The National Covenant in Scotland, 1638-1689

What did it mean to be a Covenanter?

What did it mean to be a Covenanter?

From its first subscription in 1638, the National Covenant was an aspect of life that communities across Scotland encountered on a daily basis. However, how contemporaries understood its significance remains unclear. This edited collection assesses how people interacted with the National Covenant's infamously ambiguous text, the political and religious changes that it provoked, and the legacy that it left behind. This volume contains eleven chapters divided between three themes that reveal the complex processes behind Covenanting: the act of swearing and subscribing the Covenants; the process of self fashioning and identity formation, and, finally, the various acts of remembering and memorialising the history of the National Covenant. The collection reveals different narratives of what it meant to be a Covenanter rather than one, uniform, and unchanging idea.
The National Covenant forced contortionsin Scottish identities, memories, and attitudes and remained susceptible to changes in the political context. Its impact was dependent upon individual circumstances. The volume's chapters contend that domestic understanding of theNational Covenant was far more nuanced, and the conversations very different, from those occurring in a wider British or Irish context. Those who we now call 'Covenanters' were guided by very different expectations and understandings of what the Covenant represented. The rules that governed this interplay were based on local circumstances and long-standing pressures that could be fuelled by short-term expediency. Above all, the nature of Covenanting was volatile.
Chapters in this volume are based on extensive archival research of local material that provide a view into the complex, and often highly personalised, ways people understood the act or memory of Covenanting. The chapters explore the religious, political, and social responses to the National Covenant through its creation in 1638, the Cromwellian invasion of 1650 and the Restoration of monarchy in 1660.

Introduction: Making and Remaking the Covenanters - Chris R. Langley
Corporate Conversion Ceremonies: The Presentation and Reception of The National Covenant - Nathan C. J. Hood
Glasgow and the National Covenant in 1638: Revolution, Royalism, and Civic Reform - Paul Goatman
Glasgow and the National Covenant in 1638: Revolution, Royalism, and Civic Reform - Andrew Lind
United Opposition? The Aberdeen Doctors and the National Covenant - Russell Newton
Allegiance, Confession, and Covenanting Identities, 1638-51 - Jamie McDougall
Reading John Knox in the Scottish Revolution, 1638-50 - Chris R. Langley
A Godly Possession? Margaret Mitchelson and the Performance of Covenanted Identity - Louise Yeoman
Royalism, Resistance, and the Scottish Clergy, c.1638-41 - Andrew Lind
The Engagement, the Universities, and the Fracturing of the Covenanter Movement, 1647-51 - Salvatore Cipriano
Remembering the Revolution: Memory, Identity, and Ideology in Restoration Scotland - Neil McIntyre
The Legacy of the Covenants and the Shaping of the Restoration State - Allan Kennedy
Who were the 'Later Covenanters'? - Alasdair Raffe
Bibliography