sharp by supporters of the Covenant.8 The regime also attempted to use imposed oaths as a means of compelling uniformity, which coupled with the continuing loyalty of many to the Covenants, and the violence this caused in Scotland, underlined to contemporaries the power of religious oaths to underpin political allegiance.9 At the same time however, both the Solemn League and 4

For more on the complex relationship which Covenanters could have with the idea of episcopacy see Alexander D. Campbell, ‘Episcopacy in the Mind of Robert Baillie, 1637–1662’, Scottish Historical Review, 93:1 (2014), 29–55. 5 For the Solemn League and Covenant and the Westminster Assembly see Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643–1663 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), ch. 1–2; Hunter Powell, The Crisis of British Protestantism: Church Power in the Puritan Revolution 1638–44 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), ch. 4; Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Scottish Influence on the Westminster Assembly: A Study of the Synod’s Summoning Ordinance and the Solemn League and Covenant’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 37 (2007), 55–88. 6 Crofton was both a supporter of the Restoration and an advocate for the Solemn League and Covenant, whose views will be analysed in detail in chapter 2. See E. C. Vernon, ‘Crofton, Zachary (1626–1672)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 7 Brabourne was not a presbyterian, and often attacked them in his writings, but nevertheless felt personally bound by his having sworn the Solemn League and Covenant, see Bryan W. Ball, ‘Theophilus Brabourne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 8 Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1976), pp. 92–101. 9 For more on the importance of oaths in the early modern period see Andrew Hadfield, Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); John Walter, Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Culture in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Brooke Conti, Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Edward Vallance, ‘Oaths, Casuistry and Equivocation: Anglican

3

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

Covenant and the regime’s Act of Uniformity represented failed attempts at defining the political nation on the basis of religion. The Solemn League and Covenant, while representing a potential solution to the relationship between the churches and states of England and Scotland, represented a religious vision too narrowly exclusionary to gain sufficient support in England. While the Act of Uniformity succeeded in the short term in excluding dissenters from public life, it also ultimately led to the emergence of a group of ‘presbyterian Whigs’, which included both conformists and non-conformists and would form a base of opposition to the monarchy in the later Stuart period.10 As crisis loomed again in response to the prospect of the accession of James II as in the 1680s, many seeking to resist a Catholic heir turned to the ideas which underpinned the Covenants, namely a contractual kingship predicated on popular sovereignty, and the practical action this entailed: public displays of consent by all classes of people. These took the form of public protests and petitioning, a topic on which there is a rich body of literature, and most relevantly for this book, subscription to ‘associations’.11 The creation of Protestant associations was attempted in 1681, 1688, and, most successfully, in 1696. ‘Association’ was the preferred term of English Protestants for whom the term ‘covenant’ had unhelpful connotations of Scottish radicalism. The term owed its origin to the 1584 ‘Bond of Association’ which pledged to defend a Protestant succession in the event of a Catholic plot against Elizabeth.12 In several respects though, the associations more closely resembled the Covenants in their role as oaths which underpinned a political bond, and the associations,

Responses to the Engagement Controversy’, The Historical Journal, 42:1 (2001), 59–77; John Spurr, ‘A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6:11 (2001), 37–63. 10 Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: The Entring Book, 1677–1691 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), p. 149. 11 For early modern crowds and petitioning see Philip Loft, ‘Involving the Public: Parliament, Petitioning and the Language of Interest, 1688–1720’, Journal of British Studies, 55:1 (2016), 1–23; Jason Peacey, ‘To Every Individual Member: The Palace of Westminster and Participatory Politics in the Seventeenth Century’, Court Historian, 13:2 (2008), 127–47; Brian Weiser, ‘Access and Petitioning During the Reign of Charles II’, in The Stuart Courts, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), pp. 203–13; Tim Harris, ‘London Crowds and the Revolution of 1688’, in By Force or by Default? The Revolution of 1688–1689, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), pp. 44–64. For Associations see Vallance, Revolutionary England, pp. 17–27. 12 Vallance, Revolutionary England, pp. 17–27. For more on the 1584 Association see Roger Turvey, ‘“An Ill-Considered Invitation to Violence and Vengeance”: Pembrokeshire and the Bond of Association, 1584’, Journal of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society, 21 (2012), 35–53. For more on Elizabethan concerns about Catholic plots, and the context of the Association, see Patrick H. Martin, Elizabethan Espionage: Plotters and Spies in the Struggle Between Catholicism and the Crown (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2016); Peter Lake, Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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INTRODUCTION

particularly the Association of 1681, drew much criticism from contemporaries as seditious attempts to recreate the Solemn League and Covenant. However, it was only by recasting the ideas which underpinned the Covenants in more pluralistic ways that they became viable in the English context of the 1680s. Instead of such ideas being deployed in defence of an exclusionary conception of a jure divino Kirk, they were deployed in service of a broad, non-exclusionary concept of Britannic Protestantism which was more civic than it was doctrinal or liturgical. By the 1680s, the political theories which had previously been most prominently embodied in the Covenants had become central to a Protestant civil religion which was defined in opposition to concepts of ‘arbitrary government’ and ‘tyranny’, rather than with reference to specific ecclesiology. As Steve Pincus has argued, this was a civic community in which Catholics could be included, provided their political loyalty was not suspect, but which was still defined as Protestant, in a broad, non-exclusionary sense.13 The Solemn League and Covenant retained relevance throughout the Restoration period because it presented a solution, albeit an exclusionary and controversial one, to the ‘British problem’ of a multi-kingdom polity comprised of distinct systems of law and religion. Ultimately, the settlement which emerged from the Revolution of 1688 represented in many ways an effort to solve the same issues as the Solemn League and Covenant. This is not to attempt to cast the Revolution of 1688 as some sort of eventual victory for the supporters of the Covenant, as while some moderate Scottish presbyterians did see the Revolution that way, others did not; it certainly wasn’t viewed that way in England.14 However, the aims and methods of the revolutionaries shared commonalities with the Covenanters, and these reflected broader issues regarding the settlement of church and state. These commonalities were a commitment to a limited, contractual monarchy, which was to be defended by harnessing public support in the form of a covenant or association. In both cases, this monarchy was to be limited by the law, and also bound by law to defend the nation’s religion. There was to be no officially recognised jure divino presbyterianism in either England or Scotland, as many signatories of the Covenants had hoped. However, the ‘limitation of the monarch by fundamental law, guaranteed by oaths’, which Karin Bowie identified as ‘a distinctive pattern of Scottish constitutionalism’ which the Covenanters had sought to uphold, would be confirmed in both kingdoms by the 1688 Bill of Rights and its Scottish counterpart, the 1689 Claim of Right. Glenn Burgess has argued that what primarily separated Covenanter resistance theory from contemporaneous English theories was an emphasis on the duty of the king to uphold a pattern

13

Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 469. 14 See Alasdair Raffe, ‘Who were the ‘Later Covenanters’?’, in The National Covenant in Scotland 1638–1689, ed. Chris R. Langley (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020).

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

of religion.15 The duty of the king to defend a religious constitution was also an important facet of Whig political theories in the later seventeenth century, and of the constitution which emerged after the Revolution of 1688. In fact, in the National Covenant, 1688 Association, the 1688 Bill of Rights, and the Association of 1696, the religion of the polity and the law of the land were both framed as part of the body of constitutional law that bound the monarch.16 The National Covenant was framed as a defence of religion, ‘by law established within this realm’, presenting religion as part of the constitution of Scotland.17 In the Associations of 1688 and 1696 and the Bill of Rights, the phrase used was ‘religion, laws and liberties’. In all cases, religion was framed as part of a wider legalistic constitution. In effect, therefore, all functioned as forms of civil religion which sought to settle the place of both the crown and the church within a constitutional order, and to define religious acceptability on the basis of participation in, and compatibility with, that constitution. In the case of the Solemn League and Covenant, arguments framing it as a statement of existing constitutional law were less common. Instead, it was often framed as a constitution emerging from natural law, or the law of nations. The main difference between the monarchy of the Covenants and the monarchy of Revolution was in the nature of the religion they served – in the case of the Covenants a jure divino presbyterianism, and in the case of the Revolution, a broader conception of ‘Protestantism’. Alan Cromartie has argued that the history of England leading up to the civil wars is one of a ‘constitutionalist revolution’, emerging from England’s ‘legalistic reformation’, which emphasised the ‘omnicompetence’ of the common law.18 Scotland underwent a ‘legalistic reformation’ as well, though its nature was quite different from that of England’s. England and Scotland both inherited constitutions from their reformations, which bound together certain conceptions of the derivation of sovereignty, the nature of the church, and the authority of the monarchy. In 1603, the churches and states of England and Scotland became interconnected, to a degree, but still remained distinct in important respects. The implications of the entanglement of the English and Scottish constitutions would cast a shadow over the politics of both kingdoms throughout the 15

Glenn Burgess, British Political Thought, 1500–1660: The Politics of the Post-Reformation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 192. 16 The Bill of Rights was not passed and assented to by the king until December of 1689, but due to a convention of Parliament in place until 1793, whereby Acts without a specific commencement date were counted as having been passed at the start of the session, it is officially counted by the UK Parliament as dating to 1688, so it will be referred to as such here. This information is from www.legislation.gov.uk. 17 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, The National Covenant of the Kirk of Scotland and the Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms (Edinburgh: Printed by a Society of Stationers, 1660), sig. A5v. 18 Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 3.

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INTRODUCTION

seventeenth century, and beyond. Through the prism of the Covenants, this book will explore how the political legacy of the Scottish reformation interacted with that of the English reformation. It also seeks to emphasise that the ‘English’ and ‘Scottish’ constitutions which emerged from their reformations were not strictly limited by national borders. Instead, they represented certain conceptions of the relationship between church and state which existed in competition throughout the British kingdoms, with adherents on both sides of the border. Despite their narrow and exclusionary origins, the Covenants helped to introduce into wide circulation in the English political world constitutional ideas which were then utilised in the creation of a broader, non-specifically Protestant alliance which would ultimately triumph over the supporters of James II. Covenanting, Presbyterianism, and Civil Power Over the Church

In terms of scholarship on the Covenants, the most significant contributions with relevance to this book are from Laura Stewart, Kirsteen MacKenzie, and Edward Vallance. Laura Stewart has provided a detailed and insightful study of the changes which occurred in Scotland during the period of Covenanter control, and the role which the National Covenant had as a political instrument which introduced many for the first time to the concept of a consensual constitution and played ‘a significant role in the evolution of Scotland’s political identity’.19 Kirsteen MacKenzie has approached the Covenants from the perspective of all Three Kingdoms, and examined the efforts which took place throughout the 1640s and 50s to promote the ‘Covenanted interest’ across them. MacKenzie has emphasised how the Covenants meant different things to different people and ‘served multiple purposes throughout the Three Kingdoms’.20 Vallance has situated the Covenants into a wider Anglo-Scottish context of Protestant ideas of a national covenant, and connected them to the use of ‘Protestant associations’ as a means of mobilising people to defend their religion and constitution.21 More recently, Vallance has expanded on this by placing the Solemn League and Covenant and 1696 Association into a wider context of increasing public participation in politics in the seventeenth century by comparing them to the practice of ‘loyal addresses’ to the crown.22 Stewart’s work has highlighted the complex legacy of the Covenants in Scottish politics. Stewart rightly emphasises the importance of the National Covenant as an early exercise in articulating popular sovereignty, and argues that it ‘provided ordinary men and women with a language in which popular activism could be 19

Laura Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: Covenanted Scotland 1637–1651 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 339. 20 MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant, pp. 181–2. 21 Vallance, Revolutionary England, ch. 1. 22 Edward Vallance, Loyalty, Memory and Public Opinion in England, 1658–1727 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 30–3.

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

justified and articulated against claims that legitimate politics was none of their business’.23 Stewart does not use the term ‘civil religion’, though many of her observations about the role of the National Covenant in Scottish politics appear very relevant to John Coleman’s (gendered) description of civil religion as ‘the set of beliefs, rites, and symbols which relates a man’s role as citizen and his society’s place in space, time, and history to the conditions of ultimate existence and meaning’.24 Stewart argues that ‘with its appeal to Scottish representative institutions and its presbyterianized account of the Scottish reformation, the Covenant defined the Scottish nation with such clarity that alternative ideas subsequently struggled to gain traction in the public imagination’. However, she concedes that its narrowly focussed religious implications made it an imperfect tool for engendering national Scottish unity: ‘Once religious pluralism had become an unalterable fact of Scottish life – however disagreeable that might have been for some at the time – the impossibility of dissociating the Covenant from the history of presbyterianism limited its potential as a unifying national symbol and made its contribution to the evolution of modern Scottish political identities ambiguous at best.’25 While Stewart is persuasive on this point, to view the legacy of the Covenants only in terms of their direct influence over Scottish politics is to risk overlooking the influence that they had more broadly in the development of an AngloScottish dialogue about the role of oaths and the nature of kingship and its relationship to religion. The constitutional legacy of the English reformation is a subject of perennial interest for historians and has been examined in detail in the context of the Restoration period by Jacqueline Rose.26 This book seeks to build on this work by arguing that the legacy of the Scottish reformation in England should not be underestimated, due to English interest in the National Covenant, and the entanglement of the two nations via the Solemn League and Covenant. The religious and political landscape of Restoration England was, it will argue, one influenced by multiple competing conceptions of reformation.27 Vallance has argued that an idea of a national covenant was present in the political thought of English presbyterians since at least the Marian period. Furthermore, he argued that many viewed the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant as much as a renewal of England’s national covenant as it was an extension of the Scottish Covenant to England, writing that ‘the Protestation, 23 Stewart,

Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, pp. 330–2. John A. Coleman, ‘Civil Religion’, Sociological Analysis, 31:2 (1970), 76. 25 Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, pp. 325–33. 26 Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 1–25. 27 The topic of British ‘legal pluralism’ is one which has received attention from historians, but most commonly in the context of the emergence of the British Empire; see for example Lauren A. Benton, Richard J. Ross (eds), Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850 (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2013); J. G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 24

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INTRODUCTION

Vow and Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant were all seen as embodiments and renewals of one national covenant.’28 This was both the result of a tradition of English covenanting thought but also a recognition of the practical utility of political instruments underpinned by solemn oaths, and the potential they had as a binding force and unifying shibboleth for the puritan and Parliamentarian cause.29 Both Stewart and Vallance acknowledge that the ‘rigid’ and ‘intolerant’ presbyterianism embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant has caused it to traditionally be viewed as incompatible with the trend towards toleration which gained momentum from the 1670s onwards.30 This was certainly true, and this book argues that in part it was the exclusionary nature of the Solemn League and Covenant that prevented it from forming a viable constitutional model for the British kingdoms. However, as Vallance acknowledges in his epilogue, the Covenants did continue to influence English politics in the later Restoration and beyond.31 It is one aim of this book to contribute to an understanding of how this occurred, by analysing Restoration-era responses to the Covenants and Protestant associations in the context of civil religion. This book will build on these works by specifically addressing the context of the Restoration period, and with a focus on England. Aside from one chapter by Vallance, the Restoration period is outside the scope of the above works, and the Covenants have not been addressed in this context by many other historians. The approach taken in this book will also be unique in that it will address responses in debates to the ideas contained in the Covenants, and the legacy of these ideas outside the circles of ‘Covenanters’, as opposed to the focus on local social and political dynamics of the Covenanter movement which characterises the work of Stewart and MacKenzie. While sharing broadly similar ideas on church government, presbyterian views varied significantly, and with this variation came different implications for attitudes towards authority. The controversial nature of presbyterian ecclesiology can be understood in simple terms as emerging from the principle that 28 Vallance,

Revolutionary England, p. 59. Ibid., pp. 2–6, 56–7. 30 Ibid., p. 218; Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, p. 325. The most influential account of the development of religious pluralism and the emergence of toleration in England in the early modern period remains Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). See also Teresa Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Michael McKeown, ‘Civil and Religious Liberty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Case Study in Secularization’, in Representation, Heterodoxy and Aesthetics: Essays in Honour of Ronald Paulson, ed. Ashley Marshall (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2015), pp. 157–90; Justin Champion, ‘Some Forms of Religious Liberty: Political Thinking, Ecclesiology and Religious Freedom in Early Modern England’, in Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Eliane Glaser (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), pp. 41–72. 31 Vallance, Revolutionary England, p. 222. 29

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

church government should be a matter for synods and presbyteries, separate from civil authority. This was an issue of concern for monarchs and their supporters as it risked creating an area of public life over which the monarch had no control. In the context of Scotland, a particular conception of limited monarchy and the ‘two kingdoms’ of Kirk and crown emerged from the reformation, closely binding presbyterianism with ideas of limited monarchical authority over religious matters, and a right to resist when the monarch overstepped these boundaries.32 In England, presbyterians were viewed by monarchs from Elizabeth to Charles II as a group which sought to undermine royal legitimacy. Polly Ha has argued that English presbyterians held to a view of ecclesiastical authority whereby it derived directly from God, as dictated in the scriptures, which contrasted with an episcopal model where bishops were nominated by the king.33 This had important practical implications, as it involved presbyterians denying a claim of royal authority over an institutional structure seen by royalists as within the king’s jurisdiction. When the question of comprehension for the presbyterians within the Anglican church was raised after 1660, this idea became a rallying cry for those who opposed comprehension, who argued that any attempt to reconcile royal power with the contradictory presbyterian ideas on authority would deny the monarchy the power it needed to avoid a return to the chaos of the 1640s.34 This also proved an obstruction for attempts at toleration for presbyterians later in the Restoration period, as some presbyterians could not accept toleration which was extended on the basis of royal control over the church. However, Ha also argued that presbyterian ideas about the ‘universal visible church’ were of great importance, particularly in England, during the seventeenth century. This led to a tendency among English presbyterians to be more accommodating of other forms of Protestantism, and more willing to work with, though not completely endorse, the Restoration church, than those in Scotland. English presbyterians often saw a variety of independents, Congregationalists and Anglicans as having a role within the visible church. Even if their forms of worship were imperfect, it was argued, a spirit of cooperation and compromise 32

For more on the nature of the Scottish Kirk before the period addressed in this book see Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 6. For the ‘two kingdoms’ of Kirk and crown see Bernard Bourdin, ‘James VI and I – Divine Right, the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and the Legitimising of Royal Power’, in The Struggle for the Succession in Late Elizabethan England: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representation, ed. Jean-Christophe Mayer (Montpellier: Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, Université Paul-Valéry, 2004), pp. 119–41; Alec Ryrie, The Origins of the Scottish Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). 33 Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 13–14. 34 N. H. Keeble, ‘Introduction: Attempting Uniformity’, in Settling the Peace of the Church: 1662 Revisited, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 9.

10

INTRODUCTION

was best for promoting the influence and longevity of English presbyterianism.35 On the other hand, she highlights how English presbyterians were aware of the implications that the jure divino episcopacy envisioned by Anglicans would have for the nature of the visible church, by serving to de-legitimise European reformed churches, especially those in France where bishops were never involved in the ordination of Huguenot ministers.36 This would become very important during the Restoration period as supporters of the Covenants debated the extent to which they could legitimately participate in the Church of England while maintaining their loyalty to presbyterianism. Ha’s work highlights the diversity of views within English presbyterianism, and the distinctions between English and Scottish presbyterianism, which led presbyterians in the different kingdoms to tend towards rather different interpretations of civil authority and the visible church. As will be discussed further in the first chapter, these differences became important in relation to the Solemn League and Covenant, as they meant that English and Scottish signatories did not always share an exact view of what the Covenant meant. The political power of the visible universal church came to the fore again after 1660, when attempts to accommodate the flourishing religious heterodoxy of the British Isles into the Restoration settlement renewed interest in the question of who was a legitimate Christian and how this related to the institution of the church. Throughout 1660–62, the architects of the Restoration attempted to navigate the fraught issue of how to accommodate religious dissent while avoiding the uncomfortable political implications that many believed ecclesiology such as presbyterianism entailed. As this book will discuss, the 1680s and 1690s saw attempts to define both the church and political nation in a way that was Protestant in a broad sense which placed more emphasis on political loyalty than specific ecclesiology. The relationship of royal power to ecclesiology is also a crucial facet of debates in this period. Jacqueline Rose and Paul Seaward have both written of the need by Anglican theorists at the time to justify the right of the king to dictate on the adiaphora, or ‘things indifferent’, of religious worship, while at the same time arguing that such matters were not of spiritual importance.37 Issues such as kneeling and priestly dress, they argued, was not a matter of salvation but of national unity and order, acts of civil religion more than Christian religion. For the king not to have authority over such matters, it was claimed, would be a usurpation of lawful royal power as settled in the Act of Supremacy. To ignore such instructions would be a dereliction of Christian duty to ‘render unto Caesar’, and respect temporal jurisdiction, making obedience in such matters a Godly act whether or not the acts themselves were of any spiritual value or 35 Ha,

English Presbyterianism, pp. 184–5. Ibid., p. 102. 37 Paul Seaward, ‘Circumstantial Temporary Concessions: Clarendon, Comprehension and Uniformity’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. Keeble. 36

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

scriptural validity.38 The Covenants undermined these efforts by binding the king to respect and uphold a certain pattern of ecclesiology, which is one of the reasons they were viewed as dangerous. The power of regarding loyalty to a temporal authority as a religiously proper act was well recognised. Thomas Hurste commented in 1637 that history demonstrated that the religiously motivated dissenter often had nothing but contempt for the threat of ‘Tyburn nor beheading’ and the ‘bloody lawes [which] were made against them’.39 Only by establishing that disobeying civil authority was unlawful in a religious sense, he argued, could obedience be assured. The value for civil authorities of a religious foundation to political loyalty is also key to understanding the importance of oaths, and by extension the Covenants, in this period. For some it was thought that the Covenants could fulfil this function by binding subjects to the king in sight of God. Others argued that the Covenants promoted resistance in cases where it was thought the king did not uphold his duties, and undermined temporal authority. The early seventeenth-century presbyterians represented an ecclesiological vision of a church without bishops and governed by presbyteries, with distinct English and Scottish variants. By the time of later Stuarts, however, the term presbyterian also became a broader umbrella under which to group various proponents of a vision of limited monarchy regardless of their favoured forms of church government. Mark Goldie has argued that ‘to speak of “presbyterian” politics during the Restoration is not therefore to speak of a dogmatic ecclesiological position’ but ‘an inheritance, in person or ideologically, from the faction of civil war Parliamentarians that took up arms against Charles I, but after his defeat, sought to make a treaty with him for his conditional restoration to power.’40 In other words, an inheritance from the group which made up the majority of the signatories and supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant in the 1640s. This broad alliance of puritans, presbyterians, and others who supported a conditional monarchy, and rejected both the absolutist conceptions of the Cavalier parliament and any suggestion of a return to republicanism, made up the majority of the ‘Whig’ faction which emerged in the 1670s and 1680s.41 Goldie acknowledged that the use of the term ‘presbyterian’ to describe this grouping often originated from pejorative use by opponents to tar the Whigs by association with civil war era ‘rebels’. However, he also argued that it represents a genuinely helpful term with which to describe the spectrum of Protestants who subscribed to similar ideas of limited monarchy, and which cut across the divide between dissenters and 38

Jacqueline Rose, ‘The Debate over Authority: Adiaphora, the Civil Magistrate, and the Settlement of Religion’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. Keeble, p. 53. 39 Thomas Hurste, The Descent of Authority: Or, The Magistrate’s Patent From Heaven (1637), p. 5. Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication for contemporary printed sources is London. 40 Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs, pp. 153–4. 41 Ibid., p. 149.

12

INTRODUCTION

conformists to the Anglican church.42 It was through this group that the legacy of the Covenants continued to influence the English political scene after the Restoration, as the political ideas which they represented continued to be influential beyond their specific ecclesiological demands.43 In contrast to the mixed monarchy and separation of churchly and civil authority favoured by presbyterians, the episcopal model emphasised the Godly authority of the monarch who then nominated bishops. This, in theory, was the model of monarchy to which Charles II was restored in 1660, though this was not always certain to be the case, as during the Third English Civil War Charles had accepted the crown from the Scots on a covenanted, conditional basis via his acceptance of the Solemn League and Covenant.44 Furthermore, the precise nature and implications of a Godly conception of kingship was subject to heated debate after the Restoration. Despite the idea of Godly kingship being generally associated with the strengthening of the monarchy and the Anglican episcopacy, Jacqueline Rose has shown that it became a political language beyond the control of its promoters. The language and ideas of supremacy were utilised for various purposes, she argued, by both supporters and detractors of the regime of Charles II and his bishops.45 Due to its origins in the Henrician and Elizabethan reformations, argued Rose, the intellectual basis of the royal supremacy, and the language used to discuss it, were both rooted in an anti-Catholic rejection of papal political supremacy and perceived ‘popery’ in general. During the Restoration, she argued, this made for a complicated picture where the authority of the king was bolstered in some respects by the supremacy, while also undermined in other ways due to the empowerment of people concerned by the insufficiently Godly nature of the English crown and church.46 The Godly kingship meant that the king was, in the minds of many, invested with a responsibility to the true religion as well as deriving authority from it. Although the Godly royal supremacy in theory held the king to have authority over both the church and parliament, this was also not entirely clear-cut after 1660. This ambiguity was due to strong association of the supremacy with the events of the sixteenth-century reformation and the role of parliamentary statute in establishing it, argued Rose. Its legalistic origins meant that defenders of parliament’s right to jurisdiction in certain areas had fertile ground to search for precedents, and to claim rights for parliament they perceived to have existed in the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth.47 Even among Anglicans, there was throughout the early modern period an active debate as to the relationship between religious and civil power. As Charles Prior has demonstrated, defining the nature of the church, its history, and what 42

Ibid., p. 154. Ibid., p. 154. 44 MacKenzie, Solemn League and Covenant, pp. 76–7. 45 Rose, Godly Kingship, pp. 272–3. 46 Ibid., p. 279. 47 Ibid., p. 276. 43

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

this meant for ‘the proper relationship between civil and ecclesiastical authority’ was a primary concern of theologians and divines in the decades preceding the civil war.48 Conrad Russell argued the issue at stake was also one of legislative power – whether the church had the right to make its own canon law distinct from the law-making power of parliament, and if so what the implication of this was for royal and parliamentary authority.49 These debates continued throughout the seventeenth century, and intersect with the issue of the multiple Stuart kingdoms. Each kingdom and its church experienced the royal supremacy differently, as what John Morrill called ‘a naked royal authoritarianism that followed overlapping but distinct objectives in each kingdom.’50 Grant Tapsell has revisited Morrill’s study of the British churches in the context of the Restoration period. He concluded that, in part due to Charles II’s lack of interest in matters outside England, efforts at central domination over the churches of the periphery were weaker and more sporadic, but that by the 1680s this was starting to change.51 In the case of Scotland, Gillian MacIntosh has argued that in practice the form of royal supremacy that was restored there in 1660 was weaker than it had been previously, and that many of the innovations introduced by the Covenanter regime to temper royal authority in Scotland remained in some form, despite efforts to reverse them.52 Clare Jackson has examined the nature of royalism across the Restoration period in Scotland and argued that, in many respects, the absence of a resident monarch in Scotland, and the flexibility which this required from the king’s agents in Scotland, actually strengthened the idea of monarchy, if not the practice. ‘Far from being enervated by the conspicuous absence of a resident monarch’, she wrote, ‘concepts of monarchy in late-seventeenth century Scotland became sufficiently enduring and inclusive to command near-universal acceptance.’53 At the same time, however, this ‘highly idealised conception of monarchy’ allowed Scots to ‘remain shrewdly 48 Charles

Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church, p. 22; see also John Spurr, ‘“A Special Kindness for Dead Bishops”: The Church, History, and Testimony in Seventeenth- Century Protestantism’, in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2006), pp. 307–28. 49 Conrad Russell, ‘Parliament, the Royal Supremacy, and the Church’, in Parliament and the Church, 1529–1960, eds J. P. Parry and Stephen Taylor (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 27–8. 50 John Morrill, ‘A British Patriarchy? Ecclesiastical Imperialism under the Early Stuarts’, in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, eds Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 236. 51 Grant Tapsell, ‘A British Patriarchy? Ecclesiastical Imperialism under the Later Stuarts’, in The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited: Essays in Honour of John Morrill, eds Grant Tapsell and Stephen Taylor (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 282–4. 52 Gillian MacIntosh, ‘“Royal Supremacy Restored”? Scottish Parliamentary Independence in the Restoration Era, 1660–88’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 34:2 (2014), 154–5. 53 Clare Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 13.

14

INTRODUCTION

vigilant as to the merits of its practice’.54 Alasdair Raffe has argued that James II attempted to re-imagine the royal supremacy after 1685, in a form that solved the problems of the supremacy’s religious implications by removing any religious aspect in loyalty to the king, and allowing toleration, while demanding the king hold absolute power in temporal and legal matters. This too had its complications, and Raffe sees it as having undermined the episcopal church, and by extension royal authority in Scotland, and probably playing a part in Scottish opposition to James during the Revolution of 1688.55 The conditional presbyterian conception of kingship and the absolute Godly conception were not simple binary opposites, therefore. Rather, they were complex political languages of their own which both supporters and detractors engaged with, and which had practical and theoretical implications that were not always simple to understand. This was an important facet of debates around the Covenants in the Restoration period, as this book will demonstrate, as different interpretations of the Covenants had implications for the nature of kingship. Civil Religion

This book argues that a potentially fruitful approach to understanding the role that the Covenants played in seventeenth-century Britain is through the prism of civil religion. The concept of civil religion was most famously articulated in Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and then became popularised in the work of American sociologists such as Robert Bellah and John A. Coleman in the 1960s and 1970s. The most thorough recent scholarship on the issue has come from Ronald Beiner, who approached the topic from a Straussian perspective, and compared a range of writing on the subject of civil religion from medieval writers such as Machiavelli through to Nietzsche. He describes civil religion as ‘the appropriation of religion by politics for its own purposes’.56 The ‘absolutely fundamental challenge’ presented to political authority by religion, he argues, encouraged a turn to civil religion as a solution, but that this was also ‘quite a radical response’ to the problems of religion and politics’ relationship. What this produced, he says, was a ‘profound three-way dialogue within the tradition of political philosophy – between religion, civil religion, and liberalism, which together offer a whole spectrum of possibilities for depoliticizing religion’.57 A key aspect of civil religion, argued John A. Coleman, is that it must be characterised by sufficient religious content ‘to provide a clear statement of the 54

Ibid. Alasdair Raffe, ‘James VII’s Multiconfessional Experiment and the Scottish Revolution of 1688–1690’, History, 100:341 (June 2015), 359. 56 Ronald Beiner, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 1. 57 Ibid. 55

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

role and destiny of man as citizen and the nation in relation to questions of ultimate meaning and existence’. At the same time however, he argued that the most effective civil religions are those which encourage religious pluralism and remain non-exclusionary enough that a wide range of beliefs can be accommodated within them.58 For example, in the case of American civil religion, he says, God is often invoked in civil contexts but not in so specific a way as to alienate certain religions. Historical discussion of civil religion has often focussed on a canon of writers, from classical times to the Enlightenment, but in recent years the concept has been applied by historians as a way of understanding early modern British writers on topics such as toleration, Erastianism and the authority of church and state. Ashley Walsh has recently explored the role of thought on civil religion in England in the eighteenth century, through the work of thinkers such as the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Viscount Bollingbroke, and David Hume. Walsh argued that many Enlightenment thinkers, even those who were personally irreligious, recognised religion and public worship as an integral part of a free and stable society. Building on an idea first suggested by J. G. A. Pocock, Walsh maintained that Enlightenment intellectuals believed that the Church of England could, and should, be transformed into a civil religion, and sought ‘to render the established church fully as a public institution of the state’.59 Bettina Koch traced a medieval strain of civil religion to the work of Marsilius of Padua.60 Some have looked to the civic virtues of religion espoused by classical writers such as Cicero, while others such as Carlo Sigonio looked to the ancient Hebrew Republic, which Guido Bartolucci has argued formed a model of a Godly polity where temporal and religious power was invested in separate institutions.61 Appreciation of the importance of Hebraic sources, as Eric Nelson has highlighted, permeated much of early modern European political thought.62 The idea of an ideal Hebrew Republic with spiritually mandated separation of temporal and religious authority is reflected in the work of Hugo Grotius. Grotius’s civil religion allowed for a protection of civil authority from the interference of religion, and vice versa, while retaining God’s will as the ultimate ontological foundation of the society in question.63 In Grotius’s thinking, the state of the church affected the

58

Coleman, ‘Civil Religion’, 74–7. Ashley Walsh, Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England, 1707–1800 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020), p. 35. 60 Bettina Koch, ‘Priestly Despotism: The Problem of Unruly Clerics in Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor Pacis’, Journal of Religious History, 36:2 (2012), 165–83. 61 61 Guido Bartolucci, ‘Carlo Sigonio and the Respublica Hebraeorum: A Re-Evaluation’, Hebraic Political Studies, 3:1 (2008), 39. 62 Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Translation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 16–22. 63 Annabel Brett, ‘Natural Right and Civil Community: The Civil Philosophy of Hugo Grotius’, The Historical Journal, 45:1 (2002), 41–7. 59

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INTRODUCTION

state of the city it resided in, and therefore was necessarily subject to the sovereign authority necessary to safeguard the well-being of the city.64 Mark Goldie first started analysing civil religion in the work of the republican author James Harrington in 1987.65 More recently Beiner has addressed Harrington’s writing, arguing that he represented a conceptual middle ground between the absolute Erastianism of Thomas Hobbes and the liberalism of John Locke. He also argues that this was a similar position to that taken by Spinoza, another writer whose work has been associated with civil religion, whereby ‘a strong Erastian state will crush priestcraft to the extent necessary in order to open up a space of individual liberty’.66 Charles Prior has argued that much of what has traditionally been treated as Erastianism in the context of the English Interregnum can more appropriately be thought of as part of a debate around civil religion which went beyond a simple demand for civil control over ecclesiology. 67 Other recent work on civil religion in specific early modern contexts includes that on Thomas Hobbes by Richard Tuck, who has long argued for the importance of appreciating Hobbes’s religious influences alongside his civil ones.68 This influence can be seen in arguably the most important work on the civil religion implications of Hobbes’s writing, which is Jeffrey Collins’s The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, which argued that Hobbes’s Erastianism was driven by an admiration of the ancient civil religions of Greece, Rome, and other ‘heathen’ or ‘gentile’ societies.69 Collins viewed the emergence of early modern interest in the concept of civil religion as an attempt to navigate the political and spiritual uncertainty created by the collapse of papal hegemony through a return to what was seen as the political wisdom of the ancient world.70 In Hobbes’s attitudes to civil and religious power, Collins argued, the fundamental divide of the civil war period can be identified, between those such as Hobbes who advocated for a ‘monolithic state [presiding] over a polity of atomized individuals’, and those advocating for a traditional ‘Augustinian, dualist model of the corporate church and corporate commonwealth’.71 Theories around the Covenants, however, 64

See also Annabel Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), ch. 8. 65 Mark Goldie, ‘The Civil Religion of James Harrington’, in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 197–222. 66 Ronald Beiner, ‘Civil Religion and Anticlericalism in James Harrington’, European Journal of Political Theory, 13:4 (2014), 399–407. 67 Charles W. A. Prior, ‘Rethinking Church and State During the English Interregnum, Historical Research, 87 (2013), 465. 68 Richard Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 120–38. 69 Jeffrey Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 43–8. 70 Ibid., pp. 37–42. 71 Ibid., p. 279.

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

do not always neatly fit into Collins’s schema. It is certainly true that the ‘two kingdoms’ model of presbyterianism is a classic dualist approach to church and state. However, in the varied ways in which the Covenants were conceived of during the Restoration, this division is not always clearly maintained. In many instances, the Covenants were viewed as a means of binding civil and religious authority together in a single constitution, rather than separating them. The anomalous role of the Covenants in Restoration political thought must therefore be accounted for, which this book seeks to accomplish. Christie Maloyed has recovered the civil religion of William Penn, arguing that Pennsylvania is an example of an attempt to create a liberal, tolerant civil religion.72 A similar study into the church in Roger Williams’s Rhode Island colony was undertaken by Teresa Bejan.73 Bejan has recently expanded on the idea of ‘civility’ as a standard for the inclusion of heterodox groups within a tolerant form of civil religion, analysing Hobbes and Locke alongside Williams, and characterising the religious turmoil of the early modern period as being understood by contemporaries in part as a ‘crisis of civility’.74 Ethan Shagan has approached the issue as one of ‘moderation’, highlighting that finding ‘a mean between extremes’ was a central concern of early modern political theory, but this process, paradoxically, was often accompanied by more severe periods of state-sanctioned oppression or violence.75 The civil religion of John Locke has been addressed by Aaron L. Herold, who argues that while Locke sought to contain the radicalism of overzealous religious practice and the violence caused by religious intolerance, he also acknowledged that some degree of ‘religious spiritedness’ would be necessary to uphold liberty from the inevitable threat of tyranny.76 This is an important point for the purposes of this book, as it will argue that in reactions to the Covenants a similar desire to harness religiously-­ motivated political power, while avoiding its more intolerant implications, can be identified. The ‘religious spiritedness’ of Locke is, of course, present in the public religious ritual surrounding the signings of the Covenants, but would later play a more pluralistic role in the Protestant associations. The current historiography of civil religion in the early modern period, therefore, is one which mainly focusses on a set of specific canonical authors, such as Spinoza, Grotius, Hobbes, Harrington, and Locke. This book seeks to 72

Christie L. Maloyed, ‘A Liberal Civil Religion: William Penn’s Holy Experiment’, Journal of Church and State, 55:4 (2012), 669. See also Andrew R. Murphy, Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 73 Teresa Bejan, ‘“The Bond of Civility”: Roger Williams on Toleration and its Limits’, History of European Ideas, 37:4 (2011): 409–20. 74 Bejan, Mere Civility, p. 7. 75 Ethan Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 13. 76 Aaron L. Herold, ‘“The Chief Characteristical Mark of the True Church”: John Locke’s Theology of Toleration and His Case For Civil Religion’, The Review of Politics, 76:2 (2014), 195–221, at 199.

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INTRODUCTION

expand understanding of the topic by instead focussing on its role in a certain strand of discourse – the debates around the Covenants in the Restoration period. Civil religion is a term which is most commonly used in the discussion of the subordination of religion to civil power, which might seem counterintuitive in the context of discussion of the Solemn League and Covenant, which in many respects was an instrument for the subordination of the monarchy to a vision of religion. Many people, however, argued that the Solemn League and Covenant was as much an instrument for binding people to the monarchy as it was for binding the monarchy to a pattern of religion, and that it was an instrument to restrain religious radicalism, rather than a product of it. Furthermore, interpretations of the Covenants which were seen as restraining monarchy, and related ideas of contractual monarchy in the Revolution of 1688, were often conceived of as strengthening the civil state more broadly, by protecting it from usurpation by both religious factionalism and the monarchy. Whether the Covenant weakened or strengthened civil power was a topic of active debate. However, it is not the intention of this book to argue that the Covenants were predominantly intended or functioned as civil religion, as this was not necessarily how their signatories viewed them, and the exclusionary religious nature of the Covenants meant that a unifying role was not possible, certainly outside of the narrow context of Scotland in the 1640s. Instead, this book will demonstrate how the form of the Covenants, the theories which underpinned them, and the discussions which they provoked, influenced the development of ideas of civil religion which were much more broad and pluralistic than the Covenants themselves. In so doing, this book is intended to move beyond a historiography which is mainly dominated by discussion of abstract political theory to consider the practicalities of how forms of civil religion were constituted and how the ‘religious spiritedness’ referred to by Locke was deployed for political purposes. Rather than neatly corresponding to the total realisation of any particular strand of political theory, solutions to the problems caused by religious heterodoxy in the British kingdoms emerged from a context of discursive pluralism in an ad hoc manner. In particular, this book is intended to provoke a discussion as to how the form and function of a British ‘civic Protestantism’ which increased in prominence after 1688, and was, broadly speaking, inclusive and non-sectarian, was influenced by a national memory of the Solemn League and Covenant, despite the intolerant religious nature of the Covenant and its failure to function as a unifying religious constitution for the Three Kingdoms. As the British kingdoms slid towards crisis in the 1680s, the Covenants represented for many the most prominent and enduring example of the religious act of public oath swearing as part of a political mass movement. In the Association of 1696, it can be seen how this act of public oath swearing could be appropriated. However, in England in 1696 this act was deployed for the purposes of defending a much broader vision of Protestantism than that represented in the National Covenant. This demonstrates how a religious act accompanying 19

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

a political declaration, when it was defined sufficiently inclusively, could function as a way of uniting heterodox religious communities behind a pattern of civil authority. Furthermore, while many interpretations of the Covenant did emphasise that it committed the monarchy to defend religion, this was not always done in a way which elevated religion over civil power. Instead, some interpretations, particularly of the National Covenant, emphasised that the king was committed to defend religion because it was a part of the common or civil law. Discussions of the Solemn League and Covenant also included explicit assertions that it strengthened monarchy by binding it together with a religious vision via an oath. In effect, both the Covenants and the Revolution of 1688 can be thought of as attempts to subordinate both the monarchy and the church to a constitutional model. The National Covenant succeeded as an exercise in civil religion in the sense that it successfully defined the Scottish political nation on the basis of loyalty to the presbyterian Kirk settlement which emerged from the Scottish reformation. Through the bonding potential of a solemn religious oath, it successfully rallied sufficient support to defend the Covenanter conception of the Scottish Kirk and constitution against their monarch. In effect, it sought to place both the king and the Kirk within a defined constitutional order, and to use the bond of a covenant to defend this order. However, the attempt to extend this to all Three Kingdoms in the Solemn League and Covenant was not ultimately successful, in part because the jure divino presbyterian religious parameters proved too narrow and exclusionary. Despite this, the Solemn League and Covenant did generate an increasing appreciation among many in England of the power of oaths and covenants as instruments of civil religion, both in terms of binding individual consciences and as displays of public sovereignty expressed as religious acts. In the 1680s and 1690s, these acts of civil religion were reimagined and used to defend a different concept of a Britannic political nation which was broadly rather than specifically Protestant. The use of the term ‘civil religion’ in this book is not intended to argue that the original architects of the Covenants viewed them in this manner. Rather, the form and function of the Covenants, the political theory which underpinned them, and the debates and discussion which they provoked, influenced efforts to settle issues of church and state in the British kingdoms towards the end of the seventeenth century. This resulted in the emergence of a British civil religion of ‘broad Protestantism’ defined more by loyalty to the state’s civic and geopolitical interests as by worship or church government. The Scope of the Work

The sources for this book have been selected with the aim of recovering what discussions were taking place about the Covenants in post-Restoration England, through to the Revolution of 1688 and its immediate aftermath. The nature of 20

INTRODUCTION

the Covenants as products of Scottish ideas and of the situation in the 1630s and 1640s means that discussion of Scottish sources and pre-1660 sources is also necessary at points to provide context, particularly in the first chapter. The primary focus, however, is on England, and the ways in which those discussing issues of church and state engaged with the Covenants themselves, and conceptions of what they represented. The sources discussed include pamphlets, printed books, and parliamentary debates, from positions both defending and attacking the Covenants. Many of the sources used will be polemical in nature, and in many cases authors approach the Covenants as representations of, or as lenses through which to approach, wider issues. The unique nature of political and public discourse in the Restoration period presents certain methodological issues. As Peter Lake and Steve Pincus pointed out in their collaboration addressing the nature of the early modern English public sphere, the Restoration period ‘did not always exhibit the feverish levels of public discussion characteristic of the 1640s and 50s’.77 Neither had what they describe as the ‘post-Revolutionary public sphere’ which ‘became a permanent feature of English public life’ after 1688 yet emerged.78 However, even in the quietest points of the Restoration period, public discourse was still more active than it had been prior to the civil wars.79 This broad issue is exacerbated in the specific context of addressing discussion of the Solemn League and Covenant by the fact that to discuss it in anything other than pejorative fashion was viewed, to varying extents at different times, as a subversive act. Censorship waxed and waned through the period this book addresses, and the series of crises which occurred in the 1670s and 1680s meant that political discussion often took on very specific polemical purposes. These purposes were not always well served by making explicit references to the ‘schismatic’ Solemn League and Covenant. In the 1660s, the Covenant is often discussed openly, but by the 1680s this is less common, even among groups which earlier in the period displayed sympathy for it. One might take this to mean a waning relevance for the Covenant in this period; however, the significant extent to which the Covenant is still discussed in negative or comparative terms, and the extent to which presbyterians still write of political theory and practice which strongly resembles that underpinning the Covenant, suggests that this is not the case. This necessitates that somewhat different approaches to the sources have been taken at different points in this book. While direct debates regarding the role of the Solemn League and Covenant can be commonly found in the earlier parts of the Restoration period, this wanes in the later Restoration period. In its later chapters, the focus of this book is more on the Covenant as it is ‘reflected’ in its use as a pejorative

77 Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, Journal of British Studies, 45:2 (2006), 281. 78 Ibid., 284. 79 Ibid., 281.

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polemical weapon, and the role of related political theory or instruments which are similar in form, such as the Associations of 1681 and 1696. The first chapter provides context for the rest of the book by examining the intellectual traditions from which the Covenants emerged, the role played by the Covenants as embodiments of sets of ideas and bodies of law, and contemporary interpretations and reactions to them. It argues that the National Covenant was framed as a restatement and reaffirmation of the Scottish reformation constitution, whereas the nature of the Solemn League and Covenant was more ambiguous. The Solemn League and Covenant was strongly influenced by many of the same Scottish ideas as its antecedent but existed in multiple competing intellectual and legal contexts. These contexts involved some writers conceiving of it as a treaty operating in the paradigm of the law of nations, others as a divine oath. Some considered it to be an illegal attempt to undermine royal authority, and others as something lawfully subscribed to by parliament on behalf of the people. Signatories to the Solemn League and Covenant did not always share the same concept of what the Covenant meant, and how the ‘reformation’ which it mandated for should be achieved. In particular, attitudes differed between English and Scottish presbyterians on whether episcopacy could be reformed in an acceptable manner or should be completely removed. The complex intellectual and constitutional contexts of the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant outlined in this chapter are key to understanding their controversial and enduring influence after 1660. The second chapter examines the attempts to settle the question of church government in 1660 through the prism of the Covenants, with a particular focus on a debate between Zachary Crofton and John Gauden, two supporters of the Restoration with opposing views on the form it ought to take. Though the Covenants were ultimately outlawed and condemned as seditious, supporters of the Covenants in both England and Scotland played a significant role in the process of Restoration. In the early stages of the Restoration, many people anticipated that either the monarchy would be restored on a fully Covenanted basis, or that some compromise would be reached which allowed those who had subscribed to the Covenants to reconcile that with loyalty to the restored regime. This chapter examines the debates which occurred in 1660 on what sort of settlement of church and state ought to be restored with the monarchy, and the various proposals for compromises between those who supported the Covenants and those who did not. These debates capture the fragmented nature of the movement to restore the monarchy, and of British political life in 1660 more generally. The role of the Covenants became a conduit by which people debated the constitutional status of the monarchy and the church, the nature of allegiance, and the boundaries of parliamentary and royal authority. The third chapter is concerned with the breakdown of attempts to ‘comprehend’ presbyterians within the Church of England, and efforts to include some constitutional role for the Solemn League and Covenant, which culminated in the expulsion of thousands of ministers with sympathy for 22

INTRODUCTION

presbyterianism or the Covenant on ‘Black St Bartholomew’s Day’ in 1662. It explores the reactions of supporters of the Covenants to these events, and the debates which occurred between them and those who argued that stability and royal power would be undermined if the Covenants were not outlawed. This chapter demonstrates that the Solemn League and Covenant, despite being excluded from public life, retained a relevance as a representation of the politics of those who supported the Restoration but conceived of royal power as limited. It also argues that royalist attempts to counter the Covenants by introducing a competing oath in the form of the Act of Uniformity complicated matters by further underlining the importance of oaths in underpinning political allegiance. The fourth chapter examines the Covenants in the context of the later 1660s. It argues that a situation developed during this decade where the increasingly apparent instability of the Restoration settlement led to a resurgence of interest in the Covenants as a potential solution to unresolved tensions regarding church government and the power of the monarchy, while others came to fear them as charters for radicalism and sedition. It explores the complicated relationship which existed between supporters of the Covenants and attempts, which began in 1667, to frame an approach to toleration of dissent. While some welcomed the efforts to move towards toleration as providing relief for presbyterians, others conceived of them as a further breach of the Covenants. Some signatories to the Solemn League and Covenant felt they must reject indulgence for their religious views even if it should be offered, as acceptance would be tantamount to acknowledging they must exist outside of the established church, which they viewed as a breach of their oath to seek further reformation, something some felt must occur within the church. Others argued that to accept toleration would be to accept a degree of royal power over religious matters which they saw as anathema to the oaths contained in the Covenants or to their anti-Erastian worldview. The fifth chapter examines the role of the Covenants in the crises of the late 1670s and early 1680s, and argues that they were a prominent feature of polemical material from both Whig and Tory sources. While supporters of excluding the Duke of York from the throne emulated aspects of the Covenants in their Association of 1681, their opponents deployed references to the Covenants as a means to paint Exclusionists as rebels and fanatics. A polemical narrative developed which conceived of the Covenants as part of a tradition of seditious leagues with its origins in the Catholic Holy League in France. The polemical efforts from both sides, however, had a similar effect – to distance the Covenants from their ecclesiological specifics and emphasise their constitutional and civil religion implications instead. Exclusionists appropriated the idea of an oath to restrain royal authority without the narrow presbyterianism of the Covenants, and opponents of Exclusion argued that the Holy League, Covenants and Association were all essentially part of a similar agenda of appropriating religion to usurp royal authority. 23

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

The final chapter is concerned with the role of covenants and associations in the events and discourse surrounding and following the Revolution of 1688. It is also concerned with tracing the role of political theory similar to that which underpinned the Covenants in the thinking of the Revolutionaries. It examines the role of resistance theory, and ideas of a contractual or covenanted kingship, and the connections and distinctions between the Scottish Covenants and two associations of the 1680s. The first of these was circulated among nobility in certain counties in 1688, and committed them to support William against James. The second was the Association of 1696 which was signed widely and committed signatories to defend William or, in the event of his death, a Protestant succession. This chapter also examines the role of Scottish Covenanters in the Revolution and a renewal of the Covenants at Lesmahagow. This chapter argues that explicit commitment to the Covenants had, by the time of the Revolution, become mostly limited to dedicated radicals in Scotland. However, forms of political bonding and contractual ideas of kingship, which had throughout most of the Restoration period been associated most prominently with the Covenants, became more widespread and played a significant role in the Revolution, reimagined to defend a broader conception of ‘civic’ Protestantism rather than the rigid presbyterianism of the Covenants.

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1 The 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant This chapter will explore the background and nature of the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) in order to provide the necessary context for addressing the role that the Covenants, particularly the Solemn League and Covenant, and their signatories, played during the Restoration period. Firstly, a brief word on precisely what the two Covenants were. The National Covenant represented the culmination of Scottish displeasure regarding the efforts of Charles I and his supporters, such as Archbishop William Laud, to bring the Scottish Kirk more in line with the Church of England. Though controversies stemming from the divisions between English and Scottish Protestantism had flared up at several points since the Union of Crowns, Laud’s time as archbishop had increased tensions, which erupted into rioting following the imposition of a new Scottish Prayer Book in July 1637.1 In response to these proposed changes, and the outcry they caused, Archibald Johnson, a lawyer, and Alexander Henderson, a minister from Fife, drafted the National Covenant. The National Covenant had a three-part structure which began by restating the 1581 ‘Negative Confession’, which was an oath agreed to by James VI, to reject ‘that Roman Antichrist’ and ‘his worldly monarchie and wicked hierarchy’.2 This was followed by a list of acts of parliament and other precedents such as Charles’s coronation in Scotland, which were presented as defining the legitimate church and its proper relationship to royal authority. Finally, the National Covenant contained the new bond by which its signatories pledged to defend these precedents and what they saw as the legitimate constitution of church and state. As this National Covenant was distributed around the country, Covenanters organised parliamentary and clerical representatives into ‘Tables’ which ‘evolved into a provisional government’.3 However, even as the National Covenant was being circulated and signed, the precise nature of the Kirk which its signatories pledged to defend was still not entirely clear. The extent to which the ‘wicked hierarchy’ proscribed by the 1581 Confession referred to any form of episcopacy had been subject to dispute since 1 Laura Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: Covenanted Scotland 1637–1651 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 29. 2 Arthur H. Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1979), p. 68. 3 Ibid., p. 29.

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the 1580s. Subsequent developments such as the ‘Black Acts’ of 1584, and the 1618 ‘Articles of Perth’, had sparked heated debate around whether there was a legitimate role for bishops in the Kirk, and whether such a role was compatible with the Confession of 1581. Furthermore, unlike previous bonds such as the 1581 Confession, the National Covenant was ‘not initially authorised by general assembly or parliament’.4 While the National Covenant was emblematic of a wave of resistance to royal policies, and signed by thousands of people in 1638, both its legitimacy and precisely what ecclesiological position it embodied were initially unsettled. In December 1638, however, the general assembly in Glasgow declared, in defiance of the king’s commissioner, that the 1581 Confession was explicitly anti-episcopal.5 As the National Covenant contained the 1581 Confession, this meant that, by extension, it too abjured episcopacy. In August 1639, the privy council agreed that the Covenant should be signed by people of all rank, and in 1640 it was adopted by parliament. The king attempted to restore order through two abortive ‘Bishops’ Wars’ but succeeded only in surrendering initiative to the Covenanters and allowing their army to occupy Newcastle. This period also saw the Covenanters effectively deploy printed propaganda, both to rally support in Scotland and target sympathetic presbyterian or puritan audiences in England.6 By 1640, the Scottish parliament had adopted the National Covenant, and the new Covenanter regime was in a position of military strength and essentially in complete control of the kingdom.7 The Covenanters had also by this point largely achieved the aim of establishing the National Covenant as a de facto embodiment of Scotland’s constitution, and defining it as explicitly presbyterian and anti-episcopal. The Covenanter regime which emerged from this ‘Scottish Revolution’ which took place between 1637 and 1640 would go on to agree the Solemn League and Covenant with the English parliament, which agreed to defend the Scottish Kirk and introduce religious reform in England and Ireland in exchange for Scottish military intervention in the Civil War.

4 Stewart,

Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, p. 102. Ibid., p. 30. 6 Sarah Waurechen, ‘Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public During the Bishops’ Wars, 1638–1640’, The Historical Journal, 52:1 (2009), 73–83. 7 Once the Covenanters had essentially seized full control of the mechanisms of power in Edinburgh, they would remain in control, albeit with several internal factional struggles and shifts in power, until Cromwell’s conquest of the kingdom in 1651–52. However, the new regime would face a royalist military campaign by James Graham, the Marquess of Montrose, from 1644–46, in which Montrose won several victories against numerically superior Covenanter armies, but ultimately failed to win Scotland back for the king. For more on this conflict see Barry Robertson, Royalists at War in Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1650 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 5

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The National Covenant

The Scottish reformation of 1559–60 has been called ‘one of the most extraordinary national transformations in European history’.8 The pivot towards reformed Protestantism that occurred in Scotland realigned the country’s relationship with England and France, transforming the Anglo-Scottish relationship from one mainly of rivalry to one of diplomatic and religious entanglement. The political writings produced by luminaries of the Scottish reformation such as George Buchanan and John Knox provided a corpus of resistance theory, rooted both in Scottish history and the best reformed practice of scriptural precedent.9 This body of political theory justified a conception of monarchical power as limited both by the right of the people to depose kings who overreached their authority, and a view of the Scottish Kirk as possessing an ancient sovereignty of its own separate from the monarchy, whereby Scotland consisted of two interdependent but sovereign ‘kingdoms’ of Kirk and king.10 Such reformation heritage was important both to the early Covenanter movement and its National Covenant, and to the role that Covenanters continued to play in political discourse after 1660. The authors of the National Covenant, Archibald Johnston and Alexander Henderson, were steeped in the history of the Scottish reformation. Johnston, who was a lawyer by trade and provided much of the legal underpinning for the National Covenant, drew on both Scottish and European precedent. John Coffey has described his influences as follows: As well as rummaging through the acts of the Scottish Parliament and historical manuscripts, he also set out to dig for corroborative arguments from various books: Knox’s History of the Reformation and Buchanan’s History of Scotland, histories of the Dutch revolt and the French wars of religion, commentaries on Roman law, the anti-episcopal writings of Thomas Cartwright, William Ames, Robert Parker, Henry Burton, William Prynne, and David Calderwood, and works of resistance theory by Philip and David Pareus, Theodore Beza, ‘Junius Brutus’, and Johannes Althusius.11

Alexander Henderson was an experienced preacher and veteran of the disputes around the Five Articles of Perth, where James VI had attempted to reform the 8

Alec Ryrie, The Origins of the Scottish Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 1. 9 John Coffey, ‘Buchanan and The Scottish Covenanters’, in George Buchanan: Political Thought in Early Modern Britain and Europe, ed. Caroline Erskine and Roger A. Mason (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 192–200. 10 Ibid., pp. 196–7. 11 John Coffey, ‘Sir Archibald Johnston’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For more on Johnston see David George Mullan, Protestant Piety in Early-Modern Scotland: Letters, Lives and Covenants, 1650–1712 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 2008), pp. 31–47; Peter Donald, ‘Archibald Johnston of Wariston and the Politics of Religion’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 24 (1991), 123–40.

