History documentary charting the birth and growth of the Scottish nation.
Neil Oliver continues his journey through Scotland's past with the story of the Covenanters, whose profound religious beliefs were declared in the National Covenant of 1638. This document licensed revolution, started the Civil War that cost King Charles I his head, cost tens of thousands of Scots their lives and led to Britain's first war on terror.
Neil Oliver continues his journey through Scotland's past with the story of the Covenanters, whose profound religious beliefs were declared in the National Covenant of 1638. This document licensed revolution, started the Civil War that cost King Charles I his head, cost tens of thousands of Scots their lives and led to Britain's first war on terror.
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TVTranscript
00:00For almost 20 years in the 17th century, this island was the most secure prison in the entire
00:13British Isles.
00:16Welcome to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth.
00:20Welcome to Scotland's Alcatraz.
00:24There was no escape from the Bass.
00:29The cells were home to the country's most dangerous men, men whose religious beliefs
00:33threatened the stability of Britain itself.
00:39Their radical vision was declared in a document called the National Covenant.
00:46The National Covenant would unseat kings, license revolution, cost tens of thousands
00:52of Scots their lives.
00:55It started the civil war that would cost King Charles the First his head.
00:59He struggled to erase the covenant from history, but to tell the truth, there was never any
01:03chance that he would succeed.
01:05After all, he was only a king, and the National Covenant was a contract between Scotland and
01:42In 1633, King Charles the First came here to Edinburgh for his coronation.
02:01It was a visit he would really rather not have made.
02:04He'd been king for eight years now, and if the Scots had given in to his frequent demands
02:09that the Scottish crown jewels be sent to London, then the trip wouldn't have been necessary.
02:14But the Scots had said no several times, so here he was.
02:18It was his first visit to Scotland in 30 years.
02:27Scotland had missed their king.
02:28They'd missed his father James as well.
02:32After all, the Stuart dynasty might now be in charge of all three kingdoms, but it was
02:37Scotland that they came from, and now here Charles was, processing down the Royal Mile
02:43towards his palace at Hollywood.
02:44The crowds were cheering.
02:45The Scots were pleased to see him, because they hadn't seen him before.
02:57Charles was ignorant of everything that mattered to his Scottish subjects, especially the Presbyterian
03:03cook.
03:04It might have helped to meet some of its members.
03:07Some, for instance, like Archibald Johnston of Worreston, a deeply religious young lawyer.
03:15Worreston was as sure as his fellow Presbyterians that the Scottish church was the closest to
03:21perfection on earth, but he was equally certain that it was still sinful, because it was made
03:26of human beings, and humans fall short.
03:32King Jesus is the perfect one.
03:37King Jesus supplies the grace and mercy that we lack.
03:44King Charles, on the other hand, chose his first visit to Scotland to show that grace
03:49was not his strong point.
03:52The Scots had made plans for the coronation, but Charles rewrote them.
03:56He would not be visiting Scone with its charmless and pokey chapel.
04:02He would have the service here, in Holyrood Abbey, with suitable pomp, and the coronation
04:07service would be Anglican, conducted by an English priest.
04:13A Scottish minister simply wouldn't do.
04:20Clumsy.
04:23But Charles sincerely believed he was God's anointed king.
04:27He sincerely believed that his church, the Anglican church, worshipped God correctly,
04:33and that the Presbyterian church did not.
04:40A shiver ran down the spines of Scotland's Presbyterians.
04:43The king had forced change on their church once before.
04:47Charles's father had imposed bishops on them, but to the Presbyterians, every soul was equal.
04:54Bishops were distasteful.
04:56The king's task was to defend the church, not define it.
05:04But it would take more than courage to say no to the king.
05:08Worreston kept a diary, a window into the mind of a man who would do just that.
05:17So this is all diary in here.
05:18Mm-hmm, it certainly is.
05:23It's fair to say you like taking notes, isn't it?
05:25He wrote all the time.
05:27He wrote when he was in church.
05:29He wrote when he was on horseback.
05:32He wrote, and he wrote, and he wrote.
05:38What kind of man is revealed in these pages?
05:41A fiery, fanatical, energetic, zealous man at the forefront of a revolution.
05:49Royal authority, it's not something we take very seriously, but in the 17th century, you
05:54thought God's authority came down through royalty, came down through the people to whom
05:59royalty delegated their powers.
06:01If the king tells you to do something, and you are studying your Bible, and this great
06:06feeling is washing through you in prayer, you have the courage to say no to the king,
06:11even if that leads you to the gallows or the headsman's axe.
06:20The king provided the Presbyterians with many things to say no to.