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Kirk to bring it closer to English forms of worship and faced heavy resistance from presbyterians such as Henderson.12 The National Covenant must be viewed in the context of continuity with the Scottish reformation, but it is also important to recognise how the appeals made in the National Covenant to the precedent of the reformation made it distinct from the precedents that it included and cited. Though emerging from long-held traditions of feudal bonding, the religious bonds of the Scottish reformation were revolutionary in the sense that they established loyalties to a church/state relationship conceptualised as part of the constitution of a ‘nation’ of Scotland separate from both the person and institution of the king.13 The National Covenant included the 1581 Confession and tied it to other prior confessions and acts into a more comprehensive vision and an oath embodying this constitution. However, the authors of the National Covenant also pointedly avoided making claims to innovating or changing what they viewed as the constitutional status quo. Instead, it is framed as representing a lawful constitution in which both ecclesiology and the authority of the king are settled by law. Covenanters emphasised the continuity with previous bonds, particularly the 1581 Confession included in the National Covenant, and argued that they were characteristic of not only the Kirk, but the nation of Scotland. David Calderwood, the presbyterian historian and veteran of previous disputes over the government of the Kirk surrounding the Five Articles of Perth, wrote on the Scottish tradition of oath swearing in 1638.14 ‘Was there ever any Nation’, he asked, ‘which sealed their profession with Oaths, Covenants and Subscriptions, so universally, and so oft, as our Church hath done?’15 In his later work, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, Calderwood took this argument into the deep past by claiming that ‘Gregorie, the seventie-third king, who was crowned king in the 875th yeere’, was ‘the first king who, at his coronatioun, promised by oathe to mainteane the libertie of the kirk.’16 He conceived of the events of 12

John Coffey, ‘Alexander Henderson’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For more on Henderson see Donald MacLeod, ‘Alexander Henderson: Reformed Orthodoxy and Constitutional Crisis in Scotland’, in Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology 1560–1775, ed. Aaron Clay Denlinger (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 103–19. For more on the Five Articles see Laura Stewart, ‘The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I’s Religious Policies in Scotland’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 38:4 (2008), 1013–36; Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603–1625 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 6; John D. Ford, ‘The Lawful Bonds of Scottish Society: The Five Articles of Perth, the Negative Confession, and the National Covenant’, Historical Journal, 37:1 (1994). 13 Jane Dawson, ‘Bonding, Religious Allegiance and Covenanting, 1557–1638’, in Kings, Lords and Men in Scotland and Britain, 1300–1625: Essays in Honour of Jenny Wormald, ed. Julian Goodare and Steve Boardman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), p. 163. 14 Vaughn T. Wells, ‘David Calderwood’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 15 David Calderwood, Quæres concerning the state of the Church of Scotland (s.n., 1638), p. 4. 16 David Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842), p. 45.

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the reformation as a renewal of a covenant with God, and compared it to the biblical example of Asa of Judah, claiming that the people of Scotland did ‘by solemne oath, renue the covenant betwixt God and you, in the forme as Asa, king of Judah, did, in the like case’.17 The events of 1637–38 may be often referred to as the ‘Scottish Revolution’, but in the contemporary Covenanter narrative, the ‘revolution’ had occurred in the 1550s and 1560s, with aftershocks in the following decades. In this narrative, the events of 1637–38 and the signing of the National Covenant were anything but a revolution, they were a defence of the lawful status quo in Scotland. As Charles Prior phrased it: ‘Rather than resistance, the position developed here amounted to a form of constitutionalism, where oaths and laws contained an authority and continuity that superseded that of individual monarchs.’18 However, while the National Covenant included the 1581 King’s Confession, and was framed as an embodiment of that Confession and other Scottish constitutional precedents, the context surrounding it was quite different from its predecessors.19 As Alasdair Raffe has noted, the National Covenant was not unprecedented in its role as an oath sworn not only by nobles and elites, but by ordinary people. The 1581 Confession had been ‘sworn widely by the people’ and churchmen were ordered to attempt to gather the signatures of their parishioners.20 In the case of the National Covenant, however, the scale of the public signings and the breadth of people included in signing it increased significantly, and the nature of public involvement was much more direct. Furthermore, in the case of previous bonds, the public signings had come only after approval from parliament or general assembly. With the National Covenant, this position was reversed, with official assent coming only after public signings and distribution had already begun.21 With the need to encourage and showcase public support to assist their defiance of the king, the Covenanters engaged with the public 17

Ibid., p. 427. Charles W. A. Prior, A Confusion of Tongues: Britain’s Wars of Reformation 1625–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 98. 19 The 1560 Confession of Faith was a document authored by John Knox and other early Scottish Protestants during the Scottish reformation which set out their Reformed faith and views on church government. In 1581, the ‘King’s Confession’ was signed by a young James VI, who agreed to uphold the terms of the 1560 Confession, with signatories pledging in return to defend the king and the Kirk. The 1581 Confession was included as a part of the National Covenant, and many saw the Covenant as a renewal or affirmation of the 1581 Confession. For more on these confessions and how they were influenced by earlier forms of bonding, see Alasdair Raffe, ‘Confessions, Covenanting and Continuous Reformation in Early Modern Scotland’, Etudes Epistémè, 32 (2017), 1–19; David Mullan, Scottish Puritanism 1590–1638 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 6; Dawson, ‘Bonding’, pp. 155–71; W. Ian P. Hazlett, ‘The Scots Confession 1560: Context, Complexion and Critique’, Archive for Reformation History, 78 (1987), 287–302. 20 Raffe, ‘Confessions, Covenants and Continuous Reformation’, 3. 21 Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, p. 102. 18

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more immediately than past movements had done, printing tracts to be read in public to common people and encouraging supporters to attend royal proclamations and turn them into opportunities for public debate.22 While previous public confessions can be seen as involving elements of civil religion in the use of public religious ceremonies which accompanied them, in the National Covenant a much more conspicuous example can be identified of a nationwide campaign to effect political change via public signings which were very much understood to be acts of religious observance. In the discourse which surrounded the National Covenant, the Covenanters attempted to present it as a coherent, lawful vision of Scotland’s constitution, based upon a presbyterian conception of the relationship between Kirk and realm, rooted in the events and documents of the Scottish reformation, and presented themselves as the guardians of this vision. In this conception, the actions undertaken by the general assembly and the Covenanter regime stemmed logically and lawfully from the legal position in Scotland as they saw it. Godly and popular consent for these actions was also claimed, but this was subordinated to a framing of temporal lawfulness. In essence, the fundamental argument accompanying the National Covenant was that its signatories were defending Scotland’s civil constitution, while also having a religious duty to do so. Arthur Williamson argued that an important respect in which the Scottish reformation differed from the English was that while English institutions were rooted in a notion of an ‘unchanging continuity throughout the past’, the lack of comparable historical records and established institutions in Scotland meant that the process of reformation required, in terms of the law and institutions which defended it, ‘establishment and integration in a far more active manner’.23 The result of this, he argued, was that by the time of the National Covenant, the legislation upon which the Scottish reformation had been constituted was ‘linked to the whole corpus of Scottish law: at stake was nothing short of the very foundations of Scottish society.’24 The National Covenant, therefore, was framed as at once embodying Scotland’s inextricably linked reformation and constitution. The National Covenant began by restating the ‘Negative Confession’, also known as the King’s Confession. This, it states, was first signed by ‘the King’s Majesty’, then by ‘persons of all ranks … by ordinance of the lords of the secret council, and acts of the general assembly’ in 1581, and by ‘all sorts of persons’ in 1590.25 Given the controversies generated by the 1638 Covenant and its debatable constitutional and legal status, there was clear utility in presenting the 1581 Confession first, and in underlining its previous royal and public 22

Ibid., pp. 40–80. Arthur H. Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), pp. xi–5. 24 Ibid., p. 140. 25 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, The National Covenant of the Kirk of Scotland and the Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms (Edinburgh: Printed by a Society of Stationers, 1660), sig. A2v. 23

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endorsement. In the face of charges of innovation and ‘rabble-rousing’ which would be levelled at the Covenanters, therefore it could be argued that they did nothing, either in terms of the content of the Covenant or who they addressed it to, that had not already been an acceptable part of the constitution of Protestant Scotland as those in the 1630s understood it. The authority of the Negative Confession of 1581 was hard to question, as it had been subscribed to by the king and by the general assembly, and appropriately for the purposes of the Covenanters in 1638 contained rejections of any role for ‘popish’ rituals or hierarchy in the Kirk.26 Furthermore, the Negative Confession represented constitutional affirmations of the role of the king in defending and upholding a reformed presbyterian Kirk, and tied the authority of the monarch to this: And because we perceive that the quietness and stability of our religion and Kirk doth depend upon the safety and good behaviour of the King’s Majesty, as upon a comfortable instrument of God’s mercy granted to this country for the maintenance of His Kirk, and ministration of justice among us

it claimed, meaning that it was predicated upon a concept of the king as a guardian and servant of the Kirk.27 By including the Negative Confession in the National Covenant, the implicit reminder therefore is that it was on this basis that Charles was king of Scotland, not under the conception of absolute authority over all Three Kingdoms which was the basis upon which Charles and his court sought to influence matters of adiaphora within the Kirk.28 Furthermore, as the Confession was ultimately subscribed to by ‘all sorts of people’, a precedent is provided to justify the widespread signing of the National Covenant. The Confession was framed as representing a statement of Scotland’s constitution, in which a certain pattern of the roles of crown and Kirk is established in law. The Kirk was ‘by law established’, and the king was bound to uphold these laws. As chapter 6 will demonstrate, a similar constitutional arrangement would ultimately emerge in both kingdoms after 1688, though with a distinctly different religious character. In restating the Confession of 1581, and underlining its legitimate signing by the king and people, the Covenanter movement was framed as based on legitimate precedent, and its revolutionary potential was downplayed to Scottish elites which feared unbridled mass politics.29 From the outset it was asserted that 26 Mullan,

Scottish Puritanism 1590–1638, p. 181. ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A4v. 28 For more on the limited Scottish conception of monarchy, see Karin Bowie, ‘“A Legal Limited Monarchy”: Scottish Constitutionalism in the Union of Crowns, 1603–1707’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 35:2 (2015), 131–54. For general discussion of the interaction between Laud’s ecclesiastical reforms and ideas of royal supremacy see Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven, CT, London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 111–17. For specifically in the context of Scotland see Prior, A Confusion, ch. 4. 29 For the relationship between Scottish nobility and the National Covenant see Roger A. 27

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the Covenanters were acting in accordance with the religious and legal norms of Scotland, and involving in their politics only those who it had been established by precedent could peaceably participate in them. Establishing the truth behind these claims would be another study altogether, and in fact Laura Stewart has recently argued that the signing of the National Covenant did represent a radical introduction into politics for many people who had previously not been involved in it.30 In any case, the idea is important as it represented an attempt to combine the practical political currency of mass consent with the theological currency of divine oaths, while framing such radical actions in a conservative fashion. In effect, the National Covenant resembled an instrument of civil religion in the sense that it was explicitly religious in character but deployed for political purposes and reinforced by actions which were both civic and religious, such as public signings of the Covenant in churches. However, while these mass signings, rabblings and riots lent political weight to the Covenanter cause, the theoretical legitimacy of their actions did not derive from this, and they had to be careful to attempt to maintain that distinction.31 Such a distinction was necessary because, as Stewart also noted, handing too much power to ‘the people’ at large would have risked undermining the political authority of the very people who were driving the Covenanter revolution on the elite side.32 In appealing to the precedent of the Scottish reformation, and presenting the National Covenant primarily as an updated restatement of the 1581 Confession, the Covenanters were able to frame what they were doing as the defence of an old order rather than the creation of a new one. At the same time however, innovative engagement with publics not commonly involved in politics, underpinned by religious oaths, enabled them to harness popular passion to resist Charles I in a revolutionary manner.33 Mason, ‘Counsel and Covenant: Aristocratic Conciliarism and the Scottish Revolution’, in The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707, ed. Jacqueline Rose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 229–48. 30 Stewart, Rethinking, pp. 100–20. Stewart also noted the longstanding debate over the ‘radical’ or ‘conservative’ nature of the National Covenant. As she notes, the circumstances of swearing it publicly as a religious yet ‘politicized act’ enabled its use for radical purposes. This contributes to the radical legacy of the Covenants in the later seventeenth-century English context. 31 Stewart, Rethinking, covers the dynamics of crowd action in Scotland in the 1630s. For the later seventeenth century see Alasdair Raffe, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland 1660–1714 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012), ch. 8. For studies of crowd action in the English context see Philip Loft, ‘Involving the Public: Parliament, Petitioning, and the Language of Interest, 1688–1720’, Journal of British Studies, 55:1 (2016); Tim Harris, ‘London Crowds and the Revolution of 1688’, in By Force or by Default? The Revolution of 1688–1689, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), pp. 44–64. 32 Stewart, Rethinking, p. 128. 33 The designation of the events of 1637–38 in Scotland as a ‘revolution’, as per David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution 1637–44 (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 1973), is not universal but is now commonly accepted, such as Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish

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While the Covenanters emphasised their continuity with the past, their appeal to precedent was somewhat selective, as they rejected, for example, the episcopalian Articles of Perth of 1618. In framing the Negative Confession, which predated the Union of Crowns, and the attempts which followed the union to bring the English and Scottish churches closer together, continuity with Scotland’s pre-union past was emphasised. In some respects, the National Covenant can even be viewed as an assertion of Scottish law over the monarchy: an attempt to establish the position that if Scottish law is sovereign, the National Covenant is valid, and vice versa. Charles Prior has argued that the National Covenant represented an attempt to present the Scottish reformation not only as a process which influenced Scotland, but which defined it, and as a ‘reminder that the Kirk was the product of the confluence of sacred and civil law, and … the reformation … an expression of Scottish national sovereignty’.34 In other words, although at its heart the National Covenant was an oath to defend a certain form of church government, it was also an attempt to define the Scottish political nation on the basis of a willingness to support this defence. The National Covenant, in this context, should be viewed as both a symbolic representation of Scotland’s sovereignty, and a practical instrument with which defence of this sovereignty could be organised. The Negative Confession, as quoted in the first part of the National Covenant, pledged its signatories to act in defence of the ‘true religion’, which has been ‘by the mercy of God revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel, and received, believed, and defended by many and sundry notable Kirks and realms, but chiefly by the Kirk of Scotland, the King’s Majesty, and three estates of this realm, as God’s eternal truth and only ground of our salvation.’35 The implication was that the religious order which the Covenanters were defending was the same one established by the reformation and the Confession of Faith. This order, in turn, was part of a wider natural, divinely ordained pattern of worship which had been ‘by the mercy of God revealed to the world’. The National Covenant, in this reading, did not seek to reform or innovate in religious matters but to defend the religious constitution of Scotland. This constitution, the authors asserted, was established and agreed to by all institutions of religious or political authority in the kingdom, and was rooted in a perfect form of reformed religion, from the revelation of which the Scottish reformation had emerged. The Negative Confession, and by extension the National Covenant, was therefore portrayed as safeguarding a natural order rather than creating a new one. It also implicitly rejected an absolutist conception of kingship and asserted a presbyterian one, representing the king, parliament, Kirk and ‘estates of the realm’ as centres in Revolution, and Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare (eds), Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014). 34 Prior, A Confusion, pp. 81–2. 35 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A3r.

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which the sovereignty of the people is invested, rather than all being subject to the absolute authority of the king. The Confession rejected the ‘tyrannous laws made upon indifferent things’ by the ‘Roman Antichrist’, alongside more usual anti-Catholic complaints about sacraments, saints and the mass. The ‘indifferent things’ in question referred to matters of worship such as prayer books and the role of kneeling which proponents of royal supremacy over the churches argued were within the king’s jurisdiction.36 The Confession declared that ‘all the subscribers and approvers of that cruel and bloody band (the Council of Trent) [are] conjured against the Kirk of God.’37 It went on to say that ‘finally we detest all his vain allegories, rites, signs, and traditions, brought in the Kirk without or against the Word of God, and doctrine of this true reformed Kirk.’38 The Confession was therefore framed as a rejection of a Catholic attack on the legitimate church. In utilising the Confession at the start of the National Covenant, therefore, the Covenant was portrayed as a document of the Scottish reformation. It was also framed as a document for opposing Catholic innovations within the Scottish Kirk, and a continuation of a struggle between reformation and popery ongoing in Scotland since the sixteenth century. A message of anti-popery would have also carried positive connotations to puritan audiences in England, where rejection of popery implied a defence of liberty and Godliness and a rejection of superstition.39 This meant that the repetition of the accusations contained in the Confession functioned not only as a rejection of Kirk reforms but as a positive statement to potential allies or sympathisers of what the Covenanters represented. At the same time, however, the implication existed that the king was, if not a secret Catholic himself, being manipulated by the shadowy forces of popery, a serious allegation which somewhat undermined claims to be protecting the king’s person and privileges. The powerful implications of these accusations would be all too apparent to readers. As Peter Lake has argued, the emphasis among the committed Calvinists and ‘hotter’ Protestants of England towards espousing the virtues of godly princes and magistrates in the struggle against popery carried with it political 36 ‘The

Nationall Covenant’, sig. A3r; Jacqueline Rose, ‘The Debate over Authority: Adiaphora, the Civil Magistrate, and the Settlement of Religion’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. N. H. Keeble, p. 47. 37 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A4r. For the European context of British fears of a Catholic takeover see Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 63–92, 825–49; Jason White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), chs 2–3; Ole Peter Grell, Brethren in Christ: A Calvinist Network in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 3. 38 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A4r. 39 Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (Harlow: Longman Group UK, 1989), p. 87. The Covenanters of this period actively courted English public opinion, particularly among presbyterians and puritans. See Waurechen, ‘Covenanter Propaganda’.

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implications amounting to a veiled threat. If the king’s authority derived from his godliness, and his godliness was dependent upon his opposition to popery, accusations that the king was lenient on popery were tantamount to questioning the very basis upon which his authority existed.40 Perhaps because of this, the text of the Negative Confession also stressed the reactive, defensive nature of the movement which it represented. It is declared that many are stirred up by Satan and that Roman Antichrist, to promise, swear, subscribe, and for a time use the holy sacraments in the Kirk, deceitfully against their own consciences, minding thereby, first under the external cloak of religion, to corrupt and subvert secretly God’s true religion within the Kirk; and afterwards, when time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors of the same.41

Again, the implication appears fairly straightforward; that the league represented in the Confession, and by extension the National Covenant, was a defensive one, necessitated only by the existence of a Catholic conspiracy to subvert the Kirk and introduce ungodly innovations. Also notably absent from these accusations is any involvement of the king himself. Mention of him is saved for the next paragraph, where loyalty is professed to the king and his authority is called ‘a comfortable instrument of God’s mercy granted to this country for the maintenance of His Kirk’.42 The time-honoured technique of blaming a ruler’s advisors for their mistakes is clearly at work here, but it also established a narrative, which the Covenanters of the 1630s would attempt to continue, whereby there was a Catholic conspiracy against the kingdom of Scotland of which the king was as much a victim as they were. Following the Negative Confession, the National Covenant referenced a series of historical royal and parliamentary acts, which it states demonstrated a duty to ‘maintain the King’s Majesty’s royal person and authority, the authority of parliaments, without which neither any laws or lawful judicatories can be established’ as well as to protect ‘the people’s security of their lands, livings, rights, offices, liberties and dignities’.43 This further framed the Covenant as a document intended to secure the protection of the status of the Scottish Kirk and kingdom as they then existed, in the lawful situation which emerged from the Scottish reformation, rather than a document intended to introduce innovation or schism. The Covenant then states the two causes in defence of which it is claimed the earlier acts and bonds it cites were made. The first cause was as follows: for defending the true religion, as it was then reformed, and is expressed in the confession of faith above written, and a former large confession established by sundry 40

Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, p. 86. ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A4v. 42 Ibid., sig. A4v. 43 Ibid., sig. A7v. 41

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant acts of lawful general assemblies and of Parliament, unto which it hath relation, set down in public catechisms, and which had been for many years with a blessing from heaven preached and professed in this Kirk and kingdom, as God’s undoubted truth grounded only upon His written Word.44

This is a passage which contains explicit and implicit justification of the legitimacy of the National Covenant. The cause of the Covenanters was portrayed as both religiously virtuous, but also as operating strictly within the law. It was a movement in favour of the ‘true religion’, but only as ‘set down in public catechisms’ and ‘established’ for ‘many years’. In other words, the Covenant was explicitly framed as a defence of the Scottish reformation in the legitimate and well-affirmed form that it had been established in the sixteenth century, rather than a new chapter in the process of reformation.45 In England, the royalist Robert Filmer had argued that only by way of a solemn oath could a monarch be subject to any lawful authority other than God Himself.46 This would not have been a view subscribed to by the signatories or authors of the National Covenant in Scotland. The presbyterian conception of kingship generally held that kings were subject to the law, as most famously explicated by Samuel Rutherford in Lex, Rex.47 Despite this however, in their effort to establish a watertight case for the legitimacy of the contents of the National Covenant, the authors did in fact bring up this idea. They argued that even only on the terms of oaths sworn by the king, the National Covenant would be lawful, as all Kings and Princes at their coronation and reception of their princely authority, shall make their faithful promise by their solemn oath in the presence of the Eternal God, that enduring the whole time of their lives they shall serve the same Eternal God to the utmost of their power, according as He hath required in His most Holy Word, 44

Ibid., sig. A8v–A9r. This is not to say those involved would not have considered it as such. Many historians have emphasised that all reformation was a process rather than an event; see for example Tony Claydon, ‘The Reformation of the Future: Dating English Protestantism in the Late Stuart Era’, Etudes Epistémè, 32 (2017); Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 305–10. The Scottish reformation was certainly no exception, and the fact that the Solemn League and Covenant would be subtitled ‘For Reformation and the Defence of Religion’ shows that Scottish Covenanters certainly considered the process ongoing, and defence of reformation to be a part of this process. However, in the case of the National Covenant, it was argued that it did not seek to innovate in ecclesiology, but rather to defend what they viewed as the lawful status quo. 46 Robert Filmer, The Power of Kings, and In Particular of the Kings of England (W. H. & T. F., 1680), p. 2. 47 Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex (John Field, 1644), pp. 207–51. Rutherford was one of the leading figures in the mid-seventeenth-century Kirk and, alongside John Knox and George Buchanan, probably the most well-known explicator of the relationship between presbyterianism and royal authority. For more on Rutherford see John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 45

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1638 NATIONAL COVENANT AND 1643 SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT contained in the Old and New Testaments, and according to the same Word shall maintain the true religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of His Holy Word, the due and right ministration of the sacraments now received and preached within this realm (according to the confession of faith immediately preceding); and shall abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary to the same.48

In other words, everything that was claimed as the purpose of the National Covenant is already present in the king’s coronation oath. This supported the idea that the National Covenant was a restating of the legitimate position as it already existed and framed the actions of the Covenanters as a defence against the king breaking his oaths. Indeed, in this reading, resistance to the attempts (as the Covenanters portrayed it) of the king’s councillors to impose religious innovations contrary to his oaths was not only legitimate but a duty, in defence of the king’s good name and immortal soul. The final section of the National Covenant contained the new oath, which it describes as a ‘national oath and subscription’ that ‘the present and succeeding generations in this land are bound to keep’,49 in which its signatories pledge to ‘adhere unto and to defend the aforesaid true religion’.50 As with much of the discourse which accompanied it, the text of the oath was couched in conservative and somewhat ambiguous terms. The ‘true religion’ to which it refers is defined only with reference to the precedents cited earlier in the text, with infringements upon it described as ‘contrary to the articles of the aforesaid confessions, to the intention and meaning of the blessed reformers of religion in this land’. As previously mentioned, this left a degree of ambiguity as to whether those who swore the National Covenant were obliged only to resist the recent changes to the Kirk, which the text identifies as the ‘innovations and evils contained in our supplications, complaints, and protestations’, or to oppose any form of episcopacy altogether.51 The National Covenant was more explicit in its assertion that the recent changes targeted by its signatories’ ‘supplications, complaints, and protestations’ were in direct violation of the ‘foresaid confessions’ which were cited earlier in the text.52 These precedents, it states, ‘are to be interpreted, and ought to be understood of the foresaid novations and evils, no less than if every one of

48

‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. A7v. ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. B1r. The question of whether future generations are bound by oaths made by their ancestors is one which would resurface with regard to the Solemn League and Covenant, and will be discussed in this context in chapters 2 and 3 of this book. In the case of the National Covenant, the text is clear that this is the position it represents. 50 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. B1r. 51 The Glasgow General Assembly of December 1638 defined the Negative Confession, and therefore the National Covenant, as overtly anti-episcopal, but until this point it was not entirely clear if this was the case, and the Covenant had already begun to be distributed. Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, p. 30. 52 ‘The Nationall Covenant’, sig. B1v. 49

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them had been expressed in the foresaid confessions’.53 The National Covenant attempted to strike a balance, therefore, where precedent is cited (selectively), and used to lend weight to complaints regarding recent changes to the Kirk, but there was no comment made on the explicit ecclesiological meaning of these precedents beyond this. The text also stressed its signatories’ loyalty to the king, and explicitly addressed possible accusations of rebellion. The Covenant states that its signatories will ‘to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King’s Majesty, his person and authority’.54 It states that its signatories will not ‘fear the foul aspersions of rebellion’, which ‘their adversaries from their craft and malice would put upon’ them.55 The Covenanters need not fear the charge of rebellion, the Covenant states, because their actions are ‘so well warranted’, and ‘ariseth from an unfeigned desire to maintain the true worship of God, the majesty of our King, and the peace of the kingdom’.56 The Covenant also acknowledged that its signatories and authors could not claim direct Godly endorsement: ‘And because we cannot look for a blessing from God upon our proceedings, except with our profession and subscription, we join such a life and conversation as beseemeth Christians who have renewed their covenant with God.’57 This appears slightly more circumspect than the text of the Negative Confession, which professes that its signatories were animated by ‘the word and spirit of God’, and ‘the mercy of God revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel’.58 This underlines the extent to which the National Covenant was framed conservatively, and how the Covenanters emphasised a continuity with the authority of the Covenant’s antecedents rather than claiming a new authority of its own. Much as the text of the National Covenant is focussed on the defensive, lawful character of their oath, contemporary opponents of the Covenanters focus on portraying it as an innovation or usurpation. Criticism fell on Covenanter claims to be defending the king, while at the same time, as their critics saw it, being dangerously presumptuous in their appropriation of his authority for their own ends. Take for example a typical critique which accuses the Covenanters of having ‘entrencht upon the King’s Soveraigne power, and [having] hitherto neglected and slighted his Royall authoritie’. It then leads into a poem directed ‘against the tumultuous and rebellious Scots’ in which they are accused of ‘By fallacie joyning God and King Together, and yet will show obedience unto neither’.59 Interestingly, the Covenanters were here accused of undermining the separation of the ‘two kingdoms’ of king and religion, despite 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Ibid., sig. B1v. Ibid., sig. B2r. Ibid., sig. B2v. Ibid., sig. B2v. Ibid., sig. B2v. Ibid., sig. A3v. Wye Saltonstall, The Complaint of Time Against the Tumultuous and Rebellious Scots, Sharply

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this often being viewed as a cornerstone of Scottish presbyterianism. As will be discussed later, the extent to which the Covenants upheld or undermined separation of religious and civil authority would be a topic of active debate. A speech given against the National Covenant by Henry Leslie, Bishop of Downe and Conner, also contained the critique of the Covenanters as unlawful rebels. He argued that, under the Covenanter conception of the power to resist, they may freely kill or depose ‘the Godliest Prince in the world’ should ‘the Presbytery declare for him to be such [a tyrant]’.60 However, he also attempted to undermine much of the basis of the National Covenant by attacking the precedents that it sought to cite. He portrayed the resisters of the Scottish reformation as ‘taking themselves to be the supreme judiciary’ and of declaring treason to be lawful.61 Primarily though, it is the oath itself, and the lawfulness of it, that he attacks. ‘The onely true matter of an oath is trueth’, he declares, ‘but all grounds of this last oath, are notoriously false’. He writes that ‘We finde in the fifth of Leviticus, that when a man did sweare that which was hid from him; it was a sin.’ He attacked the lawfulness of the oath contained in the National Covenant on this basis, arguing that ‘they have sworn in many things which are hid from them, and whereof they could have no certain knowledge: for they could not know that the Negative Confession is the National Confession of that church; nor that the oath is the same that the King did swear.’62 In other words, it was the ‘technical’ questions of lawfulness that dominated Leslie’s response. The strong potential of oaths to bind people to a cause is acknowledged, and there was a reverence for the power of oaths present on both sides of the argument. Such were the complexities of an oath’s legality, however, that discussion of oaths formed a language of political discourse which could be deployed by both sides quite effectively. Extrapolation of political facts from apparently lawful oaths could be readily dismissed by determined opponents via the often complex and controversial casuistry which surrounded the lawfulness of oaths. However, between the determined polemicists at either extreme lay a significant body of people for whom their being bound or not by certain oaths was a matter of genuine concern, as will be seen with the debate around the Covenants in the Restoration period. The debates that occurred following the publication of the National Covenant between its supporters and the ministers and divines of Aberdeen who opposed it provide an insight into the magnitude of the political questions that the

Inveighing Against Them (as most justly they deserve) This Yeare, 1639 (B. A. and T. S. for Richard Harper, 1639), sig. A2r–A5. 60 Henry Leslie, A Speech, Delivered at the Visitation of Downe and Conner, Held in Lisnegarvy the 26th of September, 1638, Wherein, for the convincing of the Non-conformists, there is a full Confutation of the Covenant Lately sworne and subscribed by many in Scotland (John Raworth, for George Thomason and Octavian Pulleyn, 1639), p. 8. 61 Ibid., p. 9. 62 Ibid., pp. 28–9.

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Covenant posed.63 The ministers of Aberdeen rejected the Covenanter assertion that the National Covenant represented a reaffirmation of the 1581 Confession, and in doing so sparked a debate about the nature of royal authority and the potential of oaths to override it. The Aberdeen ministers argued that, while the 1581 Confession had the consent of the king, the National Covenant did not, and therefore they could not represent the same cause.64 They further argued that the forming of ‘Leagues or Bands’ without the consent of the king had been prohibited in 1585, making the National Covenant unlawful and therefore inherently non-binding.65 The Aberdeen ministers also made use of the casuistic position that resistance is only to be preferred to martyrdom or subjection in the case of a polity that was ‘conditionall, pactionall, conventionall’ and not in the case of the ‘absolute principalitie’.66 The position of the ministers placed the competing conceptions of conditional and non-conditional monarchy at the fore of the debate regarding the lawful and binding character of the oath contained in the National Covenant. The text of the National Covenant itself to some extent avoided explicitly asserting a conditional model of monarchy, and contained repeated references to upholding the rights and privileges of the king, and avoiding any contradictions with any of his coronation oaths. It was therefore open to a degree of individual interpretation to what extent the National Covenant was rigidly advocating a certain view of kingship. Sarah Waurechen has argued that connecting the political situations in England and Scotland and portraying their Covenant as relevant to both kingdoms was a cornerstone of Covenanter propaganda.67 By emphasising the importance of the conditional presbyterian concept of kingship to the lawfulness of the National Covenant, its opponents attempted to implicitly limit its appeal to those who subscribed to such a view. It could be argued that an important part of the propaganda coming from both opponents of the National Covenant and supporters were the efforts to frame it as either a ‘Scottish rebellion’ or a crisis affecting both kingdoms, respectively. To some extent, the Covenanters could utilise both approaches in different contexts. The crisis was portrayed to sympathetic audiences in Scotland as an attempt to subject Scotland to English domination in matters of religion while also being portrayed to sympathetic puritan audiences in England as a crisis affecting all those who feared oppression of the Godly by the forces of popery.68 63

For more information on the reaction of the Aberdeen ministers to the National Covenant see Prior, A Confusion, ch. 4; Salvatore Cipriano, ‘The Scottish Universities and Opposition to the National Covenant, 1638’, The Scottish Historical Review, 97:1 (2018), 29–35. 64 Duplyes of the ministers & professors of Aberdene (Aberdeen: Edw. Raban, 1638), pp. 20–2. 65 Ibid., p. 21. 66 Ibid., p. 25. 67 Waurechen, ‘Covenanter Propaganda’, 73–83. 68 Waurechen, ‘Covenanter Propaganda’, 83; Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, pp. 270–5.

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Opponents of the National Covenant portrayed it as an act of Scottish rebellion and harkened back to previous Anglo-Scottish conflicts in an attempt to turn sentiment against them. While historians have focussed on the way in which the Covenanters attempted to tailor their propaganda to a wider public than had been the case previously, anti-Covenanter attempts to present their case in simpler, more publicly accessible forms did exist alongside the longer, more intellectually involved tracts in which much of the debate occurred. This took the form of poems and songs, such as Britaine’s Honour, a song circulated during the Bishops’ Wars which told a tale of Englishmen and Welshmen uniting against the threat of the rebellious Scots, and contained the telling couplet ‘The taunting Scot shall know what valour, Doth in a Britain’s brest reside.’69 Another song circulated by the same printer had the chorus ‘Then let not faire words make fools faine, But let us beat the Scots againe.’70 In an international context, framing the impact of the Covenants upon the Anglo-Scottish relationship differently for different audiences was just as important. Strategic considerations stemming from England’s rivalry with the Dutch and Spain’s need for English cooperation to maintain sea routes to their possessions in the Low Countries made Spain a potential ally for Charles I when the prospect loomed of conflict with the Scots.71 However, the context of the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict which many Protestants, including those in England and Scotland, viewed as an eschatological struggle in which Spain was a major antagonist, meant that the prospect of such an alliance raised further domestic problems for the king.72 It is clear therefore that, on the eve of the Bishops’ Wars, there already existed a narrative of an absolutist, Catholic threat to the Protestant world into which many people were able to contextualise the crisis in Scotland. Indeed, it has been argued that even in 1639, with the prospect of open war with Scotland looming large over domestic politics, English political balladeers ‘seemed more concerned with renewed threats to Protestantism from Spain than by any news from Scotland’.73 The Scots also attempted to leverage the European context to their advantage, and Allan MacInnes has written that during the Bishops’ Wars the Covenanters appealed to ‘France, Sweden and the United Provinces’ by framing their struggle against Charles I as part of the rivalry associated with the Thirty Years’ War, and England as a client of the Spanish.74 Later on however, during the alliance 69

Martin Parker, Britaines honour In the two valiant Welchmen, who fought against fifteene thousand Scots, at their now comming to England passing over Tyne; wherof one was kill’d manfully fighting against his foe, and the other being taken prisoner, is now (upon relaxation) come to Yorke to his Majestie (E. Griffin, 1640), p. 1. 70 Martin Parker, Newes From Newcastle with an Advertisment (E. Griffin, 1640), p. 1. 71 Sharpe, The Personal Rule, pp. 895–9. 72 Jayne E. E. Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014), p. 236. 73 Ibid., p. 249. 74 Allan MacInnes, ‘Covenanting Exchanges with the French Court during the Wars for the

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with the English parliament, MacInnes argues that the Covenanter priorities became to present themselves internationally as more moderate and to show ‘a demonstrable concern with confederal union, a pragmatic willingness to temper military force with peace negotiations and an international commitment to Protestantism not just presbyterianism’.75 A narrative of the Scottish crisis as part of wider political turmoil and conspiracy was not limited only to the Covenanter side, however. Peter Lake has argued that Charles and his supporters couched their response to the National Covenant ‘precisely in terms of an international Calvinist conspiracy against monarchy’.76 Others framed the Covenanters as representing a seditious religious league against legitimate authority, the religious character of which was largely irrelevant to its role as a unifying bond with which to rebel against their lawful king. One of the ways this manifested itself was in efforts to frame the Covenanters as inspired by or representing a continuity of the French Holy League, which features in the king’s own response to the Scots in 1639, when he refers to ‘their late wicked Covenant, or pretended holy League (a name which all good men did abhor in them of France)’.77 This comparison would continue to be promoted by opponents of the Covenanters in the Restoration period, particularly in the 1680s, and other comparisons of Covenanters with apparently tumultuous Protestant sects such as German Anabaptists can be seen as well.78 It is therefore important to appreciate how the Scottish crisis of 1637, and by extension the 1638 and 1643 Covenants, and the concept of the Covenant more generally, were viewed in the context of long-term and geographically broad trends which contemporaries saw as having dramatic eschatological and politically existential implications. The precise nature of the context into which these events and documents were placed varied according to the audience in question. The threat of absolute monarchy, and the destruction of monarchy altogether, were both seen as real and immediate dangers, depending on the perspective. The question of how one conceptualised the relationship between England and Scotland was therefore entangled immediately with the question of the extent to which the National Covenant was lawful and binding. The agreement of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643 was to add renewed urgency to the issue of England and Scotland’s relationship. The Solemn League and Covenant meant that Covenanting became a movement which advocated for a specific Three Kingdoms’, Revue electronique d’etudes sur le monde Anglophone, 11:2 (2014), 1. 75 Ibid., 5. 76 Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, p. 87. 77 King Charles I, A Large Declaration Concerning the Late Tumults in Scotland (Printed by Robert Young, 1639), p. 2. 78 Isaac Basier, History of the English and Scots Presbytery, Wherein is discovered their designs for the subversion of government in church and state (Villa Franca, 1660), p. 16; E. H., An Epitaph Upon the Solemn League and Covenant, Condemned to be Burned by the Common Hangman (Philemon Stephens, 1661), p. 1.

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and controversial model of the Anglo-Scottish relationship. However, it is important to be aware that the relationship between England and Scotland had been a facet of the debates surrounding the National Covenant from the very beginning. While the Solemn League and Covenant may have made explicit the extension of aspects of the National Covenant to the kingdoms as a whole, the National Covenant always contained assertions that by implication carried consequences for England.79 The Solemn League and Covenant

The direct origin of the Solemn League and Covenant was primarily one of military necessity, although the concept of some form of covenanted union between England and Scotland was something which had been discussed in various forms prior to 1643. Interactions between Scottish presbyterians and English Protestants had been ongoing for some time, and elements within both the Covenanter and Parliamentarian factions had long pushed for an agreement between parliament and the Scots.80 As the work of Edward Vallance has demonstrated, the idea of an English ‘national covenant’, influenced by both the Scottish Covenant and Elizabethan and Jacobean ‘Protestant associations’, was popular among English presbyterians and puritans by the 1640s.81 John Pym was a particularly prominent proponent of the idea of a unifying covenant or association for Protestants, or for a shibboleth by which true Protestants might be tested. Pym had pushed for new Protestant oaths of association since the 1620s, and he was a leading advocate for a ‘new Covenant or association’ in the 1640s, often using the terms interchangeably to refer to the concept of a unifying Protestant bond.82 Some saw the 1641 Protestation as a means by which to do this, but Vallance has argued that it did not successfully fulfil the role of a unifying bond and that shortly afterwards the prospect of a covenant ‘like those of Scotland’ was being discussed.83 The 1643 Vow and Covenant represented a further move towards a unifying political bond, but this was short-lived, Vallance argued, on account of being ‘too divisive’.84 For those who sought a 79

For a thorough study of the implications which the Solemn League and Covenant had for Anglo-Scottish relations during the civil wars and Interregnum, see Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643–1663 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), chs 2–5. 80 David Scott, Politics and War in the Three Kingdoms 1637–1649 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 47–8. 81 Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 58–60. 82 Edward Vallance, ‘Loyal or Rebellious? Protestant Associations in England, 1584–1696’, The Seventeenth Century, 17:1 (2002), 7. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid.

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unifying covenant, therefore, the military failures of the Parliamentarian forces in the summer of 1643 presented an opportunity of sorts, for the need for Scottish military aid represented a chance to unite true Protestants not only in England, but across the British Isles. Conrad Russell argued that even prior to the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, it was Scottish military involvement which allowed parliament to effectively resist the king at all. Referring to the situation in 1640, when the Covenanting army occupied Newcastle, Russell wrote that ‘The Scots had given power back to the English Parliament.’85 However, there were also serious objections to the idea of an Anglo-Scottish alliance among the English parliamentarians and from the Marquess of Hamilton in Scotland. Ultimately, it took the prospect of a royalist triumph in the war following a string of victories to cement an alliance.86 The instrument of this alliance was the Solemn League and Covenant, which promised Scottish military support in exchange for the protection of the Scottish Kirk and the ‘reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland’.87 This ‘reformation’ was broadly understood to mean the extension of presbyterianism to all Three Kingdoms, though, as will be discussed shortly, there was a degree of ambiguity on this front. The alliance represented in the Solemn League and Covenant was a palpable success in the short term, as the Scottish and Parliamentarian armies came together to win a decisive victory over the Royalist forces at Marston Moor, in the largest battle of the war. However, the fractious nature of the alliance is demonstrated in the fact that immediately following the battle disputes broke out over the value of the respective Scottish and English contributions.88 The presence of Scottish armies in England quickly became a focus of criticism even from English Parliamentarians who had initially been supportive of the Solemn League and Covenant and the invitation of Scottish troops. David Scott has shown how a group of ‘Northern Gentlemen’ in parliament, driven by concerns for their lands and estates in the north, were instrumental both in forging the alliance in the first place, and in its breakdown later in the 1640s. While northern MPs were keen on inviting the Scots to an alliance with the aim of recovering the north of England (and therefore their estates) from the Royalists, Scott argues that this enthusiasm was very short-lived.89 When faced with the reality of a Scottish occupation of the north, according to Scott, even many of those who had previously supported the alliance ‘in extremis’ became deeply concerned 85 Conrad

Russell, ‘The Scottish Party in English Parliaments, 1640–1642’, Historical Research, 66 (1993), 50. 86 Scott, Politics and War in the Three Kingdoms, p. 49. 87 A Solemn League and Covenant, For Reformation and Defence of Religion (Edw. Husbands, 1643), p. 5. 88 Malcolm Wanklyn, Decisive Battles of the English Civil Wars: Myth and Reality (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military, 2006), pp. 107–20. 89 David Scott, ‘The “Northern Gentlemen”, the Parliamentary Independents, and AngloScottish Relations in the Long Parliament’, The Historical Journal, 42:2 (June 1999), 348.

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both about the ‘conduct of the Scottish army in the region’ and what they saw as the army’s consistent failure to ‘prove its worth on the battlefield’.90 Those who already held political or ecclesiological objections to the inclusion of the Scots in the parliamentary alliance, notes Scott, were eager to exploit this.91 These religious and political concerns proved even more divisive than those of military practicality. The question of religion was, in theory, to be settled by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, a council of ministers and theologians tasked with reforming church government and liturgy.92 The Assembly had already begun to meet before the Solemn League and Covenant was drawn up, but Chad Van Dixhoorn has argued that, while the purpose of the Assembly was somewhat ambiguous, it was always the case that it was intended, in part, to demonstrate ‘that Westminster was serious about church reform, which served as an inducement for the Scots to send an army southward to aid the flagging parliamentary cause’.93 In the Solemn League and Covenant, terms were set out for the religious protection and reforms which would be enacted in exchange for this military support. The ‘preservation of reformed religion in the Church of Scotland’ was promised, alongside the ‘reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland’, which was to be done following the ‘example of the best reformed Churches’. It also pledged its signatories to ‘endevour to bring the Churches of God in the Three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church-government, directory for worship and catechising’.94 For the Scottish participants in the Assembly, this was understood to mean reforming English and Irish religion in a manner modelled on the Scottish Kirk, but the wording was somewhat ambiguous and, as will be discussed shortly, not all English signatories necessarily understood the Covenant in exactly the same way as their Scottish counterparts. Furthermore, the Assembly was already in the process of reworking the Thirty-Nine Articles

90

Ibid., 354–5. Ibid., 360. 92 The most prolific writer on the Assembly is Chad B. Van Dixhoorn; see Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, ‘The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the 1640s’, in The Oxford History of Anglicanism Volume 1, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Politics and Religion in the Westminster Assembly and the “Grand Debate”’, in Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c. 1570–1700, ed. Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). For primary materials from the Assembly see Chad B. Van Dixhoorn et al (eds), The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012). See also Hunter Powell, The Crisis of British Protestantism: Church Power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), chs 3–4. 93 Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Scottish Influence on the Westminster Assembly: A Study of the Synod’s Summoning Ordinance and the Solemn League and Covenant’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 37 (2007), 74. 94 A Solemn League and Covenant, pp. 5–6. 91

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of Religion, the defining documents of the Church of England, and how these changes interacted with the Solemn League and Covenant was not entirely clear.95 Scottish involvement in the Assembly was significant, and Scottish theologians Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, and George Gillespie ‘participated heavily’, but the overall influence that the Scots had has been the subject of debate.96 Van Dixhoorn has concluded that, ultimately, the most significant contribution that the Scots made to the Assembly might simply have been in defining it as an anti-episcopal body via the Solemn League and Covenant.97 By forcing out supporters of episcopacy, and providing a ‘radical spirit’ to the proceedings of the Assembly, particularly when it came to discussion of canon law, Van Dixhoorn argues that the Solemn League and Covenant did strongly influence the tone of the debates.98 From the start, however, Scottish participation was controversial, and not just among supporters of the episcopacy. Independents rejected the idea of harmonising church government across kingdoms, and attacked it in An Apologeticall Narration, which the Scots saw as ‘an unwarranted, rude and a very public attempt to humiliate them’.99 The Assembly did eventually produce an Anglo-Scottish liturgy, though the modifications imposed by parliament have meant this liturgy has been described as only a ‘partial success’.100 In approaching the role of the Solemn League and Covenant following the Restoration, therefore, it is important to be aware of the ever-present controversy regarding precisely what the Covenant represented.101 Despite Scottish success in defining the Assembly as broadly anti-episcopal, there were competing ideas about how exactly the church was to be reformed. Though there was a shared appreciation in England and Scotland of the idea of a national covenant, and a strong presbyterian presence in both kingdoms, English and Scottish presbyterians did not always concur on issues of church government, nor on the political implications of anti-episcopal ecclesiology.102 As the work of Polly Ha has demonstrated, the unique circumstances of the English and Scottish reformations had created strains of presbyterianism which tended towards different interpretations of the royal supremacy and different 95

Van Dixhoorn, ‘Scottish Influence’, 79. Ibid., 57–60. 97 Ibid., 88. 98 Ibid., 80–8. 99 MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant, p. 39. 100 Ibid., p. 43. 101 For an example of how the evolving circumstances of the 1630s, 1640s and 1660s created evolving views on the Covenants and presbyterianism see Alexander Campbell, The Life and Works of Robert Baillie (1602–1662): Politics, Religion and Record-Keeping in the British Civil Wars (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), ch. 3; Alexander Campbell, ‘Episcopacy in the Mind of Robert Baillie’, Scottish Historical Review, 93:1 (2014), 29–55. 102 For more on the views which were represented at the Westminster Assembly and their areas of agreement and disagreement see Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, ‘Unity and Disunity at the Westminster Assembly (1643–1649): A Commemorative Essay’, The Journal of Presbyterian History (1997-), 79:2 (2001), 103–17. 96

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attitudes towards other forms of Protestantism. English presbyterians, argued Ha, were more concerned than their Scottish counterparts to emphasise their respect for the supremacy and its compatibility with their favoured forms of church government.103 They were also much more willing to engage with the Erastian and Independent views which were also present at the Westminster Assembly. Ha noted that despite the strong areas of disagreement between English presbyterians and Independents during the Assembly, English presbyterians also displayed a notable willingness to seriously consider Independent ideas of congregational liberty. According to the Scottish minister Robert Baillie, only six of the English presbyterians present at the Assembly wholeheartedly supported complete emulation of the Scottish model of church government.104 While the membership of the Assembly was mostly opposed to episcopacy, many of them were not strongly ‘for anything else in particular’, nor were those who opposed what they viewed as the corrupt episcopacy that existed at the time necessarily completely opposed to the idea of episcopacy in any form.105 While most attendants at the Assembly opposed prelacy, some felt that the idea of bishops had a scriptural validity and thought that there could be a role for bishops in a ‘reduced’ or ‘primitive’ episcopacy. Though it was not published publicly until 1656, Archbishop James Ussher had completed his work on ‘The Reduction of Episcopacie’ in 1641 and such ideas were popular among English dissenters prior to the Westminster Assembly.106 Ussher himself did not attend the Westminster Assembly, despite an invitation, as he felt the Assembly was not legitimate without royal support. However, Ussher’s ideas of ‘reduced episcopacy’ remained popular, and some signatories to the Solemn League and Covenant, such as the English presbyterians Richard Baxter and Thomas Case, felt that a modified episcopacy, rather than necessarily a precise replication of the Scottish Kirk, was the best means to fulfil the Covenant.107 As will be discussed in later chapters, proposals for some sort of reduced episcopacy or compromise between episcopacy and presbyterianism would re-emerge as a topic for serious discussion after the Restoration in 1660. A further division between the English and Scottish presbyterians present at the Westminster Assembly lay in their different views on the apocalyptic implications of the events of the seventeenth century. Crawford Gribben has argued that 1638 represented something of a watershed for the entanglement of English

103 Polly

Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 181. 104 Ethyn Williams Kirby, ‘The English Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly’, Church History, 33:4 (1964), 419. 105 Van Dixhoorn, ‘Unity and Disunity’, 105. 106 Marcus Harmes, ‘The Universality of Discipline: Restoration of the English Episcopacy 1660–1688’, Renaissance and Reformation, 33:1 (2010), 61. 107 James C. Spalding and Maynard F. Brass, ‘Reduction of Episcopacy as a Means to Unity in England, 1640–1662’, Church History, 30:4 (1961), 421.

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and Scottish apocalyptic and millennial ideas.108 As previously mentioned, an appreciation of the idea of a national covenant was something shared by Scottish presbyterians and English puritans, and the dramatic realisation of this vision by the Scots, from what initially appeared to be a very precarious position, appeared to many as an act of divine deliverance. However, Gribben also argued that, despite the hopes of the Scots that the National Covenant would be the first stage of an era of international presbyterian solidarity, it was actually puritans and Independents who ‘spoke most clearly of the Covenant’s orientation to the future’.109 By the time of the Westminster Assembly, argued Gribben, such was the apocalyptic fervour of the Independents that the Scottish delegates were somewhat surprised by it, but nevertheless soon realised ‘they had more in common with the millennial Independents than they did with their more eschatologically cautious English presbyterian colleagues.’110 This harmony between the Scots and the Independents would not last, and as it faltered, beginning with the publication of the Apologetical Narration and culminating in open hostilities in the Second Civil War, Independent apocalyptic rhetoric would be turned on the Scots.111 For a time, however, they embraced it, and attempted to appeal to Independents by framing the Solemn League and Covenant as a fulfilment of apocalyptic prophecy.112 As well as ecclesiological and political differences, therefore, the English and Scottish presbyterians at the Assembly differed on the eschatological importance of the Assembly’s work. Many, particularly the Scots, saw the Solemn League and Covenant as an extension of the National Covenant to England. However, there are important distinctions between the two documents. There was a notable change in tone regarding the concept of reformation between 1638 and 1643, for example. As discussed previously in this chapter, the National Covenant was framed primarily as a reaffirmation and defence of a status quo which emerged from the Scottish reformation. There is no explicit suggestion in the text of the National Covenant that it was a document that was part of any sort of ongoing new reformation, and the discourse supporting the National Covenant actively downplayed such an idea. With the expansion of the Covenanter cause to all Three Kingdoms as represented by the Solemn League and Covenant however, this ceases to be the case. The Solemn League and Covenant, while continuing to call for the ‘preservation of the reformed religion’ in Scotland, demands ‘the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government.’113 While its revolutionary potential is now clear, 108 Crawford

Gribben, ‘The Church of Scotland and the English Apocalyptic Imagination, 1630 to 1650’, The Scottish Historical Review, 88:225 (2009), 42–3. 109 Ibid., 43. 110 Ibid., 43. 111 Ibid., 53–5. 112 Ibid., 44–6. 113 A Solemn League and Covenant, p. 5.

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and was to many contemporaries as well, the Covenanters took pains to portray the National Covenant and the movement around it as reactive in origin and moderate in character, rather than revolutionary. By 1643, the Solemn League and Covenant openly called for dramatic, revolutionary change to occur in at least two of the Three Kingdoms. However, as previously mentioned, while the Scottish Covenanters who signed it viewed it as a mandate to extend the Scottish reformation to the other kingdoms, the exact nature of the change that the Solemn League and Covenant called for was not seen in the same way by all those involved. Its signatories did broadly agree, however, that some form of further reformation was required, and that the Covenant contained a pledge to work towards this. After the Restoration, signatories to the Covenant would be forced to wrestle both with the question of whether this pledge was still valid, and precisely what this reformation was to involve if it was. The differences between the political situation in the Three Kingdoms on the eve of the signing of the National Covenant and the situation by 1643 clearly dictated a different approach, and provided Covenanters with greater room to acknowledge the radical aspects of their movement. Furthermore, the circumstances of military necessity which begat the alliance between the English parliament and the Scottish Covenanters gave great leeway for the Scots to attempt, in effect, to extend the Scottish reformation into England. Nor was this purely an imposition of the Scots on England; as previously discussed, there were also many in England who sought a ‘covenanted union’ with Scotland on both a religious and political basis. In fact, such was the success enjoyed by the Covenanting movement since 1638 that, around the time of the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, prominent Covenanters like Robert Baillie were discussing the prospect of extending their revolution to Europe, once England and Ireland were properly reformed.114 Nevertheless, the move by the Covenanters away from the painstaking focus on precedential legitimacy between 1638 and 1643 would give ammunition to their opponents. Crucially, the approach of the Restoration regime to the question of relations between England and Scotland would make this relationship the topic of heated debate after 1660. Furthermore, accusations of Scottish infringement upon English and Irish affairs would form a key part of anti-Covenanter discourse following the Restoration. Therefore, it is worth being aware of how the always-present Anglo-Scottish facets of the Covenanter movement became ever more important during the 1640s. Perhaps the most well-known defence of presbyterian conceptions of kingship from this period is Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex, which also contained discussion on the topic of the relationship between England and Scotland, and the justifications for the Covenanters intervening in England. Rutherford acknowledged that ‘if our Kings cause was just and lawfull’, they would be obliged ‘in our conscience, and in our oath and covenant to help our native Prince against 114 Gribben,

‘The Church of Scotland and the English Apocalyptic Imagination’, 47.

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them (the English)’.115 A common line of argument from Covenanters can be identified here, that is, that the Covenant strengthens the monarchy when the monarch acts lawfully, by obliging people across the kingdoms to come to its defence. However, given that, to Rutherford, the king was acting unlawfully, the Scots were obliged to help the English parliamentarians just as ‘the Civil Law of a Kingdom doth oblige any Citizen to help an innocent man against a murthering robber.’116 Assisting the English was also an act of self-defence, argued Rutherford, as ‘one nation may indirectly defend a neighbour nation against a common enemie, because it is self defence’, out of fear that ‘a forraigne enemie having overcome the neighbour nation, shall invade that nation itself who denyeth help and succour to the neighbour nation.’117 Not only this, but ‘England and we have one Lord, one faith, one Baptisme, one head and saviour Iesus Christ.’118 Furthermore, Rutherford argued that the Scots should return the assistance which England offered them in 1560, ‘the law of Gratitude obligeth us to this: England sent an Armie to free both our soules and bodies from the bondage of Popery.’119 To Rutherford therefore, the Solemn League and Covenant functioned as a representation of the natural right and duty which Scotland and England had to mutual assistance, both as part of an international community of Protestants, and from their natural right to self-defence. The language of precedent and constitutionalism which had framed the National Covenant was increasingly superseded by talk of dramatic, Godly change in justifications of the Solemn League and Covenant. In a pamphlet provocatively titled Three Kingdoms Made One, for example, it was stated that the Solemn League and Covenant aimed for the unmaking of England, Ireland and Scotland, and their replacement with ‘The Lord’s Kingdom’.120 The appeal appears to have been aimed not only at changing the political and ecclesiastical structures of the kingdoms but at the abandonment of the identities of their respective peoples. Through this ‘Covenant with the Lord’ would the inhabitants of the Three Kingdoms become ‘no more our own, but His people’.121 Precedent was still cited, but the narrowly focussed Scottish history that characterised the National Covenant and the apologetics surrounding it could no longer suffice, as that narrative had nothing to contribute to efforts to reform the religion of England and Ireland. Instead, biblical precedent dominates, with the narrative having shifted from one of justifying the lawfulness of presbyterianism within the framework of Scottish constitutional history, to one of 115 Samuel

Rutherford, Lex, Rex (John Field, 1644), pp. 378–9. Ibid., p. 379. 117 Ibid., p. 379. 118 Ibid., pp. 380–1. 119 Ibid., p. 383. 120 Ezekias Woodward, Three Kingdoms Made One: By Entering Covenant With One God (Christopher Meredith, 1643), p. 2. 121 Ibid., p. 2. 116

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establishing the lawfulness of presbyterianism within the universal Christian church.122 A defence of the Solemn League and Covenant from charges of ushering in a government that was in practice ‘tyrannical and episcopal’, for example, focussed not on any legal answer to these charges, as such a defence surely would have if written regarding National Covenant in the late 1630s, but on biblical precedent and the Covenant as a ‘blessed work’.123 One of the effects of the more openly radical context in which the Solemn League and Covenant was discussed was an increased emphasis on the oath which it contained, compared to that of the National Covenant. The fact that people subscribed to and swore the National Covenant was not the primary claim to lawfulness that its authors made. Its signatories conferred upon the National Covenant additional political capital and legitimacy, but the assertion of its authors was that its contents were lawful regardless, being simply a restatement of previously approved documents and doctrines. The National Covenant was presented with a threefold justification for its lawfulness: its lawful status based on precedent of Scottish history, the Godly and desirable nature of its content, and the consent of its signatories. The supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant could really only appeal to two of these justifications: the Covenant’s Godly and consensual nature. Therefore, while the justification of sovereignty on the basis of oaths was a facet of the National Covenant, it was a more important facet of the Solemn League and Covenant, and one which helps to explain the explosion of interest in oaths and their lawfulness after 1660. It might be argued therefore that the ‘civil religion aspect’ of the National Covenant, that is to say a religious act in the form of an oath which underpinned a civil settlement, was portrayed as a secondary facet to its constitutionalism. In the case of the Solemn League and Covenant, however, the ‘civil religion aspect’ had become its fundamental character, as the constitutionalism which had featured in the National Covenant was lacking. The sorts of arguments deployed in discussions of the Solemn League and Covenant often rested upon different precepts than those surrounding the publication of the National Covenant, therefore. Supporters sought to justify the presbyterian conception of church government on the basis of scripture or Patristic history, rather than examples from Scotland’s past. The primitive churches of Alexandria or Antioch were discussed in terms reminiscent of the Scottish Kirk in one pro-Solemn League and Covenant pamphlet, which referred to their ministers as presbyters, and asserted that ‘the people of Antioch had the call of the ministers, and none assumed that Authority over them in those days.’124 These defences of the Solemn League and Covenant are 122 Ibid.,

pp. 21–3. Calamy, The Great Danger of Covenant-refusing, and Covenant-breaking (M. F. for Christopher Meredith, 1645), sig. A3r. 124 John Brayne, The Churches Resurrection or the Creating of the New Heavens (George Whittington, 1649), pp. 8–9. 123 Edmund

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more explicitly biblical and millenarian in tone than the tone of the National Covenant, drawing on the sort of biblical precedent and apocalyptic language which characterised much controversial literature of the civil war period.125 In Samuel Rutherford’s 1644 defence of presbyterianism, it was to the universal examples of ‘the church of Jerusalem’, the ‘visible church of the Jewes and the visible church of the Gentiles’, and the precedents of ‘David, Solomon, and Ezakiah’ that he turned.126 Ultimately, the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant represented similar defences of a certain pattern of civil and church government. However, the contexts in which their proponents sought to defend these ideas were very different, the National Covenant being in the very narrow context of Scotland’s legal and religious history, and the Solemn League and Covenant in the wider one of the universal Christian church. If, in fact, the National Covenant can be seen as an exercise in upholding Scottish law, the Solemn League and Covenant can be viewed more in the context of the emerging concept of the law of nations. The image of the Solemn League and Covenant as an imposition upon England, concocted by rebellious and schismatic Scots, was commonplace by the 1660s.127 This view was always present to some degree however, and developed especially during the controversy surrounding the ‘Engagement’ of elements of the Covenanters with the king in 1647. This period surrounding the Second Civil War saw the narrative of the Solemn League and Covenant as a Scottish invention injurious to England and the English gain traction among supporters of parliament. In 1647 a faction of Scottish Covenanters made an ‘Engagement’ with King Charles, to fight on his behalf in exchange for Charles agreeing to a trial introduction of presbyterianism for three years. Many English opponents of the king viewed this as a severe betrayal, and a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant. This undermined the value that the Solemn League and Covenant held in 1643 as an equal collaboration between England and Scotland, and erstwhile English supporters of the Covenant began to express suspicion about the motives of their Scottish counterparts. A self-described ‘English Covenanter’ wrote in 1648 of suspicion that Scottish Engagers did not offer true presbyterianism at all, but a ‘Scottish Independency’ which was ‘as distastefull to us, as that in England or Amsterdam’.128

125 For

more on these themes see Kevin Killeen, The Political Bible in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chs 4–7; Donald E. Kennedy, ‘Holy Violence and the English Civil War’, Parergon, 32:3 (2015), 17–42. 126 Samuel Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries (E. Griffin, for Richard Whittaker and Andrew Crook, 1644), sig. A2v–B4v. 127 Anonymous, The Scotch Riddle Unfolded (Unknown, 1666), p. 1; Anonymous, Presbytery. The Presbyterians entered into a Covenant, a Damnable Covenant (s.n., 1663), pp. 1–4; J. L., Animadversions on the Scotch Covenant (Nath. Brook, 1662), p. 17. 128 ‘An English Covenanter’, The Scottish Mist Dispelled (M. S. for Henry Overton, 1648), pp. 2–3.

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Others warned of a ‘designe from the North’,129 which risked the destruction of England’s ‘lawes, liberties and priviledges’.130 The ‘Second English Civil War’ may be the term most commonly applied to the events of 1648–49, but for some contemporaries, particularly supporters of parliament, an Anglo-Scottish war would perhaps have been a more appropriate label. A news pamphlet describing the events leading up to the Battle of Preston, for example, describes the belligerents as ‘the Armies of England and Scotland’.131 Though it can be seen to some extent from 1638 in English reactions to the National Covenant, the idea of the cause of the Covenants as being associated with a concept of Scottish rebellion or rivalry between England and Scotland really gains prominence during the late 1640s, with major implications for attitudes towards the Covenants in England after 1660. The Solemn League and Covenant can be seen in a different context here: as an international treaty. A furious response to the Scottish intervention in England in support of the king in 1648, for example, characterised the actions of the Scots as ‘against the Law of Nations’, and accused them of breaking ‘all Leagues, Treaties and Covenants with England’.132 Shock was expressed that they would consider doing such a thing while ‘during, not only a Common League, but an extraordinary compact and Covenant with the Parliament of England’,133 which is understandable when it is considered that a few years prior the Solemn League and Covenant was being discussed in terms of ‘Three Kingdoms made one’.134 While the Solemn League and Covenant was undeniably in practice a treaty between two de facto independent political entities, the extent to which the signatory bodies to the Covenant were legitimately representative of their nations and to what degree those nations were genuinely independent in light of their shared sovereign was unclear. As will be discussed in chapter 2 in the context of the post-Restoration debate about the religious settlement, much hinged on different interpretations of the role of parliament and the location of legitimate power at different points throughout the chaos of the 1640s. It hardly needs stating that there was deep controversy throughout the 1640s regarding the power of parliament. Interestingly, even among those participating in the Westminster Assembly, there was from the start concern that the very nature of the Assembly was incompatible with presbyterianism. The root of this concern was that since the Assembly was constituted by parliament, and its proceedings voted on by parliament, it was, as Chad Van Dixhoorn phrased it, ‘ontologically

129 Anonymous,

England’s Alarm From the North (Robert White, 1648), p. 19. p. 1. 131 Anonymous, Bloody Newes From the Scottish Army (1648), p. 1. 132 Anonymous, The Scots Apostacy, Displayed, In a Treacherous Invasion of the English (s.n., 1648), p. 1. 133 Ibid., p. 1. 134 Woodward, Three Kingdoms Made One, p. 1. 130 Ibid.,

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Erastian’.135 This is emblematic of a paradox which would feature prominently in the thoughts and writings of presbyterians and Covenanters after 1660. Civil authority was one of the main mechanisms in which the potential to achieve their aims lay, but, for many, improper civil interference in spiritual matters was anathema. As will be further explored in coming chapters, after 1660 presbyterians and those who maintained a loyalty to the Covenant were increasingly divided over the extent to which they could accept a degree of civil influence in religious matters or not, even when such influence may have been beneficial to them. In some respects, this mirrored the aforementioned divide between English and Scottish presbyterians, though not always entirely neatly. Some Covenanters such as Zachary Crofton embraced arguments which emphasised parliamentary power over religious issues and oaths in order to defend the Long Parliament’s right to subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant. However, others would refuse to accept seemingly beneficial proposals of toleration out of a belief that civil authorities did not have the jurisdiction to extend such toleration, or on the basis that relinquishing their goal of reforming the entire church would breach the Solemn League and Covenant. Ultimately, from the 1630s and 1640s emerged a concept of ‘the Covenant’, to which people remained loyal following 1660. However, this was a confused and controversial concept, underpinned by two documents with certain similarities but quite different origins. While both Covenants shared a role as oaths underpinning a political and ecclesiastical settlement, the National Covenant was framed as a representation of the lawful status quo of the Scottish constitution. In the case of the Solemn League and Covenant, its constitutional position was much less straightforward, existing in the context of a treaty between powers, the constitutional status of which was extremely controversial after 1660. Furthermore, while the National Covenant upheld a church settlement which, it claimed, was ‘by law established’, the Solemn League and Covenant mandated for renewed reformation in England in a rather vague fashion, the details of which had proved controversial in the Westminster Assembly. Following the Restoration, therefore, the Solemn League and Covenant served as a frame of reference through which people could attempt to address the problem of church and state in the two churches and states of England and Scotland. At the same time however, loyalty to the Covenant created a fractious and confused situation in which people found themselves bound by solemn oath to a political and religious concept, the definitions of which were extremely nebulous.

135 Van

Dixhoorn, ‘Unity and Disunity’, 105–6.

54

2 1660: What Was to Be Restored? The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 did not result in either any official place for the Solemn League and Covenant, or a presbyterian church settlement of the sort that had been the hope of the Covenant’s supporters. On the contrary, the events of 1660–62 are, generally speaking, regarded as a triumph of episcopacy, and a defeat for Covenanting and presbyterianism. However, this is a view arrived at with the benefit of hindsight, and not necessarily one that contemporaries anticipated. Many Covenanters and presbyterians supported the idea of restoring the monarchy, and viewed the Restoration, initially, as a victory. For example, the Covenanter who in 1661 described the Restoration of Charles II as a divine act of ‘exemplary vengeance’ against those who broke the Covenant by killing Charles I clearly viewed the Restoration positively and as compatible with the Covenants.1 Presbyterians in England had supported the idea of restoring the monarchy in early 1660, and George Monck, whose march on London with an army from Scotland was instrumental in securing the Restoration, was supportive of the idea of instituting some form of presbyterianism.2 Samuel Pepys, writing in March of 1660, wrote of ‘the Covenant [being] printed and hung in churches again’, and associated this with ‘Great hopes of the King’s coming again’.3 Indeed, the king himself gave the impression that at least some form of compromise would be undertaken when he wrote in 1660 of reaching a settlement whereby the jurisdiction of bishops could be decided with input and consent from presbyters.4 Until ministers sympathetic to puritanism, presbyterianism, or the Solemn League and Covenant were ejected from the church on ‘Black St Bartholomew’s Day’, many people thought that the post-Restoration church settlement would include presbyterians, or be in some way compatible with the Covenant.5 Indeed, Jeffrey Collins has argued that 1

Theophilus Timorcus, The Covenanters Plea Against Absolvers (T. B., 1661), p. 4. Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643–1663 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 181–2. 3 Samuel Pepys, Diary and Correspondences, Vol. 1 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1889), p. 32. 4 King Charles II, A declaration to all His Majesties loving subjects, for the setling of church-­ government, and his gracious resolution touching the liberty of tender consciences … Also, that no bishop shall ordain, or exercise any part of jurisdiction, which appertains to the censures of the church (R. Wood, 1660), p. 1. 5 N. H. Keeble, ‘Introduction: Attempting Uniformity’, in Settling the Peace of the Church: 1662 Revisited, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 11. 2

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the Savoy Conference, which was called to settle the religious issues raised by the Restoration, and which ultimately led to the ejections of St Bartholomew’s Day, was not initially intended to exclude presbyterians. Rather, the intention of the conference at first was to modify the prayer book in a way that might be more acceptable to presbyterians and find a way to accommodate them within the church.6 It has been argued that, in the case of Scotland, the Solemn League and Covenant had by 1660 become increasingly associated with sympathy for the Stuart cause. The war with Cromwell in the early 1650s had resulted in a split in the Covenanter movement between the ‘Resolutioners’, who favoured being part of a wide alliance in support of Charles II, and the ‘Protestors’, who saw the king as an insincere supporter of presbyterianism and argued that Scotland ought to have been defended with a ‘Godly’ army of true believers, however small.7 The result of this split, argued Julia Buckroyd, was that throughout the 1650s the Solemn League and Covenant became increasingly associated with royalism. This is to say that it was not clear in 1660 that the political relationship between the Covenanters and the restored regime would be an antagonistic one. Many subscribers to the Covenants supported the return of the king and viewed the execution of his father as a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant.8 The role of the Covenanters in restoring the monarchy was acknowledged in the Cavalier parliament even by members who opposed the Covenant, and was used as an argument in favour of reaching some sort of compromise between presbyterianism and episcopacy.9 The failure to reach an agreeable compromise between episcopacy and presbyterianism at the Savoy Conference and the subsequent ejection of presbyterian and puritan ministers was not, Jeffery Collins has argued, the desire of the king and his lord chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon. Rather, it was the result of the participating bishops’ insistence on a jure divino conception of their authority fundamentally at odds with the beliefs of the presbyterians.10 The Earl of Clarendon had, in fact, felt strongly that an accommodation between episcopacy and presbyterianism would be desirable, though he did not want any official role for the Solemn League and Covenant, due to its dangerous political implications.11 6 Jeffery Collins, ‘The Restoration of Bishops and the Royal Supremacy’, Church History, 68:3 (1999), 578. 7 Julia Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland 1660–1681 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980), pp. 7–10. 8 Keeble, ‘Attempting Uniformity’, pp. 3–8. See also MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant, ch. 6. For presbyterian attitudes towards the Regicide, see Elliot Vernon, ‘The Quarrel of the Covenant: The London Presbyterians and the Regicide’, in The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I, ed. Jason Peacey (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 202–24. 9 The funeral of the good old cause, or, A covenant of both houses of Parliament against the Solemn League and Covenant (R. Royston, 1661), pp. 4–8. 10 Collins, ‘The Restoration of Bishops’, 578. 11 Paul Seaward, ‘Circumstantial Temporary Concessions: Clarendon, Comprehension and

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To the prominent presbyterian William Prynne, writing in 1659, the turmoil of the past decades was caused by those who rejected the lawfully constituted Solemn League and Covenant in favour of the creation of the Commonwealth which they had ‘neither the power nor the Authority to impose on the Nation’.12 To those that subscribed to this view, the alliance of Scottish presbyterians and English Royalists which had been defeated in the Second Civil War represented the lawful status quo, and the Commonwealth that followed was an illegal usurpation. It is not surprising therefore that many expected the Solemn League and Covenant to be restored along with the monarchy. Certainly there was concern among royalists about the presbyterian distaste for investment of power in an individual in the ecclesiological sphere, and the implications this might have for their loyalty to the king.13 However, as Kirsteen MacKenzie has argued, with Charles II having in fact subscribed to the Covenant as part of the Treaty of Breda with the Scots in 1650, and presbyterians dominating the parliamentary Committee for the Appointment of Ministers, that in the early 1660s ‘all indications were that the “Covenanted Reformation” was going to be restored to its premium position’.14 Others hoped to reach some sort of church settlement which would be agreeable to both the episcopal and presbyterian factions who had supported the Restoration. A proposal for how compromise between episcopacy and presbyterianism might be achieved was published in 1661, authored by ‘a Countrey Minister, a Friend to Both, a Stickler for Neither, but a Zealot for the Peace of the Church’. This categorises the motivations of the two parties explicitly. The beliefs of the supporters of episcopacy are described as follows: The Episcoparian [sic] pleads (as his grand Principles swaying his Conscience) – 1. (Not baulking Scripture) the harmonious consent of Antiquity, as the best Comentary upon the Records of Church affairs mentioned in Scripture. 2. The Constitutions of this Church, conformable to the Law of the Land.15

In other words, to supporters of episcopacy, emphasis is placed on the church’s historical foundation, and compatibility with the law. The presbyterian on the Uniformity’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 62–3. 12 William Prynne, Concordia Discors or, The dissonant harmony of sacred publique oathes, protestations, leagues, covenants, ingagements, lately taken by many time-serving saints, officers, without scruple of conscience (Edward Thomas, 1659), pp. 11–12. 13 Alasdair Raffe, ‘Presbyterian Politics and the Restoration of Scottish Episcopacy’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 151. 14 MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant, p. 182. 15 ‘A Countrey Minister, A Friend to Both, a Stickler for Neither, but a Zealot for the Peace of the Church’, Terms of accomodation, between those of the Episcopall, and their brethren of the Presbyterian perswasions supposed to be consistent with the declared principles of the most moderate of both parties, and humbly presented to the consideration of His Majesty, and both Houses of Parliament (Joseph Nevil, 1661), p. 2.

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other hand is said to be motivated by ‘the Letter of the Scripture, to which all Antiquity must be reduced, and judged by it’ as well as by the Solemn League and Covenant.16 In this view, episcopacy is portrayed as centred around historical precedent, and presbyterianism around scripture. The conception that the author had of the motives of the respective parties, as well as the unworkable nature of some of the proposals made, illustrates the complex problems caused in the Restoration period by the clash of incompatible models of the nature of the church and its relationship to the state. While true that presbyterians often favoured appeals to scripture over history, there was still an undeniable current of presbyterian/Covenanter history, and one that had emerged alongside and was entangled with ideas about church and state in complete opposition to the ‘Constitutions of this Church, conformable to the Law of the Land’, as supporters of the episcopacy conceived of them.17 Some argued that the Solemn League and Covenant and the anti-Erastian conception of church and state which underpinned it might be set aside in the interests of compromise and in the hope of accommodating presbyterians within a broader church. Others, however, viewed the Solemn League and Covenant as an absolute commitment which could not be abandoned even if continuing to support it would make presbyterians pariahs and exclude them from political life. This issue would manifest itself in various ways throughout the period covered by this book. In 1660, Scottish presbyterians had to decide whether to support attempts to accommodate presbyterianism in some fashion only in Scotland. Many Scottish presbyterians, including leading Resolutioner petitioners to the king, backed such an idea, even though strictly it would be a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant to abandon the aim of reforming the English church.18 Similar issues would surround the various attempts at implementing indulgence for presbyterians in the late 1660s and 1670s, with presbyterians often divided on whether they could accept indulgence on an Erastian basis or not. Another attempt at a proposal for a unifying church settlement from John Mayer contained hard to resolve contradictions. Mayer, for example, proposed that bishops be responsible for the ordination or excommunication of presbyters but have no further power over them beyond that.19 Again this might appear to be a reasonable compromise, but it had uncomfortable implications for presbyterian conceptions of the nature of the church. Polly Ha has argued that the issues of ordination and excommunication were points of fundamental theoretical controversy for many English presbyterians.20 This was because many 16

Ibid., p. 2. John Coffey, ‘Buchanan and The Scottish Covenanters’, in George Buchanan: Political Thought in Early Modern Britain and Europe, ed. Caroline Erskine and Roger A. Mason (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 197. 18 Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland, p. 17. 19 John Mayer, Unity restor’d to the Church of England (A. Rice, 1661), p. 6. 20 Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 98–106.

17

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presbyterians felt that the idea that ministers must be ordained by bishops would have dramatic implications for the continental reformed churches, by implying that the calling of a minister ordained by a bishop was more legitimate than that of a minister who had not been.21 Furthermore, the inclusion or not of an individual in a church was for many a matter of the consent of the congregation, meaning that allowing bishops to decide on matters of excommunication was a usurpation of a jurisdiction which legitimately lay with the congregation as a whole.22 In the event, any settlement involving theoretically apolitical bishops was not attempted, as bishops were restored to their position of voting in parliament, a move which rendered a settlement acceptable to presbyterians unlikely even before the ejection of presbyterian ministers on St Bartholomew’s Day, 1662.23 This sparked a debate which centred around different conceptions of ancient law, and how this interacts with the will of God as expressed through solemn oaths. Supporters of the right of bishops to vote in parliament made appeals to biblical, patristic and Saxon history.24 The Anglican polemicist Jeremiah Stephens, for example, argued that there were many Saxon-era precedents of bishops participating in civil courts, and that ‘bishops were equal or rather superior to the Thanus Major’, or major Saxon nobles.25 Elsewhere the author argued that historical examples demonstrated that ‘Bishops and principal Clergy were always of great authority in our Kingdome, especially for making of Laws and Constitutions of all kinds, and executing them.’26 Others turned to the example of Magna Carta, and used it to argue that its guarantee that the ‘Church of England, shall be free, and shall enjoy all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable’ meant that denying bishops their place in parliament would be not only a usurpation of their jurisdiction but a denial of their English liberties.27 A strand of argument therefore appears to have gained 21

Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., pp. 106–10. 23 Also known as ‘Black St Bartholomew’s Day’, or the ‘Great Ejection’, Bartholomew’s Day 1662 saw the exclusion from the Church of England of nearly two thousand ministers who refused to reject the Covenants and embrace jure divino episcopacy and cemented a view of the Restoration settlement as incompatible with both English presbyterianism and the Solemn League and Covenant. N. H. Keeble, ‘The Nonconformist Narrative of the Bartholomeans’, in Settling the Peace of the Church, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 216. 24 ‘Saxonism’ was a feature of many early modern debates around the nature of the church; see Charles W. A. Prior, A Confusion of Tongues: Britain’s Wars of Reformation 1625–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ch. 3. 25 Jeremiah Stephens, An apology for the ancient right and power of the bishops to sit and vote in parliaments … with an answer to the reasons maintained by Dr. Burgesse and many others against the votes of bishops (W. Godbid, for Richard Thrake, 1660), p. 23; Stuart Handley, ‘Jeremiah Stephens’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 26 Stephens, An apology, p. 11. 27 Anonymous, An Answer to this quodlibetical question, whether the bishops make a fundamental and essential part of the English Parliament (A. Seile, 1661), p. 3. 22

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prominence around 1660 which not only portrayed the government of the church by bishops as a matter of adiaphora within the jurisdiction of the king to impose, but which conceived of an anciently rooted lawful status quo wherein the spiritual duties of bishops extend to a certain jurisdiction within the temporal sphere. This was not a new argument, and had been a feature of ecclesiological debates in the pre-civil war period, but the question of whether to restore bishops to parliament lent this issue fresh urgency following the Restoration. While the context of the controversies could and did change, many of the fundamental questions over the constitutional positions of the English and Scottish churches which had plagued them since the reformation remained after 1660. Covenanter responses to this focussed on the role of the Solemn League and Covenant in overriding whatever ancient legal position may or may not have been in place in England. ‘Every conscientious Covenanter oweth his Justice and Duty … To obey the King as chief Governour of Church and State enjoyning things lawful and honest (so not covenanted against) though not the very best’, wrote the anonymous author of an anti-episcopal pamphlet, explicitly framing oaths as a form of Godly law which could override temporal law.28 Others attacked the general principle of attempting to discern the status of the law by examining ancient records and stories, which one author described as ‘uncertain; as filled up with Monkish Tales, much resembling the Theomachy of the Giants before the Theban War, among the Grecians.’29 This, they argued, could lead to a situation where ‘there will be Lawyers enough found to justifie any Authority, in a more unreasonable thing’.30 In this reading the Covenants, when considered as oaths endorsed by God, provided a surer route to discerning a ‘Godly’ form of government than attempting to do so via the lens of an uncertain and disputable ancient history. Though some opponents of the Solemn League and Covenant actively rejected the claims of its proponents to be harnessing a Godly authority for their political and ecclesiological vision, others engaged with the concept in an apparently sincere way, while still ultimately opposing much of the agenda that the Covenant represented. In a debate in the English parliament about the public burning of the Solemn League and Covenant, one speaker argued that instead of rejecting outright the principles underpinning the Covenant, what other parliamentary opponents of it were in fact doing was ‘Covenanting against the Covenant; entering into a new one in protesting the destruction of the Old.’31 A distinction was acknowledged therefore between a complete theoretical rejection of the Covenants based on an intellectual opposition to their underlying ideas,

28 Anonymous,

A declaration of the Presbiterians (Printed for T. Dacres, 1660), p. 2. P. S., A letter from an anti-hierarchical divine in the country, to a member of the House of Commons (s.n., 1661), p. 3. 30 Ibid., p. 5. 31 The funeral of the good old cause, or, A covenant of both houses of Parliament against the Solemn League and Covenant (R. Royston, 1661), p. 4. 29

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and a conditional rejection based either on their practical negative effects or the ability of parliament and the king to replace them with new covenants. A similar attitude can be seen in an act passed in the Scottish parliament in the same year, which began by acknowledging the importance of lawful covenants, stating that ‘the making of Leagues and Bonds, is an undoubted Privilege of the Crown, and a Proper Part of the Royal Prerogative of the Kings of this Kingdom.’32 However it then went on to state that via ‘His Majesties special warrand and approbation’ the obligation has been removed to ‘endeavor by Armes a Reformation of Religion in the Kingdom of England, or to meddle with the publik government and administration of that Kingdom’.33 The question at issue would appear to be one of legitimacy: could a covenant or oath be legitimate in sight of God, and therefore bind its signatories, even if civil powers opposed it? Or, as some opponents of a full restoration of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1660–61 appear to have argued, was the legitimacy of an oath or covenant dependent on its legitimate status in temporal law, and approval from the monarch? Gauden and Crofton’s debate

In 1660, John Gauden published a book entitled Analysis, The Loosing of Saint Peter’s Bands, in which he made the argument that the Solemn League and Covenant was not lawful, and therefore did not bind those who had taken it, and that it ought to have no place in the Restoration settlement. Zachary Crofton responded to this work with Analepsis, or Saint Peters Bonds abide: For Rehetorick Worketh No Release, which criticised Gauden’s work, and argued that the Covenant did continue to bind. In 1661, Gauden published a response to Crofton and other critics of Analysis entitled Anti-Baal Berith. Gauden’s writings on the Covenant, and Crofton’s response, represent one of the most prominent and thorough debates on what, if any, role the Covenant should have after the Restoration.34 Both Gauden and Crofton had supported the Restoration of the monarchy 32

An Act of Parliament passed in the first Parliament of King Charles the Second in Scotland, concerning the League and Covenant and discharging the renewing thereof without His Majesties warrand and approbation (Edinburgh: Evan Tyler, 1661), p. 1. 33 Ibid., p. 1. 34 Discussion of Gauden in historiography understandably tends to focus on Eikon Basilike; see for example Helmer J. Helmers, The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), ch. 4; Sean Kelsey, ‘The Kings’ Book: Eikon Basilike and the English Revolution of 1649’, in The English Revolution c.1590–1720, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). For discussion of Gauden’s The Loosing of Saint Peters Bands, see Marcus K. Harmes, ‘Protestant Bishops in Restoration England’, Parergon, 26:1 (2009), 175–96. To my knowledge there is no detailed analysis of Crofton’s work, though he is discussed in Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘The Restoration of the Church of England, 1660–1662:

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in some form, but held different views on matters of church government and the relationship between the church and the state. Crofton had been ejected from his ministry for refusing to engage with the Commonwealth regime, and yet would suffer the same fate again in 1661 as a result of his support for presbyterianism and the Solemn League and Covenant, and was even briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London as a traitor.35 Gauden had strong royalist convictions, and is widely suspected to have been the author of Eikon Basilike, and as a royalist Anglican who was made a bishop in 1660, he in many ways represents a typical voice of the episcopal Restoration regime. However, Gauden was often criticised for what other episcopacy-supporting royalists considered to be an excessive willingness to negotiate with and comprehend presbyterians.36 Gauden took a strongly royalist position in these debates with Crofton, but as Jacqueline Rose has noted, he was ‘moderate enough to retain a living in the 1650s’.37 He had also held meetings with the presbyterians Richard Baxter and Thomas Manton in the early stages of the Restoration, in the hope of reaching some kind of compromise for a ‘primitive episcopacy’. Crofton, who was born in Ireland, and first came to England in 1646, was not a ‘typical Covenanter’ in the sense that he was not part of the Scottish or English parliamentarian elites who had agreed and propagated the Solemn League and Covenant. This debate is therefore uniquely interesting as it was conducted by two people who were somewhat atypical of the ‘side’ they were arguing for, and who had some areas in which they had sympathy for similar forms of compromise. Despite their areas of agreement, however, they differed strongly on the nature and lawfulness of the Solemn League and Covenant. The points of agreement and disagreement between the two writers provide insights into the constitutional issues facing England after the Restoration, and some of the varied views which existed on how to resolve them. Gauden argued that the ‘bare words’ of an oath did not bind, but rather the extent to which the substance of the oath represented a legitimate duty to God or man.38 Crofton, on the other hand, argued that even an explicitly illegal oath, if acceptable to God, ‘binds the conscience’. Both writers concurred that the Solemn League and Covenant had not become law when parliament agreed to it in 1643, but Crofton argued that parliament did have the authority to subscribe to the Ordination, Re-ordination and Conformity’, in The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited, ed. Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 208–22. 35 E. C. Vernon, ‘Crofton, Zachary (1626–1672)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 36 Bryan D. Spinks, ‘John Gauden (1599/1600?–1662)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 37 Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 159. 38 Gauden had long conceived of lawful oaths as only being possible in the case of them representing clear, uncontroversial scriptural truth, and had previously attacked the Solemn League and Covenant on this basis in 1645; see John Gauden, Certaine Scruples and Doubts about taking the Solemn League and Covenant (s.n., 1645), pp. 1–8.

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Covenant as an oath, and that this still bound the nation they represented. They also both agreed that, theoretically, a ‘reformed’ variant of episcopacy which closely resembled the ancient church would be compatible with the Solemn League and Covenant, but Crofton did not accept that any form of episcopacy likely to be enacted after the Restoration met this standard.39 Both writers, to varying extents, engaged with the idea that church government had a relationship to the common civil good. Gauden viewed church government as a matter which primarily existed within the king’s jurisdiction, and viewed the Covenant as an unacceptable infringement. Crofton felt that church government must be dictated by ‘the foundations of Christ and His Apostles’, but also argued that the people, and by extension parliament, had a role in upholding this legitimate government for the general good, and that they, rather than the king, should have jurisdiction in church matters. As mentioned in the first chapter, many prominent defences of the Solemn League and Covenant can broadly be placed into two categories. The first of these emphasised the positive aspects of the Covenants themselves, either as Godly or practically useful, and the second emphasised their status as lawfully binding oaths, and representations of the consent of their signatories. Likewise, Gauden’s criticism of the Solemn League and Covenant is divided into two sections, roughly corresponding to rejections of these two arguments. Gauden began with a series of points attacking the political utility and religious desirability of the extirpation of episcopacy, and asserting that presbyterianism was anathema to England’s legal, political and religious history. He then deployed these arguments in an attempt to demonstrate that the Solemn League and Covenant did not lawfully bind its signatories, and certainly not to the complete extirpation of episcopacy.40 In attacking the lawfulness of the Covenant as an oath in this way, Gauden presents a specific conception of oaths as embodiments of ‘that force of Reason, Justice, Religion and Duty to God, or man, ourselves or others’.41 It is this, he argued, that ‘morally and really obligeth men’, rather than the ‘bare words of the Covenant’.42 In other words, the power of an oath extended only so far as that which was sworn was in keeping with one’s existing moral duties. Here, Gauden engaged with perhaps the most pressing legacy of the Solemn League and Covenant, which was the extent to which those who had subscribed to the Covenant in the 1640s remained bound by it. Gauden argued that, while people may have had legitimate reasons to subscribe to the Covenant in the past, if their 39

Despite this, after the matter of church government was settled on episcopal lines, Crofton would argue that dissenting ministers ought to maintain a degree of ‘communication’ with the episcopal church, as this was preferable to total disengagement. This will be discussed further in chapter 3 of this book. 40 John Gauden, Analysis, The Loosing of Saint Peter’s Bands (J. Macock, for Andrew Crook, 1660), pp. 6–19. 41 Ibid., p. 14. 42 Ibid., p. 14.

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subscription now conflicted with their ‘duty to God, or man, [themselves] or others’, then they were not bound by it. Gauden also tackled the subject of whether the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant forbade all forms of episcopacy. As discussed in previous chapters, this had always been a controversial aspect of the Covenants even in a purely Scottish context, and the extent to which the 1581 Negative Confession and the National Covenant had been subject to debate in the 1630s. In the case of the Solemn League and Covenant, this controversy was even greater, as the Covenant ambiguously mandated for the extirpation of ‘Prelacy’, and the ‘reformation’ of the English church ‘according to the word of God, and example of the best reformed Churches’.43 Gauden argued that the episcopacy and the presbytery, though both subject to human frailties and foibles, were ultimately both attempts at recreating a primitive church.44 There was therefore no reason, Gauden argued, that a ‘primitive, reformed and regular Episcopacy’ could not exist compatibly with the Solemn League and Covenant, in ‘an efficacious conjunction with Presbytery’.45 Gauden argued that interpretations of the Solemn League and Covenant which rejected any form of ‘primitive’ or ‘moderate’ episcopacy were not only inaccurate but actively hindered the search for a church compatible with the ancient examples which most agreed were desirable to emulate. On the subject of ‘primitive episcopacy’, Gauden wrote that: Many sober and honest men are by their once taking of the Covenant so scared from all complyings with any church government under the name of Bishops, or notion of Episcopacy, never so reformed and regulated, that they fear by looking back to the Primitive, Catholick, and universal Government of this and all other ancient churches, to be turned into pillars of Apostasy, as Lot’s wife was into a pillar of salt.46

While the episcopacy of the 1630s and 1640s might have been corrupt, Gauden argued that, in the context of the 1660s, it was possible to have a form ‘never so reformed and regulated’. Some form of episcopacy, in a ‘Primitive’ form, was the ‘universal Government of this and all other ancient churches’, so overzealous loyalty to the Covenant, argued Gauden, would risk scaring

43

A Solemn League and Covenant, For Reformation and Defence of Religion (Edw. Husbands, 1643), p. 5. 44 For more on the relevance of ideas of the primitive ancient church in this period see Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 26–75; Prior, A Confusion, chs 3, 7; Sarah Mortimer, ‘Kingship and the “Apostolic Church”, 1620–1650’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 13:2 (2011), 225–46; John C. English, ‘The Duration of the Primitive Church: An Issue for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Anglicans’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 73:1 (2004), 35–52. 45 Gauden, Analysis, p. 14. 46 Ibid., pp. 5–6.

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otherwise Godly people away from achieving their stated aim of participating in a reformed, Godly church. Crofton did not reject this notion outright, and was receptive to the idea that, theoretically, forms of episcopacy might be legitimate, and compatible with the Solemn League and Covenant. In his response, Crofton wrote that if the opponents of the Covenant truly wanted an episcopacy compatible with scripture and the ancient church, then it would be ‘not only consistent with, but the very complement of the Covenant’.47 However, Crofton wrote that he feared that in fact what was meant by episcopacy was ‘that frame and fabric by which the man of sin was made manifest, did advance himself in the Temple of God, above (not only all his fellow Ministers or Bishops) but even magistrates.’48 Therefore Gauden and Crofton fundamentally agreed that the terms episcopacy and presbytery can represent attempts to emulate ancient ideals of church government. However, they disagreed on the extent to which contemporary episcopacy had become distant from its ‘primitive’ origins, and the degree to which it was potentially redeemable. To Crofton, whatever the laudable original intentions of episcopacy, the term had come to embody the worst sort of unlawful human errors, and must therefore be abolished or reformed beyond recognition from its contemporary state.49 Another presbyterian critic of Gauden objected to his interpretation of episcopacy in Anatomy of Dr. Gauden’s Idolized Non-Sense and Blasphemy, In his Pretended Analysis or setting forth the true sense of the Covenant. This text argued that the Solemn League and Covenant was entirely clear in its meaning, and that the use of the term ‘episcopacy’ expressly relates to the Prelacy or Episcopacy then in being and use in England (which was far from Apostolique and Primitive, as this Doctor [Gauden], in his words before cited out of his Book of Tears, hath clearly confessed) and to the extirpating of whatsoever in it favoured of Superstition, Tyranny, Schism, Prophaness, Sinfulness, or was otherwise contrary to a found Doctrine, or the power of godliness.50

Some form of episcopacy, in this view, could be compatible with the Solemn League and Covenant. However, this could happen only if this ‘episcopacy’ could be sufficiently reformed to be closer to its ‘Apostolique and Primitive’ form, which the author argued the contemporary English version no longer resembled. The two visions of episcopacy that are presented differ not only in detail but in justification, with the legitimacy of Gauden’s model focussed on the consent of the king, while his critics focus on scriptural legitimacy and ‘the 47

Zachary Crofton, Analepsis, or Saint Peters Bonds abide: For Rehetorick Worketh No Release (Ralph Smith, 1660), p. 3. 48 Ibid., p. 3. 49 This had been a consistent point of contention among English Protestants for some time; see Prior, Defining, ch. 3. 50 Anonymous, Anatomy of Dr. Gauden’s Idolized Non-Sense and Blasphemy, In his Pretended Analysis or setting forth the true sense of the Covenant (1660), p. 7.

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power of godliness’.51 When Gauden does engage with scripture, it is generally not to portray his favoured vision of episcopacy as inherently Godly or scripturally accurate. Instead Gauden deployed scripture to support the right of a sovereign monarch to be the arbiter of appropriate forms of church government, and the duty of people to ‘humbly submit to what the King in this point, as Supream, shall see fit to establish in his Church’.52 Episcopacy was not, in Gauden’s view, of a universal jure divino legitimacy; rather it was an issue for the king to dictate for the civil good. The example of the Mosaic covenant is especially illuminating here. In Gauden’s view, Moses only had the authority to agree to such a covenant in his capacity as ‘Supream Governor or King’. Crofton disagreed with this, and argued instead that it was an example of a people collectively covenanting with God.53 There are two issues at stake here, therefore. Firstly, whether there was a jure divino form of church government. If there was not, where does the authority to define the common civil good, and how this related to ecclesiology, reside? The answers which supporters of the Covenants had to these questions were not always straightforward, as they engaged with both jure divino and civil conceptions of religion in different contexts. As discussed in the first chapter, Covenanters often cast presbyterianism as jure divino, but also commonly defended it on the grounds of common consent and lawful establishment as well. These discussions relating to the justification for certain forms of church government are particularly interesting as both Crofton and Gauden, as well as the author of Anatomy, all made arguments that portrayed their favoured position as having value in functioning as a civil religion. Gauden argued for a fairly straightforward Erastian approach where religion is utilised by the monarch as a tool for civil good, while the author of Anatomy viewed the Solemn League and Covenant as a means to utilise presbyterianism for the extirpation of vices both religious and temporal, such as ‘Superstition, Tyranny, Schism, Prophaness, Sinfulness’.54 Crofton’s example of the Mosaic covenant as a collective act illustrates the division between him and Gauden as to whether religious authority resided solely with the monarch, or in some concept of a collective popular will, as represented in this case by the Solemn League and Covenant. While he argued that the Solemn League and Covenant did not necessarily mandate for a jure divino presbyterianism, Gauden also addressed the possibility of an overtly presbyterian church settlement, and criticised it on two bases. Firstly, he argued that imposing a presbyterian church settlement was practically unfeasible, undesirable politically, and risked causing all sorts of ‘improsperities, disorders, contempts, confusions, wars, spoils and bloodshed 51 Gauden,

Analysis, p. 6; Crofton, Analepsis, pp. 13–14; Anonymous, Anatomy of Dr. Gauden’s Idolized Non-Sense, p. 7. 52 Gauden, Analysis, p. 19. 53 Crofton, Analepsis, p. 20. 54 Anon, Anatomy, p. 7.

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upon all estates and degrees’.55 The potentially anarchic and democratic aspects of presbyterianism had been a consistent feature of criticisms since the time of the National Covenant and before. In this case, however, Gauden combined this line of argument with the assertion that not only were such changes practically fraught, but fundamentally illegal. The Solemn League and Covenant, he argued, mandated for change in areas over which only the king had jurisdiction. Nobody had the authority to ‘bind the subjects of people of England … without the kings consent, no more than the vow of a servant, or son, a daughter or wife (in Moses’ law) could bind them without, yea, against the declared consent of their master, father or husband, under whose protection they were’.56 Here Gauden displayed a Hobbesian understanding of kingship whereby submission to a monarch represented implicit acceptance of a contract that invested the inherent sovereign authority of the people entirely with that monarch in exchange for protection. Crofton and other presbyterians would understand monarchy in a contractual way as well, but their views on the nature of the contract and the role that the king had in the contract differed from Gauden’s. In Crofton’s conception, the king was a party to both the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant. However, his role was not viewed as conditional upon his actual personal consent, as the king was acting solely in his capacity as a representative of the people. Here, Crofton’s view saw the concept of the ‘virtual person’ (as Hobbes described it) of the king completely decoupled from the actual person of the king. In other words, to Gauden the people could not impose new terms of kingship without the king’s personal consent, whereas to Crofton, they could.57 As will be discussed later, the extent to which the people, or their representatives in parliament, could impose conditions upon monarchy would be crucial in the events and discourse which surrounded the Revolution of 1688. Gauden continued this line of argument, and stated that no covenant could lawfully bind people to create change in areas in which they had no authority, and since the ‘Government of the church of England, especially as established by law, neither was nor is in any private mens power’, private men covenanting to change it could not in fact lawfully be bound to do so.58 To Gauden, the government of the church is seen as an inherent part of the public interest, and therefore a matter of supreme and sovereign public authority. However, the disagreement between him and Crofton on the subject, and supporters and detractors of the Solemn League and Covenant, is whether this sovereignty 55 Gauden,

Analysis, p. 7. Ibid., p. 6. 57 For more on general contemporary thought on the nature of kingship and the role of protective contract see Glenn Burgess, British Political Thought, 1500–1660: The Politics of the Post-Reformation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), ch. 7; Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 264–308. 58 Gauden, Analysis, p. 17. 56

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resided with the king or, in some sense, in the ongoing and changeable consent of the people. Furthermore, to Gauden, the Solemn League and Covenant did not only involve ‘private men’ intruding into matters outside their lawful jurisdiction of influence, but one kingdom intruding unlawfully into the affairs of another. Gauden described the Solemn League and Covenant as originating ‘from a foraign influence and design’ and called it ‘contrary to our ancient laws, both ecclesiastical and civil’.59 In Gauden’s supplementary text to his Analysis, Anti-Baal Berith, he elaborated on this position by claiming that by encouraging the ‘alienation of Church or Bishops lands’ the Solemn League and Covenant failed to be ‘agreeable to all laws Mosaick, civil, Imperial, Canon, and the common laws of England’.60 This illustrates a key reason why the Solemn League and Covenant could not be a success, yet would not completely disappear either. The Covenant represented a potential model of cooperation and integration for England and Scotland, and therefore continued to have relevance. However, the joining of two kingdoms in the Union of Crowns, while their civil and ecclesiastical laws remained separate, created a situation where any attempt to undertake religious or constitutional programmes across both kingdoms was fraught with difficulty, as many people viewed the lawful constitution of church and state in the two kingdoms in very different ways. Another way in which Gauden argued that the Covenant was unlawful was as a form of perjury, as it would seem to supersede the lawful Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. Interestingly, this is a similar line of argument to that used in the 1630s in support of the National Covenant, in that it rejected innovations which would cause people to perjure themselves with respect to existing law and oaths, much as the National Covenant was portrayed as a rejection of innovations which would breach the ‘confessions’ of sixteenth-century Scotland. Crofton argued against this view on the basis that such arguments ‘lieth in the miscarried circumstances which do relate unto the imposing, and taking of it’, and that they ignored the fact that both houses of parliament subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant in the 1640s.61 Therefore, the division between Crofton and Gauden was whether the legitimacy of parliament at a given time could supersede the ‘ancient laws’ that composed the unwritten constitution of England, and where the location of ultimate sovereignty was when the king and parliament were at odds. Gauden argued that parliament could not have decided to change England’s system of church government without the consent of the king: ‘Nor can it [episcopacy] be changed but by his Royal Assent to the Counsel and the Desire of the Two Houses of Parliament.’62 Crofton takes an interesting line of argument 59

Ibid., pp. 6–7. John Gauden, Anti-Baal Berith (London, 1661), p. 96. 61 Crofton, Analepsis, p. 12. 62 Gauden, Analysis, pp. 17–18. 60

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in response to this, in which he does not attempt to claim that the Solemn League and Covenant was made law in 1643. In fact, he explicitly acknowledged that it was not: ‘I will not determine, that an Order of Ordinance of One, or both Houses, may have the permanent tie of a law.’63 Instead, Crofton focussed on the legitimacy of the Covenant as an oath, rather than as a piece of law. Crofton proposed that if one acknowledged the authority of a parliament to act on behalf of the people, as he hoped ‘no Englishman’ would fail to do, and that an oath ‘is in itself, natura Rei, a permanent bond’, then the conclusion must be reached that parliament was ‘a power sufficiently compleat to impose or enjoyn’ an oath on behalf of the people.64 Therefore a distinction is made by Crofton between the power to make laws, requiring both the assent of the king and parliament, and the power to act as legitimate representatives of the people in other respects, which in this case he claimed for parliament alone, at least in the circumstances of the 1640s. Crofton’s suggestion that parliament could impose oaths which bound the people, separate from parliament’s power to make law, was a clever if somewhat convoluted solution to continue to claim legitimacy for the Solemn League and Covenant, possibly born of necessity as much as a sincere belief in the constitutional validity. However, this argument does serve to highlight the powerful and dynamic ways in which appeals to the legitimacy of oaths such as the Covenant could elevate certain conceptions of ‘popular’ authority over that of the king. In this argument, the popular element appears to be parliament, in its role as a representative of the people. Crofton’s argument for English parliamentary authority for the Solemn League and Covenant parallels one made in the National Covenant itself. The National Covenant advocated for the authority of Scottish parliamentary acts over the decisions made by Charles I, similar to how Crofton here argued for the authority of the English parliament over the decisions of Charles II. In both instances, the Covenanter position is one of asserting the sovereignty of national parliaments as being supreme to the supranational authority of the king. More specifically, it is to invest parliament with an authority over matters of religion which resembles Erastianism, elevating parliaments as the arbiters of the relationship between religion and the civil good, rather than the king. As will be discussed in the later chapters of this book, the extent to which monarchs could be compelled, either by parliaments or their subjects at large, to uphold a specific pattern of religion was a crucial issue in the Exclusion crisis and Revolution of 1688. In these instances, the form of religion which the exclusionists and revolutionaries sought to impose on the monarch was a much broader concept of Protestantism than the presbyterianism mandated by the Covenants, but the principle that the monarch could not dictate the nation’s religion was similar. 63 Crofton, 64

Analepsis, p. 12. Ibid., p. 12.

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While the Covenanter position is usually viewed as an anti-Erastian conception firmly rooted in a ‘two kingdoms’ approach to church and state, a certain degree of what might be termed ‘parliamentary Erastianism’ is identifiable in Crofton’s positions here. This is not to argue that they represent Erastianism in the classic, Cromwellian sense.65 Rather, in both the National Covenant and Crofton’s arguments, it is the absolute right and duty of the people at large to defend their jure divino religion, and therefore, in practice, this authority is entrusted to parliaments. Crofton may have been willing to explicate this more forcefully than his Scottish counterparts did as, due to their distinct origins in the sixteenth century, presbyterianism in England had not always been as anti-Erastian as it was in Scotland.66 The divergence between Crofton and Gauden is not, as might be expected, an absolute one of de jure versus civil religion. Rather, both were willing to conceive of the church/state relationship in terms that resemble later, more explicit, ideas of civil religion, but cannot reconcile their views on the authority which ought to settle the question of the relationship between the realm’s civil and spiritual needs. The tensions between interpretations of the Solemn League and Covenant and forms of presbyterianism which accepted certain degrees of civil control over religious matters and those which did not would become more apparent later in the Restoration period as presbyterians debated the acceptance or not of government overtures towards toleration. Furthermore, while Crofton’s hope of a presbyterian church settlement across the British kingdoms would not be realised, in some respects his conception of church government as rooted in consent is very similar to the settlement which would eventually emerge after 1688. The settlement which followed the Revolution of 1688 saw the re-­establishment of presbyterianism in Scotland, not on a jure divino basis, but on the basis that it was the preferred religion of the people of Scotland.67 This justification has echoes of Crofton’s arguments that the people’s representatives in parliament had authority over dictating church government. This is not to say that either Gauden or Crofton viewed religion primarily in a ‘civil’ manner. Rather, both appear to have thought it possible to reify 65

For more on the nature of the Protectorate’s Erastianism and how it related to other forms of church government see Jeffrey Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 5; Charles W. A. Prior, ‘Rethinking Church and State During the English Interregnum’, Historical Research, 87 (2013). 66 Polly Ha has argued that the evolution of English presbyterianism in the Elizabethan period involved a conscious effort to frame it as not only compatible with the royal supremacy over church affairs, but complementary to it. Early proponents of presbyterianism in England, she argues, proposed an ‘Anglicized’ model which would include a place for bishops with powers more closely resembling those in conceptions of ‘moderate episcopacy’ proposed during the 1660s. In Scotland, due to the connection between the reformation and concepts of mixed monarchy, this was not the case, and presbyterianism had more of an anti-Erastian character. See Ha, English Presbyterianism, ch. 1. 67 For more on this see Alasdair Raffe, ‘Presbyterianism, Secularization, and Scottish Politics after the Revolution of 1688–1690’, The Historical Journal, 53:2 (2010).

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Godly will into temporal worship through the actions of men, but disagreed as to whether the law, or oaths, had the greatest potential to achieve this. Gauden characterised his position on the Covenant as encouraging man to keep ‘in the bounds of duty, allegiance and subjection to God and his superiors in Church and State’.68 Crofton, on the other hand, claimed that ‘It is a man’s duty to distinguish between the Superstructures of men, and foundations of Christ and His Apostles (of which order his Episcopacy doth not yet appear).’69 Questions over the extent to which matters of ecclesiology fell within the realm of divine truth and grace, or human custom and law, had plagued both the English and Scottish churches since their reformations. Divine truth, most commonly, meant scripture, and it is to this Crofton referred when he claimed ‘Episcopacy doth not yet appear’.70 However, it is clear from elsewhere in the text that he also located the force of divine grace in oaths, writing that ‘an Oath … contrary to its [a kingdom’s] laws, binds the conscience’.71 This illustrates the diversion of opinion between the two authors in their views on whether a solemn oath, in sight of God, could supersede the law of the land. This link between oath swearing and divine grace is more explicit in a more detailed explication of Crofton’s views on the Solemn League and Covenant entitled Analepsis Anelepthe, where he links the raising of hands and swearing of oaths with an ‘earnest supplication for divine grace and assistance’.72 Therefore, the predominant issue here was one of human versus divine law, and if the National Covenant can be viewed in part as an attempt to assert the primacy of Scottish law over the will of the king, so too can certain rejections of the Solemn League and Covenant be seen as asserting the primacy of English law over presbyterian claims of Godly and popular will, as embodied in the oath aspect of the Covenant. In this sense these debates fell into a pattern ongoing for at least a hundred years, peaking notably in 1559, 1604, 1638, and throughout the 1640s, of attempts to settle the question of who held lawful authority over the church. And, with previous such debates, the one between Crofton and Gauden exposed and heightened not just religious fault lines but ambiguities and fragilities in the constitutional role of the king, and the relationship between the constitutions of England and Scotland. The issue of jurisdiction featured in other discussions concerning the role to be played by the Solemn League and Covenant, such as in Theophilus Brabourne’s attack on episcopacy from 1661. He wrote that ‘If a Bishop exercise jurisdiction, as he does in his Consistory, then he usurpeth the Magistrate’s authority; which is contrary to the will of God’ and in this 68 Gauden,

Analysis, p. 19. Analepsis, p. 33. 70 Ibid., p. 33. 71 Ibid., p. 14. 72 Zachary Crofton, Analepsis Anelepthe, the Fastening of St. Peter’s Fetters, by Seven Links or Propositions; or, the Efficacy and Extent of the Solemn League and Covenant asserted and vindicated (Ralph Smith, 1660), p. 126. 69 Crofton,

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resembles ‘a Pope or an Antichrist’.73 This was, he stated, because ‘if a Bishop shall exercise jurisdiction, he shall hold two offices, which are inconsistent, the one destroying the other.’74 A separation of the boundaries of churchly and civil authority, to Brabourne, would in turn protect both jurisdictions from destruction by the other. He also argued that because ‘it is against our public Oath and Covenant, to maintain Bishops’ the imposition of bishops would ‘force many thousands to live in the sin of perjury, all their lives long’.75 John Bramhall, the Lord Archbishop of Armagh, attacked the Solemn League and Covenant in similar terms, arguing that it promoted a model of government which would be ‘of all others most Injurious to the Civil Magistrate and most Oppressive to the Subject’.76 Brabourne is particularly interesting when discussing these matters because he was not a presbyterian, as he was ‘in favour of the supremacy of the civil power in matters ecclesiastical’, yet still felt himself and ‘many thousands’ of others to be bound by the Solemn League and Covenant.77 This illustrates the sincere connection that many who had sworn the Covenant still felt towards it, and why supporters of episcopacy such as John Gauden felt it was important to demonstrate that the Covenant did not still bind its signatories. The ideas with which Brabourne attacked bishops in 1661 can be found partially expressed the previous year in a text he wrote entitled A Defence of the King’s Authority and Supremacy in the Church and Church-Discipline. This began with an attack on ‘these Disciplinarians, the Pope, and his Clergy, the Bishops and Episcoparians, the Scottish and English presbyterians, with the Independents’, who he claimed ‘have for a long time usurped the power of Kings, and the authority of Magistrates, contrary to the will of God and the Honour of Kings’.78 Brabourne’s work therefore represented a rejection of bishops based not on a presbyterian reasoning that they embodied and encouraged an unreasonable degree of royal control of the ecclesiastical kingdom, but as part of a complete rejection of clericalism as a usurpation of the king’s power in any form. A Defence of the King’s Authority and Supremacy also proposed an explicit answer to the question that permeated the debates between Crofton and Gauden: the 73 Theophilus Brabourne, Sundry particulars concerning bishops humbly offered to the consideration of this honourable Parliament (Printed for the author, 1661), p. 1. 74 Ibid., p. 2. 75 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 76 John Bramhall, A fair warning for England to take heed of the presbyterian government of Scotland as being of all others the most injurious to the civil magistrates, most oppressive to the subject, most pernicious to both: as also the sinfulnesse and wickednesse of the covenant to introduce that government upon the Church of England (s.n., 1661), p. 1. 77 Bryan W. Ball, ‘Theophilus Brabourne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Brabourne had in fact long been a target of presbyterians and puritans, and was even saved from a heresy trial by the personal intervention of Archbishop Laud, see Ball, ‘Theophilus Brabourne’. 78 Theophilus Brabourne, A defence of the Kings authority and supremacy in the church & church-discipline (Printed for the author, and to be sold by William Nowell, 1660), p. 1.

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relationship between oaths and law. ‘Near twenty years ago, I took the Nationall Oath and Covenant, to be true and faithfull to the King and his Posterity … I did then also swear, to do my endeavour to the extirpation of Prelacy’, wrote Brabourne.79 He continued: ‘But it will be said, the Parliament when they required this Oath was then illegal, the King being absent. I answer: Hence it follows, my Oath was illegal, and binds not in the Common Law; but yet it binds in force of Divinity.’80 He explicitly accepted here that the Solemn League and Covenant could not have been legal without the voice of the king, but still considered himself to be bound by it in a religious sense. This was similar to the argument made by Zachary Crofton, that while the parliament that subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant could not make it law, the oath still bound, although with the distinction that where Crofton emphasised parliament’s ability to swear the oath on behalf of the nation, Brabourne focussed on having sworn it in a personal capacity. Brabourne therefore recognised a distinction, which many others did not, between the Godly lawfulness of an oath and the relationship of that oath to the law as it existed constitutionally. Compromise, he argued, must be achieved between these two factors. He pleaded with ‘our honourable Parliament, to order things so, as those who have taken this Oath, which cannot be recall’d, may not be enforced by Law, to be forsworn by any of their endeavours to establish or countenance our new Bishops’.81 In this sense Brabourne concurred with Crofton: that although the approval of the king was required to make law, oaths and covenants could constitute a parallel loyalty rooted in the laws and grace of God. He does not go as far as Crofton does in attempting to argue that the Solemn League and Covenant bound the nation collectively as an oath but not law; instead he focusses on the personal relationship he had to the oath. The seditious impact of both is clear though, and highlights why the prospect of illicit oaths became one which so concerned authorities as the kingdoms faced instability in the 1680s. The Restoration of the monarchy was a project undertaken and supported by a broad coalition of people, many of whom supported the Solemn League and Covenant, and considered the Restoration to be a realisation of its terms. At the same time, this coalition included many who saw the Solemn League and Covenant as a seditious instrument and part of the reason the monarchy had been overthrown in the first place. Attempts were made to reach a settlement which compromised between the desires of presbyterians and episcopalians, and supporters of the Covenant argued that it would in fact strengthen the restored monarchy rather than weaken it. In the debates between John Gauden and Zachary Crofton, it can be seen how a range of incompatible views on church government, royal jurisdiction, and 79

Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 2. 81 Ibid., p. 2. 80

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the legitimacy of oaths existed among supporters of the Restoration, and how difficult attempts to reach compromise were. Ultimately, an effective compromise could not be achieved, and the Solemn League and Covenant was proscribed and presbyterians were excluded from the church, as the following chapter will discuss.