06:27Charles ordered the conversion of Edinburgh's High Kirk, St Giles, into an Anglican-style cathedral.
06:34He appointed new bishops.
06:36And then, three years after his troubling visit, a rumour came to Worreston's ears.
06:42The king intended to introduce an Anglican service book in Scotland.
06:49Scots tended to look down their noses at the English Reformation.
06:53Technically, both Anglicans and Presbyterians were Protestant.
06:57Both had rejected the Catholic Church and the powers of the Pope who led it.
07:01But as far as the Presbyterians were concerned, all the English had done was swap the Pope
07:06for their own king.
07:11In due course, in 1637, the prayer book arrived.
07:15It was an Anglican prayer book with superficial tweaks.
07:18The presiding minister was called a Presbyter, but the words he spoke were priestly.
07:24Popish to Presbyterian ears.
07:26Worreston attended a meeting to discuss the new prayer book at the end of May.
07:30When he got home, he wrote in his diary that it was the very image of the beast.
07:36The 23rd of July, 1637, was the day appointed for the first use throughout Scotland of Charles's new prayer book.
07:46The Bishop of Brechin had no trouble at all when he conducted the service.
07:51But the Bishop of Brechin delivered the service with a pair of loaded pistols on either side of the service.
07:57In Edinburgh, the presiding bishop and his dean took no such precautions.
08:01They were beaten up. They were pelted with shit.
08:04The new prayer book was ripped to shreds and the dean had to hide in the clock tower.
08:09Later, the carriage in which the bishop and the dean tried to make their escape was rocked.
08:14They were shot in the back.
08:16They were shot in the back.
08:18They were shot in the back.
08:20They were shot in the back.
08:22They were shot in the back.
08:24The carriage in which the bishop and the dean tried to make their escape was rocked and rolled and overturned.
08:29The rioting lasted for hours until nightfall.
08:35In due course, the riots became a revolt.
08:38Charles had no idea how serious things were getting in Scotland.
08:44His advisers kept the truth under their flamboyant hats.
08:48The Scots had formed an alternative government and Worreston was appointed as its secretary.
08:54They wanted a useful Scottish king who would visit Scotland more than once a decade,
08:59who understood the Presbyterian kirk.
09:02They wanted everything that Charles was not.
09:05So Worreston made a suggestion.
09:08They should rewrite him.
09:10This was their rewritten king, the National Covenant of 1638.
09:20It was drafted by Worreston with the help of the leading minister of the day, Alexander Henderson.
09:26It was addressed to an idealised Charles I, who already understood his duties as a Presbyterian king.
09:33It was addressed, in other words, to a king who didn't exist.
09:41In carefully respectful terms, it attacked all the changes that Charles had made
09:46and everything he stood for.
09:49It demanded a monarchy limited by a constitution,
09:52limited in power,
09:54limited by laws.
09:57The Covenant
10:06The Covenant was a contract between three parties.
10:10The king, whose task was the defence of the Presbyterian kirk,
10:14the people and God himself.
10:17It was called the Covenant as a reference to the Old Testament,
10:22to the covenant made by God with his chosen people.
10:26In the Old Testament, the chosen people had been the Jews.
10:34But it was and is an article of Christian faith
10:38that the coming of Christ and his death on the cross changed the Covenant.
10:42God's chosen people now were Christians.
10:45The National Covenant of 1638 went a bit further.
10:49God's chosen people were the faithful members
10:52of the most perfect church on the face of the earth,
10:55the Scottish Presbyterian kirk.
11:03A meeting was scheduled here at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh
11:07for 28 February 1638.
11:10The Covenant was signed by 3,250 people.
11:15Worreston signed it himself and in his diary that evening he wrote,
11:19This is the glorious marriage day of the kingdom with God.
11:27Copies were sent to every parish in Scotland.
11:31One Sunday in March,
11:33Worreston took his family to a kirk south-west of Edinburgh.
11:37It was a chance to see how the Covenant was being received outside the city.
11:43The minister explained the Covenant.
11:46The congregation sat unmoved.
11:52Then the minister asked them to stand
11:54and swear their Covenant to the Almighty God.
11:59The congregation rose to their feet.
12:02They raised their hands, they broke down, they wept.
12:05They testified.
12:07The minister was almost suffocated by his own tears.
12:11They swore their Covenant with God
12:13and after 15 minutes they fell down on their knees and prayed.
12:17Worreston was stunned.
12:19Lord, he wrote, let me never forget my part in this.
12:23There is a very near parallel between Israel and this church
12:26for we are the only two nations on earth sworn unto the Lord.
12:32Our Scots Kirk, in its rediscovered perfection,
12:35will be a pattern for other nations.
12:38We shall extend the royal prerogative of King Jesus,
12:41the Son of God above all others,
12:43perhaps extend his kingdom throughout the earth.
13:01The enthusiasm was national in scale.
13:04At the very least, 60% of Scotland's million people
13:08promised themselves to God
13:10and believed that God made them a promise in return.
13:14They were his chosen people.
13:20And it was indeed the people who signed.
13:23They weren't even used to holding pens.
13:26Now they were signing a document of national significance.
13:30This was a new world where a king like Charles I
13:33could soon find it hard to breathe.
13:36But not all the signatures were freely given.
13:39Failure to sign the covenant was considered sinful,
13:43dubious, popish.
13:47And what if God was watching and saw that you had failed to sign?
13:52Not all the signatures were shaky, for lack of practice.
13:57But once they'd signed, whatever their reasons,
14:00then they'd made an oath, a contract, a promise to God,
14:04impossible to unmake, impossible to untake,
14:08a heavy weight on any conscience,
14:10a terrible weight for any nation to inflict upon itself,
14:14a constant pressure towards extremism,
14:17fundamentalism, madness.
14:27It took a year for Charles to realise
14:30how far his Scottish subjects had gone beyond mere disobedience.
14:34They would have to be brought to heel.
14:36Charles began preparing for war.
14:39Other kings of England would have turned to Parliament for money,
14:43but the English Parliament had shown insufficient sympathy
14:46for Charles' belief that his rule was absolute.
14:49So he hadn't called them for ten years.
14:52The Scots raised an army of fervent Covenanters,
14:55led by expert soldiers who had returned home from foreign wars.
14:59Charles raised the military equivalent of a tickling stick.
15:05He lost, twice.
15:08By the September of 1616,
15:10he had lost his last battle with England.
15:13He had lost his last battle with England.
15:16He had lost his last battle with England.
15:20By the September of 1640,
15:22he was shamed and mired in debt.
15:25He had to call the English Parliament.
15:30And the English Parliament was full of Protestants
15:33who wanted the same things as the Scots,
15:36limits to his power.
15:38They didn't understand that he was God's anointed
15:41trying to save their souls.
15:43Silence!
15:45Charles declared war on Parliament in August 1642.
15:49The English Civil War had begun.
15:53Warrington had prayed for a chance
15:55to extend the power of King Jesus beyond Scotland's borders.
15:59The English Civil War was a regrettable bloodbath, of course,
16:03but it was not the end of the war.
16:06It was not the end of the war.
16:09It was not the end of the war.
16:12It was not the end of the war.
16:15It was not the end of the war.
16:18It was not the end of the war.
16:21It was not the end of the war, of course,
16:24but it was also an opportunity.
16:28For the first year, the Scots took no part.
16:31Charles and his Royalist Army secured victory after victory.
16:35And in the autumn of 1643,
16:37England's Parliament sent agents north to Scotland
16:40to ask for help.
16:43The National Covenant had been for Scotland alone.
16:53The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 would go much further.
17:01I wasn't expecting to see this in the form of a little hardback book.
17:07Unlike the National Covenant, Solemn Leagues actually tend to be printed.
17:12They're normally a plain printed book that is signed up to.
17:15But we have these lovely engravings here.
17:18And what do they tell us?
17:19Well, one of my favourite illustrations is this one here.
17:24And this shows how the Covenant is more radical than that of 1638.
17:29There's no wishy-washy stuff on bishops here.
17:32It's the extirpation of potpourri prelacy, that is, bishops.
17:38And here we have these bishops, prelates, deans, deacons, all being cast out of their
17:43church, being insulted as they go.
17:45So something as benign sounding as a chorister is an evil that has to be extirpated?
17:49Oh yes, of course.
17:55This expanded Covenant closed a simple deal.
17:59In return for their military assistance, the Scots required the establishment, in both
18:04England and Ireland, of a Presbyterian kirk modelled after Scotland's very own, plus expenses.
18:12The royal prerogative of King Jesus would extend through all three kingdoms.
18:19Now the Scots had something serious to fight for.
18:28They happily sent an army of 20,000 men south, complete with ministers and a battle cry,
18:35King Jesus.
18:39In July, at the Battle of Marston Moor in Yorkshire, they won the first of many victories
18:44over Charles's army.
18:46The Scots had turned the tide.
18:49Charles would never have the upper hand again.
18:55Two years later, Charles sent his sons, Charles and James, to France for safety and surrendered
19:01to the Scots.
19:02He was taken to Newcastle.
19:09Alexander Henderson and Worreston, the Covenant's co-authors, were sent to persuade him to sign
19:14the Covenant.