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3 The Act of Uniformity and the ‘Great Ejection’ The 1662 Act of Uniformity introduced a Book of Common Prayer, and required that all clergy declare their ‘unfeigned assent and consent’ to the use of the book’s contents in their worship, or face ejection from the church. The passage of this act, and the subsequent ejection from the Church of England of approximately two thousand presbyterian and puritan ministers who refused the settlement which the act laid out, was seen by many as the quintessential moment of failure for the Covenanter project.1 The passage of the act completely ruled out any official place for presbyterianism, or a settlement compatible with the Solemn League and Covenant. The ‘Great Ejection’ of presbyterian ministers from the church, also referred to as ‘Black St Bartholomew’s Day’, created a dramatic divide between those who chose to lose their ministry and their livelihoods by rejecting the new settlement, and those who accepted it. Despite this, however, the Solemn League and Covenant still formed a key part of the political thinking not only of radical Covenanters who rejected any engagement with the regime, but also of people who accepted or actively supported the Restoration, and who continued in various ways to engage with both the regime and the established Church of England. In other respects, however, this period continued to see the Solemn League and Covenant become ever more associated with schism and an incompatibility with the Restoration settlement. As discussed in the previous chapter, hopes were initially high for a compromise between presbyterianism and episcopacy in the aftermath of the Restoration. Historians have debated the extent to which such compromise was ever really achievable, and to what extent the bishops, once it became apparent that they had a majority of support in the House of Commons, ever really intended to offer substantive concessions. Tim Cooper has argued that by the time of the Savoy Conference, called in 1661 in an attempt to define the religious nature of the Restoration settlement, serious concessions to presbyterians were already unlikely, and that presbyterians such as Richard Baxter were likely aware of this.2 Alasdair Raffe has also noted that concerns about the implications of presbyterianism for the strength of the restored monarchy meant that

1 For more on the ejections of 1662 see N. H. Keeble (ed.), ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’: 1662 Revisited (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); David Appleby, Black Bartholomew’s Day: Preaching, Polemic and Restoration Nonconformity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 2 Tim Cooper, ‘Richard Baxter and the Savoy Conference (1661)’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 68:2 (2017), 335–6.

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its exclusion from the church settlement in Scotland had always been probable.3 Any official recognition of the Solemn League and Covenant, something many had hoped for in the very early stages of the Restoration, was even less likely, as many royalists viewed it as an instrument of rebellion, despite Charles himself having subscribed to it in 1651. Initially, in 1660, Scottish presbyterians were committed to negotiating a place for the Solemn League and Covenant as a precondition to agreeing a settlement.4 However, by April 1660, James Sharp, Resolutioner leader and future Archbishop of St Andrews, had already reported to Edinburgh that an official place for the Solemn League and Covenant in any settlement was unlikely.5 Despite the private concerns of the leaders involved in these negotiations, however, it is undeniable that the concept of an inclusive, comprehensive church was very much presented publicly throughout the period of 1660–61 as a real and desirable possibility. Many held hopes that this settlement would include a place for presbyterians, and some sort of compromise with episcopacy. Even without an official place for the Solemn League and Covenant, many still hoped that their private subscription to endeavour reformation could continue within a comprehensive church. Therefore, the imposition of the Act of Uniformity (which required explicit rejection of the Solemn League and Covenant), and the subsequent ejection of dissenting ministers in August of 1662, created great shock and disappointment for many people, and compounded the crisis of allegiance caused by the Solemn League and Covenant that was already becoming apparent in 1660–61. Although the events of 1662 demonstrated that a settlement favourable or even tolerant to presbyterian ministers within the church was extremely unlikely, this did not eliminate any notion among presbyterians that compromise and moderate reform of the church was possible, and some still urged cooperation and accommodation. Some historians have approached this issue by highlighting how the Covenanter movement that most prominently represented presbyterianism in the 1640s had by the 1660s splintered into various groups. Historians have emphasised the extent to which the Covenants became associated with violent 3 Alasdair Raffe, ‘Presbyterian Politics and the Restoration of Scottish Episcopacy’, in ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’, ed. N. H. Keeble, pp. 149–53. For the relationship between Scottish presbyterianism and royal authority see Karin Bowie, ‘“A Legal Limited Monarchy”: Scottish Constitutionalism in the Union of Crowns, 1603–1707’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 35:2 (2015), pp. 131–54. 4 The faction that by 1660 was in a position to negotiate with the king on these matters was known as the ‘Resolutioners’, who had allied with Charles II to fight at the Battle of Worcester in the Third English Civil War, in contrast to the ‘Protesters’, who had refused, on the basis that allowing ‘Engagers’ who had disobeyed the Kirk in 1647–48 would doom them, as it had at the Battle of Dunbar. Even the more ‘moderate’ Covenanters, who had long proven more willing to compromise and support the king, were initially fixed on a place for the Solemn League and Covenant. See Julia Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland 1660–1681 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980), ch. 2. 5 Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland, p. 15.

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resistance and rebellion, and argued that to some extent the exclusion of presbyterians from the church settlement was enabled by ‘moderates’ wishing to distance themselves from this perceived sedition.6 This view is understandable in light of the undoubtedly real concern expressed by many about the schismatic and potentially violent consequences of both the Solemn League and Covenant and presbyterian theology more broadly, and is accurate with regards to the position in Scotland. However, to overemphasise the association of the Covenant with radicalism would be to neglect the evidence that a perceived loyalty to the Covenant was not necessarily a ‘militant’ position, nor necessarily even always a presbyterian one, and certainly not, in the minds of many, one incompatible with loyalty to the king. It must also be recognised that the personal and civic contradictions which had emerged from the complex and unprecedented constitutional crises of the preceding decades meant many people genuinely struggled to reconcile loyalty to competing causes such as king and Covenant. With the passage of the Act of Uniformity, and the requirement that clergy not only reject the Solemn League and Covenant but provide their ‘unfeigned consent’ to the revised Book of Common Prayer, the already complex legacy of divided loyalties inherited from the civil war period became yet more fraught. The Act of Uniformity, despite the grand aspirations of so many to reach some form of comprehension, was an act which left little in the way of leeway for 6 Kirsteen MacKenzie has argued that, after the Restoration, those who ‘still pursued the ideals of the Covenant were branded “radicals”, “outlaws” and “traitors”’, and that presbyterians were ‘firmly outlaws and outcasts’; see Kirsteen M. MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643–1663 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 193–204. Caroline Erskine has emphasised the ‘violent, fanatical intolerance’ of Restoration Covenanter thought, in Scotland at least; see Caroline Erskine, ‘The Political Thought of the Restoration Covenanters’, in Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions, ed. Julian Goodare and Sharon Adams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), p. 172. Gillian H. MacIntosh has argued that moderate, parliamentary opposition to the Restoration regime in Scotland distanced itself from religious opposition rooted in the Covenant, at least until 1688–89; see Gillian MacIntosh, ‘“Royal Supremacy Restored?” Scottish Parliamentary Independence in the Restoration Era, 1660–88’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 34:2 (2014), 162–3. This view is perhaps put most forcefully by the somewhat controversial work of Jonathan Clark, who argues explicitly that the restoration of episcopacy could not have been possible without the cooperation of moderate presbyterians, who he claims acted as a reaction against Covenanter militancy; see Jonathan Clark, From Restoration To Reform: The British Isles 1660–1832 (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2014), p. 136. This view was espoused recently by Neil McIntyre, who argues that the reintroduction of episcopacy and the settlement which ‘thoroughly dismantled the Covenanted Reformation in Kirk and state’ in Scotland can be viewed through the prism of the divides which emerged in the Covenanter movement in the late 1640s between the ‘Engagers’ loyal to the king and the ‘Protesters’, who opposed the Engagement of 1647–48. The Restoration settlement, he argued, was a ‘belated triumph for the Engagers’ if at the same time a ‘pyrrhic ideological victory for the Protesters’ due to it representing a vindication of their view that the Stuart monarchy was incompatible with their conception of true religion; see Neil McIntyre, Saints and Subverters, The Later Covenanters in Scotland c.1648–1682 (PhD dissertation, Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 2016), pp. 47–50.

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puritans, presbyterians, and others who had subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant. Considering the climate of ostensible reconciliation which it emerged from, the act is quite severe, both in content and in its tone and framing.7 Firstly, it was explicitly framed as a return to the normality of the Elizabethan period, stating: ‘in the first year of the late Queen Elizabeth there was one Uniform Order of Common Service and Prayer’.8 This alone must have been a prospect to dismay many of the ideological descendants of those who objected to the settlement at the time and had participated in the ongoing debate regarding the nature of the Church of England for over a century. The act was primarily focussed on participants in public institutions such as clergy, schoolmasters or those employed in universities. However, interestingly, it also raised the issue of resistance to the Elizabethan settlement and non­-­ attendance of church services by nonconformists, implying that it would be part of a wider programme of enforced conformity: And yet this [the Elizabethan settlement] notwithstanding … a great number of people in divers parts of this Realm following theire owne sensualitie and living without knowledge and due feare of God do wilfully and schismatically abstaine and refuse to come to theire Parish Churches and other Publique places where Common Prayer Administracion of the Sacaraments and preaching of the Word of God is used upon the Sundayes and other dayes ordained and appointed to be kept and observed as Holy dayes.9

While the act contains no provisions for compelling people to attend common prayer services, beyond those which already existed from Elizabethan times, this passage would likely raise concerns that this was part of the act’s ultimate purpose. This suggestion is likely to have contributed to a sense among nonconformists that the act was intended not simply to exercise the royal jurisdiction over matters within the public sphere, but to make imposition upon private conscience. Indeed, such fears would prove legitimate as tensions rose later in 7

The question of how the initial enthusiasm for reconciliation led ultimately to an exclusionary church settlement is one which generations of historians have discussed, from Robert S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement: The Influence of the Laudians, 1649–1662 (London: Dacre Press, 1951) and Ian M. Green, The Re-establishment of the Church of England 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Monographs, 1977) to Paul Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime, 1661–1667 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and more recent studies such as Keeble (ed.), ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’ and Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘The Restoration of the Church of England, 1660–1662: Ordination, Re-ordination and Conformity’, in The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited, ed. Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell (2013), pp. 208–22. 8 Charles II, ‘1662: An Act of Uniformity of Publique Prayers and Administracion of Sacraments and other rites and Ceremonies and for the establishing the Form of making ordaining and consecrating Bishops Priests and Deacons in the Church of England’, in Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1628–80, ed. John Raithby (Great Britain Record Commission, 1819), pp. 364–70. 9 Ibid., p. 364.

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the Restoration period and church attendance laws originally intended for the suppression of Catholics were in fact turned upon nonconforming Protestants.10 The act required ‘unfeigned assent and consent’ to both the contents of the prayer book and the ‘Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the church according to the use of the Church of England together with the Psalter or Psalmes of David.’11 A minister who refused to do so was to be deprived of all his Spirituall Promotions And that from thence forth it shall be lawfull to and for all Patrons and Donors of all and singuler the said Spirituall Promotions or of any of them according to theire respective Rights and Tittles to present or collate to the same as though the person or persons so offending or neglecting were dead.12

The act also required that the swearer declared it unlawful ‘upon any pretence whatsoever to take Armes against the King’ or ‘those that are comissionated by him’ and to declare ‘there lies no Obligaction upon me or on any other person from the Oath commonly called the Solemne League and Covenant to endeavour any change or alteration of Government either in Church or State’.13 Several major issues were raised by these demands. While uncontroversial on its face, the requirement to forswear any possibility of taking up arms against the monarchy demanded an implicit rejection of any forms of resistance theory or limited conceptions of monarchical authority that was anathema to many presbyterians, particularly in Scotland, and among those in England inspired by Scottish resistance theories. The demand also to reject any efforts to ‘endeavour any change’ in matters of church government meant that reluctant conformers were in effect being asked to make no efforts at all towards greater comprehension or toleration, or towards forms of worship in the church they deemed more acceptable.14 Though such terms had in fact featured in previous oaths of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the Solemn League and Covenant had caused many people to see themselves as uncompromisingly committed to endeavour continued reformation. There was in fact a small concession made to this point, in that the act states that the clause regarding the Solemn League and Covenant was to cease to be in effect after 1682.15 However, as examinations of responses later in this chapter will demonstrate, this did not provide sufficient reassurance for many opponents of the act. Also problematic was the fact that the act clearly had implications for the ongoing debate about the lawfulness of imposed oaths with regards to the Solemn League and Covenant. The act imposed an oath on 10

Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms (London: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 300–1. 11 ‘1662: An Act of Uniformity’, p. 364. 12 Ibid., p. 365. 13 Ibid., p. 366. 14 Ibid., p. 366. 15 Ibid., p. 366.

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pain of punishment, and yet also demanded a rejection of the Solemn League and Covenant, which was most commonly considered to be unlawful on the grounds of its imposed nature, underlining the problems caused by competing forms of allegiance to the Covenant and to the Restoration. The Act of Uniformity, therefore, in some respects underlined the disruptive power of the Solemn League and Covenant, which the act had been intended to negate. Oaths represented a powerful tool for compelling allegiance and for framing political loyalty in the context of religious grace, yet due to the complex and controversial logic of the lawfulness of oaths, to deploy them was to risk unintended consequences. By imposing an oath to counteract the Solemn League and Covenant, the Restoration regime may have achieved its goal of excluding sympathisers from public life. However, by continuing the use of solemn oaths as a political tool, the regime undermined efforts to oppose the Solemn League and Covenant on the grounds of it being an imposed oath.16 The Act of Uniformity was not precisely replicated in Scotland, although the process was similar, with episcopacy being restored in an act passed in 1662, and enforced via an oath.17 This oath too demanded the rejection of the lawfulness of raising arms against the king, and also specifically demanded rejection not only of the Solemn League and Covenant but of the National Covenant.18 These demands are unsurprising from the point of view of the requirements of the restored authorities, as the National Covenant represented a constitutional arrangement viewed as threatening to the Anglo-centric Stuart monarchy. Furthermore, due to the Covenant’s association with presbyterianism and restrictions on monarchical power, re-establishment of episcopacy and royal authority in Scotland certainly required a rejection of the National Covenant. The oath to reject the National Covenant was not, at this stage, imposed on the clergy, which enabled some presbyterian ministers to continue preaching as before, with a handful managing to continue until 1681, when the Test Act extended the requirement to abjure the Covenant to Scottish clergy.19 Some ministers, such as Andrew Honeyman, also argued that the form of episcopacy which had been introduced in Scotland after the Restoration was not incompatible with the Covenants, as they had only been a rejection of episcopacy as then 16

The relationship between different oaths and the consequences, intended and not, that certain oaths may have is a topic historians have engaged with; see Jonathan Michael Gray, ‘Vows, Oaths, and the Propagation of a Subversive Discourse’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 41:3 (2010), 731–56; Michael Questier, ‘Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance’, The Historical Journal, 40:2 (1997). 17 ‘Order of the Council for the Restoration of Episcopacy’, English Historical Documents 1660–1714, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Eyre and Spotiswoode, 1953), p. 608. 18 ‘Test Act, 1662, Act Concerning the Declaration To Be Signed By All Persons In Public Trust’, English Historical Documents 1660–1714, p. 609. 19 Alasdair Raffe, ‘Who were the “Later Covenanters”?’, in The National Covenant in Scotland 1638–1689, ed. Chris R. Langley (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020), p. 200.

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in use in England.20 However, the oath did require the rejection of the Covenant by those in any position of ‘public trust or office’. Considering that many who had subscribed to the National Covenant thought of it as a part of Scotland’s lawful constitution, the act could therefore be seen as an attempt to impose imperial monarchical authority over local Scottish law, and a similar, though not entirely identical, situation to that which the Scots were resisting in 1638. The efforts in both England and Scotland to impose an episcopal settlement and suppress the Covenants were therefore both arguably harsh in their own respects. Evidently, they were restrictive enough that approximately two thousand members of the clergy chose to lose their ministry rather than conform to them.21 Some who opposed this viewed it not only as evidence of the regime’s malicious intent, but of an abandonment of godliness by England, and a herald of the end of days, as explored by David Appleby.22 However, the discourse surrounding the regime’s defence of the settlement demonstrates that not all those who opposed the act viewed it in this apocalyptic light, and suggests that a dichotomy between radical nonconformists and moderate conformists is simplistic. It appears that there was a subset of subscribers to the Solemn League and Covenant who sincerely supported the return of the king and engaged with the possibility of a negotiated settlement, and who did not view the failure to achieve presbyterian comprehension as a sign of the apocalypse, yet nonetheless considered full conformity to be a religiously or constitutionally untenable position. The example of the evolution of Zachary Crofton’s views illuminates the difficulties that even committed nonconformists had with the idea of total separation from the established church. He wrote that although full conformity was anathema, the Godly must still engage with the church where possible, or else all chance for reformation may be lost. Yet he acknowledged that this was a difficult idea to promote to the ostracised presbyterians. ‘They consent’, he wrote, ‘when I say, Ministers must not conform; but understand me not, or affirm me Antichristian, when I say, Members must communicate.’23 In other words, Crofton argued that to engage with an imperfect church, on the basis that it is the best current option, is not necessarily to approve of all aspects of that church. He illustrated his point with a scriptural quote: ‘Israel, you must bring your Offerings to the Lord, though by reason of the profane Priests, and rude Administration thereof, your Soul doth loath them.’24 It is worth noting that Crofton wrote this from the Tower of London.25 Even to one of those most 20

Ibid., p. 200. N. H. Keeble, ‘The Nonconformist Narrative of the Bartholomeans’, in ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’, p. 216. 22 Appleby, Black Bartholomew’s Day, pp. 100–1. 23 Zachary Crofton, Reformation not separation, or, Mr. Crofton’s plea for communion with the church (s.n., 1662), p. 72. 24 Ibid., p. 72. 25 Crofton was imprisoned on suspicion of high treason from March 1661 until July 1662; 21

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dispossessed and persecuted by the course of events of 1660–62, the Church of England was still seen as valid, and a means by which to worship, even if he viewed the church as doctrinally flawed at the time. This illustrates what was at stake in this period: to Crofton and many others, a national church was the only viable means of worship. On the one hand, this can be seen as a more ‘moderate’ position in that Crofton advocates for engagement with the established church. However, this was accompanied by a duty to continue to push for ‘reformation’ within this church, as mandated in the Solemn League and Covenant. Crofton was not the only one who urged limited engagement with the church while opposing episcopacy, or who maintained a hope for a future role for the Solemn League and Covenant but did not resort to militancy and total disengagement with the church.26 One writer made the distinction between circumstantial nonconformity and total rejection of the church, stating that ‘it is true, that we submit patiently to that authority which we cannot obey cheerfully; really we cannot conform in conscience, and really we cannot resist in conscience.’27 This statement is a neat surmising of the difficult position which many of those who struggled with their loyalty to the Covenant and the regime after 1660 found themselves in – if political loyalty also necessitated religious conformity contrary to a solemn oath, how was one to resolve this contradiction? Another minister describes how, while he outwardly conformed, he privately attempted to do some ‘things in propagation of the good old Caus’, such as reading ‘little or no common prayer’ or providing private services or baptisms for those who desired them.28 It is hard to say how common an approach this was, although these actions were presented in a pamphlet claiming to be ‘an impartial account of the non-conformists private designs, actions and wayes’, which would suggest at the least a contemporary belief that such practice was more widespread.29 It seems therefore there were some presbyterians who counselled forms of conformity within the church in the hope of changing it for the better at a later date, though they acknowledged they could not be enthusiastic or sincere about prayers and practices they did not agree with. As discussed in chapter 2, there were many who viewed the Restoration of Charles II and loyalty to the Solemn League and Covenant as inextricably see E. C. Vernon, ‘Crofton, Zachary (1626–1672)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 26 The concept of ‘partial conformity’ in this period has been engaged with by several historians; see Gary S. De Krey, ‘Between Revolutions: Re-Appraising the Restoration in Britain’, History Compass, 6:3 (2008); Christopher Hill, ‘Occasional Conformity’, in Reformation Conformity and Dissent: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Nuttall, ed. R. Buick Knox (London: Epworth Press, 1977); John D. Ramsbottom, ‘Presbyterians and “Partial Conformity” in the Restoration Church of England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992). 27 Anonymous, A Mystery of godlinesse and no cabala, or, A sincere account of the non-conformists conversation … occasioned by a bitter and malitions paper called the Cabala (s.n., 1663), p. 2. 28 John Birkenhead, Cabala, or, An impartial account of the non-conformists private designs, actings and wayes from August 24, 1662 to December 25 in the same year (s.n., 1663), p. 36. 29 Ibid., p. 1.

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bound together. To conclude that the triumph of episcopacy which followed the Restoration was a process undertaken by cooperation of the ‘moderate presbyterians’ who supported the king with those who favoured episcopacy is implicitly to conclude that these ideas became ‘de-coupled’ during the process of church settlement. Covenanters, in this view, were forced to choose between their favoured form of church government and their king, with the ‘moderates’ largely choosing the king, and the ‘militants’ preferring their church. To some degree, this was the case, with the ‘militant’ position emerging from those who viewed presbyterianism as the jure divino form of church government, and therefore non-negotiable. In contrast, others viewed the National Covenant as a reaction to tyrannical imposition upon adiaphora established consensually and viewed the ‘reformation’ promised by the Solemn League and Covenant through the same lens. There also existed those who were ‘moderate’ in their attitude towards presbyterianism regarding its jure divino status, but who nevertheless saw the Solemn League and Covenant as a binding contract with God. Increasingly, it must be noted, historians have emphasised the ‘porous boundary’ (as Alasdair Raffe phrased it) between conformity and nonconformity after the Restoration, so it should not be assumed that only the most ‘militant’ retained any form of loyalty to the Covenants or the ideas which structured them.30 Some presbyterians initially opposed episcopacy or advocated for a compromise but ultimately favoured the unity of the church and stability of the monarchy over their personal concerns. Edward Reynolds, a veteran of the Westminster Assembly, is a prominent example.31 Reynolds argued in favour of presbyterianism at the Savoy Conference yet ultimately accepted episcopacy and a role as a bishop within the Church of England. Even as it became clear that comprehension of presbyterians within the church was extremely unlikely, there is evidence that the conflation of the Solemn League and Covenant with the kingship of Charles II did not entirely disappear. Despite a dismayed reaction from many presbyterians to the Act of Uniformity, it was not the case that all supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant divided into violent radicals who rejected the settlement and moderates who abandoned the Covenant. Instead, some supporters turned to a re-emphasis of more novel conceptions of the Covenant which attempted to place it into a context of compatibility with both the authority of the king and the Restoration settlement. The year 1662 saw the reprinting of a sermon from 1651 by Robert Douglas, the Scottish minister, with the new edition described as ‘printed in the year of 30

Alasdair Raffe, ‘Who were the “Later Covenanters”?’, in The National Covenant in Scotland 1638–1689, ed. Chris R. Langley (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020), p. 213. The difficulties in categorising individuals unambiguously as ‘conformist’ or ‘nonconformist’ in the Restoration period, and the extent to which certain aspects of covenanting and other forms of radicalism influenced ‘moderates’, while others did not, has also been discussed by Gary S. De Krey and Mark Goldie: Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: The Entring Book, 1677–1691 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016); De Krey, ‘Between Revolutions’. 31 Ian Atherton, ‘Edward Reynolds (1599–1676)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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Covenant-breaking’.32 Douglas had delivered the sermon in question when he officiated at the coronation of Charles II in Scotland in 1651, and in its 1662 edition it was packaged together with the Solemn League and Covenant itself, and accounts of the events surrounding Charles’s time in Scotland in the 1650s. The intent is clearly to establish the king’s strong connections to the Covenant, and to demonstrate that Douglas, who worked diligently to enable the king’s return in 1660, considered the legitimacy of Charles’s crown and the lawfulness of the Solemn League and Covenant to be very much bound together. All kings, Douglas argued, were crowned on the basis of some sort of covenant, implicit or explicit: ‘When a king is Crowned, and received by the people, there is a Covenant or mutuall contract between him and them, containing conditions, mutually to be observed.’33 The covenant upon which kingship is based, therefore, and the authority of the king become one and the same. To attempt to alter this, he argued, was very unwise: ‘Private persons should be very circumspect about that which they do in relation to the authority of kings. It is very dangerous for private men to meddle with the power of kings.’34 Since, in the case of Charles II, the covenant upon which his kingship was predicated was explicit in the form of the Solemn League and Covenant, efforts to renege on the conditions of church government contained within it represented on the part of the king a dereliction of his duties, and an unlawful infringement of the ‘authority of kings’ on the part of ‘private persons’.35 While many English critics of the Solemn League and Covenant conceived of it as the work of individuals and subscribed to individually, some also engaged with the concept that it was the product of interaction between nations or polities rather than ‘private men’. The difference between critics and supporters, however, was usually in whether the Solemn League and Covenant was seen as a mutual pact between England and Scotland, or as something imposed upon England by the Scots. The Covenant had been approved by an English parliament in 1643. However, it was also arguably an instrument by which the Scots had exploited the weakness of the English Parliamentarians by demanding presbyterian reforms in exchange for military aid. The circumstances of the composing and signing of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, and the various deals and splits within the Covenanting movement throughout the 1640s, led critics of the Covenants in the 1660s to frame the Solemn League and Covenant as essentially the attempted imposition of a Scottish agenda upon England. One critic described the Solemn League and Covenant as 32 Douglas

led the general assembly following the failure of the Engagement, yet also staunchly argued in favour of Charles II and the rights of former Engagers in the period 1650–51. He was invited as a commissioner to the Westminster Assembly but did not attend. See K. D. Holfelder, ‘Robert Douglas (1594–1674)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Robert Douglas, A Phenix, Or the Solemn League and Covenant (s.n., 1662), p. 1. 33 Douglas, A Phenix, p. 46. 34 Ibid., p. 53. 35 Ibid., pp. 57–63.

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‘That unlawful Scottish Covenant which was In the late ungracious times (with fraud enough, and force) obtruded upon the People of England.’36 Henry Foulis placed the Solemn League and Covenant into a historical narrative of malefactors using religious concerns to maintain ‘a perfect dissention betwixt England Scotland’ which benefitted nobody but Catholic France.37 Presbyterian religious dissenters, he argued, had been manipulated by hostile powers such as France since the days of Cardinal Richelieu and earlier, as a means to divide England and Scotland and prevent them from effectively combining their strength. The Covenants and their supporters, in this view, represented a recent incarnation of this divisiveness.38 Covenanters, he claims, did not hesitate to provide succour to the French by their destabilisation of the British Isles and even sought assistance from France, despite the king of France being ‘a Roman Catholic against their anointed soveraign’.39 If then the Solemn League and Covenant did represent an interaction between nations, as some claimed, rather than individuals, the counter argument from critics who accepted this premise appears to be that it was an unequal and unlawful interaction in which Scotland was imposing upon England. Again, this comes down to what lawful authority the parliament of 1643 possessed, and whether it was acting as a legitimate representative of England. To its critics, the Solemn League and Covenant had been a mechanism for illegitimate actors in both England and Scotland to effectively conduct diplomacy outside of the legitimate authority of the king. The Scottish minister John Guthrie, arguing in support of the Solemn League and Covenant, wrote that while ‘the Parliament of England, Scotland and Ireland entered into a Covenant’, the Covenant itself was ‘not a Bargain betwixt two parties on Earth’, therefore, not a treaty between nations.40 He raised this view in response to the objection that if the Covenant represented a diplomatic deal between England and Scotland, then the many instances of conflict, side-switching and double-dealing that had occurred between the two nations since had surely rendered the Covenant invalid. In Guthrie’s work a complex argument can be seen which draws on different strands of prior rhetoric used to 36

Matthew the Lord Bishop of Ely, An Abandoning of the Scottish Covenant (D. Maxwell for Timothy Garthwait, 1662), Intro page. 37 Henry Foulis, The history of the wicked plots and conspiracies of our pretended saints representing the beginning, constitution, and designs of the Jesuite: with the conspiracies, rebellions, schisms, hypocrisie, perjury, sacriledge, seditions, and vilefying humour of some presbyterians, proved by a series of authentick examples, as they have been acted in Great Brittain, from the beginning of that faction to this time (E. Cotes for A. Seile, 1662), p. 13. Foulis was a dedicated and vitriolic critic of both presbyterians and Catholics, and his approach here of attacking both by conflating them is one which would become common in the 1680s, as will be discussed in chapter 5; see Sarah Carr, ‘Henry Foulis’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 38 Foulis, The History of the Wicked Plots, pp. 13–25. 39 Ibid., p. 25. 40 John Guthrie, A sermon preach’d upon breach of covenant by that reverend and worthy servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. John Guthrie (s.n., 1663), pp. 8–9.

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defend the Covenant, to create a conception of the Covenant which combines aspects of the ‘solemn, personal oath’ and ‘diplomatic agreement’ framings which have been discussed previously. Guthrie argued, as others did, that the Covenant bound the land as a whole, rather than individuals, as ‘Where ever a King and the Princes of a Land take a Covenant, the rest of the land is bound by it.’41 Where his differs from conceptions which emphasise the nature of the Solemn League and Covenant as an agreement between England and Scotland is in what is meant by ‘the land’. Regarding the Solemn League and Covenant, he argued, ‘these 3 Lands is one Party’.42 The other party to the agreement, he argued, was ‘the God in Heaven’, and that this meant that while the Covenant may have originally been subscribed to as a collective nation, individuals were still bound by it, regardless of the behaviour of other parties or individuals who were bound by it as well.43 In some ways this was a more expansive conception of Stuart authority than some others put forward in support of the Solemn League and Covenant. It framed the king as acting as the embodiment of all three of his kingdoms in originally subscribing, by emphasising that it is rooted in ‘the King or Princes of a land’ taking the Covenant, as opposed to interpretations of the Covenant which saw England and Scotland subscribing as nations without royal consent.44 This echoed arguments made by Zachary Crofton of parliament having subscribed in its role as representatives of the people, but emphasised the role of the king as this representative instead. While the populations of the Three Kingdoms were subscribed collectively to the Solemn League and Covenant, however, its nature as a solemn oath meant that they could not be released from it collectively, or indeed at all, and that in the sight of God, and ‘if it were left all to one man, he must endeavour Reformation’.45 As the king had sworn on behalf of all his subjects in 1651 to endeavour the reformation of religion, this oath could not be considered fulfilled until this was complete. It was argued therefore that so long as the ‘reformation’ promised in the Solemn League and Covenant was not complete, the king’s rejection of the Covenant after the Restoration did not release other signatories, but was rather the unlawful failure of the king as a private individual to uphold his oath. 41

Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 12. 43 Ibid., p. 12. 44 For more on the issue of the multiple monarchy see Roger A. Mason, ‘Debating Britain in Seventeenth-Century Scotland: Multiple Monarchy and Scottish Sovereignty’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 35:1 (2015), 1–24; Jenny Wormald, ‘“A Union of Hearts and Minds”?: The Making of the Union between Scotland and England, 1603’, in Forms of Union: The British and Spanish Monarchies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Jon Arrieta and J. H. Elliott (Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 2009), pp. 109–24; John Robertson, ‘The Conceptual Framework of Anglo-Scottish Union’, in Forms of Union, ed. Arrieta and Elliott; Keith M. Brown, ‘Monarchy and the Government in Britain, 1603–1637’, in The Seventeenth Century, ed. Jenny Wormald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 13–48. 45 Guthrie, A Sermon Preached Upon Breach of the Covenant, p. 12. 42

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It can therefore be seen that by the early 1660s there were still several competing conceptions of what the legal status of the Solemn League and Covenant was, and who, if anyone, was bound by it. The Act of Uniformity complicated this further. The Act of Uniformity originated from the same ministry that had condemned the Solemn League and Covenant, but appeared to share certain similarities with the Covenant, and to make claims to authority in areas upon which the Covenant also touched. Embodied in both the Solemn League and Covenant and the Act of Uniformity was the power of sacred oaths to bind political loyalty to personal conscience. However, many of the arguments which had long been used to characterise the Solemn League and Covenant as unlawful, such as it being forcefully imposed or an infringement upon conscience, could also be applied in the case of the Act of Uniformity. According to the logic of arguments used against the Solemn League and Covenant, if the act was lawful, there was room to argue, surely both it and the Covenant were, and if one was not, neither were.46 This raised two major issues for those debating the subject in the early 1660s: the question of whether an oath could be overridden by a contradictory one, and in what respects, if any, the Act of Uniformity differed fundamentally from the Solemn League and Covenant. Supporters of the Act of Uniformity argued that since the parliament that passed the Solemn League and Covenant was no longer sitting, and that both current king and parliament supported the Act of Uniformity, the Christian duty to obey lawful authority obligated support for the act over the Covenant. However, opponents were equally able to argue that allowing a precedent of abandoning one form of (as they saw it) lawful obedience for another would allow absolutists or malefactors in the courts of future kings to demand unconditional loyalty based on nothing but strength, as Cromwell had done during the Engagement controversy. The Grand Case and the Short Surveigh

The most prominent text which outlined the arguments of the government and its supporters on the issue of the Act of Uniformity and 1662 exclusions is the Grand Case of the Present Ministry. This is attributed to Francis Fullwood, a former puritan who embraced episcopacy after the Restoration not out of 46

Glenn Burgess has argued that the story of seventeenth-century English politics is one of old certainties around the relationship of the king to the law breaking down. Burgess argued that, by conflating questions of the authority of the king’s prerogative with the authority of the law, Charles I and his ministry opened up the question of how the two interacted, and actually weakened the royal prerogative as a result. In some ways, a smaller scale manifestation of a similar phenomenon can be seen in the interaction of the Act of Uniformity and the Solemn League and Covenant, in terms of constitutional actions bearing unintended consequences. See Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education UK, 1992), pp. 212–13.

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preference for the form of government, but rather a conviction in the importance of civil authority in deciding matters of adiaphora.47 This work attracted critical responses, most notably the Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry, which illustrate some of the issues surrounding the oaths and declarations imposed as part of the Act of Uniformity and the ‘Clarendon Code’.48 The authors of the Short Surveigh developed arguments similar to those previously articulated by Zachary Crofton, in which it was argued that the Solemn League and Covenant had been collectively sworn on behalf of the nation by parliament. They also placed a strong emphasis on portraying the Covenant and presbyterianism as means to secure and defend the monarchy, and argued that reintroducing episcopacy placed the ‘Royal head’ on ‘Religious Shoulders’, to the monarchy’s detriment. These debates are especially interesting as they frequently focussed specifically on what might be termed ‘moderate’ presbyterians and puritans who did not object to the notion of conforming in a general sense, but objected to what they saw as the unnecessarily strict and conscience-infringing nature of the declarations required from them.49 Many of those who subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant were willing to consider a notable degree of compromise. However, there were also insurmountable obstacles presented by both the Covenant and presbyterianism more broadly which contributed to the difficulty in finding a stable settlement following the Restoration. As will be argued in the later chapters of this book, an appreciation of these difficulties would help to structure attempts towards the end of the seventeenth century to find a lasting religious and political settlement. An appeal to the ‘moderates’ who had subscribed to the Covenant, but were willing to compromise, can be found at the start of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry: Yet, hearing that many Moderate Brethren do now check, who had resolved to conform, had not these Declarations been required, out of my tender affection to 47

Mark Goldie, ‘Francis Fullwood (d. 1693)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The ‘Clarendon Code’ is a term applied collectively to the Act of Uniformity and various other laws made to suppress religious dissent in the 1660s, such as the 1664 Conventicle Act, though Clarendon’s personal attitudes towards dissent were rather more nuanced; see Paul Seaward, ‘Circumstantial Temporary Concessions: Clarendon, Comprehension and Uniformity’, in ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’, ed. N. H. Keeble. 49 For more on the concept of ‘moderation’ in the early modern period see Adrian Streete, ‘Moderation and Religious Criticism in William Cartwright’s The Ordinary (1635)’, in Seventeenth Century, 31:1 (2016), 17–36; George Southcombe, ‘The Polemics of Moderation in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, in Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse, ed. Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe, Benjamin Thompson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015); Ethan Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 48

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THE ACT OF UNIFORMIT Y AND THE ‘GREAT EJECTION’ them, as also my desire of the good of the church (which, I cannot but believe, may be much advanced through their conformity) I have taken this encouragement, to offer my Reason, why I conceive, that such Ministers as could otherwise have conformed, may lawfully declare in order thereunto, as by the said Act is required.50

This series of debates was centred around the ‘moderate’ Covenanters who some have argued embraced or even helped to effect the episcopal settlement following the Restoration. It demonstrates that, even among those with the greatest desire to conform, the issues raised by conflicting oaths and their implications for conceptions of authority were troubling. The Grand Case made the distinction between what ministers might view as the perfect form of church government, and what was broadly desirable and worthy of a minister’s ‘unfeigned’ approval. Achieving a uniform church which everyone involved viewed as perfect, argued Fullwood, was not possible: ‘Seeing, it is a moral impossibility, that all men, in so many particulars, and various circumstances, should be exactly of one mind.’51 Instead of absolute approval, he claimed, it was a ‘comparative or respective approbation’ that ministers were being required to provide.52 Fullwood’s position here bears similarities to later attempts at articulating or enacting forms of toleration and civil religion, in that an attempt is being made to define participation in the church along largely civic grounds, rather than through the personal conscience of the ministers involved. To serve an imperfect church in what ways you can, argued Fullwood, was surely better than to not serve it at all: Seeing all such penalties are annexed to law, on purpose to move us to active obedience what remains but that we are allowed thus to reason … rather then lose my living, and therewith, all legal opportunity of serving the church, rather then shew myself cross and disobedient to authority in lawful things; rather then ruine my self and family for a thing indifferent, though, in it self I judge it is inconvenient: I do chuse to be obedient and conformable.53

There is both a religious and a personal motivation, Fullwood argues, for conforming as far as one can, since, if deprived of his ministry, he would have no chance to guide the direction of the church or to serve it as best he could, and he and his family would suffer.54 This has parallels with Zachary Crofton’s

50

Francis Fullwood, The grand case of the present ministry whether they may lawfully declare and subscribe, as by the late Act of vniformity is required and the several cases, thence arising (more especially about the Covenant) are clearly stated and faithfully resolved / by the same indifferent hand; with an addition to his former Cases of conscience, hereunto subjoyned (J. Macock for T. Dring, 1662), p. 1. 51 Ibid., p. 8. 52 Ibid., p. 8. 53 Ibid., p. 8. 54 For information on the lives of ejected ministers after 1662, see Rosalind Johnson, ‘The Lives of Ejected Hampshire Ministers after 1662’, Southern History, 36 (2014); Philip W. Plumb, ‘Restoration Hackney: Haven for the Ejected’, Hackney History, 5 (1999).

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argument about the need for ‘communication’ with the church, although the ‘unfeigned assent’ promoted by Fullwood went beyond what Crofton argued for. While Fullwood’s arguments were broadly utilitarian, the presbyterian response to them centred on the more solemn nature of the required declarations as oaths. The role of oaths and the importance attached to them meant that Fullwood’s detractors were unable to accept his conception of the required declarations simply as a ‘comparative’ act necessary to continue with the greater good of participation in the church. ‘Sir’, wrote the ‘conformable non-­­ conformists’ responsible for one of the responses to the Grand Case, entitled A Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry, we take it for granted, you conceive the declarations required of us to be Tantamount to an Oath, they are to be solemnly made in the congregation, by Ministers qua Ministers of the Gospel, in which virbum sacerdotis is the Sacred River of the Obligation, which resulteth from such Declaration, to our Conscience in the sight of God, and his church.55

In other words, since the required declarations took the form of oaths, and were solemnly sworn in church, they obliged not just in sight of the law but in sight of God and in one’s internal conscience. Moreover, as ministers were forced to swear in sight of their congregation, a priestly authority was inherently imparted to the ministers’ words, which amounted to active endorsement rather than passive acceptance. Or, as it is phrased in the Short Surveigh: ‘Modifying Gods ordinances in, and to the Church by personal Ministerial Gifts, is the formal act in and by which they must fulfil the Ministrey to them committed.’56 Where Fullwood saw simple acceptance being demanded, therefore, his detractors saw the imposition of a declaration ‘tantamount to an oath’ to support practices they viewed as incompatible with their conscience and duty as ministers. ‘Our question’, wrote the authors of A Short Surveigh, ‘is not what could legally suffice, but what may be Conscientiously done; for this must not be violated unto the satisfaction of that.’57 The authors conceded that it was lawful to approve of the prayer book and make the necessary declarations, in light of the significant number of ministers who did so, but they also argued that some of the contents of the book and declarations had implications for the state of the church that presented genuine conflicts of conscience to many ministers. Firstly, they argued, the nature of the approval they were required to provide was in itself unprecedented and an unacceptable imposition. Compared with the ‘Book of Consecration Established by Edward VI and enforced by Queen Elizabeth’, ‘the forme of subscription required by this law, is such as was never required by any law, nor given by us to any form or manner of Ordination 55

‘Some Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry (s.n., 1663), p. 9. 56 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 57 Ibid., p. 11.

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and Consecration.’58 New to the Act of Uniformity and associated declarations was ‘This requiring of our unfeigned Assent and Consent which we unfeignedly profess we cannot give.’59 The 1662 declarations, it was argued, differed from similar such acts in the past, and from the practice of conformity itself, in both their form as oaths and in the nature of the acceptance which the declarations required. In fact, it could well be argued that the Act of Uniformity was not particularly novel in its content, with previous supremacy oaths requiring similar forms of conformity. What had changed was the context, with increased interest in freedom of conscience and the pluralistic legacy of the civil wars meaning such oaths faced more resistance than ever before. The implications of the demand for ministers to provide ‘unfeigned assent’ both in sight of God and their congregations to everything contained within the declarations, the authors argued, were significant, because it meant that the specifics of issues within the declarations then became matters of personal conscience and integrity for the swearers. The theoretical legitimacy of matters such as taking up arms against the king, and the status of the Solemn League and Covenant, argued the authors of A Short Surveigh, became important even to those who had absolutely no intention of taking up arms or any particular loyalty to the Covenant, due to the risk of perjuring oneself in sight of God. The issue of lawful resistance and the taking up of arms was addressed at length by both the Grand Case and the responses it attracted. The declaration required the swearing of the following: ‘that it is not lawful upon pretence whatever to take Arms against the King, and that I do abhor that traiterous Position of taking Armes, by his Authority against his person, or against those commissioned by him.’60 This was not a particularly controversial demand on its face, but the association of the Covenants with the resistance theories of the Scottish reformation, and other forms of resistance with other nonconformists, meant that even this aspect could cause problems, as the authors of A Short Surveigh explained. A total rejection of violent resistance in any circumstances, argued the authors of A Short Surveigh, actually risked undermining the safety and privileges of the monarch by denying honest, loyal people a weapon that dishonest ones would not hesitate to use. If the terms of the Act of Uniformity were sincerely and solemnly assented to, they argued, there was a risk that they ‘may become the basis of Treason, and Guard of Rebellion if some Ruffians should (which God defendd) seize the person of a King, he is a man from whom Commissions may be by fear extorted, whereby true Loyalty must be on their side.’61 Rather than securing the Restoration therefore, in the eyes of its detractors the Act of Uniformity risked a return to the situation a decade earlier where loyalty to an 58

Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 12. 60 ‘1662: An Act of Uniformity’, p. 366. 61 ‘Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh, p. 22. 59

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unlawful power could simply be extorted.62 This represented a similar line of reasoning to that contained in the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant: that to truly protect and uphold the appropriate and lawful status of the monarchy involved defending it from even the malicious or misguided usurpations of the king and his advisors.63 Regarding the Solemn League and Covenant, the Grand Case argued that, although it was assented to by parliament, the parliament of 1643 which did this was now a collection of ‘private persons’ rather than representative of England as a whole. Yea, though some of the same Members, and many of the same Lords, may possibly sit in the present Parliament, yet to that Parliament that is gone and dissolved so long since, they are but single and private persons: therefore, if the Question be of any obligation that may be thought to be now on them, from any thing they did in the Long Parliament, it must concern them as so many private or single persons, members of the Kingdom, and not of the Parliament.64

The Covenant therefore became, in this view, a collection of personal commitments rather than an oath involving the whole country. Fullwood continued: for any such to stand engaged by a publique Covenant against a settled Government (as the Government of the Church is) and accordingly, to endeavour the extirpation or change of it, is palpably sinful, both as such a Covenant, and such endeavours, are directly against the Rights of the King, the Laws of the Land, the privileges of Parliament, the Liberty of the Subject, and the former obligations which lay upon the Nations: as will appear every one in his own order.65

The Solemn League and Covenant, it is argued, involved its signatories swearing to act in a manner which infringed not only on the rights of the monarch, but parliament and the people as well. Fullwood, essentially, framed the Solemn League and Covenant as something which acted across multiple jurisdictions, none of which its signatories actually had the authority to act in. In response to this, the authors of A Short Surveigh argued that the Solemn League and Covenant was, in their view, not something that was ‘private and personal [and subscribed to] by single men’. Instead, it was ‘publick and

62

For similar issues in the context of the Commonwealth, see Amos Tubb, ‘The Engagement Controversy: A Victory for the English Republic’, Historical Research, 89:243 (2016); Go Togashi, ‘Milton and the Presbyterian Opposition, 1649–1650: The Engagement Controversy and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Second Edition (1649)’, Milton Quarterly, 39:2 (2005); Edward Vallance, ‘Oaths, Casuistry, and Equivocation: Anglican Responses to the Engagement Controversy’, The Historical Journal, 44:1 (2001). 63 For more on this idea see Jacqueline Rose, ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal, 54:1 (2011), 47–71. 64 Fullwood, The Grand Case, p. 27. 65 Ibid., p. 27.

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National, sworn by the people Collectively, and Distributivly considered’.66 The authority of the Solemn League and Covenant, in other words, was not in representing a collection of private oaths, but as an agreement between nations. In calling the Solemn League and Covenant ‘sworn by the people Collectively, and Distributivly considered’, the implication appears to be that the signings of the Covenant had functioned as a public approval of the oath that parliament had agreed, meaning that the nation as a whole had agreed to be bound by it. Their argument is that whatever the legislative situation, the Long Parliament lawfully could, and did, subscribe to a solemn religious oath on behalf of the nation which it represented, with the personal swearing of the oath an affirmation of this rather than an individual subscription separate from the politics of the nation as a whole. To reject the Covenant by legislative means, therefore, was ‘a knot cut by the sword of Authority, while it cannot be loosed by Religious Reason.’67 Instead they argued that England as a nation was a ‘subject capable of a real oath, as well as other nations’ and that therefore the Covenant bound ‘while England is England’.68 This was a similar line of argument to Zachary Crofton’s suggestion that the Solemn League and Covenant had not been made law by parliament, but that, as an oath, parliament had sworn it on behalf of the nation. Robert Douglas argued that the Solemn League and Covenant was both a ‘solemn religious covenant’ in sight of God and a ‘civil covenant’ between groups of people.69 Therefore, breaking the Covenant both risked the displeasure of God towards the nation, and undermining the relationship between the British kingdoms or even the norms of human interaction more generally, as ‘for a man to break a promise and Covenant with his brother is a land-stroying and soul-devouring abomination’.70 These examples highlight one of the most important questions related to the Solemn League and Covenant, which was the nature of the oath which it contained. In many ways, the Solemn League and Covenant was far from being only a ‘publique Covenant’ undertaken by ‘single persons’, though it did involve the swearing of an oath that some interpreted as a private undertaking. In some respects, the Solemn League and Covenant was, originally at least, a diplomatic document. In addition to the implications of the Covenant as a personal oath therefore, it must also be considered as a treaty between two powers who considered themselves as representing lawfully their respective countries, and which proposed a mutually agreed political model for the British Isles which ‘was federative, constitutional and confessional’.71 The arguments contained in the Grand Case make clear why the nature of the oaths associated with the 66

‘Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh, p. 37. Ibid., p. 23. 68 Ibid., pp. 38–46. 69 Douglas, A Phenix, pp. 119–21. 70 Ibid., p. 121. 71 Allan MacInnes, ‘Covenanting Exchanges with the French Court during the Wars for the Three Kingdoms’, Revue electronique d’etudes sur le monde Anglophone, 11:2 (2014), 3. 67

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Covenants was important. Though personal oaths were fraught with potential issues for the Restoration authorities as well, better that than for the Solemn League and Covenant to be viewed as something subscribed to collectively by all of England. The question of where legitimate sovereignty of England and Scotland resided during the upheaval of the civil wars period was a very important one, as discussed in the previous chapter with regards to the debates of Gauden and Crofton. While parliament could not pass laws without the assent of the king, some argued that its members were nevertheless the legitimate representatives of England, and that they could and did subscribe to an oath on the nation’s behalf. Further complicating matters was the fact Charles II had also subscribed in 1651 to the Solemn League and Covenant, meaning that strong arguments could be made for the nation being bound by the Covenant regardless of one’s views on the nation’s legitimate representative. The Solemn League and Covenant can therefore be seen as a diplomatic treaty representing a nation as a whole which was also reinforced with individual oaths, and this is key to the debates taking place in 1662, which in large part centre on exactly what sort of oath it contained, and who exactly subscribed to this oath. In A Short Surveigh, this point is made by comparison with the Protestation of 1641, which is described as ‘sworn with an I.A.B by that personal name, which perished with the takers’ in comparison to the Solemn League and Covenant, which ‘was sworn by those real Capacities, Noble-men, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Ministers of the gospel, and Commons of all sorts, which pass and will pass to our successors, while England is England.’72 The authors here appear to have been making a rather extraordinary and easily missed point about the Solemn League and Covenant: that its list of signatory groups is interpreted by them not as simply a description of people who signed it. Rather, it was an expression of the collective assent of these groups as represented in parliament, with the actual personal signings functioning as an affirmation of this rather than its origin.73 This fits into a pattern of thought regarding the nature and purpose of the Covenants which was discussed in chapter 1 with regards to the National Covenant. The National Covenant, that chapter argues, was seen by many of its supporters not as an oath to endeavour change, but a reaffirmation of the lawful contemporary political situation as they saw it. The oath-taking involved with the Covenant was hugely important in practice and certainly lent additional legitimacy by strengthening the idea that it had popular consent, and 72

‘Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh, p. 45. For discussion of similar issues in the context of the 1641 Protestation see John Walter, Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), ch. 4; Lorenzo Sabbadini, ‘Popular Sovereignty and Representation in the English Civil War’, in Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, ed. Richard Bourke, Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 164–86.

73

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committing people to what it represented in sight of God. Nevertheless, the distinction was maintained that the legitimacy of the National Covenant did not inherently derive from popular consent, but rather was reinforced by it. As a statement of the Scottish constitution as it had emerged from the sixteenth century, the contents of the National Covenant were already lawful, according to its supporters. The associated oath-swearing simply signalled people’s approval of that lawful situation and bound them to uphold it. This interpretation of the relationship between oaths and law contained in the Covenants was central to the ideas of the Covenant’s supporters, but was often overlooked by their detractors. In this case, the idea that the original subscription of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643 was an agreement between England and Scotland as nations at large rather than collections of individuals fulfilled a similar function for those writing about it in the 1660s. Whereas as the supporters of the National Covenant argued that the positions which the oath was intended to uphold were already law, English supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant could not make the same argument. However, they still attempted to make the case that the Solemn League and Covenant was lawful. These claims to lawfulness rested on a controversial interpretation of parliament’s role as possessing an authority to agree treaties and swear oaths on behalf of the people of England. Some also appealed to a concept of a law of God, to suggest that since the Solemn League and Covenant committed the swearer to an endeavour which they viewed as opposing religious practice that was unlawful, all Godly men were in fact bound by it regardless of their personal swearing of it or the circumstances of its signing by parliament. Edward Bagshawe wrote that: It matters not at all … whether the Covenant in this part (or others) was imposed, and taken, by a Body in Parliament, or by Single persons, or by the King himself without them … for the thing itself being unlawful, they were bound, without any Covenant taken (but more with it) to alter, and endeavour to extirpate it.74

If ‘the thing itself’ proscribed by the Covenant, that is, episcopacy and prelacy, was unlawful, that meant that, regardless of the lawfulness of the Covenant, the obligation to extirpate the unlawful ‘thing’ remained. That Bagshawe pre-empted the point regarding the circumstances of the subscription might suggest he was aware of presbyterian pro-Covenant arguments emphasising parliament’s role in subscribing on behalf of the nation. Bagshawe was not a presbyterian however, tending more towards sympathies for forms of Anabaptism and Independency, so it is perhaps not surprising he favoured more explicitly religious arguments

74

Edward Bagshawe, The XXIV cases concerning things indifferent in religious worship considered, or, The resolver better resolved by his own principles, and non-conformists more confirmed also, the grand case touching ministers conformity, with the double supplement thereunto annexed, briefly discussed (s.n., 1663), p. 61.