19:16There were two paths open to Charles.
19:19On the one side, a long life as a covenanted king, limited by laws, but the country's leader
19:25still.
19:28On the other, more war, more loss of life, the faint hope of victory for absolute monarchy.
19:35They got down on their knees and begged Charles to sign the Covenant, to accept a kingship
19:42limited by laws, to agree to establish in all three kingdoms a Presbyterian church of
19:48which he was in no sense the head.
19:50They were asking for peace, of course, but they were also asking Charles to reject his
19:55God, to reject his entire understanding of himself, his duties, his place on earth.
20:01The king couldn't say yes.
20:02It was a syllable too far.
20:09He did not sign the Covenant.
20:13The Scots handed the king over to the English Parliament, but in his own mind, he was still
20:18king by God's grace.
20:20It would be sinful simply to accept his fate.
20:29Secretly, he made contact with the nobles of the country that his dynasty had been born in.
20:35Scotland's nobles had signed the Covenant, but it was Charles' hope that their loyalty
20:40to his family would prove stronger, and he was proved right.
20:45The nobles agreed to fight for him again, provided that if they won, he would adopt
20:50the Covenant and the Presbyterian Kirk for a three-year trial period in all his kingdoms.
20:59The nobles took their secret deal to the rest of the Covenanters.
21:02The very idea split the movement in two.
21:06For the ordinary folk who made up the majority of the movement, the Covenant was everything.
21:11This talk of three-year trials was nonsense.
21:13They would not fight for the vague promises of an uncovenanted king.
21:18They became known as the Protestors.
21:26The appeals of the Protestors fell on deaf ears.
21:30The nobles marched south to fight for Charles, and at Preston, they were defeated utterly
21:35by an army led by a former gentleman farmer, Oliver Cromwell.
21:41For the Protestors, this was no more than God's judgement.
21:45God did not want the nobles to run the country.
21:51The Protestors seized the capital and purged the ungodly nobles from power.
21:57Worreston joined them.
21:59Now the Protestors were at the heart of the Covenanting movement, God's people, and a
22:04government as well.
22:07This was the rule of the saints.
22:18They packed the governing session of the Kirk with their members.
22:22They seized control of public conduct.
22:25Backsliders and opponents would be executed.
22:28No sin would go unpunished.
22:31There were floggings, ears nailed to posts, holes bored in tongues.
22:38The rule of the saints marked the high point of the Covenant's power.
22:43Covenanters in later years would remember it as the Golden Age, but there was no way
22:49the rule of the saints could ever have lasted.
22:51It was only possible while certain things remained undecided, such as the fate of the
22:57King.
23:05By December of 1648, Cromwell had become the leader of a faction that controlled the English
23:10Parliament behind the scenes.
23:13All those who might have defended the King were purged from Parliament and an act was
23:17passed.
23:21The King would be prosecuted for treason.
23:24The trial began on the 20th of January, 1649.
23:32Charles refused to defend himself.
23:34He refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court or the logic of the charge itself.
23:40But this was the New World, where kings found it hard to breathe.
23:44On the 30th of January, 1649, they cut off his head.
23:53When the King's head fell, the Old World ceased to be.
24:01It went mad.
24:03The people were horrified by what Cromwell's faction had done.
24:07So the English Parliament abolished monarchy.
24:10If there was no King, there was no crime.
24:13They had beheaded a nobody.
24:17No one had asked the Scots if they wanted their King beheaded.
24:21Their covenant needed a King, like King David in the Bible.
24:25Their covenant needed his signature.
24:27A dead King could sign nothing.
24:31So within a week of the King's execution, they declared his son, Charles, King instead.
24:40The 20-year-old Charles returned from France to take the throne.
24:44It was imperative that he sign the covenant.
24:47His ship arrived in the mouth of the Spee in the North East in June.
24:51It anchored, and before he had had a chance to set foot on land,
24:54commissioners went on board, presented him with a copy of the covenant
24:58and required his signature.
25:09He signed because he had to.
25:13But in Cromwell's world, there could be no Kings.
25:17As long as there were Kings, he was a regicide, a King killer,
25:21which meant that Cromwell had a bone or two to pick with the Scots.
25:30In July of 1650, Cromwell came north.
25:34At first, his campaign went badly.
25:37He was forced back to Dunbar, his back to the sea.
25:40One last push would secure his total defeat.
25:44The protesters mustered their army in Leith.
25:49It was more than double the size of Cromwell's force.
25:52The godliest of the godly, Worreston amongst them,
25:55chose this moment to insist the army be purged of its ungodly elements.
26:00The ungodly elements tended, by and large, to be the professional soldiers
26:04upon whom the army's success depended.
26:08God can do much with a few, said Worreston.
26:11He was right, but God chose to do it for the other side.
26:19One morning in September, Cromwell broke out of Dunbar at dawn,
26:23killed 4,000, took 10,000 prisoner
26:26and put the rest of the Covenanting army to flight.
26:29It became one of Cromwell's most famous victories.
26:34It made him seem at last like a possible leader,
26:36not just of an army, but of the country itself.
26:42The very next day, the Kirkcession and the Town Council fled from Edinburgh.
26:47The rule of the saints was over.
26:51The young King Charles fled to France
26:53and the English Parliament declared the birth of a new country.
26:59The Great Britain of the Stuarts, the Union of the Crowns, was gone,
27:03replaced by the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
27:12Behind the pleasant title was a brutal union of conquest,
27:16secured by pillage, massacre
27:19and the presence in Scotland of an English army of occupation,
27:2210,000 strong.
27:32In 1653, Cromwell became something called Lord Protector,
27:36not a king, but still addressed as Your Highness.
27:40But still addressed as Your Highness by those who served him.
27:43Behind his back, people called him a tyrant and usurper.
27:48For four years, Worreston held himself aloof from the new regime.
27:51But in the end, his ambition required him to collaborate.
27:55He just couldn't bear being unimportant.
27:58In 1657, Cromwell made him Lord Clerk Register,
28:03Chief Record Keeper of the Scottish Government
28:05and gave him a position on the English Council of State.
28:10It was a dream of power and a nightmare of betrayal.
28:15Just what was Worreston loyal to now, apart from himself?
28:22It was hard to say.
28:24The Covenant hung over his head as much as anybody's,
28:27but there was no king.
28:30There was someone who looked and behaved increasingly like one,
28:33but that was Cromwell.
28:35He began to look like a king reflected in a wicked mirror,
28:38ugly, ill-favoured, a tyrant with a blood-stained chin.
28:42Worreston kept on with his daily regime of prayer,
28:46manufacturing certainty as best he could.
28:53Then Cromwell died.
28:57His unreal regime died with him.
29:01Now the Commonwealth was headless, but there was a head available.
29:08It belonged to Charles II.
29:20On May 8th of the year 1660,
29:22the English Parliament proclaimed Charles II King of England.
29:29The Scottish Parliament did likewise one week later.
29:33There were scenes of wild celebration in Edinburgh.
29:36Toasts drunk, glasses shattered, cannons fired.
29:44The joy was hysterical.
29:4511 years of guilt unleashed.
29:49Worreston felt the future tighten around his neck and fled to Europe.
30:07The brief and ugly experiment was over.
30:10The headless king had horrified everyone.
30:13No-one wanted anything to do with dictators.
30:16No-one wanted anything to do with the almost-democracy of the Covenant.
30:22The way ahead was backwards.
30:25The parliaments of both England and Scotland began undoing things.
30:29They remade the old world.
30:31They remade the Union of the Crowns.
30:33You could hardly see the join.
30:39It was as though nothing had happened.
30:41As though this Charles was that Charles.
30:44His father's ghost was promoted.
30:47He became King Charles the Martyr.
30:50Cromwell's body was exhumed and its head cut off.
30:56Charles II King of England died on May 8th of the year 1660.
31:02There was no Cromwell.
31:04There had been no civil war.
31:06There was no Covenant.
31:07There would be no Covenanters.
31:18The English Parliament declared the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 unlawful.
31:24Surviving copies were collected and burnt by the public hangman,
31:28executed as though they were people.
31:34Charles was destroying the evidence of the new world that had killed his father.
31:39Everyone knew there would be changes for the Presbyterian Church.
31:43Perhaps it would be enough for Charles that the protesters no longer ran it.
31:49Perhaps it would be enough for Charles that the protesters no longer ran it.
31:56It wouldn't.
32:05Charles appointed bishops and archbishops.
32:09He ordered Scotland's ministers to swear an oath of allegiance to him
32:14and also required that every minister seek the nomination of a local member of the gentry.
32:23262 out of roughly 1,000 ministers failed to make the cut,
32:28couldn't or wouldn't take the oath,
32:30couldn't or wouldn't find a noble patron.
32:33So 262 ministers, mostly in the South West, were made redundant.
32:38Alexander Peden was one of them.
32:42Until 1662, Peden was a minister in the parish of New Luce in the deep South West.
32:49Charles's oath of allegiance stuck in his craw.
32:53He couldn't say it, let alone swear it.