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over constitutional ones.75 Regardless of this, his works added to the pattern of defences of the Covenants which emphasised their inherent lawfulness over the oath-taking which in practice often served to most effectively realise their aims into political allegiance and action, even as more mainstream presbyterian defences placed a greater emphasis on parliament’s role in the signing as representatives of the nation. Furthermore, as Charles II had been crowned in 1651, in Scotland at least, on the basis of his subscription to the Solemn League and Covenant, a reasonable claim could be made to his Three Kingdoms having been subscribed on that basis if not in 1643. This raised the question of whether Charles’s circumstances of poverty and lack of support at the time, and more importantly the obvious shift of his inner circle away from any sympathy for the Covenant by 1662, in any way negated any of these arguments.76 The authors of A Short Surveigh addressed this point, and made arguments similar to those of Robert Douglas, to assert that, with the provision in the Solemn League and Covenant to defend the king, and his previous assent to it, a rejection of the Covenant would undermine the king’s position more than it would secure it. ‘Truly Sir we cannot but do the Covenant that right, as to observe, it bindeth its subject, to preserve the Authority as well as the Person of the King, and we cannot easily believe it bindeth, in any thing against the Kings Right.’77 Not only do the authors present themselves as guardians of the king’s legitimate authority, but they claim that those with a different conception of monarchical power were acting not to strengthen the king, but their own positions, at his expense. We hope, Sir, we may without offence observe the Kings Right of Prerogative is ill pleaded by such who themselves despise and disregard it, disobey the directions of his Royal Declaration: concerning Ecclesiastical affairs dictated by his Supremacy in Ecclesiastical causes; they give cause to be suspected to throw it in the way of Antagonists as a stumbling stone on which to break their legs or necks, who use it as a stepping stone in the way of their unwarrantable rigour and severity.78

The shift which occurred from approval of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1650–51 and advocacy of a compromise between religious groups in the Declaration of Breda, to the clear exclusion of presbyterians by 1662, is therefore portrayed not as a change of heart on the part of the king. Rather, this change was framed as a nefarious undermining of the king’s agenda by bishops and their supporters who wished to effectively annex royal authority to themselves. 75

N. H. Keeble, ‘Edward Bagshawe (1629/30–1671)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For more on Charles’s time among the Covenanters in Scotland and his feelings that he had been extorted into signing the Solemn League and Covenant see Nicole Greenspan, ‘Charles II, Exile, and the Problem of Allegiance’, The Historical Journal, 54:1 (2011), 73–103; MacKenzie, The Solemn League and Covenant, ch. 2. 77 ‘Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh, p. 27. 78 Ibid., p. 27. 76

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The Short Surveigh went on to argue that the very idea that episcopacy was necessary or in some way conducive for the establishment of a strong monarchy, embodied in the maxim ‘no bishop, no King’, in fact served to undermine the monarchy. The authors argued it predicated royal authority on a small group of fickle elites who tended to ‘despise and disregard’ the will of the king, and contrasted it with the presbyterian conception in which it was predicated on the more stable base of the people at large. ‘We are not yet persuaded’, they write, ‘that a Royal head must needs stand on Religious Shoulders, and fall when these are withdrawn.’79 This is a powerful argument for them to make – that not only did the configuration of church and state represented by the Restoration settlement weaken religion, but the monarchy as well, by predicating royal authority on the role of bishops. These ideas resemble Hobbes in their rejection of political priestcraft, and were strikingly explicit in their framing of the Covenant as a form of civil religion which would strengthen civil power by tying together church government with popular and royal consent. Episcopal government of the church, the Short Surveigh argued, was ‘not at first animated by the Kings authority’ but was a separate power that was in fact ‘opposite to the Kings Authority’ and which was only recently and imperfectly brought by the ‘pinch of Premunire’ into the ‘submission of the Clergie [and] the Kings Laws’.80 The mention of premunire implies that the authors are asserting the risk of a residual ‘Catholic’ power invested in bishops which threatened that of the king. While Covenanter discourse had since the 1630s stressed their (albeit conditional) loyalty to the king, in A Short Surveigh there appears to be a stronger attempt to portray the Covenant’s supporters as guardians of the king’s authority and to frame their episcopal opponents as threatening it. The means by which these opponents were said to do this, somewhat paradoxically, was by strengthening the prerogative, but the suggestion is that this was not to actually hand more power to the king, but rather to channel the prerogative into something different altogether which they could then exploit. The example is cited of Robert Sibthorpe and Roger Maynwaring, who, it was argued, ‘do loudly proclaim a possibility for Church-men, to scrue the Prerogative of the King beyond its due pitch, and the proportion of Englands Consitution’.81 Of course, supporters of the episcopacy and opponents of the Solemn League and Covenant equally saw the Covenants and their supporters as attempts to usurp royal authority to an unlawful body. Jurisdictional criticisms of the Covenants which had been common during the 1640s continued into the Restoration period, as discussed in the previous chapter. Those resisting the 79

Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 28. 81 Ibid., p. 27. Robert Sibthorpe and Roger Maynwaring were clergymen known for espousing strong arguments for absolute kingship during the reign of Charles I. For more on their theories see Glenn Burgess, British Political Thought, 1500–1660: The Politics of the Post-Reformation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 174–5. 80

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imposition of an episcopal settlement were accused of attempting to ‘justifie themselves in the exercise of sovereign power, which they assumed, even beyond the claim of Majesty it self’.82 They were also accused, in criticisms which echoed both existing narratives surrounding the Covenanters and prominent attacks on Catholics and Jesuits during this period, not only of usurping the authority of the king, but of God Himself. Catholics were accused of usurping the political authority invested by God in the king, and of assigning holy qualities to the objects and works of men, and these critiques were mirrored in writing on the Covenanters. They were accused of ignoring their duty towards, and the authority of, God’s ‘lieutenants upon the earth’ in the form of kings, and of ascribing to the Solemn League and Covenant the ‘breathe, motion, and dictates of the sacred spirit of God’ despite its origin as the work of ‘a few confederated seditious heads’.83 The issue of whether the Act of Uniformity could override the Solemn League and Covenant raised a range of questions about royal and parliamentary authority. Those who argued that it could not revisited an interpretation of the nature of the Solemn League and Covenant as a collective contract between nations, rather than as something internal imposed on a people by their leadership. This idea had been present since the creation of the Solemn League and Covenant but was more usually subordinated to other interpretations. The most interesting aspect of this line of argument is that it relied on a supposition, almost universally held today, but less coherently developed in this period, of a political entity of ‘the nation’ which is separate from both the sovereign monarch and the lifespan of a representative body in parliament.84 The question is essentially one of exactly what the English parliament was doing when it subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, and in what capacity it was doing it. Was it, as the Grand Case argued, subscribing on its own behalf, for as long, and only as long, as it was representative of the people, after which it was ‘dissolved into private persons’ and its subscription could be overridden by another parliament? Or, as the supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant argued, did parliament subscribe in its role as an embodiment of ‘the nation’ as a whole, which existed in perpetuity whether at the time represented in a parliament or not? These two competing interpretations also implied two rather different conceptions of the lawful authority of parliament. Most of those writing on the subject, at least not from an overtly republican point of view, appear to have concurred that parliament could not legislate without the assent of the monarch. 82

Roger L’Estrange, A memento, directed to all those that truly reverence the memory of King Charles the martyr and as passionately wish the honour, safety, and happinesse of his royall successour, our most gratious sovereign Charles the II (Henry Brome, 1662), p. 12. 83 Edward Wolley, Loyalty amongst rebels the true royalist, or, Hushay the Archite, a happy counsellour in King David’s greatest danger (John Williams, 1662), p. 63. 84 For more on this see Colin Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2006), chs 3–4, ch. 6.

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However, the nuances of this position can be seen in arguments such as those in A Short Surveigh, or those discussed in the previous chapter from writers like Zachary Crofton or Theophilus Braborne, which claimed a distinction between parliament’s ability to make the Solemn League and Covenant into law, which would have required royal assent that was lacking, and its ability to subscribe to it as a solemn oath on the nation’s behalf. In effect, a certain position appears to have developed among supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant that claimed that, while parliaments could indeed not legislate other than in concert with the monarch, there were certain things they could in fact do on their own. It should come as no surprise that those on the ‘presbyterian side’ of the broad royalist/presbyterian divide of this period, who generally tended towards mixed government and greater authority for parliaments and assemblies, held a conception of parliament’s authority that granted it more extensive jurisdiction than their more royalist opponents. However, this issue is different from the more standard disagreements regarding the authority of parliament in that it did not only raise technical questions of the limits of royal and parliamentary jurisdiction, but a more fundamental question of the purpose and nature of the role of both king and parliament. The question of representation, not only in the modern sense of the promotion of the interests of those represented, but in the sense of a synecdochal embodiment of the realm at large, was closely bound with the question of sovereignty in early modern political thinking. Hobbes conceived of the very essence of sovereignty as lying in the role of the sovereign as a ‘person artificall’ representing all those they governed.85 As the work of Kevin Sharpe and Conal Condren has demonstrated, the idea of representation was one which early modern rulers focussed on and recognised as a crucial source of authority.86 It was this embodiment of the realm, in the thinking of Hobbes, that made a sovereign monarch the best guard of the realm’s fortunes, by entangling the ‘riches, power and honour’ of the monarch’s natural person with those of the artificial person of the realm at large.87 In claiming that the English parliament in 1643 undertook the intensely personal act of swearing a solemn oath on behalf of all the people of the realm, a powerful claim is therefore implicitly made that the artificial person embodying England as a whole was not the king, but the parliament. While this was not necessarily explicitly claiming sovereignty as residing in parliament rather than the king, it was not far from it, especially in light of the claims of Hobbes and others that embodiment in an artificial person was essentially the root of sovereignty. The Solemn League and Covenant can be seen therefore as not 85

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or, The matter, forme, and power of a common wealth, ecclesiasticall and civil (Andrew Cooke, 1651), ch. 16. 86 Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 11; Conal Condren, ‘Reason of State and Sovereignty in Early Modern England’, Parergon, 28:2 (2011), 23. 87 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 19.

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only incompatible with the Restoration settlement due to the issue of church government, but also due to the unacceptable constitutional positions that its validity would imply. This incompatibility, in some ways, can be seen as another issue arising from the amalgamation of the distinct constitutions and bodies of law of England and Scotland in 1603. J. G. A. Pocock has argued that the notion of the king as possessing an artificial body politic was weaker in Scotland than England: ‘The great discourse of “the king’s two bodies” was certainly not unknown in Edinburgh; James VI was its accomplished exponent before he became James I; but it does seem possible to say that it was not supported or disseminated by so thick and widespread an integument of institutions and language as can be detected in England.’88 Scottish conceptions of kingship had for a long time been, generally speaking, more limited and conditional than English ones, and the practice of the nobility affecting political change via bonds and leagues as with the Solemn League and Covenant had a storied history and place in the fabric of Scottish politics.89 Furthermore, it has been argued that Scottish lawyers had operated on the basis of a belief in a broad outline of a law of nations since at least the sixteenth century, predicated upon a common understanding of Roman and civil law from which Scottish law was derived.90 In this context, the Solemn League and Covenant can be seen as an interaction between nations that did not necessarily have the same conception of either their own constitutional arrangements or the laws under which such interactions took place. There are reasons to think that the conception of the Solemn League and Covenant which comes to the fore in debates around the Act of Uniformity, as an agreement made between the two artificial persons of England and Scotland, is therefore one that perhaps made more sense in a Scottish context than it did in an English. In spite of this, English supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant, even some of a more ‘moderate’ persuasion, were still willing to deploy this idea in Anglocentric debates. Furthermore, objections to the Act of Uniformity such as those in A Short Surveigh remained anchored in concepts of authority which emerged primarily from a Scottish tradition. Gillian MacIntosh has argued that, in the case of Scotland, the long-term political effects of the Covenanting period were greater than often assumed, but that these effects manifested themselves in a parliamentary opposition to Charles II which, unlike the radical Covenanters who turned to violence, accepted the Restoration in a general sense but conceived of Charles’s power as limited. It was not until the Revolution of 1688, she argued, that the interests of this faction and of 88 J. G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 60. 89 Jane Dawson, ‘Bonding, Religious Allegiance and Covenanting, 1557–1638’, in Kings, Lords and Men in Scotland and Britain, 1300–1625: Essays in Honour of Jenny Wormald, ed. Julian Goodare and Steve Boardman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), p. 163. 90 Andrew Dewar Gibb, International Private Law in Scotland (Edinburgh: W. Green and Son, 1928), p. 18.

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the more radical presbyterians aligned sufficiently for them both to seek the total overthrow of the Stuarts, but the influence of those who sought to limit Stuart authority never vanished completely.91 In the reactions to the Act of Uniformity it can be seen that in England, too, there was a broad group who accepted Charles’s Restoration but conceived of his authority in a more limited way, and who did not totally abandon any allegiance to the Solemn League and Covenant even while seeking compromise where possible with the regime and the established church.

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MacIntosh, ‘Royal Supremacy Restored?’, p. 163.

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4 Crisis and Toleration in the 1660s The 1660s saw the jubilation that many had experienced at the Restoration turn to concern as the British kingdoms were rocked by a series of crises. The Covenants continued to be discussed, in both favourable and unfavourable terms, throughout this period. London was struck by plague in 1665, and fire the following year, and war broke out between England and the Dutch Republic. In the fevered atmosphere surrounding these crises, fears grew of the threat posed by nonconformist plots and violence, and some feared that the Covenants would re-emerge as instruments or inspirations for sedition. In many accounts, Covenanters and presbyterians are considered as schismatic dissenters or malefactors akin to Jesuits and Quakers. However, others argued that the Solemn League and Covenant represented a solution to the instability of the Restoration settlement which was becoming increasingly apparent. The political theories which surrounded discussion of the Covenants evolved in interesting ways in this period, with proponents of the Covenants conceiving of them in ways which did not involve so rigid a separation of the ‘two kingdoms’ of church and crown as had the theories of the Scottish reformation from which they had emerged. Even as the weaknesses of the Stuart monarchy and the religious settlement of 1662 became more apparent throughout the 1660s, the crown in England remained in a stronger position than ever it had in Scotland, and this situation is reflected in discussions and theories around the Covenants. The Solemn League and Covenant continued to be thought of as a solution to the problems of religious and civil power in the British kingdoms, which entangled the fortunes of church and crown while theoretically elevating neither above the other. If the conception of a constitution for the British kingdoms embodied by the Solemn League and Covenant was to be realised, its proponents reasoned, this constitution would have protected and strengthened both church and crown. Through the means of the oath embodied by the Covenant, the inherent sovereignty of the people would be channelled into loyalty to the king, and the king bound in sight of God to uphold and defend the true religion. However, while the problems with the Restoration settlement became more apparent, the rigid ecclesiastical demands and political instability that many saw as embodied by the Solemn League and Covenant prevented it from functioning in practice as a unifying form of civil religion. A failed Covenanter rebellion in Scotland raised fears that the Covenants were once again being used as instruments of violence, but also prompted James Stewart and James Stirling to explicate Covenanter political theory with 102

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newfound emphasis on natural law, presenting ideas which appear to anticipate those which would flourish around the time of the Revolution of 1688. The prospect of potential indulgence for dissenters also created a dilemma for those who had subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant, and religious dissenters more broadly in this period. While some welcomed the prospect of toleration, many struggled with the idea of accepting toleration on the basis of an Erastian conception of royal authority contrary to the Covenants or presbyterian conceptions of the church. This was particularly true in Scotland, where the need for compromise with presbyterian dissenters was greatest, but opposition to royal control of the church was stronger than in England. Others felt that the prospect of tolerating dissent at all might be a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the reformation of all Three Kingdoms that it mandated. This was a period in which supporters of the Covenants were marginalised, but which also underscored the continued relevance the Covenants had for those considering the political and religious issues which plagued the Restoration polity. This chapter will begin with an introduction to the crises and dissent which characterised much of the decade, and how these shaped attitudes to the Covenants, and move on to analysing how the legacy of the Covenants interacted with evolving ideas of royal authority in the 1660s, particularly with respect to the issues of attempted indulgence and toleration of dissenters. Whereas the 1640s and early 1660s saw lengthy and detailed exchanges of books and pamphlets published on the subject of the Covenants, there is not a similar volume of comparably detailed print discourse dating from the mid-1660s. Instead, references to the Covenants are more often found in ballads or verse, in jocular or derogatory terms, the irrelevance of the Covenants and the defeat of their proponents presented as a foregone conclusion.1 As it was phrased in one such example, ‘That Party which Sealed a Covenant in hast, Who made King and Kingdom, and Churches lye wast, Their Projects all came to Nothing at last.’2 In a ballad about a ‘joviall crew’, written to celebrate ‘the trade of a bonny bold begger’, one of the positive characteristics this idealised group of beggars possessed was that they ‘enter into no Covenant nor League’.3 Others cast the Covenanters and Covenants as villainous influences in narratives leading to the triumph of the Restoration in 1 Anonymous,

The Last years intelligencer in Burlesq. (s.n., 1663), 1–5. A Nevv-thing of nothing, or, A Song made of nothing, the newest in print he that seriously mindes it will find something in’t (The Vere at the sign of the Angell, 1664), 1. 3 Anonymous, The Joviall Crew, or Beggers-Bush. In which a mad maunder doth vapour and swagger, with praiseing the trade of a bonny bold begger (William Gilbertson, 1660–65), 1. This song is presumably a reference to Richard Brome’s well-known play A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars; for more on this see Bradley D. Ryner, Performing Economic Thought: English Drama and Mercantile Writing 1600–1642 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). For more on ballads in this period see Angela McShane, Political Broadside Ballads of Seventeenth-Century England: A Critical Bibliography (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011). 2 Anonymous,

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lifting the ‘long cloak’ of presbyterianism, independency and puritanism from the realm, often conflating these dissenters with other purportedly seditious groups such as the Fifth Monarchists.4 However, even as the balladeers celebrated the defeat of Covenanting along with all other disruptive radical nonconformism, signs were already emerging that the perceived victory of the Restoration regime over Covenanters and other radicals may have been less than total. The exposure of a planned ‘northern rebellion’, also referred to as the ‘Farnley Wood plot’, in which radicals attempted to orchestrate uprisings in Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmorland, highlighted the immediacy of the threat.5 The plot was a failure, but along with the arrest of various other radical conspirators in the period 1663–64, it demonstrated that the potential for violent schism and sedition among the ‘hotter’ Protestants had not vanished entirely. Although these plots were not primarily led by presbyterians, there were links between some of those arrested and Scottish Covenanters, and all Protestant groups resistant to the episcopal church settlement were seen as having radical potential.6 The suspicion on all sides would be exacerbated by the 1664 Conventicle Act, which outlawed public meetings for dissenting worship, and the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which brought with it the possibility of cooperation between dissenters and the United Provinces. Presbyterians, puritans and other radical exiles had long sought refuge in the Netherlands and upon the outbreak of war contacts began between radicals in England and the exiles about the possibility of an alliance with the Dutch against the Stuart monarchy.7 Further turmoil in the form of the outbreak of plague and the Great Fire of London contributed to a period in which tensions were high and fears of nonconforming rebels capitalising on the weakness of the kingdom were rampant.8 4

‘AC and PC’, The tyrannical usurpation of the independent cloak over the Episcopal gown (Gideon Andrews, 1663), 1; Anonymous, A Mene Tekel to Fifth Monarchy, with the knavery of the cloak (1665), 1. 5 The plot was led by dissenting minister Edward Richardson, who apparently had connections to dissenters and Covenanters in London, Scotland, and the Netherlands. Despite the plot being uncovered and Richardson fleeing to the Netherlands, the rebels did actually manage to muster men in three counties, Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmorland, but these quickly melted away, partly due to low numbers and partly due to unfavourable weather. Richard L. Greaves, Enemies Under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain 1664–1677 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 2. For more on this event see Andrew James Hopper, ‘The Farnley Wood Plot and the Memory of the Civil Wars in Yorkshire’, Historical Journal, 45:2 (2002), 281–303. 6 Greaves, Enemies, pp. 1–11. 7 Ibid., pp. 24–30. 8 For more on the political and social consequences of the plague and fire, see Robin D. Gwynn, ‘Growing Through Crisis: The Plague of 1665, the Great Fire, and the French Protestant Church of London’, Huguenot Society Journal, 30:4 (2016), 519–31; Matthew R. Greenhall, ‘“Three of the Horsemen”: The Commercial Consequences of Plague, Fire and War on British East Coast Trade, 1660–1674’, International Journal of Maritime History, 24:2

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In this climate of fear, discourse around the Covenants evolved in ways which demonstrate the influence of the contemporary political situation. The apparent instability of the Restoration settlement and regime meant that the re-emergence of alternative political and religious arrangements was increasingly viewed as a possibility. Some returned to the idea of the constitutional arrangement embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant as a potential alternative to the unstable Restoration constitution. At the same time, however, fears of radical anarchy and a return to war or regicide influenced supporters of the Covenants to conceive of them in more conservative terms than some had previously done so. Even James Stewart in Scotland, who was a much more rigidly committed Covenanter than many signatories to the Solemn League and Covenant in England, and an exponent of radical ideas of natural law, framed the Covenants in a remarkably conservative manner. In a similar way to the efforts of the earliest Covenanters to ameliorate the radical implications of the National Covenant in the view of certain audiences, some presbyterians in the 1660s started to portray the Covenants in more restrained terms. In this view they were conceived of as balanced, moderate solutions to the contradictions of the Restoration settlement, which would safeguard the authority of the king and the integrity of the church in stronger ways than the Restoration settlement had done. The Second Anglo-Dutch War brought with it fears that presbyterians and other dissenters might side with the Dutch against the monarchy. In the event, there was no significant uprising of English dissenters in support of the Dutch military effort. It has been argued that the range of religious and political views among the English dissenting exile community in the Dutch Republic made it difficult to arrive at agreement over what precisely would be the goal of such an alliance.9 Nevertheless, the possibility of cooperation between the king’s foreign enemies and religious dissenters at home was considered a very real one by the regime, which is understandable when the eventual Dutch role in the overthrow of James II in 1688 is considered.10 There were also particular historical reasons why the possibility of an alliance between presbyterians who might remain loyal to the Covenants and the Dutch would have been a troubling one for Charles II and his supporters. The connections between English presbyterians and the Low Countries, particularly Antwerp and Amsterdam, were extensive and longstanding.11 The English Reformed Church in Amsterdam had congregations drawn from all classes and operated with a significant degree of independence from Dutch (2012), 97–126; Jacob F. Field, Reactions and Responses to the Great Fire: London and England in the Later 17th Century (PhD Thesis, Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2008); Stephen Porter, The Great Plague (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), ch. 5. 9 Greaves, Enemies, p. 16. 10 Ibid., pp. 26-7. 11 Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 142–3.

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churches and authorities, playing an active role in the life of much of the exile community in matters of justice, dispute resolution, and charity.12 In the 1630s and 1640s, cooperation and communication with the Dutch was a cornerstone of the foreign policy of the Covenanter regime in Scotland. The Bishops’ Wars, it has been argued, took on a European significance in the context of the ongoing conflict between Spain and the United Provinces. Prior to their outbreak, Charles I had been broadly aligned with Spain and was making preparations to intervene on their behalf, but the naval dominance enjoyed in the North Sea by the Dutch over the Spanish after 1639 broke up this potential alliance and allowed free passage of material assistance to the Scots from the Netherlands.13 This in turn drew the Scottish Covenanters into the alliance of France, Sweden, and the United Provinces engaged in the Thirty Years’ War, and these countries all provided support to the Scots at various points.14 While the Covenanter diplomacy of 1639–40 took place in a very different context to the 1660s, as support for the Covenants among elites and nobility was far more limited, the fear that Covenanting rebels might support the Dutch persisted. Furthermore, as discussed in previous chapters, the introduction of the Solemn League and Covenant had in effect created a framework for conducting novel forms of diplomacy across the British Isles without the involvement of the king.15 The fact that the Covenants represented an alternative political model to both a strong Stuart monarchy and the puritan Commonwealth of Cromwell is further reason that Covenanters and presbyterians would have appeared as an attractive potential ally to the Dutch. In domestic terms, a mixed monarchy, it could be argued, meant less leeway for wars with the United Provinces. In international terms, the Solemn League and Covenant represented an instrument for pursuing Protestant solidarity across borders which would have made its signatories potentially attractive partners. Despite Dutch support for forces opposed 12

Ibid., pp. 147–65. Allan MacInnes, ‘Covenanting Exchanges with the French Court during the Wars for the Three Kingdoms’, Revue electronique d’etudes sur le monde Anglophone, 11:2 (2014), 1. 14 Ibid., 1. 15 For more on the relationship between English and Scottish Protestantism and the United Provinces, see Esther Mijers, ‘Addicted to Puritanism: Philosophical and Theological Relations Between Scotland and the United Provinces in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, History of Universities, 29:2 (2017), 69–95; Helmer J. Helmers, The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), particularly chs 2–3; Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), ch. 5; Douglas Catterall, ‘Fortress Rotterdam? Rotterdam’s Scots Community and the Covenanter Cause, 1638–1688’, in British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688, ed. David Worthington (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 87–105. For ideas of ‘international Protestantism’ more broadly see Jeremy Fradkin, ‘Protestant Unity and Anti-Catholicism: The Irenicism and Philo-Semitism of John Dury in Context’, Journal of British Studies, 56:2 (2017), 273–94; Tony Claydon, ‘The Church of England and the Churches of Europe’, in The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 13

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to Charles I during the Bishops’ Wars, as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms wore on support among the Dutch political class for the Stuart monarchy and opposition to the religious and political proposition embodied by Cromwell grew.16 The centralising, Erastian Protestantism of Cromwell was anathema to many in the Dutch Republic, who viewed his rule as a pope-like usurpation of absolute power.17 It was for this reason, it has been argued, that many within the United Provinces viewed the possibility of working with exiles cautiously. The Commonwealth had been no friend to the Dutch and it has been argued that many in the United Provinces were keen to avoid installing a regime too similar to Cromwell’s in the event that the Stuart monarchy could be overthrown.18 In the Covenants however, a political and religious arrangement not dissimilar to that of the Dutch Republic was embodied. While Scottish presbyterians did not actively cooperate with the Dutch, there were certainly connections between the Anglo-Dutch War and the rising of Covenanters which took place in 1666. This represented the first major outbreak of sustained violent resistance associated with loyalty to the Covenants in Scotland: the events which became known as the Pentland Rising and culminated in a defeat of the Covenanting forces at the Battle of Rullion Green. Tensions had been building since the Restoration settlement, both over the overarching issues of church government and more directly over the behaviour of the king’s representatives in Scotland. The attempts of the Earl of Middleton to enforce conformity in the early years of the Restoration have been described by Maurice Lee Jr as ‘disastrous’.19 The efforts of his successor, the Earl of Rothes, do not seem to have been any more successful as he not only failed to achieve an effective crackdown on illegal conventicling, but actually presided over an increase in its occurrence.20 Concerns about the possibility of a conspiracy between Scottish dissenters and the Dutch military exacerbated these issues. The decision by the Earl of Rothes to levy troops and billet them in the west of Scotland was motivated, it has been argued, by a fear of the Dutch and their newly formed alliance with France.21 Rothes’s intention in moving these forces to the west was ‘to crush nonconformity once and for all’, argued Julia Buckroyd.22 Rothes did not succeed in this endeavour, and instead set the stage for a revolt. A combination of ‘this massive assault on nonconformity, together with the unrest caused by the Dutch war, the disarming of the west and the 16 Helmers,

The Royalist Republic, pp. 90–115. Ibid., pp. 217–18. 18 Greaves, Enemies, p. 16. 19 Maurice Lee Jr, ‘The Worcester Veterans and the Restoration Regime’, in Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions, ed. Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014), p. 146. 20 Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1976), p. 58. 21 Julia Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland 1660–1681 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980), p. 65. 22 Ibid., p. 65. 17

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harsh financial policies of the government from 1664’ meant that tensions in Scotland were extremely high and ripe for a rebellion.23 These tensions came to a head in 1666, when a scuffle between local inhabitants and soldiers under the command of Sir James Turner, who had been dispatched to keep peace and uphold conformity in the area, escalated into armed rebellion.24 Turner’s small garrison was quickly overrun and Turner himself captured without a fight.25 While historians have argued that networks of dissenters in the area may have been planning for an uprising for some time, it appears that in the event the rising was spontaneous and local plotters were only able to join it in a piecemeal fashion.26 In any case, the conduct of Turner and his troops appears to have exacerbated existing tensions significantly, and created a climate of resentment in which the outbreak of spontaneous rebellion was possible.27 The local dynamics of the rising have been addressed in much greater detail than can be afforded here by Neil McIntyre, who has demonstrated that the rising involved a combination of local motivations and grievances with the actions of dedicated radicals from both Ireland and England. These dynamics do not need to be revisited here except to concur with McIntyre that they serve as evidence that ‘the Solemn League and Covenant held the potential, symbolically at least, to unite aggrieved nonconformists in the Three Kingdoms against the government of Charles II.’28 Throughout the period discussed in this book, the Covenants were utilised in a dynamic fashion to embody alternative constitutional arrangements to the often centralising, imperial conceptions of authority originating from the Stuart court. This can be seen in the Pentland Rising in the role played by the Solemn League and Covenant as an alternative authority which might be invoked in the face of perceived intolerable imperial imposition. Interestingly however, in the case of the Pentland Rising evidence 23

Ibid., p. 65. Enemies, p. 66. 25 Ibid., p. 67. 26 Ibid., pp. 64–9. 27 Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters, pp. 62–3. 28 Neil McIntyre, Saints and Subverters: The Later Covenanters in Scotland c.1648–1682 (PhD Thesis, Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 2016), p. 64. Aside from mentions by Cowen, Greaves, and McIntyre, scholarship on the rising is limited; the only monograph on the subject is the dated account by Charles Sanford Terry, The Pentland Rising and Rullion Green (Glasgow: James McLehose and Sons, 1905). The rising is also discussed in Elizabeth Hannan Hyman, ‘A Church Militant: Scotland, 1661–1690’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 26:1 (1995), 57–62. For more on the role of the Covenants in Ireland see Chris R. Langley, ‘Sheltering under the Covenant: The National Covenant, Orthodoxy and the Irish Rebellion, 1638–1644’, Scottish Historical Review, 96:2 (2017), 137–60; John Young, ‘Scotland and Ulster Connections in the Seventeenth Century: Sir Robert Adair of Kinhilt and the Scottish Parliament under the Covenanters’, Journal of Scotch-Irish Studies, 3:4 (2013), 16–76; Peter C. Gilmore, ‘Presbyterianism as Cultural Marker: Covenanters and the Scotch-Irish’, Scotch-Irish Studies, 2:2 (2005), 40–59. 24 Greaves,

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can also be seen that association with the Solemn League and Covenant imparted upon local grievances a wider constitutional and religious meaning which was not always welcomed by those aggrieved. When the rebels publicly affirmed their allegiance to the Covenant upon reaching Lanark, somewhere in the region of two hundred people left the army; presumably, Richard Greaves concluded, ‘these had probably enlisted only on account of economic grievances or hostility to Turner’s actions.’29 While the Solemn League and Covenant presented a framework in which political and religious grievances could be articulated and acted upon, this was, as discussed in previous chapters, a framework fraught with wide-ranging implications which limited its appeal. Despite these desertions however, eight hundred rebels, and possibly up to twice that number, remained at arms by the time they met the loyalist force at Rullion Green.30 The royalists numbered in the thousands, making the resulting battle comparable in scale to most of the fighting seen during the war in Scotland in the 1640s; only the climactic battles of Kilsyth and Philiphaugh involved significantly greater numbers of men.31 The rebels were unable to recreate any of the against-the-odds victories won by the royalist rebels in the civil war however, and were soundly defeated. This swift conclusion should not, however, obscure the fact that the Pentland Rising represented a stark reminder of the violence and turmoil of the 1640s and underlined the fact that a return to similar conditions was very possible, given the right circumstances. With the ongoing Anglo-Dutch war, the outbreak of plague and fire, and rebellion in Scotland, the sense grew among supporters of the restored regime that the enemies of the king were marshalling to harm him and his kingdom. While the anti-Covenanter texts of the period immediately following the Restoration often took the form of cordial discourse which addressed the Covenants’ supporters as wayward brethren rather than enemies, the situation was rather different by 1665–66. By this point, critics of the Covenanters, and presbyterians more generally, commonly write of them as analogous to Quakers and Jesuits in the seditious threat they posed to the kingdoms, and methodical argument is less often seen than outright censure. The increasing fragmentation of the political nation as a result of religious sectarianism is something commonly blamed on presbyterians, among others. One text described how the ‘endless wranglings’ and ‘confused volums’ created by the ‘Pope, Presbyter, Independent or Quaker’ had achieved only ‘the distraction of Churches and States for Jews, Turks and Heathens to laugh at’.32 Others acknowledged that 29 Greaves,

Enemies, p. 67. Ibid., pp. 64–73. 31 Ibid., pp. 70–1; Murdo Fraser, The Rivals: Montrose and Argyll and the Struggle for Scotland (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2015), pp. 154–63. 32 Robert Dixon, The doctrine of faith, justification and assurance humbly endeavoured to be farther cleared towards the satisfaction and comfort of all free unbiassed spirits, with appendix for peace (William Godbid, 1668), p. 104. 30

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presbyterians were somewhat less extreme than other groups, but expressed fears that this simply made them enablers for the more extreme groups, or gateways via which people could end up associated with ever more extreme sects. ‘Conversion’, wrote Abraham Wright in 1668, ‘signified turning men from presbyterian to Independent, from thence to Anabaptist, and so on from one corrupted Opinion to another.’33 A similar view is expressed by Jeremy Taylor, who writes that ‘I hope the presbyterian will join with the Protestant, and say that the Papist, and the Socinian, and the Independent, and the Anabaptist, and the Quaker are guilty of Rebellion and Disobedience, for all their pretence of the Word of God to be on their side’, before ruefully concluding that ‘certain it is that the biggest part of dissenters in the whole world are criminally disobedient.’34 Here Taylor acknowledged the confused role of the presbyterian in Restoration politics, caught between outright conformity and dissent, often straddling both worlds to different extents.35 A slight exception would be a text containing analysis of the lawfulness of the Solemn League and Covenant and the circumstances surrounding it, produced by the bishop Gryffith Williams.36 This does resemble the slightly older criticisms of the Covenant such as Gauden’s Analysis or the Grand Case of the Present Ministry in that it methodically analysed the Solemn League and Covenant in the context of biblical and legal precedent in order to portray it as unlawful. However, in tone it differs markedly, with an excoriating approach that portrays the presbyterian supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant not only as having joined the ranks of known enemies of the church, but as their leader and instigator. The title associated Covenanters with ‘sacrilidge, atheism, and prophaneness’.37 In one illustrative passage, Williams provides a biblical comparison with the tribes who ‘holpen the children of Lot to devour Jacob’:

33

Abraham Wright, Anarchie reviving, or, The good old cause on the anvile being a discovery of the present design to retrive the late confusions both of church and state, in several essays for liberty of conscience (s.n., 1668), p. 15. 34 Jeremy Taylor, Dekas embolimaios a supplement to the Eniautos, or, Course of sermons for the whole year: being eleven sermons explaining the nature of faith, and obedience, in relation to God, and the ecclesiastical and secular powers respectively (R. Royston, 1667), p. 81. Jeremy Taylor was the Bishop of Downe and Connor from 1660 until his death in 1667, and was often involved in disputes with Irish presbyterians. See John Spurr, ‘Jeremy Taylor’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 35 This idea will be discussed further in the context of the late 1670s and the 1680s in chapter 5, and is one which several historians have engaged with; for example see Gary S. De Krey, ‘Between Revolutions: Re-Appraising the Restoration in Britain’, History Compass, 6:3 (2008), 738–73; Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: The Entring Book, 1677–1691 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), ch. 4. 36 Williams was a long-time royalist who had fought for the king at the Battle of Edgehill. See Vivienne Larminie, ‘Griffith Williams’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 37 Gryffith Williams, Truth vindicated, against sacrilidge, atheism and prophaneness and likewise against the common invaders of the rights of kings (Randall Taylor, 1666), p. 1.

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CRISIS AND TOLERATION IN THE 1660 s So, the Independents, the Arminians, the Brownists, the Anabaptists, Luther and Calvin, and Cartwright, the Hugenots, with them that are called the Quakers, and the Jesuites also, have joyned with them, and have, to the uttermost of their power, holpen our Grand Opposers the Presbyterians, if not to devour the seed of Jacob, to destroy the Church and thy Service.38

It can be seen here how, in the fevered atmosphere of the mid-1660s, there were supporters of episcopacy who conceived of events in the apocalyptic terms more commonly associated with the thought of the ‘hotter’ Protestants. The tense state of attitudes on all sides is encapsulated in a text from 1667 which purported to contain an account of a fabricated declaration, to be used in Lancashire and Cheshire to entrap suspected radicals.39 The exact denominational allegiance professed in this declaration was left unclear, beyond a general anti-Jesuit position.40 It does however contain a reference to loyalty to the Solemn League and Covenant, which it claimed ‘some of us have long since entered, and as the rest of us now since enter into’, implying that radical sedition involved an alliance of both longstanding Covenanters and other groups. This featured alongside economically focussed arguments bemoaning ‘the lamentable cryes of the poor of the land for want of imployment, through the decay of trading, by means of excise, customs [and] monthly taxes’, positions which distinctly differentiate it from most legitimate Covenanter writings.41 Whatever the truth of this forgery, be it a genuine instrument of entrapment or an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of investigations into radical sedition, it underlines the extent to which dissenters and conformists had both come to see each other as acting in bad faith, and with destructive and malicious motives.42 Indulgence and Royal Authority

The crises of the 1660s saw renewed debate on the nature of post-Restoration royal authority, and the Solemn League and Covenant played a part in these debates. In particular, a series of attempts to introduce forms of toleration in England and Scotland meant a return to discussion of the implications of the Solemn League and Covenant for royal authority in religious matters. This formed part of a broader debate about the extent to which presbyterians and 38

Ibid., p. 118. Evan Price, Eye-salve for England, or, The grand trappan detected in a plain and faithful narrative of the horrid and unheard-of designs of some justices and deputy-lieutenants in Lancashire treacherously to ensnare the lives and estates of many persons of quality in that county, as also, in the counties of York and Chester (1667), p. 4. 40 Ibid., p. 5. 41 Ibid., p. 5. 42 For more on the role of forgeries and deception in this period see Kate Loveman, Reading Fictions, 1660–1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), particularly ch. 4. 39

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other dissenters could accept toleration on an ‘Erastian’ basis. In Scotland, the Pentland Rising led to the publication of two significant new works of Covenanter political theory by James Stewart, Naphtali and Jus Populi Vindicatum. These texts contextualised the Covenants in a time of crisis and with respect to theories of natural law, and did so to argue against them being purely instruments of radicalism and sedition. While Stewart had a fairly radical conception of the people’s right to reject royal authority and return to a state of nature, he also argued that the Covenants presented potential solutions to the kingdoms’ crises, which would restrain a natural right to resistance and ensure the security of the monarchy by predicating it on a Covenanted basis. The remainder of this chapter will examine the relationship between royal authority and discourse surrounding the Covenants in the 1660s, by first examining the issues of royal authority and toleration, and then analysing Stewart’s texts Naphtali and Jus Populi. By the 1660s, presbyterian attitudes towards royal authority, particularly in Scotland, and among those in England who had subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant, had cemented a view among some supporters of the establishment that presbyterians could not be negotiated with. This made them enemies of the peace of church and state as much as groups such as Jesuits, and this is reflected in discourse that groups the two together. The conflation of presbyterian and Catholic was not simply the grouping together of vague, supposedly seditious ‘others’, though this certainly occurs. Instead, specific constitutional criticisms of their perceived usurpation of civil authority were used to link both groups as incompatible with the model of church and state which emerged from 1660–62. An anti-presbyterian poem from 1666 implored its readers to ‘not let ev’ry Parish have a Pope’.43 Another pamphlet dating to 1668 equated any Protestant who subscribed to a ‘two kingdoms’ model of church and state with promoting Catholic theology: Then as to Religion, it is most palpable, that they do all deny any Authority in the king to intermeddle with it, are no less professed Enemies to his Supremacy in matters Ecclesiastical (a foundation Principle of the English Protestant reformation) than the Jesuited Papists. Their Judgement joyntly is, Let Kings take care of Civil State, Let Church of Church-matters debate.44

What united those seen as dangerous dissenters, Covenanters and Papists, therefore, was a view of royal authority as limited in the spiritual sphere. Such a view, the author argued, was incompatible with obedience to the law and the stability of a civil society, certainly one such as England where the church fell within the jurisdiction of the king: 43 Anonymous, The Scotch riddle unfolded: or, Reflections upon R.VV. his most lamentable ballad, called the loyal non-conformist (1666), p. 1. 44 Benjamin Camfield, A serious examination of the independent’s catechism and therein of the chief principles of non-conformity to, and separation from the Church of England (J. Redmayne, 1668), Appendix, 2.

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CRISIS AND TOLERATION IN THE 1660 s Now so long as these Doctrines are entertained and acknowledged, it is but labour lost to press them unto obedience and conformity to the Laws of the Realm about Religion, and the Service of God; since these Laws themselves are adjudged by them no other then extravagancies beyond the compass of their Rulers Commission.45

What united the presbyterians and the Jesuits in the mind of the author was not only their current potential to disrupt the status quo in England, but a fundamental incompatibility of their beliefs with the way church and state was constituted after 1660–62. Both groups were portrayed as holding a disregard for the law in viewing it as ‘extravagancies beyond the compass of their Rulers Commission’. Supporters of the Covenant, for their part, continued to produce analyses which portrayed the Solemn League and Covenant as continuing to bind, but they did not do so in the quantity and length seen around 1660–61, which is unsurprising in light of the proscription of the Covenants and greater restrictions on nonconforming print. Again however, the tone can be observed to be changing, from one of compromise and reconciliation to one of dire warning and outright criticism. Even prior to the suspicions of conformists reaching a crescendo in 1666, Covenanter texts show little of the good-faith approach they ostensibly took in the early phases of the Restoration. A pamphlet presented in the form of a pair of letters dating to 1665 entitled Covenant Renouncers, Desperate Apostates demonstrates this tone of betrayal and mistrust. It began by making the observation, which the author calls ‘worthy of your serious consideration’, that ‘an Enemy under the vizor of a Friend, is far more dangerous, than an open and professed adversary.’46 The implication is clear and, interestingly, very similar to accusations made against Covenanters by their opponents, that attempts to negotiate after the Restoration were in bad faith, and that supporters of episcopacy represented an equal or greater threat than more obvious malefactors such as Jesuits or Quakers. Covenant Renouncers, Desperate Apostates is also more explicit in the positions it presented regarding the nature of Godly and royal authority than some previous texts of a more conciliatory nature. This text presented more explicitly the idea of the primacy of Godly law over individual executive authority, which had often been present to some extent, but was previously more buried and qualified, as discussed in the previous chapter. In response to arguments advocating what the author calls ‘Subjection to higher Powers’, it argues that ‘there are Powers higher than those on earth, which whether it be right to obey rather, or before men,

45

Ibid., Appendix, 2. Covenant-renouncers, desperate apostates opened in two letters, written by a Christian friend, to Mr. William Gurnal of Lavenham in the county of Suffolk: which may indefinitely serve as an admonition to all such presbyterian ministers, or others, who have forced their consciences, not only to leap over, but to renounce their Solemn Covenant-obligation, to endeavor a reformation according to God’s Word, and the extirpation of all prelatical superstition, and contrary thereunto, conform to those superstitious vanities, against which they had so solemnly sworn (Printed in Anti-turn-coat-street, and sold at the sign of Truths-delight, 1665), p. 3. 46 Anonymous,

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judge ye.’47 The legitimate ‘higher powers’ mentioned in scripture, it suggested, referred only to those who ‘[act] regularly, according to that trust which is committed to them by God’.48 Such arguments have been present in various forms in Covenanter theories since the Bishops’ Wars. However, to see them articulated so explicitly is a marked contrast from the Short Surveigh of the Present Ministry only a few years prior, the authors of which presented subjection to the king as at the heart of their position. The authors of that text insisted that they were ‘so heavily devouted to the service of the King, that we dare not in the least detract from his Royal Prerogative’ and that ‘we do not finde in the Covenant any such words as that we shall endeavour to extirpate or alter the Government without the Kings consent.’49 In An Apologeticall Relation of the Particular Sufferings of the Faithfull Ministers & Professours of Scotland, John Brown emphasised the limitations, both constitutional and spiritual, on the king’s authority.50 The role of Christ as supreme king, and the weakening of this role by the opponents of the Covenant, was emphasised: ‘The cause, for which thou dost now suffer is the cause of Christ: His enemies would pul the crown from off his head, & the sceptre out of his hand, & by this meanes, make him no King in & over his Church.’ It argued that ‘Christ’s interest should be sought before man’s, & the King’s interests, only in a subordination to Christ.’51 The Covenants were described as that which ‘God will owne as his Covenant and as his oath’ and to mandate only actions which were already necessary as a ‘morall duty’.52 This text therefore strongly emphasised the jure divino underpinning of the presbyterianism represented in the Covenant in a way which some conceptions did not. Both Covenants had been framed as legitimate on the basis of some form of law which took precedence over the will of the monarch. The National Covenant was associated with concepts of an ancient Scottish constitution which emulated biblical ideals, and which had been solidified and honed during their reformation. Arguments for the legitimacy of the Solemn League and Covenant were often predicated upon ideas of a people’s right to covenant together for self-­ defence via their due representatives. Both these approaches indirectly appealed 47

Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 7. 49 Anonymous (‘Some Conformable Non-Conformists’), A Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry (s.n., 1663), pp. 27–29. 50 This text’s author, John Brown of Wamphray, is a good example of the importance of the links between English and Scottish presbyterians and the United Provinces in this period. In 1663, after losing his ministry in the Great Ejection, Brown fled to Rotterdam, where he continued to preach and write in defence of the Covenant; see Ginny Gardner, ‘John Brown’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 51 John Brown, An apologeticall relation of the particular sufferings of the faithfull ministers & professours of the Church of Scotland, since August, 1660 wherein severall questions, usefull for the time, are discussed: the King’s preroragative over parliaments & people soberly enquired into, the lawfulness of defensive war cleared, by a well wisher to the good old cause (s.n., 1665), p. 420. 52 Ibid., p. 374. 48

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to a concept of Godly law or will, from which, it was argued, the rights which underpinned the conceptual basis of the Covenants were derived. In Covenant Renouncers, Desperate Apostates however, a more direct assertion is made that the Solemn League and Covenant represented the will of God: the work of ‘the Powers higher than those on earth’.53 The idea that the Covenants represented the will of God had always been present in the discourse around them; however, this aspect of the perceived legitimacy of the Covenants was often presented indirectly, via precedent and political theory, over a direct claim to Godly inspiration. Considering the lack of clear pathways towards conciliation between presbyterians and the established church at this point, it is not surprising that fewer texts can be found in this period which attempted to portray the Covenants in a ‘moderate’ light. It is also possible that there was greater interest in works from leading Covenanters emphasising these ideas in this period. The year 1664 saw the publication of a collection of Samuel Rutherford’s letters, which frequently characterised the Covenants as the direct work of God and directly associated with the health of the churches and kingdoms of the British Isles.54 Similarly, Archibald Johnston, one of the architects of the National Covenant, had declared from the scaffold in 1663 that ‘our Covenant is nothing else but a solemn express declaration of our being satisfied with the Covenant of Grace’, claiming for the Covenant a direct scriptural legitimacy.55 Despite these concerns about the relationship between presbyterian and Covenanting theories and royal authority, attempts to reach some sort of compromise settlement did continue. As a result, the late 1660s and early 1670s saw a series of debates on the possibility of indulgence or comprehension for religious dissenters, and the merits of renewing the 1664 Conventicle Act, which raised perennial questions about the nature of the established church and civil jurisdiction over conscience. This period has been characterised by Gary S. De Krey as a ‘first Restoration crisis’ (in comparison with the wider ‘Restoration crisis’ surrounding the Exclusion debates in the period 1678–83).56 The period was one of confusion and swings of fortune. In England, the Conventicle Act was renewed in 1670, followed by a declaration of indulgence from the king in 1672, which was undone the following year. A similar process occurred in 53 Anon.,

Covenant-renouncers, p. 7. Samuel Rutherford, Joshua revidivus, or Mr Rutherfoord’s letters (Rotterdam: s.n., 1664), 117, 297, 541, 543, 581, 620. 55 Warriston, Archibald Johnston, The last discourse of the Right Honble the Lord Warestoune, as he delivered it upon the scafford at the Mercat-Cross of Edinburgh, July 22. 1663 (Edinburgh: s.n., 1664), p. 19. Johnston had fled abroad in July 1660 after being condemned by the Restoration regime, but was captured in Rouen and handed over to the English, and was hanged in Edinburgh in 1663; see John Coffey, ‘Sir Archibald Johnston’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 56 Gary S. De Krey, ‘The First Restoration Crisis: Conscience and Coercion in London, 1667–73’, Albion, 25:4 (1993), 555–6. 54

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Scotland, where several attempts at indulgence or comprehension of presbyterians were attempted, with mixed success.57 Though no lasting settlement for any form of toleration was reached, the attempts produced a corpus of discourse exploring how the religiously heterodox nature of the British Isles could be accommodated within a stable model of church and state.58 Alexandra Walsham has argued that the Conventicle Acts of the 1660s and 1670s fitted into a pattern of measures against religious dissent which had been ongoing since the attempts to suppress puritans in Elizabethan times. These measures, she argues, were intended to mitigate the politically subversive potential of religious dissent by limiting gathering in public or in too great a number, but had a secondary effect of a gradual, tacit association of the private, family space with a de facto religious freedom.59 The use of these measures was accompanied by rhetoric from the authorities which portrayed religious tests and proscriptions as instruments to counter political subversion rather than to dominate individual conscience.60 It was on these political grounds that the Solemn League and Covenant was outlawed, and on which many arguments in favour of restoring episcopacy after 1660 were predicated. This ‘process by which pluralism was grudgingly accepted to be ineradicable’, as Walsham phrased it, meant that by the 1670s a serious debate could begin about the possibility of indulgence for private dissenting worship, but also complicated that process by leaving a number of contrasting views both among conformists and nonconformists about the nature of the church, the role of civil authority and the importance of private and public worship. Some nonconformists such as Revd John Owen, steeped in the puritan traditions of the Commonwealth, were happy to appeal to the possibility of private toleration while respecting the king’s supreme authority and reject any suggestion of a separation of the ‘two kingdoms’. Christ, he wrote, would eternally remain the ‘only institutor or author’ of religion.61 However, he conceded: such is that which is called, Power Ecclesiastical, or Authority to dispose of those Affairs of the Church with coercive Jurisdiction, which relates to the outward publik concernments of it, and the legal interests of men in them. This we acknowledge and 57 Attempts at working out a form of ‘moderate episcopacy’ for the Kirk into which presbyterians might be accommodated began in Scotland in 1663, and forms of indulgence were attempted in 1669 and 1672, but the success of these efforts was limited; see Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland, pp. 4–6. 58 For discussion of the efforts towards toleration in the wider context of the 1670s see John Spurr, England in the 1670s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), ch. 8. 59 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 261. 60 Ibid., p. 261. 61 John Owen, A peace-offering in an apology and humble plea for indulgence and libertie of conscience. By sundry Protestants differing in some things from the present establishment about the worship of God (s.n., 1667), p. 13.

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CRISIS AND TOLERATION IN THE 1660 s own to be vested in the Supream Magistrate, the Kings Majesty, who is the fountain and spring of all Jurisdiction in his own Kingdoms what-ever.62

This notion that the king possessed ‘coercive jurisdiction’ was central to royalist conceptions of ecclesiastical authority, but controversial with respect to the conscience of subjects and their rights under the common law.63 In the case of toleration however, the idea was raised as a legal fiction whereby the king could grant conditional indulgences and concessions to dissenters, while not theoretically relinquishing his constitutional powers.64 Such Erastian conceptions of indulgence were deeply controversial for many presbyterians, however, particularly those in Scotland. Although an attempt was made to enact an indulgence in 1669, the proposals were not particularly popular with either Anglicans such as Archbishop Sharp or with presbyterians.65 A prominent proposal for how an accommodation between episcopacy and presbyterianism in Scotland would look was that of Bishop Robert Leighton, although this ultimately would come to nothing.66 Leighton promoted a model similar to some of the forms of ‘limited episcopacy’ discussed in the aftermath of the Restoration, whereby bishops would be advised by presbyteries and synods, with a right of appeal to local synods for appointments to which congregations

62

Ibid., p. 13. For more on these ideas see Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 4; Glenn Burgess, ‘The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered’, The English Historical Review, 107:425 (1992), 837–61; Shelley Lockwood, ‘Marsilius of Padua and the Case for the Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6:1 (1991). 64 See Paul Seaward, ‘Circumstantial Temporary Concessions: Clarendon, Comprehension and Uniformity’, in ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 65 David George Mullan, Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), p. 62. Various approaches were taken towards attempted indulgence in Scotland around this time. Indulgence was extended to those who would accept it in 1669, but concerns quickly grew that ministers were not abiding by the terms of the indulgence and were using it as an opportunity to undermine more orthodox preachers. In 1672, a list of ministers to be readmitted was drawn up without their consultation, but a quarter of them never took their seats at their assigned parishes. Robert Leighton accepted a position as archbishop on the condition that he be allowed to attempt to put some of his ideas on ‘accommodation’ of presbyterians into practice, but he met resistance both from the government and presbyterians and his scheme did not succeed. For more on the 1669 and 1672 indulgences see Buckroyd¸ Church and State in Scotland, chs 7–8. 66 Leighton was a student of Sir James Stewart, Covenanter and father of James Stewart of Goodtrees, writer of Naphtali. Leighton was reluctant to accept his bishopric, but eventually did so out of political expediency, hoping to be able to broker a compromise between presbyterianism and episcopacy. See Hugh Ouston, ‘Robert Leighton’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 63

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objected.67 Responding to Leighton’s proposals, the presbyterian minister Robert MacWard expressed concerns that such a system, without reversals of the Rescissory Act of 1661 and the Act of Supremacy of 1669, would still leave an unacceptable degree of royal authority over religious matters.68 MacWard wrote that in ‘a National Synod … his Majesty, by vertew of his Supremacy, doth more absolutely appoint and determine upon the manner and members thereof, then if it were a meer civill Court’, which he argued made it ‘unquestionably dependent upon his Royal Authority, reserving to himselfe, aswell the proposal, as the final approbation of all matters to be therein treated.’69 The Act of Supremacy, MacWard argued, meant that whatever reassurances presbyterians were offered in Leighton’s proposal for accommodation, it would ultimately exist only on the basis of the king’s whim and would therefore concede no real authority to the presbyteries: The late Act 1669, asserting the Supremacie, whereby the Surpreme Authority overall persons, & in all causes Ecclesiastick, is so fully declared to appertaine to the King, and that by vertew thereof, he may dispose upon the Government and Persons Ecclesiastick; and enact concerning the Churches meetings and matters therin to be proposed, as he shall think fit, that a more absolute power in any thing can hardly be devised in his favours.

In other words, it was not only the case that the specifics of Leighton’s proposal were unacceptable to MacWard. Rather, it was his argument that no accommodation between the episcopacy and presbyterianism could succeed so long as the incompatibility of the Restoration settlement, as he saw it, with the constitution of Scotland went unaddressed. Episcopacy, in this view, was not just an unwelcome innovation on the government of the church (though it was this also). It was also a symptom of a greater problem: the royal supremacy itself. ‘The supremacie’, he wrote, was ‘the complement of all Ecclesiastical usurpations, with an explication broader than all the pretensions of the Papacy.’70 Here MacWard expressed a desire that religion be settled by law, and not subject to the whims of individuals, which is a concept that would form an important facet of political thought for decades to come, and would play a crucial role in the Revolution of 1688 and the development of concepts of civil religion. While these ideas would have their day, as explored in later chapters of this book, attacking the supremacy in this manner certainly complicated efforts to accommodate or tolerate presbyterians. Whereas in England both dissenters 67

Robert MacWard, The case of the accommodation lately proposed by the Bishop of Dunblane to the non-conforming ministers examined (s.n., 1671), p. 2. 68 The Rescissory Act undid the changes made during the period in which the Covenanters were in control in Scotland, and the Act of Supremacy enshrined ‘complete monarchical control over church affairs in Scotland’: Clare Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 116. 69 MacWard, The case of the accommodation, p. 5. 70 Ibid., p. 123.

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and the authorities were to some extent increasingly coming to view freedom of worship in exchange for political loyalty as possible and desirable, MacWard was portraying presbyterianism as inherently associated with an attack on the royal supremacy as outlined in the act of 1669. Moreover, the public, civic aspects present in the Covenants meant that an emerging conception of freedom of conscience within a private sphere was incompatible with upholding these public aspects which many presbyterians, particularly in Scotland, viewed as a religious commitment. Concerns about the compatibility of the Covenant with indulgence were not limited to Scotland. Others argued that since the Solemn League and Covenant had presented a unitary constitutional model of church and state for the British kingdoms, for presbyterians who had subscribed to the Covenant to accept toleration or indulgence would be a breach. The English presbyterian William Assheton argued that ‘such a Toleration is utterly repugnant and inconsistent with that Solemne League and Covenant.’71 Toleration of religious heterodoxy, he argued, would be ‘opposite to the Reformation of Religion, according to the Word of God, and the example of the best reformed churches’.72 It would also prove ‘destructive to the three Kingdomes nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion and government’.73 This highlights the contradictory role played by the Solemn League and Covenant in the late Stuart period. The Covenants enshrined a constitutional arrangement which rejected the Erastian basis upon which legal censures on nonconformity were enacted. However, this did not mean that the Covenanter position was easily reconcilable with emerging conceptions of how toleration might be enacted. As attempts at toleration often had an Erastian underpinning as well, with toleration seen as something extended by the will of the king, such attempts could be seen as incompatible with the jure divino presbyterianism mandated in the Covenants. If the presbyterianism embodied in the Covenants was seen as a Godly form of ecclesiology, to allow toleration for those who rejected this could be viewed as a breach of them.74 71

William Assheton, Toleration disapprov’d and condemn’d by the authority and convincing reasons of I. that wise and learned man King James and his Privvy Council anno reg. 2do, II. the honourable Commons assembled in this present Parliament faithfully collected by a very moderate hand and humbly presented to the serious consideration of all dissenting parties (Francis Oxland Sen., 1670), p. 83. Assheton was a prolific writer who focussed on making his writing widely accessible, who distributed his work ‘in cheap editions for charitable or evangelical distribution’ and produced ‘short pamphlets of practical divinity for the common lay person’. See Newton E. Key, ‘William Assheton’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 72 Assheton, Toleration disapprov’d, p. 67. 73 Ibid., p. 67. 74 For more on this idea generally see Walsham, Charitable Hatred, ch. 2. For specifically in the context of presbyterianism see John Coffey, ‘Between Reformation and Enlightenment: Presbyterian Clergy, Religious Liberty and Intellectual Change’, in Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1570–c.1700, ed. Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 252–71.