32:57On the last Sunday before his expulsion, Peden entered the pulpit at New Luce and preached.
33:03It was a performance to warm the heart of a Wariston.
33:06He preached from morning until midnight.
33:09When at last he left the pulpit, he struck its door three times and ordered it never to open again,
33:14except for a Presbyterian minister like himself.
33:35This became his pulpit instead.
33:37Any rock would do, to be honest.
33:39And this became his kirk.
33:47He became a field preacher, a man on the run, with a growing reputation.
33:52His followers called him Prophet Peden.
33:55The meetings to which he preached were outlawed under the new king's regime,
33:59but they took place regardless.
34:01The largest drew crowds of 10,000,
34:04and the crowd bore arms.
34:06Here, and in places like this, he preached to a movement that the Covenant had created,
34:12to people who had no nobles, no gentry to lead them,
34:16and never felt the lack.
34:24They were voices in the wilderness, pointing at the Stuart dynasty and crying,
34:29insisting that the king could not do as he wished.
34:37Almost nobody was listening.
34:39Once, the Covenanter movement had run the entire country.
34:42Now it was numerous only in the South West.
34:45Numerous and illegal, dismissed by the mainstream.
34:49The nobles, many of the ministers, and most of the rest of society
34:53had gone back indoors where it was warm,
34:55under the umbrella of what the king permitted.
34:58The protesters stayed outside.
35:00They liked it cold.
35:05In Prophet Peden, the protesters had found a new hero.
35:09He was desperately needed.
35:11The government of Charles II was eating up the old ones.
35:18In 1663, Worreston was finally arrested in France.
35:26The last of 18 men that Charles held responsible for his father's death.
35:34The gallows were built unusually high,
35:36opposite his former house on the Royal Mile.
35:39On the night before his execution, a friend visited him in jail.
35:43Worreston told him he could never doubt of his own salvation.
35:48He had so often seen God's face in the house of prayer.
35:56EXPLOSION
36:06Time passed.
36:08The king adopted a more tolerant policy.
36:11He licensed some of the protesting ministers to preach once more,
36:15as long as they accepted that he, not King Jesus, was head of the church.
36:20For Peden and the hard core of the protesters,
36:23this was wickedly similar to Catholic Christianity,
36:26where the head of the church was human and had power over individual souls.
36:35The king, they were now certain, was popish.
36:41Even paranoids are right occasionally.
36:43In 1670, Charles concluded a secret treaty with the Pope.
36:48Charles concluded a secret treaty
36:50with the most powerful Catholic king in Europe,
36:53Louis XIV of France.
36:59Louis agreed to provide Charles with a generous annual pension.
37:03This was to assist Charles in the restoration of his kingdoms
37:06to the arms, the very open arms, of the Catholic Church,
37:10at which point Charles would announce his own Catholicism.
37:14And Charles promised that once the national conversion was complete,
37:17he would assist the French in their war against the Protestant Dutch.
37:28This was a secret that Charles must keep.
37:31Anyone who accused the king of potpourri must be silenced.
37:38The most outspoken protesters were confined on the Bass Rock.
37:42Peden was one of them.
37:44He was imprisoned there for four long years.
37:53Their leaders were captives.
37:55The king's power seemed limitless.
37:58Everything that the protesters had once achieved was being undone.
38:08The idea grew amongst them that a spectacular act of rebellion
38:11would recall their countrymen to the one true path.
38:16Bishops were at the heart of the wicked changes that the king had made,
38:20and the Archbishop of St Andrews had once been, like themselves,
38:24a decent Presbyterian.
38:29On the 3rd of May, 1679,
38:31Archbishop Sharp was returning to St Andrews with his daughter,
38:35but nine protesting Covenanters had lain in wait.
38:38They gave chase.
38:40Sharp's coach was just two or three miles from safety
38:43when it was brought to a standstill.
38:45DRAMATIC MUSIC
39:08It was an assassination, a terrorist act.
39:12The government sent a task force to the protesting heartland
39:16to stamp on the rats,
39:18led by a newly appointed captain, John Graham of Claverhouse.
39:23Claverhouse knew that the crowds at field preachings
39:26could sometimes number as much as 10,000,
39:30but he was unaware that they were half religious service, half army,
39:35like the one he blundered into at Drumclog.
39:38DRAMATIC MUSIC
39:41The terrain was boggy and treacherous.
39:44Claverhouse's men were trained but outnumbered.
39:48Manoeuvres were simply impossible.
39:50They were defeated. Claverhouse was almost killed.
39:54Soon afterwards, Glasgow fell to the protesters.
40:01With this victory, the Golden Age seemed within their grasp.
40:05They could have marched on Edinburgh to restore the rule of the saints.
40:09Instead, they made camp near Bothwell Brig, just south of Glasgow,
40:14and settled down for three weeks of discussion.
40:20Should the ungodly be allowed to join the army?
40:23Were they fighting to unseat Charles
40:25for failing to live up to his duties as a Covenanted King?
40:28Or were they fighting just to reproach the King
40:31and restore him to the path of righteousness?
40:34During these three weeks, the protesters dissolved into smaller and smaller factions.
40:39Tubs were thumped. Hobby horses were ridden.
40:42Fine points of theology debated.
40:50Perhaps they were under the illusion that the King was in a mood for clemency.
40:54After all, Peadon was once again at liberty.
40:57But Peadon himself wasn't at Bothwell.
41:00He had learnt his lesson on the Bass.
41:03The best sort of prophet to be was one who was breathing.
41:09From a safe distance of 40 miles,
41:11he prophesied the bloody slaughter of his friends at Bothwell Brig.
41:15Wherever his information came from, it was accurate.
41:27400 of the Bothwell debaters were killed,
41:30with 1,200 taken prisoner, the rest dispersed in terror.
41:37But Bothwell Brig had shown that the Covenanting movement was still a threat.
41:42THE END
41:57Executions of the protesters became frequent.
42:03In 1681, a widow's son from a small town in Dumfriesshire
42:07came to watch as the very last protesting minister swung to glory.
42:11And he decided that a martyr's death would suit him too.
42:18His name was James Rennick.
42:24Later that year, he came into the city to watch another five executions.
42:31Five more of his fellow protesters.
42:34Their heads were stuck on the city's netherball gate.
42:37And that night, Rennick climbed up, took them down
42:40and buried the five grisly parcels with all due ceremony.
42:45He began to rise in the ranks of the protesters.
42:56Rennick was in the bloom of youth.
42:58The king who so offended him, Charles II, was withering on the vine.
43:07His wife had proved barren.
43:13Charles had fathered several bastards.
43:16But male bastards weren't considered king material.
43:21There was only one alternative. The king's brother, James.
43:25And at the king's command, he was confirmed as Charles II's successor.
43:30But James had been openly Catholic for almost ten years.
43:48The vast majority of his future subjects were Protestants,
43:52for whom Rome was a byword for tyranny.
43:55Yet almost nobody dared object.
43:57He was a Stuart, after all,
43:59and guilt for his father's execution stilled most tongues.
44:04Only the protesters said it out loud.
44:07Here was the final proof that the Stuart dynasty was unfit to rule.
44:14Since Bodwell Brigg, the protesters' numbers had declined.
44:17There were no more than 6,000 left,
44:19when once the Covenant could have claimed
44:21They didn't care.
44:23They rechristened themselves the United Societies,
44:26declared that they were the country's rightful government,
44:29and as their leader, they chose James Rennick.
44:34To announce their presence, they marched into Lanark,
44:37to the Merket Cross, and burnt copies of the Acts
44:40that made James next in line for the throne.
44:43Then they made their own declaration.
44:47In the name of the people,
44:49for whom, of course, they did not speak,
44:51they rejected the Stuart dynasty.
44:53They rejected Charles as king,
44:55on the grounds that he had destroyed the perfect reformation,
44:58on the grounds that he had turned his court into a brothel,
45:01on the grounds of the hateful Catholicism of his intended heir.
45:05They demanded a return to the years of 1648,
45:08and demanded that James be executed.
45:12Rennick's United Societies cut a dash.
45:15They drew the eye of Prophet Peadon.
45:18He took to preaching sermons that supported them.
45:25He loved to preach.
45:27He loved to preach.
45:29He loved to preach.
45:31He loved to preach.
45:33He loved to preach.
45:35He loved to preach.
45:37He loved to preach.
45:40He lamented the bad faith of the nobles,
45:43gentlemen and ministers who deserted the covenant
45:46for the safety of Charles II's church.
45:48They are vile bastards, he said.
45:51Clearly, Peadon hoped the United Societies
45:54would take him on as their minister.
45:56But Rennick let it be known that Peadon had been tested
45:59and found wanting.
46:01His numerous absences whilst others had lost their lives
46:04had been duly noted.
46:06In fact, he had disgracefully failed to die on several occasions.
46:10Not like Rennick.
46:12Rennick was more than willing to die if his God required it.
46:25Rennick was insanely resolute.
46:28And with his 6,000 men,
46:30he was perfectly capable of starting a second civil war.
46:36He and his followers were eminently worth killing.
46:39But how could these dangerous men be identified?
46:42The government needed to look inside its subjects' heads.