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Even among those who did not oppose toleration or indulgence on principle, the nature of this toleration and the boundaries of who might be tolerated were still controversial. The English presbyterian Richard Baxter expressed support for limited forms of toleration and the comprehension of ‘all sober Protestants in the publik ministry’.75 He stressed however that this did not mean a ‘universal toleration’ and portrayed the idea that it did as a deliberate misrepresentation of the position of those supporting toleration by those opposing it.76 He also argued that those who claimed that presbyterianism always involved opposition to toleration were acting disingenuously.77 The truth, he argued, was that there were a range of Protestant doctrines which presbyterians were willing to accept and work alongside, but that this did not mean an acceptance of toleration for all: He argueth from Presbyterians being always against a toleration. Reader, all sober Divines that ever I met with, use here to distinguish between Tolerable and Intolerable things and persons, and to conclude that the Tolerable must be Tolerated, and the other not, though they all agree not how much is Tolerable. Now what doth this man but talk confusedly, as if they had been against all Toleration. Look up man without blushing, and tell the World, Whether ever the Presbyterians maintained it a sin to Tolerate Presbyterians.78

As he conceded, however, there was no general acceptance of exactly which practices were tolerable, and which were not. For Baxter’s part, he described ‘Conformists, Independents and Anabaptists’ as ‘honest tolerable dissenters’.79 In this it can be seen how Baxter’s position, though differing from Assheton’s, also presented an incompatibility with the forms of toleration that were actually on offer, as Charles II was keen to tolerate Catholics also, a group it is safe to assume were not covered under Baxter’s conception of the tolerable.80 In turn, these problems prompted opponents of toleration to cite the Solemn League and Covenant as a reason why toleration would fail, suggesting that supporters of the Covenant would use toleration as an opportunity to impose their own, more severe, forms of religious uniformity. Richard Perrinchief, the English royalist clergyman, argued that, since presbyterians had not balked at imposing religious conformity when given the opportunity to do so, any complaints or appeals for compromise they might then make were insincere, and an attempt only to impose a tyranny of their own: 75

Richard Baxter, Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated, against the reasonings of a confident questionist, in a book called Toleration not abused; with counsil to the nonconformists, and petition to the pious conformists (s.n., 1672), p. 64. 76 Ibid., p. 65. 77 Ibid., p. 61. 78 Ibid., p. 95. 79 Ibid., p. 95. 80 For more on Baxter’s idea of the church see Paul Lim, In Pursuit of Purity, Unity and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in its Seventeenth-Century Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

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CRISIS AND TOLERATION IN THE 1660 s Which Laws as they are justifiable by the continued practice of the Church in all Ages, by the Examples of the Most Religious Princes: so also are they far beneath that rigour which the men who now complain of them, did use when and where, they had or have power. Who has forgot the Tyrannies of the Covenant? We have heard of the Terrors whereby the Decrees of the Kirk of Scotland exacted Obedience.81

Both the obligation of the Solemn League and Covenant, critics argued, and the past behaviour of the Covenanters, gave reason to believe that if given the opportunity they would not extend toleration to other faiths. Their opponents also take pains to emphasise that the stridency of provisions against nonconformity that a presbyterian regime spanning the Three Kingdoms would impose would far outweigh those imposed by the Restoration ministry. This position was set out by the English MP Thomas Tomkins in 1667: It is Evident, that neither of these will Tolerate each other; so there is no reason why the Magistrate should Tolerate either of them: And first, For the presbyterian; the reason is clear, because he will Tolerate no body else, as appears plainly by the Covenant: and if you will have one shameful Instance of their Rigour, remember how they had the face to deny to that Royal Martyr our late Soveraign of Blessed Memory, the attendance of his own Chaplains; He must make use of their way of Devotion, or by their Consent, He must have none at all.82

It was argued, therefore, that toleration could actually do a disservice to Protestant dissenters by potentially exposing them to more severe repression from Covenanting presbyterians. On the subject of those deprived by the Great Ejection, Perrinchief wrote: ‘Do but compare those many thousands that were undone by the Covenant, with those few that did not conform, and it will appear but an empty boast to talk of their number.’83 This would suggest that, by the late 1660s, in contrast to the period immediately following the Restoration settlement when it is common to find derision expressed at the idea of any significant future role for the Solemn League and Covenant, the possibility of a Covenanting revival was being taken more seriously. Partly, this was a result of the climate of fear and mistrust which characterised the 1660s and concerns the Covenant might return as an instrument of radicalism. This is demonstrated both in the attitudes of presbyterians such as Assheton who were rejecting compromise, and in those of critics 81

Richard Perrinchief, Indulgence not Justified (Printed for R. Royston and James Collins, 1668), p. 3. Perrinchief had previously attacked what he saw as the religious tyranny of Henry VIII, but was a strong defender of Charles I, writing even during the Interregnum that he was ‘the most moderate, and the most innocent’ of the monarchs since the time of Henry VIII. See Jason McElligott, ‘Richard Perrinchief’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 82 Thomas Tomkins, The inconveniencies of toleration, or An answer to a late book intituled, A proposition made to the King and Parliament for the safety and happiness of the King and kingdom (W. Garret, 1667), p. 29. 83 Richard Perrinchief, A discourse of toleration in answer to a late book intitutled A discourse of the religion of England (E. C., 1668), p. 53.

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who were leveraging the idea of a return of the Solemn League and Covenant as an argument against toleration. However, it was also part of wider debate on civil authority over the church, and the extent to which this authority, such as it existed, was located with the king or parliament. The idea of a Covenanted kinship was still being advanced by some as a solution to these problems at this point. The fact that the Solemn League and Covenant still mandated for allegiance to the king in some respects made it a more ‘moderate’ proposition than the radical puritanism and republicanism of the interregnum period. This was used by some to argue for its compatibility with the restored monarchy. Others, however, argued that by 1670 the Solemn League and Covenant was a more immediate threat than radical republicanism precisely because of its ‘moderation’. The English bishop Simon Patrick explained this view: The very plea, which those may justly put in for themselves who express more and greater zeal against the presbyterians than against the Regicides; and arraign the Covenant more frequently than the Engagement: there is more and greater need of it; the people being in more danger to be misled by the one than by the other; and having a greater abhorrence of those Crimes which are black and ugly, than of those which are guilded over with specious pretences.84

While the forces that led to the death of Charles I and the creation of the Protectorate were regarded as defeated, therefore, the Covenanters were not viewed in the same way by Patrick. The civil wars period had left an indelible stain on ideas of republicanism, but alternative conceptions of monarchy to that of the one endorsed by the Restoration regime, such as the mixed government embodied in the Covenants, were not so tainted, he argued. In his view this made them a greater danger to the status quo than more radical visions to which he assumed people would not tolerate a return.85 The period after 1663 can be seen to be one in which the Solemn League and Covenant, and in Scotland also the National Covenant, and the ideas with which they were associated, gradually re-entered the public consciousness as matters of serious political impact. Following the early years of the Restoration 84

Simon Patrick, An appendix to the third part of The friendly debate being a letter of the conformist to the non-conformist (H. Eversden, 1670), pp. 98–9. Patrick was regarded as a latitudinarian, and a probable author of the canonical latitudinarian text A brief account of the new sect of latitude-men together with some reflections upon the nevv philosophy (s.n., 1661). His polemical writings focussed on attacking antinomians and Catholics; here presbyterians are attacked in similar terms as being extremists; see Jon Parkin, ‘Patrick, Simon’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 85 For radical and republican viewpoints in this period see Gary S. De Krey, ‘Radicals, Reformers and Republicans: Academic Language and Political Discourse in Restoration London’, in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Craig Houston and Steven C. A. Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 71–99; Blair Worden, ‘Republicanism and the Restoration, 1660–1683’, in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

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in which the supporters of the Covenants were viewed to have been roundly defeated and excluded from public life, and the Covenants themselves mocked, banned and publicly burned, events forced them back into focus. While writers both opposing and supporting the Covenants had commonly either celebrated or lamented them as defunct around 1662–63, as the decade wore on doubts about this view were increasingly expressed. The upheaval that the Three Kingdoms experienced as a result of war and natural catastrophe in 1665–66 underscored that the apparent stability brought about by the Restoration may have been illusory, and fears about sedition and dissent among religious nonconformists of all stripes grew. In England, the debates which surrounded the possibility of the introduction of certain forms of toleration demonstrated the renewed gravity with which the Solemn League and Covenant was viewed. Supporters approached these debates with a reinvigorated sense of the importance of the Covenant, which led some such as William Assheton to reject compromise as damaging to the future prospects of a full substantiation of the Solemn League and Covenant. Those opposed to any role for the Covenant expressed concern that toleration might function as a cover for the introduction of a presbyterian tyranny along the lines detailed in the Solemn League and Covenant. Others feared that the Solemn League and Covenant represented a much more likely potential avenue for an insidious return of ‘hotter’ Protestantism than the views of those who openly expressed sympathy for puritanism and the Cromwellian Commonwealth, as the defeat and discrediting of Covenanting ideas had, they argued, been much less complete than that of the puritans and regicides. While the Covenants and their supporters remained marginalised, a trend during this period can be identified, in which the triumphalist and fatalist views which characterised attitudes among the opponents and supporters of the Covenants respectively around 1663–64 were to some extent undermined by the 1670s. Instead, a gradual appreciation emerged that, despite the perceived triumph of episcopacy in 1661–62, the ideas and identities embodied in the Covenants would not entirely go away. This period also saw the publication of two important works of Scottish Covenanter political theory, firstly the anonymously published Naphtali, or The Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland, a work produced jointly by James Stewart and James Stirling. The theories which this contained were later expanded by Stewart in Jus Populi Vindicatum, or the People’s Right to defend themselves, and their Covenanted Religion vindicated, which was a response published in 1669 to criticisms which Naphtali had elicited. These too have recently been subject to detailed analysis by Neil McIntyre, who argued that the radicalism in Stewart’s positions went beyond that of previous resistance theorists by justifying individual resistance to tyranny rather than ‘appealing to the duties of the inferior magistracy’.86 McIntyre calls this a ‘crucial ideological development’

86 McIntyre,

Saints and Subverters, p. 71.

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which gave Stewart’s work its ‘radical edge’.87 It is difficult to disagree that Naphtali and Jus Populi had radical implications in explicating a right of all people to return to a state of nature and ‘to use such means, as they were allowed to use in their primeve state, that is, to joyne together and associated, the best way they can, for repelling of what destroyeth these noble and important Ends, and defend their Religion, Lives and Libertyes.’88 Stewart here made an explicit defence of a view of kingship as constructed from a natural right to self-defence, and subject to change should it no longer fulfil that purpose. This is a view which would characterise much of the political theory of the Revolution of 1688, but which is seldom found in the 1660s. However, as with much of the discourse around the Covenants since the 1630s, while Stewart’s ideas may have been rooted in theory with radical implications, they were also explicitly deployed for conservative purposes. While Stewart predicated his arguments on a people’s right to return to a state of nature in pursuit of governments more amenable to their needs, he does not appear to be advocating that anybody in seventeenth-century Scotland actually needed to do this. Instead, Stewart wrote to defend a right to resistance in defence of a lawful status quo which had emerged from the Scottish reformation and was embodied in the Covenant. This is because, as he wrote in Naphtali, ‘Religion (the highest concernment of Gods glory and of mans happiness, both temporall and eternall) is the most important, precious of all interests.’89 This requirement to obey the will of God was the ‘superior and antecedent obligation’ which superseded all others and which ought to be the ultimate guide of people’s political actions.90 While people were therefore free to return to a state of nature in protection of their interests, the most pressing concern was still the law of God. At the heart of Stewart’s work, therefore, is an idea which had permeated Covenanter thinking for decades: that the Scottish reformation was a process by which the law of God and the constitution of the Scottish Kirk and state became one and the same. The reformation had been a statutory and constitutional process, but it had also been one guided by God, which sought to align the Kirk with the best examples of contemporary and ancient Reformed churches. Therefore, God’s law and Scottish law as embodied in the National Covenant had, in Covenanter thinking, become inextricably linked. In keeping with the majority of Covenanter writings, both Naphtali and Jus Populi made heavy reference to the events of the Scottish reformation. Such examples were deployed by Stewart to argue for a general acceptance of the right to resistance in certain circumstances, as the Scottish reformation represented

87

Ibid., p. 90. James Stewart, Jus Populi Vindicatum, or The peoples right to defend themselves and their covenanted religion vindicated (s.n., 1669), p. 92. 89 James Stewart and James Stirling, Naphtali, or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: s.n., 1667), p. 15. 90 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 88

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one of the most immediate, and less controversial, examples of resistance.91 However, Naphtali’s engagement with Scotland’s reformation history went beyond simply an illustrative example of resistance. Stewart explicitly and repeatedly characterised the reformation as an act of divine deliverance, and as a process by which an order of church and state desired by God was constituted. On the events of 1560 Stewart wrote: Yet the Lord, who of his own free Mercy and Grace, did visit us with the day-spring of his blessed Gospel from on high; did also by his own Power and Presence, in and with his faithful Servants, at length also compleat his work, and establish his Kingdome over us and his Government among us; And so the Kingdome became the Lord’s; even the first fruits of the Kingdomes of the Earth, unto our Lord Jesus Christ.92

The Kingdom of Scotland, in this reading, does not belong to the king, but ‘the Lord’, with the king simply a conditional protector of this kingdom, appointed by men on the basis of natural law. The jure divino element of Scotland’s constitution was not its king, but its Kirk. The Scottish reformation, in the thinking of Stewart and Stirling, therefore, was not only a collection of people exercising their natural right to resistance and striving towards a more perfect church. It was also an act of direct intervention by God, through which this perfect church had already been constituted, notwithstanding the attacks to which ungodly actors had subjected it since. While, as discussed earlier in this chapter, Covenanter writings had often made somewhat indirect claims to divine inspiration, in the case of Naphtali it is explicitly stated that precedent is of value only when it can be seen to be Godly. The distinction is made between ‘pure antiquity’ – that which represented a precedent of divine intervention – and ‘simple antiquity’, which did not. ‘We are commanded’, they wrote, ‘to the Law, and Testimony, but never to the Fathers.’93 The Scottish reformation, in this view, is seen as having been revealed by God to form a continuity with the ‘pure antiquity’ of the biblical ‘Law, and Testimony’, regardless of whether it formed a continuity with the church of ‘the Fathers’. The authority under which the first presbyterian assemblies met, it was argued, was ‘by vertue of that intrinsik power and priviledg granted by our Lord unto his church, and exercised by his Apostles and their followers’.94 However, not only did they assemble under the authority of God, but they were actively guided by divine providence in the actions that these assemblies undertook: As they first Assembled, and by virtue of the same warrant, did set on foot and continue a constant series of their Courts and meetings; (except in so far as by plain force and violence they were restrained) so they held the same in the Name of the

91 McIntyre,

Saints and Subverters, p. 71. Stewart and Stirling, Naphtali, p. 35. 93 Ibid., sig. B3. 94 Ibid., p. 35. 92

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant Lord Jesus Christ only, and in his sole Authority, by Direction of his Word and Spirit, concluded all their Counsels, Votes and Acts.95

The events of the 1630s, in this conception, were a return to the divinely sanctioned order which emerged from the events of the reformation and a period in which God paid his temporarily wayward subjects more attention than ever before. As a result, ‘before the end of the Year 1638, the Work of God was revived with more Glory and Splendor, than ever formerly it had attained.’96 The reforms which the Covenanter regime undertook during its time in power in the 1630s and 1640s ‘by the Power and Presence of God were signally approved’.97 The Solemn League and Covenant, too, was portrayed as part of this process of God’s will being revealed, and in it, they wrote, ‘the great Work of God in this Land, hath been so Powerfully and Gloriously manifested.’98 In other words, although the theories upon which Naphtali was predicated allowed, its authors argued, for a return to the state of nature and constitution of new authority in defence of religion and pursuit of the will of God, such a move would not be necessary in the specific example of Scotland. In Scotland, as Stewart presented it, a constitution of church and state which accorded with God’s will had already been presented to them, through the process of the Scottish reformation in which Scotland’s status as a nation favoured by God was revealed. This providential reformation had demonstrated divine distaste for prelacy and divine favour for presbyterianism as described in the Covenants, with the Covenants themselves being expressions of this: so do we mostly constantly hold, that as well this Article against Prelacy, as all the rest contained in this Holy Covenant, were and are antecedently oblidging both to King and People, without the supervention of either Oath or Promise; and that the rooting out of Prelacy, & the wicked Hierarchy therin so obviously described, is the main duty, in the endeavour where of (as most advantageous unto all these great and holy Ends proposed by the Covenant) all the Zeal of the faithful ought to be concentred.99

The work of James Stewart, therefore, posits a natural right to resistance that is subject to restraint under no law but the law of God. However, it also supposes that the law of God was made manifest in the Scottish reformation and the documents which it produced, such as the Confession of Faith and the Covenants. Essentially therefore, this right to resistance was still subject to the law and constitution of Scotland as it had been codified in the National Covenant, and which had been extended to the British Isles more generally in the Solemn League and Covenant. However, with the rejection of these Covenants, and with them, as Stewart and Stirling saw it, the law of God, the 95

Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 46. 97 Ibid., p. 46. 98 Ibid., p. 53. 99 Ibid., pp. 53–4. 96

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natural right to defence of one’s self and religion was once again active, and resistance was justified. In the conception of natural law set out in Naphtali, therefore, there was a right to resist in cases where the terms of the Covenant require defence. However, in some respects, it argued, the Covenants served as much to restrain radicalism as to unleash it. Rather than requiring a total return to a state of nature and the wholesale creation of a new order of church and state, the Covenants provided those in search of a lawful constitution agreeable to God with a model to follow. The Covenants, to Stewart, represented a model of civil religion which could satisfy the ‘highest concernment’ of religious issues while also securing civil stability and the rights of king and subject. Absent the unifying civil bond of the Covenants, he argued, Godly people might be forced to tear down civil authority in defence of their religion. The loyalty which subjects owed to Charles II, it is stated in Naphtali, was as a result of their oath ‘to be true and faithful to the king, according to the National and Solemn League and Covenant’.100 In essence, the Covenants were being presented as documents with constitutional status which takes precedence over other forms of loyalty. Naphtali also restated arguments, common in the debates around 1660–61, that undermining the Covenanted basis upon which Charles had been crowned in 1651 risked undermining his authority by creating a situation where royal jurisdiction was ill-defined and subject to the whims of ministers who might not have the king’s or the kingdoms’ interest at heart. The post-­ Restoration settlement, it is argued in Naphtali, involved ‘directly innovating the Fundamental Law and Constitution of the Kingdom, and thereby making the king’s throne, the foundation of all the succeeding Perjury and Apostacy’.101 This position is expanded in Jus Populi, where it was argued that the Covenants, far from being the cause of Charles I’s downfall and a threat to the safety of Charles II, were only ever conceived of by their proponents as ‘a soveraigne remedy to preserve his majestie’s life’.102 Swearing the Solemn League and Covenant was a declaration ‘that they intended no insurrection or rebellion against the Kings just and lawfull authority; for they swore to defend the Kings Majestyes person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the True Religion, and libertyes of the Kingdoms.’103 Furthermore, by binding together the Three Kingdoms the Solemn League and Covenant tempered the more radical aspects of presbyterian resistance theory by ensuring separatism and secession would not be possible within its framework.104 The Scottish Covenanter responses to the Pentland Rising betrayed an awareness that their position was not strong, and that violent resistance to Restoration authorities 100 Ibid.,

p. 70. p. 86. 102 Stewart, Jus Populi, p. 408. 103 Ibid., p. 408. 104 McIntyre, Saints and Subverters, p. 89. 101 Ibid.,

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was necessary. This caused detailed explication of resistance theory and natural law to justify this. However, alongside this it was still emphasised that the Covenants represented a moderate, lawful solution to these issues, and were portrayed as still embodying a potentially stable constitutional model, rather than simply a licence for rebellion and violence.

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5 Exclusion and Association in the Late Restoration Period The late Restoration period is one in which old political identities began to be redefined, and the concept of competing ‘parties’, in the form of the Whigs and the Tories, first started to emerge. The concept of the ‘association’, as both a social and political grouping, and in some cases as an actual statement or subscription which defined these groups, also emerged as a prominent feature of public life. While these groups were new, the ideas which underpinned them were influenced by prior political and intellectual traditions, including the Solemn League and Covenant and the discourse which accompanied it. Mark Goldie has argued that the 1670s marked the start of a period in which presbyterian political theory became deeply entangled with the interests of what previously would have been termed puritans, to dominate the philosophy of the emerging Whig political faction.1 The ecclesiastical demands of Scottish presbyterianism and the Solemn League and Covenant, he argued, remained relatively marginalised in England.2 However, their political implications – of a limited monarchy more restrained by parliament than in conceptions traditionally favoured by the Stuarts – came to dominate the thinking of the king’s opponents. The political influence of the ‘hotter’ puritanism had waned considerably due to its association with regicide, and therefore, argued Goldie, puritan religious sensibilities instead became more closely associated with the politics of the presbyterians. Though many self-proclaimed presbyterians by the 1670s did not necessarily demand the rejection of episcopacy, they presented themselves as part of a perceived presbyterian tradition. This was royalist rather than republican, but also characterised by resistance to monarchical or ministerial tyranny.3 As Gary S. De Krey has phrased it, ‘the Restoration polity was inherently unstable’.4 The post-Restoration settlement had arguably failed, both to address the question of a stable relationship between church, state, and nonconformity, 1 Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: The Entring Book, 1677–1691 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), p. 151. For more on the nature of ‘groups’ and ‘parties’ in this period see Scott Sowerby, ‘Group Hunting: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in Later Stuart Britain’, Historical Journal, 58:4 (2015), 1191–1204; Tim Harris, ‘Party Turns? Or, Whigs and Tories Get Off Scott Free’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 25:4 (1993), 581–90. 2 Goldie, Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs, p. 153. 3 Ibid., p. 156. 4 Gary S. De Krey, ‘Between Revolutions: Re-Appraising the Restoration in Britain’, History Compass, 6:3 (2008), 745.

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and to adequately settle the boundaries of royal and parliamentary authority in England and Scotland. While in some respects the legislation introduced in the 1660s to produce stability achieved some of its aims, as the previous chapters have argued, many constitutional and individual issues were left unresolved. Many presbyterians in particular were caught in a confused and contradictory position by the incomplete and unstable nature of the Restoration settlement. Though the Solemn League and Covenant may not have been given a place in the settlement of 1662, this did not amount to a successful exclusion of presbyterians, or their political theories, from public life. ‘In fact’, argued De Krey, ‘through the 1680s, so many English presbyterians ambiguously straddled the fence between conformity and nonconformity as to make the distinction between these terms exceedingly problematic.’5 When the Solemn League and Covenant is discussed and criticised in this period, therefore, it is crucial to keep in mind that contemporaries were not doing so as a reference to an obsolete or long-irrelevant document. Rather, it was a representation of a constitutional model which, not twenty years earlier, had been viewed by many as a potentially viable alternative to a settlement the weaknesses of which, by the 1680s, were becoming increasingly apparent. The period covered by this chapter, the late 1670s and early 1680s, was defined by a period of political turmoil known as the ‘Exclusion Crisis’. This refers to the efforts of those who opposed the prospect of a Catholic monarch to exclude the Duke of York, the future king James II, from the throne. These efforts involved both protests and crowd actions and parliamentary mechanisms, including the ‘Association’, which will be addressed shortly. This crisis was to some extent precipitated by, and overlapped with, an outbreak of hysteria and concern regarding Catholic conspiracies which became known as ‘The Popish Plot’. The central allegations upon which this hysteria rested, from a man named Titus Oates, were later revealed to be fraudulent. Nevertheless, the issues which underpinned it, of concern about the religion of the monarch, the state of Protestantism in the British kingdoms, and fears of an increasingly powerful Catholic France, were quite real. This chapter will explore the continuing influence which the Covenants, particularly the Solemn League and Covenant, had in English political debates during the crisis of the late 1670s and early 1680s. This included polemical efforts to portray the Solemn League and Covenant as part of a tradition of seditious leagues dating to the French Holy League and earlier. This tradition, it was argued, culminated in the efforts of parliamentarians led by the Earl of Shaftesbury to exclude the Duke of York from the succession, and the Association of 1681, which was introduced to this end. The Association referred to a bill which Shaftesbury and his supporters attempted to pass which was modelled on the Elizabethan ‘Act of Association’, which committed parliament to resisting a ‘Popish

5

Ibid., 750.

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Successor’, but which became an oath subscribed to by supporters of Exclusion after the parliamentary efforts stalled.6 Edward Vallance has traced the evolution of the idea of a ‘Protestant association’ from its Elizabethan origins through the seventeenth century. Vallance has argued that, by the 1640s, the idea had evolved from an internal ‘domestic security measure’ to one which was strongly related to the concept of a national covenant and, increasingly, to the idea of national or transnational Protestant solidarity.7 The circumstances of military necessity in which the Solemn League and Covenant was agreed certainly shaped its specific nature, but Vallance has argued that, by the 1640s, the idea of a ‘covenanted union of nations’ was a popular one, and that at this point the terms ‘covenant’ and ‘association’ were largely interchangeable, meaning that many contemporaries considered the Solemn League and Covenant to be an evolution of earlier ideas of Protestant associations.8 Indeed, as Vallance noted, the text of the Solemn League and Covenant itself treated the terms as related, as it implores other European churches to ‘join in the same or like association and covenant’.9 Vallance argued that not only was Shaftesbury’s Association influenced by an intellectual tradition that included the Solemn League and Covenant, but that, in practice, the Association bore more similarities to the Covenant than it did to the Elizabethan Association on which it was ostensibly modelled.10 As will be explored later in this chapter, these connections between the Solemn League and Covenant and Protestant associations were commonly highlighted by opponents of Exclusion. That the Association brought such comparisons with the Solemn League and Covenant and other forms of religiously defined political union demonstrates the great concern with which the potential of religion to cement civil bonds was viewed by the 1680s. This says more about the perilous state of the Restoration polity at this juncture than it does about the religious nature of such leagues, as the Holy League, Solemn League and Covenant, and Shaftesbury’s Association had little in common ecclesiastically. Rather, their relevance to contemporaries in the 1680s demonstrates an awareness that associations of mutual interest, if framed in sufficiently inclusive ways, could potentially offer solutions to the problems of church, state, and authority which the Restoration settlement had left unresolved. Religious oaths provided a means of reinforcing such associations by binding them with a solemn religious act. When Whig politicians felt that the constitution was under threat from absolutism, they turned, in part, to 6

Andrew Starkie, ‘“High Feeding and Smart Drinking”: Associating Hedge-Lane Lords in Exclusion Crisis London’, in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s, ed. Jason McElligott (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), p. 159. 7 Edward Vallance, ‘Loyal or Rebellious? Protestant Associations in England, 1584–1696’, The Seventeenth Century, 17:1 (2002), 5–6. 8 Ibid., 10. 9 Ibid., 10. 10 Ibid., 10.

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oaths as a way of unifying opposition to this, much as the Scots had done in the 1630s. It is worth being aware that comparisons between the Protestant associations and the Covenants had inherent value from a polemical point of view in linking contemporary Whig politics to historical examples of sedition. However, this chapter and the one that follows will argue that some political figures of the 1680s did genuinely embrace the legacy of the Scottish Covenants, in both form and underlying political theory. Two of the most important ideas which the Scottish Covenants represented – political organisation underpinned by solemn oath to uphold a certain religious vision, and a constitution predicated upon a mixed monarchy – it will be argued were significant aspects of Whig politics in the period leading up to and following the Revolution of 1688. In addition to the domestic concerns about the instability of the Restoration settlement, the renewed interest in the late 1670s and 1680s in political groups defined by oaths, of which the Holy League and Solemn League and Covenant were the most prominent points of reference, had a continental dimension. The situation in Europe was concerning for Protestants, due to the renewed persecution of French Huguenots which would culminate in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and the French military advances under Louis XIV. This situation created a sense that the hopes of an end to confessional warfare and the expansion of Catholic empires after 1648 had been unfounded, and caused many in the British kingdoms to question the efficacy of Stuart foreign policy that had been predicated on these assumptions.11 The European context formed the backdrop to Protestants in the British kingdoms beginning to drift into a broad political identity of the sort Goldie terms as ‘presbyterian’, and which would later be thought of as ‘Whig’ upon the crystallisation of party identity in the early eighteenth century. This was not a grouping based upon nonconformity, and it cut across confessional boundaries. Instead, while the Whig/presbyterian grouping was certainly religious to some degree, it falls more into the realm of civil religion: a Protestant identity rooted more in constitutional and strategic ideas than ecclesiastical. As Gabriel Glickman noted: ‘the presbyterian preacher Roger Morrice and the “Latitudinarian” Anglican Gilbert Burnet shared the conviction that they were witnessing “the fifth great crisis” of international Protestantism.’12 The extent to which this emerging ‘Whig/presbyterian’ alliance, and the ‘royalist/Tory’ grouping to which it was opposed, can be properly called ‘parties’ at this point

11

Gabriel Glickman, ‘Conflicting Visions: Foreign Affairs in Domestic Debates 1660–1690’, in The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, 1660–2000: How Strategic Concerns Shaped Modern Britain, ed. William Mulligan and Brendan Simms (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 21–2. Tony Claydon has also addressed the European dimension to ecclesiology, and how this ‘created allegiances which spanned a continent’: Tony Claydon, ‘The Church of England and the Churches of Europe’, in The Later Stuart Church 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), p. 173. 12 Glickman, ‘Conflicting Visions’, p. 22.

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has been the subject of much historiographical debate.13 However, it is clear that to some extent the variety of political and religious identities in early modern Britain had begun to form into wider groups of aligned interests by this point, and while there was some overlap, movement from one group to the other had become unlikely.14 While there was little prospect for any official recognition of the Solemn League and Covenant or realisation of the reformation of religion that it mandated, the Covenant retained relevance throughout the British Isles as an embodiment of the form of mixed presbyterian government which became a focal point of Whig ambitions in the 1670s and 1680s. As this chapter will argue, the events surrounding the ‘Popish Plot’ hoax and subsequent panic and the crisis over the accession of James II/VII demonstrated a continuing relevance of the Solemn League and Covenant, both in itself and as an influence on similar models for uniting political causes via covenants and associations. Concerns surfaced repeatedly not only about the Solemn League and Covenant but about other similar oaths and covenants (sometimes hoaxes, but reflecting genuine concerns) and their seditious potential from both Whig opponents and Tory supporters of the king. Oaths also became a defining feature of the Exclusion Crisis as concerns were raised over the potential of James as a Catholic to sincerely participate in the political culture of oath-swearing which many saw as crucial to maintaining the rule of law. There has not traditionally been much of a place for discussion of the Covenants and their supporters in the context of the crises which characterised the later reign of Charles II, outside of Covenanter conventicles and violence in Scotland. However, the legacy of the Covenants in England, as well as Scotland, in this period should not be underestimated. Not only did the broad Whig alliance subsume many ideas and individuals associated in previous years with the Covenanters, but contemporaries, particularly opponents of the Whigs, often explicitly characterised them as supporters of the Covenants or heirs to a Calvinist covenanting tradition. This was often conceived of as including not only the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant but, paradoxically, the French Holy League, as the political aspects of such leagues were emphasised to a much greater degree than the confessional. There are two broad senses in which the influence of the Covenants in this period can be identified. Firstly, there is the use of the idea of the Covenants as a polemical and rhetorical device, which both Whigs and Tories utilised. This involved explicit identification of opponents with support for the Covenant, usually by Tory polemicists seeking to evoke the idea of their opponents as heirs to civil war-era malefactors and characterise the crisis as ‘1641 come again’. Polemical references to the Covenants also, however, involved the idea of the 13

Harris, ‘Party Turns?’, 581–2. Gary S. De Krey, ‘Party Lines: A Reply’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 25:4 (1993), 642.

14

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form of the Covenant, as a solemn oath underpinning some alternative form of political allegiance. This took many forms, from the ‘Association’ to which the Earl of Shaftesbury was accused of belonging, often explicitly compared to the Solemn League and Covenant, to various supposed seditious leagues to which Catholics and dissenters were accused of subscribing. Secondly, there is the political legacy of the Covenants and Calvinist-derived resistance theories more generally, which would have often been expressed in terms related to the Solemn League and Covenant in the early years of Charles II’s reign. This legacy can be defined as theories of legitimate resistance, and a right to construct political bonds, via mechanisms such as oaths. In the later part of the 1680s leading up to the Revolution of 1688, discussion of such resistance theories became less pejorative as the necessity of recourse to resistance became a realistic prospect, as will be discussed in the following chapter. In the period discussed here, however, particularly following the Covenanter rising of 1679 in Scotland, the seditious nature of the Covenants, and the political theories which underpinned them, were a powerful polemical tool for supporters of James’s succession. Opponents of the Whigs sought to exploit the negative connotations of associations, covenanting, and radical presbyterianism. It has been argued that the broader application of the term ‘presbyterian’ discussed at the start of this chapter was first applied by their opponents in a pejorative sense, and famously the designation ‘Whig’ derives from the Whiggamore Raid carried out by anti-engagement Covenanters.15 Explicit references to the Solemn League and Covenant, therefore, even among groups who may have viewed themselves as owing loyalty to it in the earlier stages of the Restoration period, were often avoided. Furthermore, Michael Winship has argued that the broad alliance of presbyterians and other dissenters with puritan conformists in what they saw as a shared overarching goal of opposing popery and tyranny, meant that specific Covenanter confessional ideas were often subordinated to a broader, more political vision of the visible church as a defensive alliance of Protestants, more along the lines of the ‘moderate Puritanism’ of theologians such as Richard Baxter.16 The political ideas which had underpinned the Covenants, particularly the idea of a conditional kingship predicated upon the bond of a mutual solemn oath between king and people, were a significant aspect of this ‘civil Protestantism’. Such ideas continued to be vigorously espoused and formed an important part of the political language in which concerns about the monarchy of Charles II and the possible succession of his brother were expressed. This was also a period in which there was a rich discussion of oaths in general and the role that oaths had to play in politics, and this was reflected in the approach that the regime of Charles II took towards the Covenants. 15

Michael Winship, ‘Defining Puritanism in Restoration England: Richard Baxter and Others Respond to “A Friendly Debate”’, The Historical Journal, 54:3 (2011), 691. 16 Ibid., 705–12.

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As discussed in chapter 3 in the context of the period immediately following the Restoration, the Covenants played a contradictory role in the relationship between the regime and its supporters, and the use of oaths. On the one hand, oaths were viewed as an important tool for compelling and testing loyalty to the monarchy. This importance is underlined by the suspicion poured upon those who were perceived as approaching oaths insincerely or failing to subscribe to them at all, such as Catholics, in particular Jesuits, and Quakers. However, there was also a need for the regime to discourage those who had sworn the National or Solemn League and Covenant from abiding by them. This contradiction was arguably even more noticeable in this period, as tensions increased and concerns grew about both presbyterians and those who failed to swear oaths. There was therefore a redoubling of efforts by authorities to undermine support for the Covenants specifically while attempting to avoid undermining oaths more broadly.17 This involved new counter-oaths against the Covenants, as well as public burnings and denunciations of the Solemn League and Covenant as unlawful. A ‘Presbyterian Plot’? – The Covenants in Exclusion debates and polemic

Comparisons between the Solemn League and Covenant and other ‘seditious leagues’ such as the French Holy League were increasingly prominent during the Exclusion Crisis, and became an important facet of arguments against Exclusion Bills and the Association of 1681. One way in which such comparisons were made was through historical writings, which were commonly used as instruments for polemics in this period.18 Many of the arguments relating to the Covenant which would become mainstays of royalist polemics in the late 1670s and early 1680s can be found in some form in Peter Heylyn’s Aerius Redivius, or The History of the Presbyterians, published posthumously in 1672.19 This text portrayed seditious leagues as inherent to presbyterianism throughout Europe, and identified all manner of historical presbyterian groups, such as Dutch 17

The contradictory relationship between the Covenants and state-imposed oaths in the Restoration period has been addressed by Allan Kennedy, who argued that ‘The Restoration regime co-opted this idea’ [using oaths as a political test] from the Covenants and the ‘Covenanting era’: Allan Kennedy, ‘The Legacy of the Covenants and the Shaping of the Restoration State’, in The National Covenant in Scotland 1638–1689, ed. Chris R. Langley (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020). 18 Mark Knights, ‘The Tory Interpretation of History in the Rage of Parties’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 68:1/2 (2005), 357. 19 For more on Peter Heylyn see Peter Craft, ‘Peter Heylyn’s Seventeenth-Century English Worldview’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3:11 (2014), 325–44; Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

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participants in the Eighty Years War, as ‘covenanters’.20 Thomas Hobbes’s History of the Civil Wars of England, also known as Behemoth, was first published in 1678 and, unsurprisingly given its author’s interests, contains reflections on the implications of the Covenants as they related to the question of sovereignty.21 ‘The greatest part of the Nobility, and others, to enter (by their own Authority) into a Covenant among themselves to put down Episcopacy without consulting the King’, wrote Hobbes on the National Covenant.22 The phrase ‘by their own Authority’ implies here a claim to sovereignty being made by the signatories quite the opposite of their own claims to have been a conservative movement respectful of the king’s authority, and speaks to contemporary concerns about the possibility of the construction of alternative authority to that of the restored monarchy. William Dugdale’s A Short View of the Late Troubles in England was published in 1681, and was explicit in its intention to present a parallel between the events of the 1640s and the events surrounding the French Holy League, as well as ‘with the Barons’ Wars in the time of King Henry III’.23 Dugdale’s treatment of the Covenants is fairly typical of polemical royalist attempts to characterise the Covenanters, the regicides, and the French Holy League as typifying a radical religious disregard for proper authority, contemporaneously represented by those advocating for Exclusion. The National Covenant, he argued, was the instrument by which the Covenanters usurped royal authority and constructed their own, based upon the religious power of the Covenant and its oath: Then the Faction proceeded to levy Soldiers, impose Taxes, and requiring obedience to their Acts, menac’d the Refusers; raised divers Fortifications in that Kingdom, block’d up his Majesties Castles and Forts; and took the Castle of Edenborough; procuring their Preacher seditiously to teach the People, that there was a Necessity of bearing Arms against his Majesty under pain of Perjury and Damnation.24

20

Peter Heylyn, Aerius Redivius, or, The history of the presbyterians containing the beginnings, progress and successes of that active sect, their oppositions to monarchial and episcopal government, their innovations in the church, and their imbroylments (Robert Battersby, 1672), pp. 107–8. 21 For more on the political and religious content of Hobbes’s Behemoth, see Tomaz Mastnak (ed.), Hobbes’s Behemoth: Religion and Democracy (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2009). 22 Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, or, An epitome of the civil wars of England, from 1640 to 1660 (s.n., 1679), p. 37. 23 William Dugdale, A short view of the late troubles in England; briefly setting forth, their rise, growth, and tragical conclusion. As also, some parallel thereof with the barons-wars in the time of King Henry III. But chiefly with that in France, called the Holy [Lea]gue, in the reign of Henry III. and Henry [IV] late kings of that realm (Printed at the Theater for Moses Pitt, 1681), Cover. For more on Dugdale see Jan Broadway, William Dugdale: A Life of the Warwickshire Historian and Herald (Gloucester: Xmera, 2011); Ann Hughes, ‘William Dugdale and the Civil War’, in William Dugdale, Historian, 1605–1686: His Life, His Writings and His County, ed. Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 51–65. 24 Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles, p. 53.

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The Solemn League and Covenant, too, he argued, was an instrument of usurpation, originated ‘under the specious veil of Reformation’, before becoming that fatal Engine, wherby not only the Hierarchy in the Church, was by them soon after destroyed; and the patrimony thereof with the Lands and Revenues of the Crown, swall’d up by those pretenders to Godliness, but the sacred Person of the King, most inhumanly murthered; and this was ancient and long flourishing Monarchy, so far as ‘twas in their power, wholly subverted and destroy’d.25

The implication was that the National and later Solemn League and Covenant were at the heart of the destruction and ultimate regicide unleashed during the civil wars. Furthermore, it was argued that the Covenants were illegal by way of precedent, as they existed only in the tradition of authority claimed on the basis of seditious, religious leagues: In the Preamble whereunto, they had the confidence to say, that this their League and Covenant, was according to the commendable practise of these Kingdoms, and the Example of God’s people in other Nations: Whereas, there is not only no mention of any such things by our Historiographers; nor in the History of any other Realm, that I have ever seen, excepting that of the Holy League in France.26

Dugdale’s critique illustrates the relevance of the Covenants and similar leagues to the issues facing English politics in the 1680s. If there was a natural right to construct authority on the basis of leagues supported by oaths, implied Dugdale, then surely leagues such as the French Holy League, which many Protestants would have viewed as destructive, were as valid as the Solemn League and Covenant or the Association. If the Holy League was to be seen as unlawful, then so by implication must all other such leagues, regardless of their ecclesiastical underpinning. The centrality of the Covenants to the ways in which Whigs and presbyterians were viewed and portrayed by supporters of the accession of the Duke of York was perhaps most famously encapsulated in the 1681 print The Committee, or Popery in Masquerade, produced by leading royalist propagandist Roger L’Estrange.27 Though the print is full of civil war-era imagery of various kinds, it is arguably those associated with the Covenanters which dominated. A figure labelled as a presbyterian is leading the committee in question, populated by other dissenters such as Quakers, Anabaptists, and Fifth Monarchists, all seated beneath a banner that reads ‘Behold wee are a covenanting people’, at a table before which lies a discarded copy of the Magna Carta and the severed head of 25

Ibid., p. 128. Ibid., p. 128. 27 For more on L’Estrange see Peter Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch (eds), Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 26

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Figure 1. The Committee or Popery in Masquerade, after Sir Roger L’Estrange, 1680, Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Charles I.28 This assembly of varied and often antagonistic groups of dissenters was therefore portrayed as of one aim when it came to the destruction of the lawful constitution and its replacement with a ‘covenanting’ one. Hung on a wall prominently overlooking this scene is a copy of the Solemn League and Covenant itself. Directly above the Covenant are figures representing the pope and the civil war puritan Isaac Penington.29 The Solemn League and Covenant is therefore portrayed as an instrument of all those seeking to undermine the king and his kingdoms. This image was met with a satirical print attacking L’Estrange, entitled Strange’s Case, Strangely Altered, the first of what would be many works portraying 28

Roger L’Estrange, The committee, or, Popery in masquerade (s.n., 1681), p. 1. Penington was a London politician who was Lord Mayor at the time of the composing of the Solemn League and Covenant. Penington initially supported the idea of introducing presbyterianism to England and signed the Covenant, but later became a leading Independent, and was instrumental in excluding presbyterians after the Second Civil War. He was part of the court which tried Charles I, and although he did not sign the death warrant, was sentenced as a regicide to life in the Tower of London, where he died in December 1661; see Keith Lindley, ‘Isaac Penington’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

29

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Figure 2. Strange’s case, strangly [sic] altered, approximately 1680, London, ESTC R15296, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

him as ‘Towzer’, a dog carrying a broom.30 In this image Towzer is portrayed as fleeing the service of the king towards images of the pope and the Duke of York, encouraged by a depiction of Satan flying above.31 That contemporaries 30

While the exact origin of the image of Towzer the dog is rather unclear, it appears to be strongly associated with L’Estrange by the 1680s and appeared as a feature in pope-burning processions and anti-Tory polemics. Interestingly, in a demonstration of the conflation of seemingly contradictory negative religious and political imagery in this period, Towzer was often depicted with a violin, and labelled as ‘Old Noll’s Fiddler’, a reference to an apocryphal story that L’Estrange, a keen musician, had played in Cromwell’s presence during the Interregnum. Much as L’Estrange portrayed various dissenting groups as allies against his cause, despite their differences in practice, so too was he portrayed as an ally of Cromwell by presbyterians and others who viewed the Interregnum and Restoration regimes as variants of the same kind of tyranny. Helen Pierce, ‘The Devil’s Bloodhound: Roger L’Estrange Caricatured’, Printed Images in Early Modern Britain, ed. Michael Hunter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 245–50. 31 Ibid., pp. 241.

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considered Covenanters to be a primary target of L’Estrange can be seen in an annotation on the British Museum’s copy of Strange’s Case, which declared that L’Estrange was ‘very Ripe by Figures of Covenantors and all sorts of Professors to Scoff at that Godliness which he was a Stranger to’.32 Historiography of this period has often moved away from discussion of the Covenants and Covenanters to view matters in terms of the Whig/Tory divide of the Exclusion Crisis. Notably, however, it was still in terms referencing the Covenant that L’Estrange attacked the opponents of the king, and L’Estrange’s opponents still used a contrast with Covenanters as a means to criticise L’Estrange’s ‘Godliness’. Though perhaps the most striking, The Committee, or Popery in Masquerade is just one example from a large body of media produced after 1678 which portrayed supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant as either witting or unwitting accomplices to an array of seditious forces which critics claimed were attempting to undermine king and country. Whereas previous attacks on the Covenanters and their supporters had often focussed on the destabilising influence of presbyterian theology, the focus after 1678 was often on the destructive effects of what critics viewed as loyalty separate from that owed to the king, in the form of a league constructed on the basis of oaths. As well as associating the Covenants with the chaos of the civil wars, these critiques situated the Covenants within a longer historical tradition of seditious leagues, either directly participated in or encouraged, it was claimed, by Jesuits.33 Interestingly, despite the common refrain of ‘1641 has come again’ as a shorthand for the idea that the Restoration crisis was a repeat of the civil wars, ‘1643 has come again’ might be a more appropriate summary of many such arguments. While it might be expected that those wishing to characterise opponents of the king and the Duke of York as heirs to civil war radicals would turn to the example of English puritans and regicides rather than Covenanters and presbyterians, this does not really appear to have been the case. As discussed in the previous chapter, there was a view among some royalists that the more ‘moderate’ presbyterians were a greater threat than the more discredited radical puritans, and this appears to carry through to polemical writing in this period. L’Estrange’s polemical work, in particular, used the destructive potential of the Covenants as a central motif. For example, in L’Estrange’s Toleration Discuss’d In Two Dialogues, the Grand Remonstrance of 1641 is referred to only four times, in comparison to thirty-four references to the National or Solemn League and Covenant.34 In Dissenters Sayings of 1681 there are a total of seven mentions of either the Remonstrance or other events from 32

Ibid., p. 245. As can be seen in the phrase ‘Popery in masquerade’, Protestants accusing other Protestant opponents of being secretly Catholic, or manipulated by Jesuits, was a common feature of polemical writing in this period; for more on anti-Catholic attitudes in this period see Jeffrey Collins, ‘Restoration Anti-Catholicism: A Prejudice in Motion’, in England’s Wars of Religion, Revisited, ed. Charles W. A. Prior and Glenn Burgess (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 281–306. 34 Roger L’Estrange, Toleration discuss’d, in two dialogues I. betwixt a conformist, and a 33

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1641, against over forty for the Covenants.35 In his Remarks on the Growth and Progress of Non-Conformity, the ratio is five to one.36 The atmosphere of unprecedented concern about the influence of Catholic sedition, and in particular the spectre of the threat of Jesuitism, allowed for a productive avenue of attack against the Solemn League and Covenant in which it was compared to the French Holy League. This is a case in which the ebb and flow of propaganda discussed by historians like Mark Knights can be charted, as arguments were recontextualised and turned against the interests for which they were originally deployed. From 1678–80, the example of the French Wars of Religion can be primarily found in texts from the Whig side of the Exclusion debate or those concerned with characterising contemporary events as part of a longstanding Catholic effort to oppress and attack Protestants. Such texts included the anonymously authored A Brief Narrative of the several Popish Treasons and Cruelties against the Protestants in England, France and Ireland from 1678, or A Seasonble warning to Protestants from the cruelty and treachery of the Parisian massacre dating to 1680.37 The Whig luminary Gilbert Burnet wrote in 1678 comparing the contemporary situation to that in France in the time of the Holy League, as did Henry Care in 1680.38 Another anonymous text from 1680 described a ‘Holy League against England’ orchestrated by the pope.39 Yet the historical warning presented by the French Wars of Religion was quickly turned against the ‘presbyterian faction’ and in particular was used to attack the Solemn League and Covenant and its supporters, and by 1681–82 comparisons of the Covenant and the Holy League emerged as a recurring feature of Tory propaganda. It was argued that such leagues created, in the words of one anonymous writer, a situation ‘where allegiance is tyed to interest’.40 This non-conformist II. betwixt a Presbyterian, and an Independent (E. C. and A. C. for Henry Brome, 1679), passim. 35 Roger L’Estrange, The dissenter’s sayings, in requital for L’Estrange’s sayings published in their own words for the information of the people (Joanna Brome, 1681), passim. 36 Roger L’Estrange, Remarks on the Growth and Progress of Non-Conformity (Walter Kettilby, 1682), passim. 37 Anonymous, A Brief narrative of the several popish treasons and cruelties against the Protestants in England, France, and Ireland giving a full account of the Popish Plot, and a full discovery of the manner of the murther of Sir Edmund-bury Godfrey (Printed for P. B., 1678), 1; Anonymous, A Seasonble warning to Protestants from the cruelty and treachery of the Parisian massacre, August the 24th, 1572 wherein the snares laid for the innocent are detected and posterity cautioned not to believe: with the Pope’s bull to encourage and justifie the massacre and rebellion of Ireland collected from the best French historiographers, August the 24th (Printed for Benjamin Alsop, 1680), 1. 38 Gilbert Burnet, A letter written upon the discovery of the late plot (Printed for H. Brome and R. Chiswell, 1678), 44; Henry Care, The history of the damnable popish plot, in its various branches and progress published, for the satisfaction of the present and future ages, by the author of the Weekly pacquet of advice from Rome (Printed for B. R. LW. HC., 1680), 46–7. 39 Anonymous, The tears of Rome: or the despair of the Pope for the ill success of the Plot In a diaglouge between the Pope, the devil, the Jesuit Ignatius, and the Cardinal Barbarin (s.n., 1680), 1–3. 40 Anonymous, A Protestant plot no paradox, or, Phanaticks under that name plotting against the

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situation, it was argued, was rooted in a principle which was shared by Catholics and by the Whig opponents of the king, which was that: The original power of Kings they place in, and derive from the People, to which, as Rivers to their mother Ocean, it ought to return again, when the end for which Kings have been entrusted, their salus populi, is by themselves apprehended not so well provided for, as by some other constitution of Government in their opinion it might be.41

A principle of government purely based on salus populi, or the safety of the people, the author argued, is actually no government at all, as ‘If true, it is impossible for any people ever to Rebel; for Rebellion must still be against the Supreme Authority, which is lodged by this Rule in themselves.’42 The author continued that ‘Infinite are the ill consequences of this one Principle’, and that when religious motives were involved, it was more destructive still. Rebels, it was argued, would not stop with one tyrannical monarch but would attempt to overthrow entire systems of government to then remake them in their favoured form. The precise ecclesiological demands of such rebels were unimportant, it was argued: ‘Of instances, though History be full, two shall suffice, great ones indeed, viz. the French League and the Scotch Covenant.’43 While the author conceded that it might seem paradoxical to equate Catholics and dissenting Protestants, they argued that not only did unrest of any sort help the interests of the Jesuits, but that ‘disguised Jesuits’, who, ‘suitably habited, may pass for a zealous holder-forth’, were actively working to foment rebellion.44 The author states that ‘where there is a Conventicle, there will be a Jesuit’.45 This text is very important as it explicitly characterised the concept of a conditional kingship predicated upon an original contract with the people as associated primarily with the Solemn League and Covenant. As this concept would become crucial to Whig political theory during and after the Revolution of 1688, it is interesting to chart the associations that were made with this idea in the early 1680s. This text made this association between conditional kingship and the Covenant pejoratively, and therefore cannot be read as a direct window into the thinking of proponents of such ideas. Nonetheless, it is striking that the ideas which would form the basis of the Revolution were thought of by some as explicitly embodied in the Covenant even in 1682. L’Estrange appears to have led efforts to conflate the Covenants with the Holy League, first mentioning the League in 1679 in a list of rebellions he

king and government proved first, from their principles, secondly, from their practices (Tho. Graves, 1682), 3–4. 41 Ibid., 3–4. 42 Ibid., 3. 43 Ibid., 4. 44 Ibid., 6. 45 Ibid., 6.

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considered to have been caused by misguided appeals to liberty of conscience.46 In 1680 there followed a series of writings in which L’Estrange explicitly characterised Covenanters as the heirs to a destructive and rebellious tradition which included the Holy League. In The Presbyterian Sham, L’Estrange wrote: There hath passed a solemn Oath over the Nation, engaging the main Body of it to endeavour a Reformation, and must all Covenants be kept? I have read of some, who had made a Covenant with Hell, and others who made a Holy League in France, Let them keep their Covenant, which is no better than these, if they like it so well; but god keep us and the whole Nation from them and their Covenant.47

In Citt and Bumpkin, a satirical ‘discourse upon swearing and lying’ penned by L’Estrange, one character asked ‘how shall we apply This Modell [referring to the Solemn League and Covenant] now to our Purpose?’ and was met with a response of ‘Why just as They appl’d the Holy League of France, to Theirs: for the common people have the very same Passions, the same Weaknesses, Now, that they had then.’48 Elsewhere in 1680 L’Estrange wrote that ‘our Covenanters did but write after the Copy of the Holy League of France.’49 Another text from 1682, titled A Looking-Glass for Loyallists, or the Doctrine of the Presbyterians Paralell’d with the Doctrine of Jesuites, also drew comparisons between the French Holy League and the Solemn League and Covenant, arguing that ‘Both in the League and Covenant, the People are encouraged to take up Arms against their King.’50 Both presbyterians and Jesuits, it was argued, were ‘wont to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance’.51 Others wrote of a series of historical disasters attributed to Catholicism as being in fact due to toleration of illicit religious meetings of the sort that the presbyterians were at that point the chief perpetrators of: He that has time to Ransack Stories, will find how fatal, small, and inconsiderable Meetings have been, to the downfall of States, and Kingdoms … Who knows not that the Gunpowder-Treason was hatch’d in a Conventicle? And that Holy League in France derives its Pedigree from the same Original.52 46

Roger L’Estrange, Reformed Catholique, or the True Protestant (Printed for Henry Brome, 1679), 26. 47 Roger L’Estrange, The Presbyterian Sham, or, A commentary upon the new old answer of the Assembly of divines to Dr. Stillingfleet’s sermon (s.n., 1680), 4–5. 48 Roger L’Estrange, Citt and Bumpkin, or, A learned discourse upon swearing and lying and other laudable qualities tending to a thorow reformation: the second part (Printed for Henry Brome, 1680), 4–5. 49 Roger L’Estrange, A seasonable memorial in some historical notes upon the liberties of the presse and pulpit with the effects of popular petitions, tumults, associations, impostures, and disaffected common councils: to all good subjects and true Protestants (Printed for Henry Brome, 1680), 26. 50 Anonymous, A Looking-Glass for Loyallists: Or, the Doctrine of the Presbyterians Paralell’d with the Doctrine of the Jesuites (Printed for T. S., 1682), 1. 51 Ibid., 1. 52 John Hinckley, Fasciculus literarium, or, Letters on several occasions I. Betwixt Mr. Baxter, and

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George Hickes, annotating the final speeches of Covenanter rebels John Kid and John King, which he described as ‘the spirit of popery speaking out of the mouths of phanatical-Protestants’, claimed ‘The Solemn League and Covenant, is the Alpha and Omega of the Kirk-Doctrines and Cause. Hence they commonly call it the Holy League and Covenant, as both the Pope and Jesuits called its Prototype, the League of the Papists in France.’53 These writings do not only claim that supporters of the Solemn League and Covenant were inadvertently aiding Jesuits in their efforts to destabilise the nation therefore, but sought to compare the form of the Covenant with that of the Holy League in two primary respects. Firstly, they are both held up as examples of the dire consequences caused by a group of religious dissenters seeking to impose their form of worship upon a kingdom of multiple faiths. Secondly, the Covenant and Holy League are cited as examples of the strife and faction caused by parallel forms of loyalty to that of allegiance to the monarch underpinned by oaths, which undermine royal sovereignty. Efforts to conflate the Covenants with Jesuit theology and the Holy League were accompanied by efforts to conflate any support for Exclusion with support for the Solemn League and Covenant. One significant such effort revolved around the role played in the Exclusion Crisis by the 1585 Act of Association. The act was passed with the stated aim to protect Queen Elizabeth from plots and to secure against the succession of a Catholic heir, such as Mary Queen of Scots.54 As efforts to pass an Exclusion Bill faltered, Whig proponents of Exclusion, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury, turned to the Act of Association as a model upon which an alternative bill could be based. As Patrick Collinson noted, a key distinction between the original Association and Shaftesbury’s successor was the different royal attitudes towards them. Whereas the original was ‘a device to protect the crown, undertaken, in effect, by the crown’, its successor could be interpreted as ‘a statement made against the regime and ministry’.55 In this context it is not surprising that parallels the author of the Perswasive to conformity, wherein many things are discussed, which are repeated in Mr. Baxters late plea for the nonconformists, II. A letter to an Oxford friend, concerning the indulgence Anno 1671/2, III. A letter from a minister in a country to a minister in London, IV. An epistle written in Latin to the Triers before the Kings most happy restauration (Printed for Thomas Basset, 1680), 303. 53 George Hickes, The spirit of popery speaking out of the mouths of phanatical-Protestants, or, The last speeches of Mr. John Kid and Mr. John King, two Presbyterian ministers, who were executed for high-treason and rebellion at Edinburgh, August the 14th, 1679 with animadversions, and the history of the Archbishop of St. Andrews his murder, extracted out of the registers of the Privy-Council (Printed by H. Hills, 1680), 7. Hickes would not always be an unqualified supporter of James II, as he argued against his plans for indulgence of Catholics, but he was nevertheless a nonjuror after the Revolution of 1688. See Theodor Harmsen, ‘George Hickes’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 54 K. H. D. Haley, The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 516. 55 Patrick Collinson, This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 72.

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with the Solemn League and Covenant could be drawn, and used to implicate Whigs with accusations of sedition. Though the Association Bill was read several times in parliament without accusations of treason, as fortunes turned against Shaftesbury and he was arrested, a draft of the bill was produced as evidence of his treachery.56 Following this, several pieces of writing were published which sought to compare the Association with the Solemn League and Covenant. Richard Wroe asked, ‘Are not they who formerly entred into a Solemn League and Covenant against our established Church, Projecting a new, but more wicked and dangerous Association?’57 An anonymous author writing on the subject of parliamentary addresses condemning the Association also paralleled it with the Solemn League and Covenant and argued they were alike in their destructive intent: ‘Neither are all Associations … abhorred in any of these addresses, which detest only those two Diabolical ones, the first, of the Sole’m League and Covenant, and this seized in the [Earl of Shaftesbury’s] Closet.’58 A similar view was expressed by the author of A Plea for Succession in Opposition to Popular Exclusion, who argued that such an Association was a much surer route to tyranny than allowing the Duke of York to succeed to the throne. The ‘popular’ character of the Association is stressed throughout as destructive and used to compare it to popery and covenanting.59 If the Association were to succeed, they argued, it would be to allow the succession to be dictated by ‘the Power of a few Men, whom Faction, Guilt, or Interest, shall persuade to head the Party’, and potentially to allow them to raise an army to enforce this, as the Scottish Covenanters had done.60 Such a situation, it was argued, would mean that ‘we doubly enslave both ourselves, and Posterity at once; that is, both to the head Associators, or Covenanters, call them what you will; and also to the Army that upholds them.’61 The most detailed explication of comparisons between the Covenants and the Association was The Parallel, or the New Specious Association an Old Rebellious Covenant, written by John Northleigh. Northleigh initially published this anonymously but was ‘happy to be known as the author’ by the time of the accession of James II.62 56 Haley,

The First Earl of Shaftesbury, pp. 677–8. Richard Wroe, The beauty of unity in a sermon preached at Preston in Lancashire at the opening of the Guide-merchant held there, September 4, 1682 (Benj. Tooke, 1682), 26. Wroe would in fact later come to be regarded as a Whig, but this clearly did not mean that he supported Shaftesbury’s Association in 1682; see C. W. Sutton/Henry D. Rack, ‘Richard Wroe’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 58 Anonymous, A Return to the letter of a noble peer concerning the addresses (Ralph Stamp, 1682), 3. 59 Anonymous, A Plea for Succession in Opposition to Popular Exclusion (Walter Davis, 1682), 5–7. 60 Ibid., 3–4. 61 Ibid., 4. 62 Andrew M. Coleby, ‘John Northleigh’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 57

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In The Parallel, Northleigh wrote that, although the Whigs had avoided the terms ‘league’ or ‘covenant’ for fear of evoking the idea of Solemn League and Covenant or Holy League, the Association was essentially the same thing: But yet here there is almost an Identity of practice; the Almighty is most solemnly invok’t in the beginning of the Oath; Priviledges of Parliament; Laws of the Kingdom, Liberties of the Subject; Popery; Protestant Religion; all the same numerical pretensions, the same Words, Expressions, and Out-crys; and what can be the consequence, but that the same Rebellion will follow too?63

The circumstances from which both emerged, he argues, were very similar, both being seen as the culmination of a campaign to favour dissenting Protestants, accuse the king of popery, cast aspersions on his family and counsellors, and hold him hostage financially in exchange for assenting to parliamentary demands.64 He compared what he referred to as the ‘Tenor of the Oath’, the part in which an oath is actually sworn, in the National Covenant, Solemn League and Covenant, and the Association. The similarity of language in all three, he suggested, meant that ‘Certainly they must be the softest fools in the World, an easie sort of Ideots, below the cunning of common brutes, that can be cheated with the same bait, whose disguised hook they have already felt, and smarted by.’65 In terms that parallel the debate discussed in chapter 3 regarding the power of parliament to have originally subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, Northleigh argued that the parliament which produced the Association had attempted to overstep its jurisdiction by making law from an oath without the consent of the king. That parliament, he argued, considered ‘their Votes to be Law, and they sit again as long as they please, and whether the King will or no’.66 To actually enforce the Association, he wrote, would require the coercive enforcement of an oath made without the license of the king: ‘they must go down into their several Burroughs, and according to this Association raise the Militia, and make the people swear to obey them.’67 Furthermore, without the assent of the king, Northleigh argues it would not be legal for parliament to attempt to impose an oath on the nation as a whole, unless ‘they design that their Rowses, Wilmores, Whitakers, Harveys, shall be all their Members in the next parliament?’68 In essence, Northleigh accused the parliamentary supporters 63

John Northleigh, The parallel: or, The new specious association an old rebellious covenant. Closing with a disparity between a true patriot, and a factious associator (B. Tooke and T. Sawbridge, 1682), 8. 64 Ibid., 8. 65 Ibid., 14. 66 Ibid., 24. 67 557 Ibid., 24. 68 Ibid., 25. Northleigh is presumably referring here to a shorthand for all pro-exclusion ministers, and by Whitaker and Harvey he likely means Michael Harvey (1635–1712) and Henry Whitaker (1622–95), who were allies of Shaftesbury. The reference to ‘Rowses’ likely

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of the Association of attempting to rule arbitrarily, by deciding that the will of parliament could make the Association ‘as statutable, as if the King’s Le Roy vult had passed it into Law’, and provocatively suggested it was tantamount to suggesting ‘all the Old Acts that make it Treasonable to raise Forces without the King, would have been abrogated by this New one for tolerating Insurrection’.69 Northleigh also deployed the tactic of comparing the Solemn League and Covenant, and by extension the Association, with the French Holy League, which as Andrew M. Coleby has noted, enabled Northleigh ‘to be both loyal and anti-Catholic at the same time’.70 The form of a rebellious league was similar, he argued, as was the purpose, to oppose a religious minority perceived as receiving favourable treatment: And now we are in the Vein and Humor of drawing Parallels between Covenants, I shall give them a tast too, of that in France against the poor Hugonots, who were suspected to be favoured by the Government, just as the Catholiques are still here; and let these deluded Zealots see, that they treat not only in the footsteps of the true Protestants of the Charles the First in England, but also of the rank Papists of Henry the Third in France.71

Northleigh’s efforts to links the Whigs with both the Solemn League and Covenant and the Holy League were a success, and were ‘admired and emulated’, Coleby has argued, by writers such as John Dryden, who produced the satirical play The Duke of Guise, inspired by The Parallel.72 In The Duke of Guise, Dryden is explicit about the purpose of the play as a way of exploring the connections between the contemporary political turmoil and historical predecessors in the form of the Holy League and the Covenants. In the prologue, Dryden explained the message he is attempting to convey: Our Play’s a Parallel: The Holy League Begot our Cov’nant: Guisards got the Whigg: refers to Sir John Rouse, arrested for treason but saved by a favourable jury. ‘Wilmore’ likely refers to John Wilmore, a London merchant who participated in the juries for Stephen College and Shaftesbury himself in 1681. See ‘Whitaker, Henry (c.1622–95), of Motcombe, Dorset’, in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660–1690, ed. B. D. Henning (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1983); ‘Harvey, Michael (c.1634–1712), of Clifton Maybank, Dorset’, in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690–1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002); Gary S. De Krey, London and the Restoration 1659–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 5; Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p.195; John Marshall, ‘Whig Thought and the Revolution of 1688–91’, in The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy: The Revolutions of 1688–91 in Their British, Atlantic and European Contexts, ed. Tim Harris and Stephen Taylor (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), p. 59. 69 Northleigh, The Parallel, 24. 70 Coleby, ‘John Northleigh’. 71 Northleigh, The Parallel, 26. 72 Coleby, ‘John Northleigh’.

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant Whate’er our hot-brain’d Sheriffs did advance, Was, like our Fashions, first produc’d in France73

The characterisation of Whig manoeuvres against the Duke of York as part of a historical tradition of rebellious leagues and covenants is therefore a consistent feature throughout the period of heaviest Tory propagandising in 1680–82, and beyond, in the case of The Duke of Guise. Mark Knights has characterised the wider crisis surrounding the issue of Exclusion as being motivated by three primary factors; ‘fear of popery, fear of arbitrary government and the disruption of England’s client relationship with France.’74 These concerns can definitely be seen reflected in the texts studied here; the real danger of ‘popery’ is characterised as its potential to cause sedition and disloyalty, of which Whigs and presbyterians were also accused. Shaftesbury and others are accused of attempting to govern arbitrarily, and what Protestants viewed as the worst actions of Catholic France were portrayed not as originating from religion, but as attempts by one religious group to persecute another and abandoning loyalty owed to the monarchy in the process. Knights’s characterisation can therefore be seen as correct, but perhaps somewhat incomplete. The fear of Catholicism displayed in these debates was not entirely about religion in a strict sense, but also about the undermining of the legal constitutional order of church and state. Both Whig and Tory in this period used anti-Catholic rhetoric to attack opponents perceived as undermining the constitutional order, but differed on the exact nature of this order. Part of the utility of the Association of 1681, and more explicitly the Association of 1696, which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter, is that they offered a concise method of encapsulating what this order was seen to be, for a broad audience. The question that the attempts to conflate the Solemn League and Covenant with both the Holy League and Shaftesbury’s Association raise for the purposes of this book is: were they correct? Can these ideas legitimately be thought of as similar forms of political bonding, or was the idea of such continuity merely a convenient rhetorical device with which to attack opponents? As discussed, explicit references to the Solemn League and Covenant were often avoided by proponents of Exclusion. However, opponents of Exclusion argued that the Association, and the movement towards Exclusion more generally, represented a political and constitutional legacy of the ideas which accompanied the Solemn League and Covenant. As discussed previously, Edward Vallance has convincingly argued for a degree of continuity between oaths of the 1640s, such 73

John Dryden, The Duke of Guise A Tragedy: Acted by Their Majesties Servants (T. H., 1683), Prologue. For more on The Duke of Guise see Adrian Streete, Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 6. 74 Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 10. For more on the European dimensions of concerns about Catholicism and the risk of French domination in the 1680s see Glickman, ‘Conflicting Visions’, pp. 15–31.

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as the Vow and Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant, and later ideas of Protestant associations.75 Patrick Collinson appeared to believe this as well, writing that it is ‘understandable’ that ‘Restoration historians have tended to agree with the Tory version of this story’ – that is, that the Association was ‘no worthy successor to this loyal declaration (the original 1585 Association) but a replica of the Solemn League and Covenant of the 1640s’.76 It is hard to deny that, in its purpose as an instrument to unite opposition to royal policy and restrain a monarchy, Shaftesbury’s Association did in fact more closely resemble the Covenants than it did the 1584 Bond of Association. Plainly, the 1681 Association went beyond a simple agreement to defend the monarchy, endorsed by the monarch, which was the fundamental character of the 1584 Association. It is hard to say to what extent the 1681 Association was inspired directly by the Covenants, but it is clear that the proponents of Exclusion were undertaking a political effort with similarities to that of the Covenanters, and that many contemporaries were aware of this fact. An examination of the parliamentary debates surrounding the introductions of the Exclusion and Association bills would appear to support the notion that, if not always directly inspired by the Solemn League and Covenant, many proponents of Exclusion were operating on the basis of political ideas similar to those which had underpinned the Covenant. Interestingly, proponents of Exclusion did not always shy away from discussing what lessons they might learn in their endeavours from the French Holy League, even as it was consistently evoked in pejorative fashion by their opponents. Despite the polemical currency of the Holy League and Solemn League and Covenant in attacking those in favour of Exclusion, supporters of Exclusion were sometimes willing to invoke these examples indirectly or even, in some cases, directly. Understandably, explicit defences of the Covenants were not made in parliament at this point; however, appeals for leniency towards active Covenanters in Scotland certainly were. By no means a presbyterian, Thomas Clarges nevertheless appealed in 1678 for relief on behalf of ‘the loyal party, that supported the Monarchy, when it was shaken, and fought for the Crown, [who] are oppressed in Scotland, and cannot be heard here’.77 The harsh treatment of Scottish presbyterians, he argued, was destined ‘to put that Nation in Rebellion’, as indeed it did the following year with the rising which culminated in the Battle of Bothwell Bridge.78 Even following that uprising, there were calls in parliament for lenient treatment, with Goodwin Wharton arguing that the Duke of York’s attitude towards the 75

Vallance, ‘Loyal or Rebellious?’, 10–12. This England, p. 72. 77 ‘Debates in 1678: May 7th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 5, ed. Anchitell Grey (London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1769), pp. 337–61. 78 Ibid. Clarges’s position here is striking, as he was a staunch royalist who had fought for the king in the Civil War and opposed Exclusion in 1679–81. He would eventually turn against James II due to his religious policies, however. See A. A. Hanham, ‘Clarges, Sir Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 76 Collinson,

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Scottish rebels demonstrated his unfitness to be king: ‘It was a sign of a very ill principle in the Duke, that, when the Duke of Monmouth was sent into Scotland to suppress that Rebellion, it was thought amiss by the Duke, that they were not all destroyed.’79 Sir Thomas Littleton did warn his fellow parliamentarians of the risks of modelling an Exclusion bill upon the French Holy League, on the basis that ‘All the Protestant Divines of England exclaimed against the Church of Rome for excluding Hen. IV from this Right to the Crown of France, and our own arguments may justly be returned upon us.’80 However, he did so in order to invoke the example of Scotland, and the tradition of resistance to monarchs there. ‘They are in Scotland’, he argued, ‘not so much for secluding their Princes from the Crown, as for ordering their Princes to do what they list. We need less to fear, if we take this example of Scotland along with us.’81 Even Littleton, therefore, who was no Exclusionist, was not fearful of expressing political ideas anchored in the resistance tradition originating in the Scottish reformation.82 Others openly discussed the Holy League as a precedent for what they were attempting to do. In a debate in 1680 on the merits of excluding the Duke of York by name, or merely by implication as a Catholic, the close ally of Shaftesbury, Sir George Hungerford, argued for explicit Exclusion on the basis that ‘In the Holy League of France, the Duke of Guise excluded Henry IV, by name.’83 In the same debate, Sir Francis Winnington also discussed the example of France as a model for how an exclusion might proceed, noting that ‘In the instance of Hen. IV, they did not deny him King of France, but say they “We will not lose our Religion by having him King”.’84 Winnington appears to have suggested that the Holy League and a similar association for Exclusion would both be legitimate ways of people upholding their established religion, even if the nature of that religion was different. Parliamentarians arguing for Exclusion also articulated their position in ways which were similar to the theories of conditional kingship and lawful resistance which underpinned the Covenants. Henry Sacheverell, who was in favour of Exclusion, argued that it would necessarily involve checks on the king’s authority: ‘how can we secure Religion, or the just rights of any 79 ‘Debates in 1680: November 9th–11th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 7, pp. 433–59. 80 ‘Debates in 1679: May 11th,’ in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 7, pp. 236–60. 81 Ibid. 82 John Ferris, ‘Littleton, Sir Thomas, second baronet 1619/20–1681’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 83 ‘Debates in 1680: December 15th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 8, pp. 147–71; M. W. Helms/Basil Duke Henning, ‘Hungerford, Sir George (c.1637–1712), of Cadenham, Bremhill, Wilts’, in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660–1690, ed. Henning, pp. 614–17. 84 ‘Debates in 1680: December 15th’, pp. 147–71.

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Protestant Successor, unless the King’s power be restrained?’85 The language employed here – of restraining the actions of an individual monarch in order to protect the rights associated with their office – has strong echoes of the Scottish resistance theory which led to the National Covenant and Scottish attitudes towards Charles I. As prospects of an explicit Exclusion bill dwindled, William Cavendish, considered ‘one of the most moderate of the Opposition’, turned to resistance theory predicated on the obligations of the king, as an alternative solution.86 The proposal made by Cavendish was ‘That the Duke, being a Papist, is incapable of performing the Office of A King, and that it is lawful for the People to resist him, if he should come to the Crown.’87 While some of the connections made between the Covenants and the political situation after 1678 were very explicit, as in The Parallel or The Duke of Guise, others were rather more subtle. One intriguing example lies in The Papist’s Bloody Oath of Secrecy, the name given by Robert Bolron, informer to both Shaftesbury and the Tories at various points, to an oath swearing to kill the king which he claimed was administered to him as part of the supposed ‘Popish Plot’. Bolron was a former soldier, jeweller, and collier who became involved with Titus Oates and his claims of Catholic plotting in 1679.88 It has been suggested that his motives were in part revenge against Sir Thomas Gascoigne, who had ejected him from his home for rent arrears, and in part to earn money to pay off his substantial debts, and his role in the affair was one of repeated perjury, at various times in service to both Whig and Tory efforts.89 Yet, despite its obviously fraudulent origins, The Papist’s Bloody Oath of Secrecy remains an interesting document. Bolron learned personally from Oates, and was clearly successful enough in crafting his hoaxes to get the attention of both Whigs and Tories at different times, so The Papist’s Bloody Oath has value as far as it represents attempts to tap into genuine concerns and avenues for propaganda.90 For the purposes of this chapter, what is interesting about The Papist’s Bloody Oath is that it appears in several respects to be an attempt to suggest the existence of a secret Catholic equivalent to the Solemn League and Covenant. While the oath claimed to commit those who swear it to ‘destroy the said pretended King of England’, it also makes a suggestion, of obvious value from a propaganda point of view, that it is a response to the king breaking a secret covenant of his own, upon which the signatories viewed his kingship as predicated. ‘The pretended king of England’, it claims, ‘hath broke his vows with his 85 ‘Debates in 1678: November 22nd–27th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 6, pp. 261–85. 86 E. R. Edwards, ‘Cavendish, William, Lord Cavendish (1641–1707), of Chatsworth, Derbys’, in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660–1690, ed. Henning, pp. 35–9. 87 ‘Debates in 1681: January 7th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 8, pp. 259–85. 88 Richard L. Greaves, ‘Robert Bolron’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 89 579 Ibid. 90 Ibid.

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Holiness’s Agents beyond Sea, and not performed his Promises, in bringing into England the holy Catholick Religion.’91 The oath then claims that those who swore it were obligated to ‘root out and extirpate the said Protestant doctrine’, in language directly echoing the Solemn League and Covenant.92 The Papist’s Bloody Oath is raised here not to suggest that it formed part of the propaganda effort to associate the concepts of the Solemn League and Covenant with schism and Jesuitism. The purpose of The Papist’s Bloody Oath as an attempt to foment anti-Catholic sentiment and to suggest the existence of a Catholic attempt on the king’s life, while also hinting at untoward involvement of the king himself with Catholic agents, is plain, and most likely does not need explaining via any ulterior motive. However, what it does demonstrate is another example of the role played in the Popish Plot panic and the Exclusion Crisis by concern about the potential of religiously motivated leagues and covenants to create seditious allegiance outside that owed to the monarchy. The direct role of the Solemn League and Covenant and the ideas which it represented may have been less apparent in discourse surrounding the events of 1678 onwards than it was in the debates which followed the Restoration of the crown in 1660. However, the Covenant still played a prominent role in debates around Exclusion and in polemical writings concerned with the possibilities of ‘Popish’ or ‘presbyterian’ plots against the state. In some cases, the Solemn League and Covenant continued to be evoked as a representation of a Calvinist resistance tradition into which some of those opposing the future accession of James, the Duke of York to the throne sought to situate their political ideas. In other cases, a narrative began to emerge of the intellectual origins of the Solemn League and Covenant which placed little emphasis on its denominational character, and instead contextualised the Covenant as part of a tradition of fanatical, seditious religious leagues. These changing approaches to the Solemn League and Covenant occurred in a context in which the stability not only of the Restoration settlement in the British Isles, but also of the settlement which followed the French Wars of Religion, and the post-Westphalian settlement in Europe more generally, appeared to be faltering. The resurgence of Catholic France and the threat of a resumption of denominational conflict in Europe, coupled with an Anglican church and Stuart state whose contradictions were sharpened by European concerns, as shown by Tony Claydon and Gabriel Glickman, meant that the question of allegiance was arguably an even more confused and fraught one than it was following 1660. Concerns therefore grew about the potential of leagues and bonds to construct alternative models of authority and allegiance to the Stuart polity, the shortcomings of which were becoming ever more apparent. At the same time, however, a growing degree of cooperation between conformist and nonconformist ministers within the broadly-defined ‘presbyterian’ faction, 91 92

Robert Bolron, The Papist’s Bloody Oath of Secrecy (Randall Taylor, 1680), pp. 5–6. Ibid., p. 6.

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and increasing advocacy for freedom of conscience, blurred the lines between ‘dissent’ and ‘conformity’ within English Protestantism. The period around the Exclusion crisis saw significant discussion of the Solemn League and Covenant, but in a quite different context to much of the discourse that had taken place before this point. Proponents of the Duke of York’s accession to the throne cast those in favour of Exclusion as heirs to a tradition of seditious bonding, which included the French Holy League and the Solemn League and Covenant. In particular, Shaftesbury’s Association was framed as tantamount to a new covenant. There is reason to think that there was substance to these comparisons beyond pejorative polemics. Shaftesbury’s Association of 1681 did, in many respects, resemble the Covenants more closely than the Elizabethan Bond of Association upon which Shaftesbury’s was theoretically modelled. While proponents of Exclusion were understandably less eager to explicitly invoke the Solemn League and Covenant than their opponents, they did discuss similar concepts of leagues and resistance theory. The extent to which Shaftesbury and other exclusionists were directly attempting to emulate the Covenants is unclear. However, there was definitely a widespread awareness that the political project of Exclusion had similarities to Covenanting, and that the Solemn League and Covenant represented a relatively recent example of a document which resembled the Association in both form and purpose. Together with the increasingly common use of the example of the French Holy League, the connection of the Covenants with Exclusion in public discourse demonstrates an appreciation that the form, function, and underlying political theory of religious leagues which had in the past been rigidly confessional could be applied to political projects with different religious motivations. As the next chapter will explore, this process continued to be relevant in the events surrounding the Revolution of 1688 and its aftermath.

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6 The Revolution of 1688 and the Association of 1696 By the late 1680s, the Covenants themselves featured only in a limited way in political discourse, primarily in a Scottish context. However, the political theories embodied in the Covenants featured heavily in the theory underlying the Revolution of 1688 and influenced the terms in which the Revolution was discussed. Resistance theory and ideas of contractual kingship which had previously been associated with Covenanting and sedition became commonplace. Sometimes, these ideas were justified with reference to the intellectual heritage of the Scottish reformation, other times with reference to England’s history or to other factors such as Hebraic kingship. While not always directly influenced by the Covenants, the Whigs of the 1680s were attempting a project with many similarities to the Covenanters of the 1630s and 1640s. In both cases, what they were undertaking was a political revolution justified as safeguarding a certain conception of a threatened constitution of church and state. The intellectual tools which the Covenanters and 1688 Revolutionaries used to do this were similar as well – they argued they were simply defending a lawful status quo, and used oaths and associations as a means of organising this defence. As Clarendon phrased it in reference to the original Covenanters, ‘they united themselves by subscribing a covenant.’1 So too did opponents of James II’s succession and rule attempt to unite themselves with similar documents at various points from 1681 onwards, during the events surrounding the Revolution of 1688, and to defend William’s crown and the revolutionary settlement afterwards. Particularly in the Association of 1696, influence from the Covenants can be seen in the use of a widely signed oath which emphasised popular consent alongside constitutional lawfulness. The difference, however, was that this form had been appropriated for a much more expansive, pluralistic religious vision – a form of political Protestantism which was more inclusive than the presbyterianism of the Covenants, extending even to Catholics of sufficient political loyalty. The late 1680s and 1690s saw the narrowly jure divino presbyterian ecclesiology of the Covenants excluded from the new Revolutionary order. However, this period also saw unparalleled success for the combination of limited contractual monarchy, underpinned by mass popular politics, of which the Covenants still represented the most immediate historical example. 1 Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Vol 1) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1807), p. 174.

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Contract and Association

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Exclusion Crisis saw the revival of the idea of the ‘Protestant Association’, ostensibly modelled on the Elizabethan Association of 1584, but also contemporaneously viewed as very similar in form and function to the Solemn League and Covenant. This idea of a Protestant association would be revived again in 1688 and 1696, first as an instrument through which the revolutionaries sought to defy James II, and then as a means to secure the Revolutionary settlement. Edward Vallance has argued that the significant works on Protestant associations ‘agree that these documents were not, first and foremost, designed to protect the person of the monarch but were instituted to secure the Protestant state’.2 In other words, these associations represented attempts to articulate a contractual model of authority where the preservation of religion is a central duty of the monarch and the state, in a manner that resembled the model of authority which underpinned the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant. The following section will examine the role of associations and contractual political theory in the Revolution of 1688 and its aftermath. The period surrounding the Revolution saw a growth in publications which portrayed the English monarchy as existing on some sort of contractual or covenanted basis.3 As Edward Vallance has demonstrated, the idea of a covenanted element to the English crown predicated upon Protestantism had existed in some form since the times of Edward and Mary and was arguably embodied in the 1584 Bond of Association.4 Vallance argues that ideas of an English Protestant association and the Scottish ideas of a conditional kingship as embodied in the Covenant influenced each other as ideas about the relationship between religion and the constitutions of both kingdoms ‘were readily exchanged as part of a shared Protestant culture’.5 It is therefore reasonable to believe that contemporaries would appreciate that ideas of a Protestant association and the National and Solemn League and Covenant, though not identical, were related concepts. Indeed, as demonstrated in the previous chapter, contemporaries were well aware of the similarities between the Solemn League and Covenant and the Association proposed by Shaftesbury. It is therefore worth noting that a similar association was used as part of the process of the Revolution: with a document signed in Devon, Exeter, and 2 Edward Vallance, ‘Loyal or Rebellious? Protestant Associations in England, 1584–1696’, The Seventeenth Century, 17:1 (2002), 1. 3 For more on the Revolution and theories of contractual kingship see Richard S. Kay, The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 77–96; Thomas P. Slaughter, ‘“Abdicate” and “Contract” in the Glorious Revolution’, Historical Journal, 24:2 (1981), 232–7. 4 Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 6–10. 5 Ibid., p. 48.

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in London which declared its signatories’ support for the Prince of Orange in ‘maintaining the Ancient Government, and the Laws and Liberties of England, Scotland and Ireland’.6 This document was described as being signed ‘by the gentlemen of Devon’ and ‘the Lords and Gentlemen’ of Exeter, indicating it did not undergo the widespread dissemination to the commons that documents such as the Covenants did.7 As will be discussed further later in this chapter, a similar document that was much more widely signed would be produced in 1696 to secure the post- Revolution settlement from perceived Jacobite plotting. In its form, however, this Association plainly mirrors the National Covenant in the sense that it was a three-way covenant between God, signatories, and the king, or in this case, the as yet uncrowned William of Orange. The signatories declare that they: do engage to Almighty God, to His Highness the Prince of Orange, and to one another, to stick firm to this Cause, and to one another in the Defence of it, and never to depart from it, until our Religion, Laws, Liberties, are so far secured to us in a Free Parliament, that we shall be no more in danger of falling under Popery and Slavery.

One of the first instruments for securing support for the Revolution of 1688, therefore, was remarkably similar in many ways to the National Covenant: a covenant involving God as a party, containing a solemn oath to defend what is portrayed as the lawful status quo from illegal innovation. In the instrument which secured the Revolution settlement, the Bill of Rights, certain similarities with the form and function of the National Covenant can also be identified.8 The Bill of Rights is naturally much more forthright in its condemnation of James II than the National Covenant was with regards to Charles I, as it was an instrument to replace a king rather than restrain one. However, both were framed as instruments to defend a lawful constitution rather than effect change to it. Where the National Covenant appeals to ‘the fundamental laws, ancient privileges, offices, and liberties of this kingdom’, the Bill of Rights appeals to the ‘auntient Rights and Liberties’ of English subjects, clearly framing it as a defence of an existing ancient constitution rather than the creation of a new one.9 This is even more explicit in its Scottish equivalent, the Claim of Right, which claimed that James II ‘Did By the advyce of wicked and evill Counsellers Invade the fundamentall Constitution of this Kingdome And altered it from a legall limited monarchy to ane Arbitrary Despotick power’.10 6 Anonymous,

The Association (William Churchill, 1688), 1. The General Association of the Gentlemen of Devon to His Highness the Prince of Orange (s.n., 1688), 1; Anonymous, The Copy of the Association Signed at Exeter by the Lords and Gentlemen that went to the Prince of Orange (s.n., 1688), 1. 8 For more on the Bill of Rights see Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘The Bill of Rights, 1689, revisited’, in The World of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of 1688–89, ed. Dale Hoak and Mordechai Feingold (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 42–58. 9 Bill of Rights (English Parliament, c.2, 1688). 10 Claim of Right (Scottish Parliament, c.28, 1689). 7 Anonymous,

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In the English context, an awareness of the need to frame the Bill of Rights as a defence of ancient law can be seen in debates which led up to the passing of the bill by parliament. On 4 February 1689, the House discussed the wording proposed for the Declaration of Rights, which would form the basis of the Bill of Rights. In this debate, several members raised the importance of ensuring that the bill was rooted in ancient law, rather than needing to make new law. The long-time parliamentarian and supporter of Exclusion, Sir Thomas Lee, argued that ‘for those things wherein the ancient Rights are infringed, those require no new Laws.’11 Sir Henry Capel, also a veteran of the Exclusion debates, spoke of his awareness that the Whigs ‘have been branded often with Alteration of the Government’, but responded that ‘we only assert our Rights and Liberties, pursuant to the Prince’s Declaration.’12 Accompanying the Bill of Rights in 1689 was a new coronation oath, which explicitly committed the monarch to be bound by the law, and to govern ‘according to the Statutes in Parlyament Agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same’.13 It also committed the monarch to ‘Maintaine the Laws of God the true Profession of the Gospell and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law’, proposing a constitution of church and state which was similar to that embodied in the National Covenant, where ecclesiology was part of the nation’s laws and not subject to the authority of the monarchy. Gilbert Burnet wrote of both his contractual conception of kingship and belief in the right to resistance in An Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supream Authority. There he wrote that ‘The true and original Notion of Civil Society and Government is that it is a compromise made by such a body of Men’ and that when people contractually submit themselves to authority ‘The Measures of Power, and by consequence of Obedience must be taken from the express Laws of any State, or Body of Men, from the Oaths that they swear.’14 Many texts published in the few years following the Revolution make reference to this idea that kingship is predicated upon some form of original covenant or contract, of which the coronation oath represented a renewal. The Fundamental Constitution of the English Government by William Atwood argued that ‘the King’s Oath [is] his part of a binding Contract’, and that it was this original contract upon which kingship is based.15 This contract, claimed Atwood, committed the monarch to ensure three things, upon which their crown was dependent: ‘That 11 ‘Debates in 1689: February 1st–5th’, in Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons: Volume 9, ed. Anchitell Grey (London: T. A. Beckett and P. A. De Hondt, 1769), pp. 39–65; Stuart Handley, ‘Sir Thomas Lee’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 12 ‘Debates in 1689: February 1st–5th’, pp. 39–65. 13 Coronation Oath Act 1688 (English Parliament, c.6, 1688). 14 Gilbert Burnet, An enquiry into the measures of submission to the supream authority And of the grounds upon which it may be lawful, or necessary for subjects to defend their religion lives and liberties (s.n., 1688), 2–3. 15 William Atwood, The Fundamental Constitution of the English Government (J. D., 1690), 29.

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God’s Church, and all the People in the Kingdom, shall enjoy true Peace’, ‘That he will forbid Rapine, and all Injustice, in all Orders of Men,’ and ‘That he will promise and command Justice and Mercy in all Judgements’.16 Seasonable Reflections on Dissolving Corporations in the Late Two Reigns argued that the king ‘hath originally subjected himself to the Law by his Coronation Oath.’17 James Tyrrell discussed the original contract and quoted James I, speaking before the Houses of Parliament: That a King in a settled Kingdom binds himself by a double Oath to the Observation of the Fundamental Laws of his Kingdom, tacitly as being a King (that is claiming under his Ancestors) and so bound to protect them as well as the Laws of his Kingdom; and expressly by his own Oath at his Coronation.18

He then argued that: you see here by James’s own Concession, that there are not only Fundamental Laws, but an Original Contract (which he there calls a Paction or Covenant) to observe them from the time of the first King or Monarch to this day, and that when he ceases to Govern according to this Compact (which he here calls his Laws) he then becomes a Tyrant.19

Interestingly, not only was Tyrrell arguing for a contractual conception of kingship predicated upon a covenant, but by citing the example of James I, Tyrrell appears not to draw any distinction between the nature of kingship in England and Scotland. That is not surprising in the context of his text’s publication in 1695, following the proposal of similar constitutional models for the kingdoms in the Bill of Rights and Claim of Right, but importantly Tyrrell applies this to the crown of England throughout history. Therefore, it appears that the controversial model of kingship embodied in the National Covenant was, by the 1690s, discussed by Whig writers such as Tyrrell in terms that framed this model as the legitimate historical constitution not only of Scotland, but England as well. The Whig pamphleteer Samuel Johnson, discussing an English contractual kingship dating to Saxon times, explicitly referred to it as a ‘National Covenant’. He also argued that ‘The Oath of Allegiance being the counterpart of the Coronation Oath, and containing the Subject’s Duty as the other does the King’s, is of the nature of all Covenants, as 16

Ibid., 29.

17 Anonymous,

Seasonable Reflections on Dissolving Corporations in the Late Two Reigns, By Surrendring Judgement Against Charters (Randall Taylor, 1689), 6–7. 18 James Tyrrell, A Brief enquiry into the ancient constitution and government of England as well in respect of the administration, as succession thereof (Richard Baldwin, 1695), 31. Tyrrell’s early writing has been described as ‘impeccably royalist’ but by the time of the Exclusion Crisis he had become a collaborator with John Locke and Algernon Sidney and emerged as a leading Whig political theorist. See Mark Goldie, ‘James Tyrrell’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 19 Ibid., 32.

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is a Conditional Oath.’20 Perceived connections to Scottish resistance theorists and Covenanters were also raised as a criticism of proponents of contractual kingship and resistance theories. In a letter to James Welwood, the Anglican clergyman John March attacked Gilbert Burnet as adhering to ‘an old Fanatik Principle came out of Scotland’, based on ‘Buchanan, Douglas, Rutherford, Nephthali, and other Scotch Fanatiks’.21 Burnet’s ideas were therefore explicitly associated by his critics not only with classic Scottish resistance theorists like Buchanan, but more recent Covenanter texts like Naphtali. This is not to claim that theories of contractual kingship around this time were primarily justified with explicit reference to the Covenants, as this is not borne out by the evidence. In fact, references to Scottish contractual kingship are often outnumbered by references to English and Hebraic history. However, the theories of contractual kingship espoused in relation to the Revolution were very similar in nature and fulfilled a similar function to the National Covenant. The Covenants also represented some of the most prominent and immediate historical examples of attempts to articulate and practically effect a contractual kingship, as the architects of the Revolutionary theories must have been aware. Both the efforts of the Covenanters and the 1688 Revolutionaries represented attempts to predicate a conditional, contractual monarchy upon a conception of a national past. To purely emulate Scottish precedents would not have worked in the context of England. The contractual theory of the Revolution was, however, an attempt to conceive of English kingship in a way in which the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant represented the most immediate examples, both geographically and chronologically. Perhaps the clearest example of continuity with the associations and covenants created earlier in the seventeenth century is the Association of 1696. In that year, two related Jacobite plots were uncovered, one to assassinate King William as he returned from a hunt, and the other to invite a French invasion with the aim of restoring James to the throne.22 The plots failed to achieve their goals, though the regime was only partially successful in apprehending the conspirators, and Steve Pincus has argued that there were active Jacobite meeting places and organisations across the country in the 1690s, which would doubtless have sharpened the apparent threat posed by such plots.23 In response to these threats, parliament introduced an Association, in the vein of those 20 Samuel Johnson, Remarks upon Dr. Sherlock’s book intituled The case of resistance of the supreme powers stated and resolved, according to the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures (The author, to be sold by Richard Baldwin, 1689). 21 James Welwood, A vindication of the present great revolution in England in five letters pass’d betwixt James Welwood, M.D. and Mr. John March, Vicar of Newcastle upon Tyne: occasion’d by a sermon preach’d by him on January 30. 1689 (R. Taylor, 1689). 22 Rachel Weil, A Plague of Informers: Conspiracy and Political Trust in William III’s England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 248–50. 23 Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 444–5.

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of 1584 and 1681. The Association claimed to be a response to a ‘Horrid and Detestable Conspiracy, Formed and Carried on by Papists, and other Wicked and Traiterous Persons, for Assassinating his Majesty’s Royal Person in Order to Incourage an Invasion from France, to Subvert our Religion, Laws, and Liberty.’24 In the event of a successful plot against William, its signatories agreed to ‘Freely and Unanimously Oblige our Selves, to Unite, Associate, and Stand by each other, in Revenging the same upon his Enemies.’25 They were also sworn to ‘the Succession of the Crown, according to an Act made in the First Year of the Reign of King William and Queen Mary, Intitled, An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, and Settling the Succession of the Crown.’26 It was therefore partially framed as a restatement of the Bill of Rights, much as the National Covenant was framed as an oath in defence of existing statutes. However, Edward Vallance has argued that, to some extent, it was a culmination of Whig efforts throughout the 1690s to introduce a new oath which specifically rejected James II’s claim to the throne, as well as being a reaction to the events of 1696.27 In this respect therefore, this Association was more similar to the many early modern oaths of allegiance than to the promissory oaths to endeavour change contained in documents such as the Solemn League and Covenant and the Association of 1681. The Association of 1696 was not, however, only an oath of allegiance, and indeed it did not replace the 1689 oath of allegiance, which continued to be used after 1696, albeit with increased penalties attached.28 As Vallance has noted, the demographics upon which it was imposed differed as well, with the Association reaching the public at large whereas the oath of 1689 had been restricted to clergy and those holding public office.29 In some respects, therefore, it could be argued that the document to which the Association of 1696 was most similar in its form and purpose was the National Covenant. Both functioned not explicitly to endeavour change, nor simply to affirm passive acceptance of a monarch, but rather to defend a constitutional and religious status quo born from recent revolutionary change, which was perceived as being threatened by sinister actors. Both were tendered to a wide variety of people and often signed in circumstances of public extravagance. These circumstances functioned as much as displays of popular consent and exercises of political power as simply opportunities for individuals to sign, and also sharpened the religious implications of the documents by publicising the solemn oath-swearing aspect, and often occurred in the specifically religious context of a church.30 24

A Copy of the Association agreed upon by the Honourable House of Commons on Monday the 24th of February 1696 (s.n., 1696), 1. 25 Ibid., 1. 26 Ibid., 1. 27 Vallance, Revolutionary England, p. 201. 28 Weil, A Plague of Informers, p. 257. 29 Vallance, Revolutionary England, p. 201. 30 Pincus, 1688, pp. 462–3.

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Steve Pincus has argued that the dramatic difference in scale between the signing of the 1584 Association and that in 1696 undermines the claim made by Patrick Collinson that the Elizabethan Bond of Association had ‘a persistent afterlife in the seventeenth century’, and argues that the evidence shows that 1696 in fact represents ‘both an ideological and a social break’.31 However, simply to consider these two points over a century apart and emphasise their discontinuity is to risk missing the wider picture of an evolution of ideas of covenants and associations throughout the seventeenth century, of which the 1584 Association simply represents one early example. Instead, the Association of 1696 should be viewed in part as the result of a complex and non-linear exchange of ideas as a part of what Edward Vallance has termed ‘a shared AngloScottish Protestant culture’.32 Pincus is correct that the context of the 1584 Association was explicitly confessional, and the context of the 1696 Association much less rigidly so.33 This is also true of the arguments made in this chapter regarding continuity between the Covenants and political ideas which were applied to justify the Revolution after 1688. Rather than undermining claims of continuity, however, this drift away from rigid confessional boundaries in the use of covenants and associations demonstrates the evolution which occurred in an ad hoc fashion throughout the seventeenth century. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the development of new constitutional ideas and practices within a rigidly confessional context, such as in the case of the National Covenant. This suggested the right of a people to covenant together to construct authority but did so in the very narrow framework of what was viewed as a Godly constitution which had emerged from the Scottish reformation. However, as religious pluralism became commonplace, and circumstances of religious bloodshed and political upheaval changed the nature of the political solutions people sought, this picture began to change. Aspects of explicitly confessional constitutional documents such as the 1584 Association or the National Covenant influenced, both in form and content, an emerging body of British civil religion of which the 1696 Association can be viewed as an early example. However, the strict confessional nature of earlier bonds could not serve to unite the heterodox population of the late-­seventeenthcentury British Isles. Therefore, the ‘Protestantism’ of the Association of 1696 is one conceived of much more broadly than the ‘Protestantism’ of the Association of 1584, or the ‘reformation’ of the Solemn League and Covenant. This is not to say that the Association did not come with religious implications attached, but rather that its religious content was conceived of more broadly than that of many earlier bonds or oaths. Furthermore, the concept of political bonds of this sort had become so diffused into political culture by this point that different groups could view the same bond in different ways 31

Ibid., p. 464. Revolutionary England, p. 6. 33 Pincus¸ 1688, p. 471. 32 Vallance,

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according to their needs. Pincus correctly argued that the Association was not rigidly anti-Catholic, blaming as it did ‘Papists and other Wicked and Traiterous Persons’, rather than solely Catholics, and being signed by large numbers of Catholics.34 However, people most certainly conceived of the Association as a defence against ‘Catholicism’ in the sense that previous bonds such as the National Covenant and the 1681 Association also used the word. This was Catholicism not as a set of religious practices but as an absolutist force that infringed upon the ‘rights and liberties’ of Protestants in both political and religious ways. In this sense the Association functioned similarly to the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance, which Michael Questier has argued was directed at ‘those who have an active allegiance, religious as much as political, to Rome’, but left unmolested those who ‘merely cling to some popish superstitions’.35 Duel Pead considered the Association to be targeted at four doctrines with which he claimed ‘Papists and Jacobites’ were poisoning English political discourse: 1. The Doctrine of Jure Divino, and the Consquent thereof, the Dispensing Power 2. The Doctrine of Passive Obedience, and its Consquent, Non-Resistance. 3. The Doctrine that teacheth the Difference betwixt the Church of England and that of Rome is not great; and its Consquence, That a Papist is better than a Dissenter. 4. And lastly, take care of the Doctrine of a King de facto; that the present King is only a King by Possession of the Crown; whereas he is Rightful King according to the Laws of the Land.36

Aside from arguably the third point, the focus from Pead is overwhelmingly civil and political, rather than relating to worship. In this reading, the Association is essentially an act of civil religion which involved committing to a certain constitutional model, which did not make specific religious demands, but which made political demands with implications for religion. Pead defined a true Protestant through comparison with false ones, on the basis of their political and civic loyalty, rather than their religious practices: ‘Though Men Know the Devil can transform himself into an Angel of Light, yet they dare not therefore venture upon a Familary with him; so notwithstanding, Rebels, Conspirators, and Assassines, may wear the glorious Name of Protestants, yet are they not therefore to be trusted; for if ever their hoped time shall come, they will unmask, and to your utter Confusion you shall feel

34

Ibid., p. 470. Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 319. 36 Duel Pead, Sheba’s conspiracy and Amasa’s confederacy, or, A modest vindication of the national association entred into by the Honorable House of Commons, Feb. 25th, 1695 being a sermon preach’d in the parish-church of St. James Clarkenwell, March 29th (T. Parkhurst, 1696), 25. 35

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the Claws they now shut up’.37 In this conception therefore, the purpose of the Association again appears similar to the National Covenant: to define and unite a political nation along the lines of a set of religious precepts. The difference is that whereas in the context of the National Covenant the limits of this nation were along rigidly doctrinal lines, in the case of the Association the definitions are much wider, and essentially amount to a rejection of religious beliefs which would infringe upon the political status quo, and little else. For many of those who were concerned about the possible implications of subscribing to the Association, the key question was one of whether James could remain king on a de jure basis even as William held the crown de facto. If James remained the de jure king, it was argued, the Association might go beyond the allegiance owed to a de facto monarch and instead represent an instrument with which to replace one king with another. Steve Pincus has argued that defenders of the Revolution in its very early stages did not tend to challenge arguments that William was only king de facto, in order to downplay the novelty of what had taken place in 1688–89. By the mid-1690s, however, the threat of Jacobitism meant that defenders of William had become much more intent on defending his right as king de jure.38 The importance of this debate for those considering subscribing to the Association was that it represented the difference between a bond to uphold the lawful status quo, and a bond to endeavour to change William’s constitutional status. As the Association involved an obligation to protect the succession along the line of William and Mary, it treated William as a de jure monarch, as otherwise the lawful succession would revert to James, or his heirs, upon William’s death. The Association also described William as ‘rightfull and lawfull King’. Defenders of the Association were therefore faced with a similar task to those in Scotland defending the National Covenant in 1638: to present their bond as a defence of the lawful status quo rather than as something which mandated for revolutionary change. William Atwood turned to the work of English lawyers such as Edward Coke and Matthew Hale to argue for a distinction between the birth right of a lawful heir ‘to be declared king’ and the point at which they actually became king de jure, which happened after ‘a Parliamentary Settlement of the Crown upon him’.39 The issue, much like in Atwood’s Fundamental Constitution, was one of kingship being predicated upon a contract, and the possibility of the king to lose his crown through ‘his breach of a contract established in Parliament’.40 This illuminates a subtle difference between common framings of the National Covenant of 1638 and the Association of 1696. While both had similarities in form and function, they were underpinned by a different theoretical basis. 37

Ibid., 26. 1688, p. 454. 39 William Atwood, Reflections upon a treasonable opinion, industriously promoted, against signing the National association and the entring into it prov’d to be the duty of all subjects of this kingdom (E. Whitlock, 1696), 3. 40 Ibid., 46. 38 Pincus,

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Whereas the National Covenant was most commonly defended as an embodiment of the contract upon which Scottish kingship was predicated, in Atwood’s reading this is not the case with the Association. While the kingship was contractual, the contract was that which the king had made with parliament upon his coronation, and the Association was not presented as a straight renewal of this contract, as the National Covenant was. Instead, it was a one-sided commitment to defend ‘the king and kingdom’, meaning that in this sense it more closely resembled an allegiance oath than it did a covenant. In this sense, the Association shows influence from a variety of early modern oaths and bonds with distinct forms and purposes. In the purpose of the Association to secure a revolutionary settlement, while also defending this settlement against charges of innovation, and in its form as an oath publicly subscribed to by representatives from all sections of society, the Association does appear to closely resemble the National Covenant. Yet, at its heart, the Association is an oath of allegiance tendered in a fashion influenced by the Covenants, rather than a covenant proper. The Association cannot be said to be wholly new, nor can it be described as a precise analogue to any previous political or religious oath tendered on the British Isles. Instead, it displays features of several prior oaths and bonds. What this demonstrates is the broad influence which the varied Anglo-Scottish political language of oaths and bonds had upon the emerging civil religion of the late-seventeenth-century Williamite state. Resistance theory

The Revolution of 1688 also produced a body of polemical works which justified the events which had taken place upon the grounds of a natural right to resist a tyrannical monarch. These were ideas which had in the preceding thirty years been most prominently embodied in the British Isles by the Solemn League and Covenant and works of its supporters such as Naphtali. They had been explicitly repudiated through the Act of Uniformity, and when raised very tentatively in the context of Shaftesbury’s Association, such ideas were dismissed as treasonously similar to the Solemn League and Covenant.41 This is not to say that the resistance theories that became the terms in which the Revolution was justified were necessarily explicitly presbyterian or associated with the Covenant. There were a variety of related ideas of legitimate resistance and a consensual underpinning to monarchy which both fuelled the Revolution and were deployed after the event as justification. Some explicitly took 41

Shaftesbury was never actually convicted of treason, though he was arrested for it with the Association cited as evidence – several attacks on the Association discuss it as treason, for example Northleigh, The parallel, or, The new specious association an old rebellious covenant. Closing with a disparity between a true patriot, and a factious associator (B. Tooke and T. Sawbridge, 1682), 24–5; William Patterson, Remarques upon the new project of association: In a letter to a friend (Edinburgh: David Lindsey, 1681), 7.

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inspiration from the Scottish intellectual world of which the Covenants were a product. Others focussed on English or continental traditions of Protestant resistance, and in some cases these ideas overlapped in the form of conceptions of Anglo-Scottish or pan-European Protestant rights to resistance and self-­ defence. However, 1688 can be seen as a watershed moment when the ideas of resistance which had, since 1660, been primarily the preserve of those who in one way or another continued to uphold the Solemn League and Covenant, or ideas associated with it, expanded beyond this context in a significant way for the first time since the civil wars. While the resistance theory embodied in Naphtali is often thought of as quite different from other forms, due to it representing a move away from a focus on the role of the magistrate in resistance, interestingly, some of the writings that the Revolution produced contained conceptions of a right to resistance very similar to Stewart’s. In Political Aphorisms, or The True Maxims of Government Displayed, Thomas Harrison describes the right of resistance against a tyrannical magistrate: ‘If a Magistrate, notwithstanding all Laws made for the well-governing a Community, will act plainly destructive to that Community, they are discharged either from Active or Passive Obedience, and indispensibly obliged by the Law of Nature to Resistance.’42 However, whereas the framing for Stewart’s theory of resistance in Naphtali and Jus Populi was explicitly religious, Harrison’s is more concerned with law, specifically the role of established religion as part of the common law. While part of the right to resistance was a right to defend one’s religion, he argued, this flowed not necessarily from a revealed, divinely ordained duty to endeavour and protect a perfect religious settlement. Rather, ‘When once the Christian Religion is become a part of the Subjects Property by the Laws and Constitutions of the Country, then it is to be considered as one of their principal Rights: and so may be defended as well as any other Civil Right.’43 The argument that religion could become ‘a part of the Subjects Property’ via the ‘Laws and Constitutions’ of a polity is very similar to the arguments which accompanied the National Covenant, where a constitution of church and state is elevated above the will of a monarch, although with a secular focus on ‘civil right’ rather than jure divino religion. In essence, 42 Thomas Harrison, Political Aphorisms, or The True Maxims of Government Displayed (Thomas Harrison, 1690), 19. The origins of Political Aphorisms are somewhat unclear. Some historians doubt that Harrison is in fact the author, rather than just the publisher, though as Harrison is broadly considered as its author, he will be referred to as such here. In places it appears to plagiarise Locke’s Two Treatises, as well as containing influences from Leveller texts, and the work of the Scottish presbyterian Robert Ferguson. Whatever its origins, it was a best-selling, very widely read summary of the political principles underpinning the Revolution, and it is for that reason that it is of interest in this chapter. See Richard Ashcraft and M. M. Goldsmith, ‘Locke, Revolution Principles, and the Formation of Whig Ideology’, The Historical Journal, 26:4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 773–9; Alexander S. Rosenthal, Crown Under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), p. 199. 43 Harrison, Political Aphorisms, 20.

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Harrison’s argument is a repudiation of the regal Erastianism of the Restoration period. Control of ecclesiology, he argued, is a ‘civil right’ of ‘the subjects’ at large, not a right for the monarch to exercise as they see fit. The law, argued Harrison, was fundamentally a representation of the terms of the covenant under which a form of government is constituted: As every Man, in the delivery of the Gift of his own Goods, may impose what Covenant or Condition he pleases; and every Man is Moderator and Disposer of his own Estate. So in the voluntary Institution of a King, and Royal Power, it is lawful for the People, submitting themselves, to prescribe the King and his Successors what Law they please, so as it be not Unreasonable and Unjust, and directly against the Rights of a Supream Governour.44

Kingship, in this argument, was based on voluntary consent, with the law of the land which the king ruled over functioning as the covenant underpinning it. The law did not originate from the king, but was given to him by the people. Some fifty years following the signing of the National Covenant, therefore, the idea which it embodied of a kingship bound by law and predicated upon a covenant can be found to be espoused by defenders of the Revolution and the conception of a constitution for the British Isles which it represented. While in some ways Harrison’s ideas might appear closer to a Hobbesian conception of natural law than the revealed, explicitly Godly natural law underpinning the National Covenant, he does provide examples which suggest he still considered that God was a party to the covenants upon which kingship was predicated. King Ammon, he argues, lost his life and crown as he ‘walked not in the way prescribed him by God’. Furthermore, he notes, ‘And all the Kings of Israel, who violated the Covenant and Conditions annexed to their Crowns, did, for the most part, lose their Lives, and underwent the utter Extirpation of their Posterities from the Crown.’45 Harrison’s work combined the language of divine mandate, historical precedent, and the civil rights of the people. Harrison suggests Hebraic kings were crowned on a covenanted, conditional basis, much like the kingship embodied in the National Covenant, and also that they were obliged to act in a way ‘prescribed … by God’, similarly to the way in which Scottish presbyterians portrayed the reformation as both constitutional and Godly. This is also similar to Robert MacWard’s concept of civil religion as discussed in chapter 4, whereby the civic good could be protected from both the king and malefactors within the general population by enshrining in law a religious settlement which was Godly while also encouraging civil stability and protecting from tyranny. In fact, Harrison makes explicit the continuity between the Calvinist resistance theory which underpinned the Scottish reformation and the National Covenant, and the situation at the time of his writing. He quotes the following 44 45

Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8.

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from George Buchanan on the origin of kingship in Scotland: ‘That it [the kingdom] was free from the beginning, created it self Kings upon this very Law, that the Empire being conferred on them by the Suffrages of the People; if the Matter required it, they might take it away by the same Suffrages.’ Most notably, after this quote he concludes that ‘Of which Law many Footsteps have remained even to our Age.’46 Kingship predicated upon ‘the suffrage of the people’ can therefore be seen as a common thread directly connecting the thinking of Buchanan, the Covenanters of the seventeenth century, and Harrison. Harrison therefore appeared to conceive of the Revolution of 1688 as part of a tradition of justified Protestant resistance to tyranny, of which Scotland provided a noteworthy example through its reformation and its defence in the form of the National Covenant. This right to resistance was rooted in the fundamental nature of kingship, which was consensual, and safeguarded by covenants and the common law, which served as embodiments of this original contract. Harrison was not the only one who justified the events of 1688–89 with reference to the history of Scottish Protestantism. That George Buchanan’s The History of Scotland was reprinted in London in 1690 by the radical Whig bookseller Awnsham Churchill is surely significant. Several writers around this time also made reference to historical Scottish Protestant ‘resistance’ during the reformation and by the Covenanters as examples which the revolutionaries had followed, or to traditions of mutual Protestant defence across borders as embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant. Thomas Long Sr (not to be confused with his nonjuring son) wrote that the Scots were justified in their resistance to the absolutism of Charles I.47 He also argued that English support for the Scottish reformation and resistance among other European Protestants meant that arguments that non-resistance was mandated by the Anglican church were specious: And the Church of England, which ever since the Reformation taught the Doctrine of Non-resistance in any case whatsoever, have yet manifested their Judgment, that this general Rule may in some cases admit exception, as by the Assistance given to the Scots, French, and Dutch Protestants in defence of their Religion and Liberties, as hereafter mentioned may appear.48

Elsewhere, Long cited the example of resistance in the Scottish reformation, and English support for it, as ‘the Princely and upright preservation of the Liberty of the Realm and Nation of Scotland from imminent Captivity and Desolation.’49 These quotes would appear to indicate a belief both in a right to resistance and 46

Ibid., 10. Thomas Long, A Resolution of Certain Queries Relating to Submission to the Present Government (R. Baldwin, 1689), 28. 48 Ibid., 5. 49 Thomas Long, The Historian Unmask’d, Or Some Reflections on the Late History of Passive Obedience (Richard Baldwin, 1689), 14. 47

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a Godly duty for Protestant princes and magistrates to defend each other, as embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant. Long’s writing underlines the point that the Scottish reformation could be seen as relevant to England, both as part of a shared European Protestant heritage, but also specifically due to the role of the English in the reformation and the expulsion of French troops from Leith. What appears to be suggested by Long’s work is not only a right to resistance, but a duty among Protestants towards mutual defence in support of Godly governance which crossed national borders, which was arguably the essential nature of the Solemn League and Covenant. In looking back to the events of 1559–60, those such as Long writing in defence of the Revolution could find a useful example of one Protestant nation assisting another in avoiding the ‘captivity and desolation’ threatened by interference by the French, which was also how many of his supporters wished to frame William’s intervention in 1688. This was not only a rhetorical device, as the geopolitical dimensions to the Revolution of 1688 were quite real. Historians have noted how the religious policies of James II were part of a political project modelled on the ‘Gallicanism’ of Louis XIV’s France, and how William’s intervention was in part motivated by a desire to gain the British kingdoms as strategic partners against Louis.50 The theme of mutual defence amongst Protestants is also present in the works of Slingsby Bethel.51 Bethel, writing in 1691 on the topic of The Providences of God, Observed Through Several Ages, in Introducing the True Religion, described Elizabeth’s reign glowingly, primarily due to the role of England in supporting Protestantism in Scotland and elsewhere.52 These efforts had clearly been favoured by God, he argues, ‘the Nation not suffering the least dishonour in any of their action during her Reign, tho ingaged in war upon the account of Religion with all her neighbours’.53 Thomas Comber argued that the history of Protestant persecution and resistance in Scotland and continental Europe demonstrated the duty of Protestants to petition their leaders for protection and assistance, but also to be prepared to meet tyranny with resistance, as ‘Protestants may be victorious so long as they only Petition, tho with armes in their Hands.’54 It is the duty of a king, he argues, to be receptive to the concerns 50

For more on the relationship between James II and Louis XIV and how this influenced James’s political and religious strategy in England and Scotland, see Pincus, 1688, ch. 5. For a deeper analysis of how this influenced James’s religious policies see Alasdair Raffe, ‘James VII’s Multiconfessional Experiment and the Scottish Revolution of 1688–1690’, History, 100:341 (June 2015). 51 Bethel had long been a strong advocate for England militarily supporting Protestantism and confronting France abroad, for reasons of commerce and trade as well as religion. See Gary S. De Krey, ‘Slingsby Bethel’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Ryan Walter, ‘Slingsby Bethel’s Analysis of State Interests’, History of European Ideas, 41:4 (2015), 489–506. 52 Slingsby Bethel, The Providences of God, Observed Through Several Ages, in Introducing the True Religion (R. Baldwin, 1691), 4–5. 53 Ibid., 4–5. 54 Thomas Comber, The Protestant mask taken off from the Jesuited Englishman (William Wilde,

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of his subjects, or risk resistance: ‘For this was our case so long as our king would stay to be petitioned.’55 Again, a model of resistance very similar to the course of action undertaken by the Scots in 1637–38 was proposed: to present grievances in a way which safeguarded the rights of the king, should he be willing to listen, but to be prepared to resort to violence should he not. Perhaps most striking is the example provided by The History of Self-Defence, a pamphlet published in response to the nonjuror Abednego Seller’s The History of Passive Obedience, which argued against Seller’s position of the unlawfulness of resistance to authority. Alongside the more common examples of legitimate Protestant resistance such as those from France, Germany, and Scotland in 1560 and 1638, it cited the Covenanter uprisings of 1666 and 1679 as examples of legitimate resistance undertaken to ‘lawfully defend themselves against the Encroachments of Princes upon their Laws and Liberties’.56 The author would appear therefore to have conceived of the Revolution as part of a continuity of lawful Protestant resistance of which even the later Covenanter movements, often regarded as on the fringe of Protestant respectability, were a part. James Welwood, in A Vindication of the Present Revolution, conceived of a European Protestant resistance tradition which included ‘France, Germany, Switzerland, the Grisons, the Low Countries, Swedland, Scotland, Denmark, and Poland’. True Protestants in all these countries, he argued, had ‘forced their way to Reformation by Resistance, and the most of them thro Rivers of Blood’.57 In a 1688 pamphlet entitled The Causes and Manner of Deposing a Popish King in Swedeland, Truely Described, a different precedent was cited for the use of an association for the removal of an illegitimate monarch. This pamphlet described the deposition of King Sigismund of Sweden, who had been joint monarch of Sweden and Poland before the Swedish Riksdag deposed him on account of his Catholicism in favour of his uncle Charles.58 Interestingly, his account of his deposition explicitly characterised this as having occurred on the basis of an

1692–93), 50–1. Interestingly, Comber was considered an uncompromising royalist and Tory for much of his life, though he turned on James II along with other Tories aghast at his promotion of Catholicism. It is unsurprising in this context that he emphasised resistance as a very last recourse when kings failed to uphold their duty to be receptive to subjects’ concerns. See Andrew M. Coleby, ‘Comber, Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 55 Comber, The Protestant mask, 50. 56 Anonymous, The History of Self-Defence, in Requital to the History of Passive Obedience (D. Newman, 1689), 22–3. 57 James Welwood, A Vindication of the Present Revolution (R. Taylor, 1689), 2. Welwood’s commitment to international Protestant solidarity was more than theoretical. He lived among Huguenots in Paris and in the court of William of Orange, and was arrested in 1684 for communicating with Scottish exiles in the Netherlands after he returned to Scotland that year. See Elizabeth Lane Furdell, ‘Welwood, James’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 58 Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), p. 68.

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‘association’: ‘the Convention made several Decrees for security of Religion and Property, and entred into an Association for the Defence of them.’59 It is clear therefore that the Revolution of 1688 produced writings on the topic of resistance which were similar to the views contained in the National Covenant, and that contemporaries were aware of these links, making explicit comparisons with both the Covenant and the Scottish reformation more broadly. This is not to argue that the theories of the Revolution were solely or even primarily Scottish in origin. Rather, the example of the Covenants and the reformation was an important part of the intellectual world inhabited by the revolutionaries and those who supported and defended the Revolution, and an important example of resistance theory for those writing on the subject. Scotland and the Covenants after 1688

The result of the Revolution was arguably a kingship that was very close to the model of kingship represented in the Covenants. However, this was shorn of the jure divino presbyterianism that accompanied this model of kingship in the Covenants. As Alasdair Raffe has demonstrated, the revival of presbyterianism in Scotland was a process that started prior to the Revolution, as the religious reforms instituted by James II/VII allowed greater leeway for presbyterians to practise their faith and to incrementally reintroduce functioning presbyteries.60 Despite a general presbyterian distrust of toleration, especially among those most committed to the Covenants, such as the Cameronians, when the opportunity presented itself in 1687, many Scottish presbyterians seized on the chance to begin the reconstruction of their church. By the time James was overthrown, eleven presbyteries already existed, and several synods had met.61 Furthermore, presbyterians, including radical Cameronians, played a major role in the events of the Revolution in Scotland, defeating the Jacobite uprising at the Battle of Dunkeld, so it is unsurprising that the settlement of 1690 restored a form of presbyterianism. However, not only did this settlement fail to include a role for the Covenants, it also, as Raffe has noted, did not acknowledge the jure divino origin of presbyterianism which the Covenants asserted, and which many presbyterians in Scotland sought.62 For many Scots, Clare Jackson has argued, the lack of a role for jure divino presbyterianism was considered to be an acceptable compromise, and Raffe has made similar arguments that the post-Revolution settlement was, for many, close enough to a fulfilment of the 59 Anonymous, The Causes and Manner of Deposing a Popish King in Swedeland, Truely Described (R. Baldwin, 1688), 1. 60 Raffe, ‘James VII’s Multiconfessional Experiment’. 61 Ibid., 362–65. 62 Alasdair Raffe, ‘Presbyterianism, Secularization, and Scottish Politics after the Revolution of 1688–1690’, The Historical Journal, 53:2 (2010), 327.

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aspirations of the Covenants, though not a full endorsement of them.63 For much of the Restoration period, according to Jackson, authorities in Scotland had been willing to prioritise civil order over religious uniformity, and this had ‘generated a characteristically flexible and accommodating mentality that enabled a relatively Erastian form of presbyterianism to be re-established in 1690 with a relatively minimal political and social dislocation’.64 As discussed previously in this chapter, the late seventeenth century saw assertions of jure divino church government fall out of favour in comparison to broader conceptions of a civil and political Protestant nation, so it is not surprising to see a similar process occur in Scotland. However, despite the religious settlement which followed the Revolution in Scotland representing in many respects an effective compromise between respecting the rights of presbyterians to worship and avoiding some of the uncomfortable implications of the Covenants, it was not without controversy. There were some who considered the lack of an explicit role for the Covenants as an unacceptable concession. Others feared that allowing presbyterianism any sort of official role was to risk a full Covenanter takeover later on, exposing Anglicans to the threat of repression. Both Covenants were publicly renewed by a group of ‘Cameronian’ Covenanters in March 1689 at Lesmahagow in Lanarkshire. This was accompanied by the republishing of the Covenants, along with an introduction analysing the nature of national covenants and a ‘solemn acknowledgement of publick sins and breaches of the Covenant’.65 Those who renewed the Covenant at Lesmahagow were among the most radical and dedicated Covenanters remaining, and should not be taken as representative of more than a minority. However, the accompanying texts contain interesting insights into the nature of loyalty to the Covenants which remained in Scotland, and the differences between the conceptions of covenanted kingship held by radical Scottish Covenanters and those increasingly being discussed in England in the context of justifications for the Revolution. In the English examples of contractual kingship discussed here, such as Harrison and Burnet, the idea of a covenant or contract upon which kingship was predicated was often rooted in an idea of natural law, where the construction of authority from a state of nature was based on an inherent right to self-defence. Where God was viewed as a party to this covenant, it was primarily in the role that He had in providing man with the inherent liberty, religion, and rights which the king then covenanted to defend. The conception of covenanted kingship which the signatories declared they were renewing at Lesmahagow in 1689, however, was slightly different. 63

Alasdair Raffe, ‘Who were the “Later Covenanters”?’, in The National Covenant in Scotland, 1638–1689, ed. Chris R. Langley (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2020). 64 Clare Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 13. 65 Anonymous, The National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant With The Acknowledgement of Sins and Engagement to Duties As they were Renewed at Lesmahego, March 3, 1689 with Accommodation to the Present Times (s.n., 1689), 1.

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Edward Vallance has argued that ideas of a political national covenant in England and Scotland did not directly emerge from covenant theology, but rather that the two ideas influenced each other symbiotically and not always straightforwardly.66 In the case of the Covenanters of Lesmahagow, however, the connection is explicit, with the right to covenanting portrayed not as a natural law emerging from man’s state of nature, but a right actively granted by God, to ‘the first man representing all mankind’, with the first example being ‘the bond of the Covenant of Works’.67 Rather than covenanting being the process by which men bonded together to defend their religion, rights, and laws, the covenants came first and instilled matters such as law and oaths with meaning: ‘But that the Lord should offer to Covenant with Man, and to give the Law, Promised and Oath Covenant-wayes, is a greater wonder than either Law, Promises or Oaths.’68 While concepts of covenanted and contractual kingship in England had become increasingly generalised in their religious character in this period, there were still those in Scotland who conceived of covenanted kingship essentially as a realisation of an act of Godly revelation, as the proponents of the National Covenant had originally done in the 1630s. The contrast between the two highlights how, in the English context, political concepts with a specifically presbyterian origin had become, to some extent, shorn of their specific religious connotations and become part of an emerging body of civil religious practices which functioned to shore up the Revolutionary settlement. In fact, the declarations from Lesmahagow made it very clear that their author or authors believed that the ecclesiastical aspects of the Solemn League and Covenant outweighed any other concerns of national or royal allegiance, or any form of political entanglement between England and Scotland beyond their as-yet-unrealised bond as covenanted, presbyterian polities. The author acknowledges that renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant was a controversial thing to do, at least ‘as it was at its first framing; that is, as a League Offensive and Defensive with the Collective body of these Kingdoms … in Scotland, England and Ireland’.69 This was because, with no immediate prospect of a presbyterian reformation in England, ‘as the case now stands, it were very hard to Renew that League for Religion, between these Nations’, and that if they were to renew it, it would involve ‘an Association with the Prelatical and Malignant party’.70 However, they concluded that the Covenant could, in fact, be renewed. This was because they conceived of the Covenant not primarily as a contract between polities, but between God and a body politic the extent of which was inherently defined by its allegiance to the Covenant: ‘it is not absurd, that the whole Nation, or even a party in it, renew That Holy Engagement, as it as a Covenant with God: wherein He is respected not only as witness, but 66 Vallance,

Revolutionary England, pp. 30–8. The National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant, 1. 68 Ibid., 1. 69 Ibid., 35. 70 Ibid., 35. 67 Anon,

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Party Contracting, or with whom they Contract, and to whom they vow obedience.’71 What appears to have been proposed here is a relationship between civil and religious power where both the nature of the civil polity, and the extent of who was included within it, was defined along religious grounds. At the same time as the language of covenanted kingship was deployed in England to construct a concept of authority with increasingly non-specific and pluralistic religious underpinnings, at Lesmahagow the Solemn League and Covenant was conceived of as embodying a polity the boundaries of which were explicitly defined along confessional rather than political or geographic lines. A discussion of the Revolution from the point of view of the most radical Scottish Covenanters can be found in An Account of the Methods and Motives of the Late Union and Submission to the Assembly, which documented the return of the ministers Thomas Lining, William Boyd, and Alexander Shields to the Church of Scotland. Shields was the most prominent of the three, a long-time representative of the more radical Cameronian faction of Covenanters, who had long written in defence of the Covenant, and who was present for the renewal in March 1689.72 The Cameronians had actively raised troops to oppose James II during the events of 1688–89, and included with the account is their declaration of 1689 which asserted their support for the Revolution, describing William of Orange as ‘a renowned Instrument in His Hand, to rescue us from Popery and Slavery, to remember this broken and bruised Church, and to give us a reviving in our Bondage.’73 However, in several respects it outlined a vision for the Scottish church and state which the Revolution settlement did not fully realise. Despite restoring presbyterianism, the Revolution settlement of the Scottish church did not restore the Covenants, but An Account of the Methods and Motives framed the Covenants as an inherent part of the reformation which had produced the Kirk which the nonconforming ministers were re-joining. Firstly, the declaration included with the account explicitly characterised their actions as in defence of ‘the good Old Way and Cause of Scotlands Covenanted Reformation, in all its received and established, Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government, according to the Word of God, Confession of Faith, Catechisms, National Covenant and Solemn League.’74 In the account itself, the ministers not only ask the assembly to renew the Covenants, but to investigate and punish breaches of them and attempts by authorities to crack down on the Covenants since the Restoration. The decision that these ministers had made to re-join the Church of Scotland was not popular with many lay Cameronians, and this might have been in part an attempt to assuage critics by appearing to take a hard line, rather than their sincere intention. In either case, it is clear 71

Ibid., 35. Michael Jinkins, ‘Alexander Shields 1659/60–1700’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 73 Thomas Lining, Alexander Shields, William Boyd, An account of the methods and motives of the late union and submission to the assembly offered and subscribed by Mr. Thomas Lining, Mr. Allexander Sheilds, Mr. William Boyd (s.n., 1691), 7; Jinkins, ‘Alexander Shields’. 74 Lining, Shields, Boyd, An Account, 9. 72

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that, despite these ministers re-joining the Church of Scotland, compromise with the Cameronians was to be very difficult and many would not be satisfied with a settlement which introduced presbyterianism while sidestepping the issue of the Covenants or failing to explicitly frame presbyterianism in a jure divino manner. While these ministers would remain with the Church of Scotland, other splits would occur in future, and separate churches would emerge from the Cameronian movement, but the point for the purposes of this book is that radical ministers, at least at first, clearly viewed the Revolution as a triumph of the Covenants.75 For many less radical Scottish presbyterians, the introduction of presbyterianism following the Revolution of 1688 represented, essentially, a fulfilment of the aspirations of the Covenants, and they did not see any need to renew them further.76 However, the idea of a restoration of the Covenants and assizes against those who had suppressed and breached them was not simply the fantasy of a few Cameronian ministers, but an outcome which some, such as the principal of Edinburgh University, Alexander Monro, feared would come to pass after the Revolution. Indeed, Monro’s fears were not entirely unfounded as he was not only removed from his post, but was eventually jailed as a suspected Jacobite sympathiser in 1696.77 Essentially, Monro accused presbyterians who were supporters of the Covenants of having created a situation where they were free to ignore both civil and religious law in favour of a nebulous concept of what ‘the Covenant’ demanded. This was akin to popery, he argued, as it created a situation where compromise in the civil sphere was impossible due to fanatical religious demands: ‘The Papists will not part with one Barbarous word, nor the Presbyterians with the least Iota of their Orthodox Stuff.’78 This would undermine loyalty to civil authority, he argued, by predicating it upon a religious commitment which not everybody could make: ‘One great piece of Policy, which the Presbyterians manage against the Episcopal Party, is, never to require Obedience to the Civil Authority, without the mixture of some Presbyterian Test.’79 Such a disregard of civil authority predicated upon the Covenants, he claimed, was in fact more dangerous than a Catholic one, as ‘the Severity of the Popish Inquisition is tempered with Canons, and this of Ours, only Regulated

75 For

more on the divisions between Cameronians and other Scottish presbyterians see Alasdair Raffe, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012), ch. 7. 76 Raffe, The Culture of Controversy, pp. 78–9. 77 Tristram Clarke, ‘Alexander Monro (d.1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 78 Alexander Monro, Presbyterian inquisition as it was lately practised against the professors of the Colledge of Edinburgh, August and September, 1690 in which the spirit of Presbytery and their present method of procedure is plainly discovered, matter of fact by undeniable instances cleared, and libels against particular persons discussed (J. Hindmarsh, 1691), 51. 79 Ibid., 51.

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by the boundless Humour of a few Imperious Rabbies, Whose Actions know no Law but the Covenant, and that no other end, but their Ecclesiastical Tyranny.’80 Others made similar arguments, warning that allowing a role in Scotland for the Covenants, particularly the Solemn League and Covenant, would embolden people who did not see themselves as bound by any law other than the Covenant. George Mackenzie argued that allowing a place for the Solemn League and Covenant and the ‘divine right of Presbytery’ which it implied would allow people to be ‘subject to no law’.81 If people were allowed to disregard the law in favour of the Covenant, he argued, ‘no sober Man can live in security.’82 John Robertson summarised the danger that people saw in an allegiance owed only to the Covenant by describing a ‘presbyterian preacher’ as ‘consequently a Sworn enemy to all Mankind, except those of his own fraternity, by the Solemn League and Covenant’.83 Those who opposed a full restoration of the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland also argued that such a move would be incompatible with the moderate, tolerant settlement being sought by the Williamite regime. Such an objection was not unreasonable as radical Scottish Covenanter arguments in the early stages of the Revolution had often revolved around opposition to toleration. To some extent this was specific to the toleration for Catholics which James was proposing, but it also involved arguments that toleration of any sort was incompatible with the Covenants. Alexander Shields expressed this view in A Hind Let Loose, which documented the Covenanter grievances which would lead to their participation in the uprising against James II during the Revolution of 1688. Shields argued that it was a breach of the Covenants, the Confession of Faith, and presbyterian principles ‘to allow or accept such a vast Toleration for Idolaters and Hereticks’.84 In their justification for raising armed men against James, which was republished alongside the Account of the Methods and Motives of Shields, Lining and Boyd, the crimes of James’s regime are described as ‘Encroachments of Absolute Power over Laws and Liberties of Church and State either by Persecution or Toleration.’85 The Testimony of some persecuted Presbyterian ministers argued that: most recognosce a power in this Tolerator to subvert all Laws; And so by accepting this lawless, & Law-subverting Liberty, they make themselves guilty of the palpable breach of the national Covenant; where the laws are contained, which this Toleration 80

Ibid., 12. George Mackenzie, Earl of Cromarty, A memorial for His Highness the Prince of Orange in relation to the affairs of Scotland together with the address of the presbyterian-party in that kingdom to his Highness: and some observations on that address by two persons of quality (Randal Taylor, 1689), 8. 82 Ibid., 8. 83 John Robertson, Rusticus ad clericum, or, The plow-man rebuking the priest in answer to Verus Patroclus: wherein the falsehoods, forgeries, lies, perversions and self-contradictions of William Jamison are detected (Aberdeen: s.n., 1694), 6. 84 Alexander Shields, A Hind Let Loose (Edinburgh: s.n., 1687), 176–7. 85 Lining, Shields, Boyd, An Account of the Methods and Motives, 11. 81

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The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant suspends. And dreadfully accessory to all the sad effects of this undermining all the legal bulwarks of our Religion.86

To those who viewed the National Covenant as a statement of Scottish law, therefore, a tolerant settlement would not be legal, as the Covenant mandated for a strict jure divino form of presbyterianism. Although de jure toleration of episcopacy was not an option in 1690, the new regime was clearly moving in that direction and was keen to prevent persecution of former episcopalian ministers, and acts allowed excluded ministers back into the Kirk in 1693 and 1695. Therefore, a choice emerged in this period between a form of presbyterianism that did not include a place for the Covenants, but which had the potential for a more stable and tolerant Kirk, and a more rigidly intolerant settlement that did. However, whereas the Cameronians viewed anything other than an official recognition of the Covenants as a breach, other moderate presbyterians saw the church settlement as essentially fulfilling the aims of the Covenants.87 Others felt that the settlement went too far in accommodating presbyterianism. Alexander Cunningham criticised the idea of restoring presbyterianism at all, and particularly in conjunction with any prospect of legalising the Covenants, in part on the basis that the Solemn League and Covenant made no provision for toleration. ‘Since the Solemn League and Covenant is the canon’, he argued, and it committed signatories ‘to extirpate Episcopacy, and never to be indifferent in the Cause’, it must be concluded that ‘The Principles of Scottish Presbytery grant no Toleration to Dissenters.’88 Interestingly, when Gilbert Rule argued against Cunningham in favour of the introduction of presbyterianism, he allowed for the idea of avoiding the issue of toleration by introducing presbyterianism without the Solemn League and Covenant. He did try to argue that the Covenant allowed ‘toleration of men who hold Prelacy to be lawful without allowing of Presbytery itself and submitting to its domination’, but also that Cunningham was mistaken to call the Solemn League and Covenant canon, writing ‘Presbytery was long in Scotland before that Covenant had a being.’89 This suggests that by 1691 an appreciation had 86 Anonymous, The Testimony of some persecuted presbyterian ministers of the Gospel unto the covenanted reformation of the Church of Scotland and to the present expediency of continuing to preach the Gospel in the fields and against the present antichristian toleration in its nature and design (s.n., 1688), 22. 87 Alasdair Raffe has emphasised the extent to which moderate presbyterians felt that they could continue to uphold the Covenants after 1688, and in some cases viewed the more radical Cameronians as having breached them. See Alasdair Raffe, ‘Who were the “Later Covenanters”?’. 88 Alexander Cunningham, Some questions resolved concerning Episcopal and Presbyterian government in Scotland (Alexander Cunningham, 1690), 5–8. 89 Gilbert Rule, A vindication of the Church of Scotland being an answer to a paper, intituled, Some questions concerning Episcopal and Presbyterial government in Scotland: wherein the latter is vindicated from the arguments and calumnies of that author, and the former is made appear to be a stranger in that nation by a minister of the Church of Scotland, as it is now established by law (Edinburgh: Thomas Salusbury, 1691), 16.

176

THE REVOLUTION OF 1688 AND THE ASSOCIATION OF 1696

developed even among supporters of the Covenant that a settlement which did not include an official place for the Covenant might be best for the purposes of stability and reconciliation. Others made similar arguments revolving around the fourth clause of the Solemn League and Covenant, which stated: We shall also, with all faithfulness, endeavour the discovery of all such as have been or shall be incendiaries, malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering the reformation of religion, dividing the king and his people, or one of the kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties among the people, contrary to this League and Covenant.90

This clause complicated the conception argued for by Gilbert Rule of a difference between those who ‘hold Prelacy to be lawful’ and those who wished to submit Scotland to ‘its domination’ by arguably compelling signatories to the Covenant to intrude upon private religious convictions, under the rather broad remit of opposing those ‘hindering the reformation of religion’. John Cockburn argued that this clause ‘binds every man to be a spy, and an Informer, even against his dearest friends and nearest relations’.91 At the same time as the constitutional arrangements embodied in the Solemn League and Covenant, of a contractual, conditional kingship, were being accepted in England, therefore, its religious demands were becoming less acceptable in a context of increased Scottish pluralism. The period surrounding the Revolution of 1688 is one when, in many respects, the political theory which had previously been prominently associated with the Covenants entered the English mainstream. These ideas of limited monarchy, contractual kingship, and the settlement of religion under the law, separate from royal authority, formed a key part of both the thinking which drove the Revolution, and the settlement which emerged from it. In the means by which supporters of this settlement sought to defend it, the 1696 Association, influence from the Covenants can also be seen. However, it also became indisputable that, even in Scotland, and even with a regime willing to accept official recognition of presbyterianism, there was to be no official place for the Covenants, and only the most radical continued to defend them. This underlines the central paradox of the Covenants. While they were too rigidly intolerant and exclusionary to be acceptable to the population of the British kingdoms, they also helped to promote ideas and practices into the mainstream which would be repurposed for the construction of non-exclusionary, relatively tolerant, civil religion.

90

A Solemn League and Covenant, 5. John Cockburn, A continuation of the historical relation of the late General Assembly in Scotland (B. Griffin, 1691), 7.

91

177

Conclusion There are two sides to the story of the Covenants in the Restoration period. On the one hand, there is the story of how the documents themselves and their most dedicated supporters became increasingly marginalised and associated with sedition and armed rebellion. Many had high hopes in the early stages that there might be some place for the Solemn League and Covenant in the Restoration settlement. The ejection of presbyterian ministers from the Church of England on ‘Black’ St Bartholomew’s Day 1662, and the proscription of the Solemn League and Covenant in the Act of Uniformity, dashed these hopes. In Scotland, the Covenants were associated with armed uprisings in 1666 and 1679, and Covenanters were subject to persecution in the ‘killing times’ of the 1680s. By 1689, only the most radical ‘Cameronians’ remained committed enough to renew the Covenants at Lesmahagow, while many of the more moderate erstwhile supporters of the Covenants felt the introduction of presbyterianism after the Revolution of 1688 was an acceptable compromise. On the other hand, however, there is the story of how the Covenants continued to feature in political and religious discourse in both positive and negative terms, and as living documents through which the problems of the Restoration settlement of church and crown were examined. Moreover, the political theories which underpinned the Covenants, of limited contractual kingship and a lawful settlement of church government separate from the monarchy, and the practice of public covenanting, became an increasingly important part of the politics of the British kingdoms. In the events and discourse surrounding the Revolution of 1688, much of the theory and practice represented in the Covenants was reimagined in service to a much broader conception of Protestantism which more closely resembled a civil religion than the exclusionary jure divino religion embodied in the Covenants. The influence of the Covenants, particularly the Solemn League and Covenant, in the Restoration period, is therefore significantly more complex and enduring than many historians have appreciated. For some, interest in the Covenants was intensely personal. Many had sworn the Solemn League and Covenant during the civil war period and wrestled with the implications of conflicting loyalty to the Covenant and the restored regime. This can be seen in the debates between Zachary Crofton and John Gauden, both supporters of the Restoration, who differed on the nature of oaths and the circumstances of their lawfulness, and oaths aligned with other forms of authority. To others, the Covenants represented a solution to what they viewed as the instability of the Restoration settlement, caused by a lack of a solution 178

CONCLUSION

to religious heterodoxy and an unclear relationship between monarchy and law. The nature of this solution varied. For example, the authors of A Short Surveigh, a pro-Covenant response to the government’s defence of the Act of Uniformity, argued that the Solemn League and Covenant represented a strong, unambiguous foundation for royal authority, by predicating it upon a written consensual contract. By placing both religion and the monarchy on an equal footing in a Covenant, they argued, the monarchy would be strengthened, in contrast to the condition ‘that a Royal head must needs stand on Religious Shoulders’.1 Similar arguments, such as those discussed in chapter 4 from James Stewart of Goodtrees, were made for a form of the Solemn League and Covenant representing a more stable solution to the issue of the relationship between the Three Kingdoms, by explicitly bonding them together in a mutual Covenant.2 As demonstrated in chapter 2, however, the efforts to reach a compromise between ‘moderate’ episcopal and Covenanter positions only served to highlight the extent to which the constitutional implications of the two were often incompatible. In one view, loyalty to the Covenant went hand in hand with loyalty to the king. In another, the Covenant meant fulfilling a duty to God in spite of temporal loyalty or earthly punishment. One defence of the Covenant argued that it must be kept with or without royal approval, as ‘there are Powers higher than those on earth, which whether it be right to obey rather, or before men, or not; judge ye.’3 It could, they argued, only be right to obey the powers on earth when they act ‘regularly, according to that trust which is committed to them by God’.4 Sometimes, as in the case of the work of Stewart, the Covenant was discussed in terms of a radical concept of a natural right to resistance, and to return to a state of nature and construct governments as the people saw fit, in defence of their religion. However, at the same time, in a display of the nuanced ways in which the Covenant could be viewed, Stewart argued that the Covenant also restrained this natural right in a way which was beneficial to the monarchy, as its signatories volunteered to defend the king, even though by rights they could choose not to.5 1 ‘Some Conformable Non-Conformists’, A Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry (s.n., 1663), 28. 2 James Stewart, Jus Populi Vindicatum, or The peoples right to defend themselves and their covenanted religion vindicated (s.n., 1669), 408. 3 Anonymous, Covenant-renouncers, desperate apostates opened in two letters, written by a Christian friend, to Mr. William Gurnal of Lavenham in the county of Suffolk: which may indefinitely serve as an admonition to all such Presbyterian ministers, or others, who have forced their consciences, not only to leap over, but to renounce their Solemn Covenant-obligation, to endeavor a reformation according to God’s Word, and the extirpation of all prelatical superstition, and contrary thereunto, conform to those superstitious vanities, against which they had so solemnly sworn (Printed in Anti-turn-coat-street, and sold at the sign of Truths-delight, 1665), 7. 4 Ibid., 23. 5 James Stewart and James Stirling, Naphtali, or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, s.n., 1667), 70.

179

The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant

The Covenants were to others a source of great fear and concern. Some argued that if the supporters of the Covenants regained significant power, persecution of all non-presbyterians would surely follow. Others argued that linking loyalty to the king to a contract such as the Covenant was no loyalty at all and created a situation ‘where allegiance is tyed to interest’.6 The Covenant was also seen as a potential model for other ‘seditious’ leagues. Concerns surfaced in the 1660s of dissenting rebels utilising similar documents and, during the panic over a ‘Popish plot’ in the 1670s and 1680s, fears of an equivalent league secretly sworn by Jesuits surfaced. The most significant re-emergence of discussion of the Covenant came during the Exclusion Crisis. The ‘Association’ created by Shaftesbury and his allies as an instrument to exclude the Duke of York from the throne was widely compared with the Solemn League and Covenant, and framed as part of a tradition of seditious leagues which included the French Holy League. By this point, emphasis had often shifted from the religious nature of these leagues to their constitutional nature – as instruments which allowed individuals to create political bonds which bypassed royal authority. While the accusations of Tory polemicists should of course not be taken at face value, in a broad sense they were correct. The Association of 1681 had more in common with the Solemn League and Covenant than it did with the Association of 1584, upon which it was ostensibly modelled. Influences from both the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant can also be seen in the Associations circulated during the Revolution in 1688, and the Association to defend the Protestant succession in 1696. While the presbyterianism embodied in the Covenants was never established in England, and in Scotland not on the jure divino basis which many Covenanters sought, the political model which they advocated of a limited, contractual monarchy won out in the Revolution of 1688–89. It could be argued, therefore, that as it was shorn of its strict ecclesiological implications, the model of a religious oath representing mass consent on a political issue formed part of the basis upon which a British civil religion was constructed. This book has sought to contribute to the understanding of early modern civil religion by moving beyond the canonical authors through which it has previously been understood and approaching the issue through a series of polemical debates around the Covenants. Recovering these debates will equip historians with a deeper corpus of material through which to investigate the role of religious oaths, rituals, and covenants in the civil and political world of early modern Britain. This book is also intended to emphasise that contemporaries continued to be very aware of the shadow cast by the Covenants over a range of religious and political issues, and the broad influence of the political ideas with which they were associated. 6 Anonymous,

A Protestant plot no paradox, or, Phanaticks under that name plotting against the king and government proved first, from their principles, secondly, from their practices (Tho. Graves, 1682), 3–4.

180

CONCLUSION

The Covenants were living documents, which were interpreted in different ways for varied purposes. The interpretations of the Covenants varied from a potential constitutional solution to the issues affecting the churches and states of the Stuart kingdoms, a personal relationship with God, to a dangerous, seditious charter for presbyterian tyranny. What the varied discussions of the Covenants in the Restoration period have in common is that those discussing constitutional and religious issues felt they could not overlook them. It is the intention of this book to encourage historians of the Restoration period and beyond not to overlook them either.

181

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Anonymous [‘A Countrey Minister, A Friend to Both, a Stickler for Neither, but a Zealot for the Peace of the Church’], Terms of accomodation, between those of the Episcopall, and their brethren of the Presbyterian perswasions supposed to be consistent with the declared principles of the most moderate of both parties, and humbly presented to the consideration of His Majesty, and both Houses of Parliament (Joseph Nevil, 1661). Anonymous [‘An English Covenanter’], The Scottish Mist Dispelled (M. S. for Henry Overton, 1648). Anonymous [‘Some Conformable Non-Conformists’], A Short Surveigh of the Grand Case of the Present Ministry (s.n., 1663). 184

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Anonymous, A Brief narrative of the several popish treasons and cruelties against the Protestants in England, France, and Ireland giving a full account of the Popish Plot, and a full discovery of the manner of the murther of Sir Edmund-bury Godfrey (Printed for P. B., 1678). Anonymous, A declaration of the Presbiterians; concerning His Maiesties Royal Person, and the government of the Church of England. With several propositions touching the Solemn League and Covenant, and the setting up of Bishops (Printed for T. Dacres, 1660). Anonymous, A full and true account of the discovery of the late treasonable plot in Scotland as also of the original bond of association, that several disaffected persons have entred into, and signed, against the government; and of the seizing of several persons in the house of the Lord Olyphant, where the said association was found (Richard Baldwin, 1690). Anonymous, A Looking-Glass for Loyallists: Or, the Doctrine of the Presbyterians Paralell’d with the Doctrine of the Jesuites (Printed for T. S., 1682). Anonymous, A Mene Tekel to Fifth Monarchy, with the knavery of the cloak (s.n., 1665). Anonymous, A Mystery of godlinesse and no cabala, or, A sincere account of the non-conformists conversation … occasioned by a bitter and malitions paper called the Cabala (s.n., 1663). Anonymous, A Nevv-thing of nothing, or, A Song made of nothing, the newest in print he that seriously mindes it will find something in’t (The Vere at the sign of the Angell, 1664). Anonymous, A Plea for succession in opposition to popular exclusion wherein it is evidenced, that an association, or any other such method, is a more immediate way to arbitrary power and a more certain road to popery than a standing up to the right of succession can in any reason be supposed to be: with some remarques on Coleman and his letters (Walter Davis, 1682). Anonymous, A Protestant plot no paradox, or, Phanaticks under that name plotting against the king and government proved first, from their principles, secondly, from their practices (Tho. Graves, 1682). Anonymous, A Return to the letter of a noble peer concerning the addresses (Ralph Stamp, 1682). Anonymous, A Seasonble warning to Protestants from the cruelty and treachery of the Parisian massacre, August the 24th, 1572 wherein the snares laid for the innocent are detected and posterity cautioned not to believe: with the Pope’s bull to encourage and justifie the massacre and rebellion of Ireland collected from the best French historiographers, August the 24th (Printed for Benjamin Alsop, 1680). Anonymous, An Account of the late barbarous proceedings of the Earl of Tyrconnel and his soldiers against the poor Protestants in Ireland with their killing and driving some thousands out of Cork and Lymmerick stark naked in the cold, their besieging Bandon, taking the Honourable Capt. Boyle, and their bloody association to destroy all the Protestants of that kingdom (W. Downing, 1689). Anonymous, An Ansvver to this quodlibetical question, whether the bishops make 185

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a fundamental and essential part of the English Parliament collected out of some memorials in a larger treatise for the information of some, the confirmation of others, and the satisfaction of all (A. Seile, 1661). Anonymous, Bloody Newes From the Scottish Army (s.n., 1648). Anonymous, Covenant-renouncers, desperate-apostates opened in two letters, written by a Christian friend, to Mr. William Gurnal of Lavenham in the county of Suffolk: which may indefinitely serve as an admonition to all such Presbyterian ministers, or others, who have forced their consciences, not only to leap over, but to renounce their Solemn Covenant-obligation, to endeavor a reformation according to God’s Word, and the extirpation of all prelatical superstition, and contrary thereunto, conform to those superstitious vanities, against which they had so solemnly sworn (Printed in Anti-turn-coat-street, and sold at the sign of Truths-delight, 1665). Anonymous, England’s Alarm From the North (Robert White, 1648). Anonymous, Presbytery. The Presbyterians entered into a Covenant, a Damnable Covenant (s.n., 1663). Anonymous, Seasonable Reflections on Dissolving Corporations in the Late Two Reigns, By Surrendring Judgement Against Charters (Randall Taylor, 1689). Anonymous, The Anatomy of Dr. Gauden’s idolized non-sence and blasphemy, in his pretended Analysis, or setting forth the true sense of the covenant; that is to say, of that sacred covenant taken by the Parliament, the commissioners of Scotland, and the assembly, September 11. 1643 (s.n., 1660). Anonymous, The Association (William Churchill, 1688). Anonymous, The Causes and Manner of Deposing a Popish King in Swedeland, Truely Described (R. Baldwin, 1688). Anonymous, The Copy of the Association Signed at Exeter by the Lords and Gentlemen that went to the Prince of Orange (s.n., 1688). Anonymous, The General Association of the Gentlemen of Devon to His Highness the Prince of Orange (s.n., 1688). Anonymous, The History of Self-Defence, in Requital to the History of Passive Obedience (D. Newman, 1689). Anonymous, The Jesuit in Masquerade, or, the Sheriffs Case Uncas’d in some Brief Observations upon the Danger of Taking Oaths: Otherwise than according to the Plain and Literal meaning of the Imposers (C. Mearne, 1681). Anonymous, The Joviall Crew, or Beggers-Bush. In which a mad maunder doth vapour and swagger, with praiseing the trade of a bonny bold begger (William Gilbertson, 1660–65). Anonymous, The Last years intelligencer in Burlesq (s.n., 1663). Anonymous, The National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant With The Acknowledgement of Sins and Engagement to Duties As they were Renewed at Lesmahego, March 3, 1689 with Accommodation to the Present Times (s.n., 1689). Anonymous, The Scotch riddle unfolded: or, Reflections upon R.VV. his most lamentable ballad, called The loyal non-conformist (s.n., 1666). Anonymous, The Scots apostacy, displayed, in a treacherous invasion of the English 186

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212

Index Act of Supremacy (England, 1558)  11 Act of Supremacy (Scotland, 1669) 118–9 Act of Uniformity (1662)  4, 23, 75–101, 164, 178 Adiaphora 11–2, 31, 34, 60, 83, 88–9, 95 Alexandria 51 Amsterdam  52, 105 Anabaptists  42, 95, 110–1, 120, 137 Ancient constitution  87, 156–8 Antioch 51 Antwerp 105 apocalypse 46–52, 81 An Apologeticall Narration 46–8 Appleby, David  81 Articles of Perth, 1618  26–8, 33 artificial person  99–100 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury   130–1, 144–53, 164 See also Association of 1681 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury 16 Assheton, William  119–23 Association of 1584  4, 149, 155, 159–61, 180 Association of 1681  4–5, 22–3, 130, 135, 148–9, 153, 159–60, 162, 180 Association of 1696  1, 4, 6, 7, 19, 22, 24, 148, 154–64, 177, 180 Associations of 1688  4, 6, 155–6, 180 Atwood, William  157, 163 Bagshawe, Edward  95–6 Baillie, Robert  47, 49 Battle of Bothwell Bridge  149 Battle of Dunkeld  170 Battle of Marston Moor  44 Battle of Preston  53

Battle of Rullion Green  107, 109 Baxter, Richard  47, 62, 75, 120, 134 Beiner, Ronald  15, 17 Bejan, Teresa  18 Bellah, Robert  15 Bethel, Slingsby  168 Bill of Rights (1689)  5–6, 156–8, 160 Bishops’ Wars  26, 41, 44 106–7, 114 Black Acts of 1584  26 Black St Bartholomew’s day  22–3, 55–6, 59, 75–102 Bolron, Robert  151–2 Book of Common Prayer  25, 34, 56, 75–9, 90 Bowie, Karin  5 Boyd, William  173–5 Brabourne, Theophilius  3, 71–3 Bramhall, John, Lord Bishop of Armagh 72 Brown, John  114, Buchanan, George  27, 159, 167 Buckroyd, Julia  56 Burgess, Glenn  5 Burnet, Gilbert  132, 141, 157, 159, 171 Calderwood, David  27, 28 Calvinism  34, 42, 133–4, 152, 166–7 Cameronians 170–6, 178 Capel, Henry  157 Cardinal Richelieu see du Plessis, Armand Jean Care, Henry  141 Case, Thomas  47 Catholicism 4–5, 13, 23, 34–5, 41, 79, 85, 97–8, 112, 120, 130–5, 141–54, 162, 169, 174–5 Cavendish, William  151 Charles I  25, 35, 38, 41 ,42, 106 execution of  55, 122, 137–8 opponents of  1, 26, 29, 32, 107, 151, 167

213

INDEX

Charles II  69, 82–3, 100, 108, 133 policies of  14, 115, 120 pre-restoration  56, 57, 84, 94, 96 restoration of  13, 55, 127 Cheshire 111 Church of England  10–11, 13, 22, 25, 45–8, 55–71, 75–101, 152, 162, 167 Churchill, Awnsham  167 civil religion  2, 5–9, 11, 15–20, 23, 29, 32, 51, 66, 70, 89, 97, 102, 127, 132, 161–4, 177, 178–80 Claim of Right (1689)  5, 156, 158 Clarendon Code  88 Clarges, Thomas  149 Claydon, Tony  152 Cockburn, John  177 Coffey, John  27 Coke, Edward  163 Coleby, Andrew M.  147 Coleman, John  8, 15 Collins, Jeffrey  17–8, 55–6 Collinson, Patrick  144, 149, 161 Comber, Thomas  168 The Committee, or Popery in Masquerade 137–40 comprehension 10–11, 22, 62, 77–88, 115–9 Condren, Conal  99 conscience  49, 71, 78, 82, 87–91, 115–7, 142–3, 152–3 contractual monarchy  2–5, 24, 67, 84, 154–64, 167, 171–3, 177, 178–80 Conventicle Acts  104, 115–6 Cooper, Tim  75 coronation oaths  37, 40, 84, 157–8, Council of Trent  34 covenant theology  172 Covenanter Rising of 1666  3, 107–8, 169, 178 Covenanter Rising of 1679  3, 134, 169, 178 Crofton, Zachary  3, 54, 61–73, 81–2, 86, 88, 89–90, 93, 99 Cromartie, Alan  6 Cromwellian Commonwealth  57, 62, 106–7, 116, 123 Cunningham, Alexander  176

De facto/de jure kingship  162–3 De Krey, Gary S  115, 129–30 Declaration of Breda  96 Douglas, Robert  83–4, 93, 96, 159 Dryden, John  147–8 du Plessis, Armand Jean, the Cardinal Duke of Richelieu  85 Dugdale, William  136–7 Dutch Republic  41, 104–7 Earl of Clarendon see Hyde, Edward Earl of Shaftesbury see Ashley-Cooper, Anthony Edict of Nantes  132 Edinburgh University  174 Edward VI  90 Eighty Years War  27, 136 Eikon Basilike 61–2 Elizabeth I  4, 10, 13, 78, 90, 144 Engagement (Cromwellian)  62, 87, 92, 122 Engagement of 1647  52, 76–7, 84 English Parliament  3, 9, 12, 26, 42–60, 62–70, 73, 84–8, 92–99, 129–30, 145–60 English Reformation  6–8, 13, 30, 46, 71, 112 episcopacy  2, 10–15, 22, 25–6, 33, 37, 46–7, 51, 55–74, 75–7, 80–3, 87–9, 97–8, 104, 113, 116–8, 123, 129, 136, 174–6, 179 ‘reduced’ or ‘primitive’ episcopacy  2, 47, 61–5, 116 Erastianism  17, 23, 47, 53–4, 58, 66–70, 103, 107, 111–2, 117–9, 165, 171 Exclusion Crisis  23, 69, 115, 129–53, 155, 157, 180 Farnley wood plot  104 Fifth Monarchists  104, 137 Filmer, Robert  36 First English Civil War  1, 12–14 Scottish intervention in  26, 43–5 Foulis, Henry  85 France  11, 23, 27, 41, 42, 85, 106–7, 130, 130–53

214

INDEX

French Holy League  23, 42, 130–53, 180 French Wars of Religion  141–2, 152 Fullwood, Francis  87–94 Gallicanism 168 Gascoigne, Thomas  151 Gauden, John  61–73, 94, 110, 178 Gillespie, George  46 Glickman, Gabriel  132, 152 Goldie, Mark  12, 17, 129, 132 Great Fire of London  102–4, 109 Great Plague of London  102–4, 109 Gribben, Crawford  47–8 Grotius, Hugo  16–17 Guthrie, John  85–6 Ha, Polly  10, 46–7, 58 Hale, Matthew  163 Hamilton, James, Marquess of Hamilton 44 Harrison, Thomas  165–7, 171 Henderson, Alexander  25, 27–8, 46 Henry I, Duke of Guise  147–51 Henry III of France  136 Henry IV of France  150 Henry VIII  13 Herold, Aaron L  18 Heylyn, Peter  135–6 Hickes, George  144 Hobbes, Thomas  17–18, 67, 97, 99, 134, 166 Honeyman, Andrew  80 Huguenots  11, 132 Hungerford, George  150 Hurste, Thomas  12 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon  56, 154 See also Clarendon Code Independents  10, 46–8, 52–3, 72, 95, 104, 109–11, 120 Interregnum  17, 57, 107, 122–3, 139 Ireland  26, 44, 45, 48–50, 62, 85, 108, 156, 172 Jackson, Clare  14, 170–1 Jacobites  156, 159, 162, 163, 170, 174

James VI and I  25, 27, 100, 158 James VII and II  133, 156, 160 Exclusion of  23, 130, 140, 145, 148–50, 152, 154, 180 opponents of  155, 173 policies of  168, 170 Jerusalem 52 Jesuits  98, 102, 109, 111–3, 135, 140–4, 152, 180 Johnson, Samuel  158–9 Johnston, Archibald  27, 115 Jure divino 2–6, 11, 56, 66, 70, 83, 114, 119, 125, 154, 162, 165, 170–7, 178 Kid, John  144 King, John  144 Knights, Mark  141, 148 Knox, John  2, 27, 29 Koch, Betina  16 Lake, Peter  21, 34, 42 Lancashire 111 Law of Nations  6, 22, 52–3, 100, 165 Lee, Thomas  157 Leighton, Robert Archbishop of Glasgow 117–8 Leslie, Henry, Bishop of Downe and Conner 39 Leslie, John, Earl of Rothes  107 Lesmahagow  24, 171–3, 178 L’Estrange, Roger  137–44 Leviticus (on oaths)  39 Lex, Rex 36–7, 49 Lining, Thomas  173–5 Littleton, Thomas  150 Locke, John  17–19 Long, Thomas  167 Louis XIV of France  132, 168 MacInnes, Allan  41–2 MacIntosh, Gillian  14, 100 Mackenzie, George  175 MacKenzie, Kirsteen  7, 57 MacWard, Robert  118–9, 166 magistrates  34, 65, 71–2, 116–7, 121–4, 165, 168 Magna carta  59, 137

215

INDEX

Maloyed, Christie  18 Manton, Thomas  62 March, John  159 Marian Exiles  2, 8 Mary Queen of Scots  144 Mayer, John  58 Maynwaring, Roger  97 McIntyre, Neil  123–4 Middleton, John, Earl of Middleton  107 ministers of Aberdeen  39–40 Monck, George  55 Monro, Alexander  174 Morrice, Roger  132 Morrill, John  14 Mosaic covenant  66–8 National Covenant authors of  27–8 circumstances of its creation  25–30 comparisons with other leagues or associations  23, 130–53 contents of  27–43 form of  32, 43, 155, 164 as an oath  28–9, 32–3, 36–40, 54, 136 public signings of  29–32 natural law  6, 103, 105, 112, 125–8 Negative Confession (1581)  25–40, 64 Nelson, Eric  16 Newcastle  26, 44 Northern Gentlemen  44–5 Northleigh, John  145–7 Oates, Titus  130, 151 Oath of Allegiance (1606)  162 oaths in the late Restoration period 130–5, 143–6, 151–2, 156–62 See also Act of Uniformity, Association of 1584, Association of 1681, Association of 1696, Associations of 1688, Coronation oath, Leviticus (on oaths), National Covenant as an oath, Negative Confession, Oath of Allegiance, Solemn League and Covenant as an oath ordination  11, 58–9, 90–1

Owen, John  116 Patrick, Simon  122 Pead, Duel  162 Penington, Isaac  138 Penn, William  18 Pepys, Samuel  55 Perrinchief, Richard  120–1 Pincus, Steve  5, 21, 159, 161, 163 Pocock, John  16, 100 political party  132–3 popery  13, 31, 34–5, 40, 50, 134, 137–48, 156, 162, 169–70, 173–4 Popish Plot  130, 133, 151–2, 180 Presbyterian Whigs  11, 129–35, 152 Presbyterianism English 1–11, 26, 43–54, 55–62, 70, 72, 81–3, 104–5, 110, 135–49 moderate 88–101, 116–7 Scottish 1–11, 26, 27–40, 43–54, 55–62, 70, 72, 76–7, 79–80, 103, 107, 115–28, 149, 166, 170–7 Prior, Charles  13, 17, 29, 33 Protestant Associations (as a general term)  4, 7–9, 18, 43, 131–2, 149, 155 See also Association of 1584, Association of 1681, Association of 1696, Associations of 1688 Protestation of 1641  8, 43, 94 Prynne William  27, 57 Pym, John  43 Quakers  102, 109–11, 113, 135, 137 Questier, Michael  162 Raffe, Alasdair  15, 29, 75, 83, 170 Rescissory Act (1661)  118 resistance theory  5, 26–9, 40, 79, 91–2, 111–2, 123–8, 134, 150–3, 154, 157, 162, 164–70, 179 Resolutioners  56, 58, 76 Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 see Charles II, restoration of church settlement  11, 22, 62–74, 75–6 and the Solemn League and Covenant see Solemn League and Covenant

216

INDEX

and supporters of the Restoration of Charles II Revolution of 1688  1, 5–6, 15, 19, 20, 24, 100, 105, 154–81 political theory of  67–70, 103, 118, 124, 132, 134, 142, 154–81 Reynolds, Edward  83 Rose, Jacqueline  8, 11, 13 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques  15 Royal Prerogative  61, 87, 96–7, 114 royal supremacy  13–15, 31, 33, 46–7, 70, 72, 96, 112, 118 Rule, Gilbert  176–7 Russell, Conrad  14, 44 Rutherford, Samuel  36, 46, 49, 50, 52, 115, 159 Sacheverell, Henry  150 Savoy conference  56, 75, 83 Saxon history  59, 158 Scott, David  44–5 Scottish Civil War  109 Scottish Kirk  1–2, 5, 10, 20, 25–38, 44–7, 51, 124–5, 173–6 Scottish parliament  26–7, 61, 80, 156 Scottish Reformation  2, 7–8, 10, 20, 22, 27–43, 91, 124–7, 154, 161, 166–70 Scottish Revolution  29 Seaward, Paul  11 Second Anglo-Dutch War  102, 104–9 Second English Civil War  48, 52–3, 57 Seller, Abednego  169 Shagan, Ethan  18 Sharp, James, Archbishop of St. Andrews  3, 76, 117 Sharpe, Kevin  99 Shields, Alexander  173–5 Sibthorpe, Robert  97 Siege of Leith (1560)  50, 169 Sigismund of Sweden  169 Sigonio, Carlo  16 Solemn League and Covenant agreement of  1, 26, 68, 84–6, 92–4 ambiguity of  19, 22, 45–6, 49, 54, 59, 63–6, 102–5, 119, 122 comparisons with other leagues or

associations  5, 9, 19, 43, 130–4, 135–53, 155, 159, 160, 164–5 contents of  45–54 debates on lawfulness  49–54, 60–74, 75–101, 110–11, 114–5 influences on  22, 43 military implications of  43–5, 84–5, 106–7 as an oath  2–5, 8, 12, 23, 54, 60–3, 68–74, 80–1, 86–101 proscription of  75–80, 87–101, 116, 130 public signings of  93–4, 170–77 and the relationship between England and Scotland  52–4, 84–5, 92–4, 127 and supporters of the Restoration of Charles II  22, 55–7, 68, 96 and the Westminster assembly of divines  3, 45–9 sovereignty 4–7, 17, 20, 27, 33–4, 51, 66–9, 94, 98–9, 102, 136, 144 Spain  41, 106 Stephens, Jeramiah  59 Stewart, James (of Goodtrees)  102, 105, 112, 123–8 Stewart, Laura  7–9, 32 Stirling, James  102, 123–8 Supremacy Act (1669)  118 Tapsell, Grant  14 Taylor, Jeremey  110 Test Acts  80 Third English Civil War  13, 76 Thirty Nine Articles of Religion  45–6 Thirty Years War  41, 106 toleration 9–10, 23, 54, 79, 89, 102, 111–28, 175–6 Tomkins, Thomas  121 Tories  23, 129, 132–3, 139–40, 148–9, 151 Treaty of Breda (1650)  57 Tuck, Richard  17 Turner, James  108–9 two kingdoms concept of church and state  10, 38–9, 70, 102, 112, 116 Tyrrell, James  158

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Union of Crowns  1, 6, 25, 33, 68, 100 Universal church  10–11, 50–2, 81–2, 134 Ussher, James, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland  47 Vallance, Edward  7–9, 43, 131, 148, 155, 160–1, 172 Van Dixhoorn, Chad  45–6, 53 Vow and Covenant (1643)  9, 43, 149 Walsh, Ashley  16 Walsham, Alexandra  116 Waurechen, Sarah  40 Welwood, James  159, 169 Westminster Assembly of Divines  3, 45–8, 53–4, 83

Wharton, Goodwin  149 Whigs (see also ‘Presbyterian Whigs’)  6, 12, 23, 129–48, 151, 154, 157–8, 160, 167 William III  24, 154, 156, 159–60, 163, 168, 173 William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 25 Williams, Gryffith  110 Williams, Roger  18 Williamson, Arthur  30 Winnington, Francis  150 Winship, Michael  134 Wright, Abraham  110 Wroe, Richard  145

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY I Women of Quality Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 Ingrid H. Tague II Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690 Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas Clare Jackson III Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 Andrew C. Thompson IV Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837 Nick Harding V The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 Grant Tapsell VI Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England Jason McElligott VII The English Catholic Community, 1688–1745 Politics, Culture and Ideology Gabriel Glickman VIII England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion Joseph Cope IX Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 Matthew Jenkinson

X Commune, Country and Commonwealth The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643 David Rollison XI An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805 Edited by Nigel Aston and Clarissa Campbell Orr XII London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War Jayne E.E. Boys XIII God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660–1720 Brodie Waddell XIV Remaking English Society Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England Edited by Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter XV Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689–1750 Julia Rudolph XVI The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy The Revolutions of 1688–91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts Edited by Tim Harris and Stephen Taylor XVII The Civil Wars after 1660 Public Remembering in Late Stuart England Matthew Neufeld XVIII The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited Essays in Honour of John Morrill Edited by Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell

XIX The King’s Irishmen The Irish in the Exiled Court of Charles II, 1649–1660 Mark R.F. Williams XX Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions Edited by Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare XXI Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England Mark Hailwood XXII Social Relations and Urban Space: Norwich, 1600–1700 Fiona Williamson XXIII British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain, 1450–1700 John Cramsie XXIV Domestic Culture in Early Modern England Antony Buxton XXV Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London, 1650–1750 Craig Spence XXVI Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland Essays in Honour of John Walter Edited by Michael J. Braddick and Phil Withington XXVII Commerce and Politics in Hume’s History of England Jia Wei XXVIII Bristol from Below: Law, Authority and Protest in a Georgian City Steve Poole and Nicholas Rogers

XXIX Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England Caroline Boswell XXX Cromwell’s House of Lords Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642–1660 Jonathan Fitzgibbons XXXI Stuart Marriage Diplomacy: Dynastic Politics in their European Context, 1604–1630 Edited by Valentina Caldari and Sara J. Wolfson XXXII National Identity and the Anglo-Scottish Borderlands, 1552–1652 Jenna M. Schultz XXXIII Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London Lena Liapi XXXIV Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain Essays in Honour of Mark Goldie Edited by Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris and John Marshall XXXV The Hanoverian Succession in Great Britain and its Empire Edited by Brent S. Sirota and Allan I. Macinnes XXXVI Age Relations and Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century England Barbara Crosbie XXXVII The National Covenant in Scotland, 1638–1689 Chris R. Langley XXXVIII Visualising Protestant Monarchy: Ceremony, Art and Politics after the Glorious Revolution (1689–1714) Julie Farguson

XXXIX Blood Waters War, Disease and Race in the Eighteenth-Century British Caribbean Nicholas Rogers XL The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England Edited by Brian Cowan and Scott Sowerby XLI Africans in East Anglia, 1467–1833 Richard C. Maguire XLII Royalism, Religion and Revolution Wales, 1640–1688 Sarah Ward Clavier XLIII Painting for a Living in Tudor and Early Stuart England Robert Tittler XLIV Scotland and the Wider World: Essays in Honour of Allan I. Macinnes Edited by Alison Cathcart and Neil McIntyre XLV Urban Government and the Early Stuart State Provincial Towns, Corporate Liberties, and Royal Authority in England, 1603–1640 Catherine F. Patterson