46:49An oath was framed requiring all citizens
46:52to reject the United Societies.
46:54But there were questions too.
46:56Could the subject say,
46:58God save the king?
47:01No one from the United Societies could say that of Charles II.
47:05Not when God was listening.
47:08And God was always listening.
47:15John Graham of Claverhouse,
47:17fast becoming the government's enforcer of choice,
47:20was sent into the South West armed with the oath.
47:23The oath could be administered on the spot,
47:26and failure to take it was punishable by instant death.
47:29These months would be remembered as the Killing Times.
47:36It wasn't the numbers that made the Killing Times notorious.
47:45The numbers weren't great.
47:50It was the summary nature of the executions.
47:56No courts, no appeals.
47:58Just a bullet in the head.
48:00A little over 90 deaths in a little less than a year.
48:04The killings began in December
48:06and provided an unpleasant baptism
48:08for the beginning of a new and inauspicious reign,
48:11the reign of James VII and II.
48:18In February of 1685,
48:20Charles II died of a stroke.
48:23James' succession was unopposed.
48:26The Stuart dynasty seemed unassailable.
48:29Now there were two powerful Catholic monarchs
48:32for Europe's Protestants to contend with.
48:35In France, Louis XIV.
48:38In Britain, James VII and II.
48:43For William of Orange,
48:45the Calvinist prince of the Dutch Republic,
48:47the prospect of a Catholic alliance
48:49between Louis XIV and James was too frightening for words.
48:53He'd been fighting the French off and on for years.
48:56He was James' nephew and son-in-law.
48:59In short, he had a claim to James' crowns.
49:06James set about providing William of Orange with ammunition.
49:10He decreed that Catholics could not only worship, but hold office.
49:14He was his father's son.
49:16Parliament was not consulted.
49:20James' father, Louis XIV,
49:23Parliament was not consulted.
49:26Catholics became a majority on the Privy Council.
49:29Catholics were appointed to the control of royal boroughs.
49:33Little was lacking from James' victory.
49:36Only the United Societies remained.
49:39He set a price on Rennick's head by proclamation.
49:42£100, dead or alive.
49:48It was clear to Rennick what his god required of him.
49:53He would preach in the fields outside Edinburgh.
49:56He would even enter the city itself.
49:59He would make it easy for the king's men to find him.
50:04The authorities entered the house he was staying in.
50:07Rennick shot one of them, escaped, but couldn't or wouldn't run.
50:11He walked this far to Castle Wynd, where he was captured.
50:18He was too important a prize for simple execution.
50:21For two weeks, the authorities attempted to extract from him
50:25a confession that he had never done God's work.
50:28This proved impossible.
50:37His execution was finally fixed for February 17th, 1688.
50:42On the scaffold, Rennick spoke for King Jesus at considerable length.
50:48He recited Psalm 103.
50:50The Lord has established His throne in heaven
50:53and His kingdom rules over all.
50:55He read from Revelations chapter 19.
50:58Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God
51:02that ye may eat the flesh of kings.
51:04And he concluded, Lord, I die in the faith that you will not leave Scotland
51:08but that you will make the blood of your witnesses the seed of your church
51:12and return again and be glorious in our land.
51:15And now, Lord, I am ready.
51:37Rennick's death made James feel safe.
51:40He could ignore the covenant.
51:42He was anointed by God, an absolute monarch, unchallenged.
51:49And then he did what his brother had failed to do.
51:52He secured the future of the Stuart dynasty.
51:58On the 10th of June of that year,
52:00the king's wife gave birth to a healthy male heir,
52:03James Francis Edward.
52:05A rhyme began to do the rounds
52:07A rhyme began to do the rounds
52:09and James should have listened to it.
52:13It was a prophecy.
52:18Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop
52:22When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
52:27When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall
52:32Down will come baby, cradle and all
52:38The roots of his power as a Catholic king were far from deep.
52:43They had grown upon stony, Protestant ground.
52:52William of Orange had begun preparing an invasion fleet
52:55two months before the child was born.
53:01The fleet was ready by the first week of October,
53:05With sailors and others included,
53:07William's force totalled some 70,000.
53:10Clearly, he had no intention of doing this twice.
53:16The army landed in Devon in the first week of November
53:19and almost at once,
53:21James's support began, mysteriously, to wither away.
53:25Because in the end, Stuart or not,
53:28son of the headless king or not,
53:30he was a Catholic.
53:35On the night of the 9th of December,
53:37the queen and the king's young heir fled to France.
53:40James the 7th and 2nd followed on the 23rd.
53:44He hadn't abdicated,
53:46but everyone decided to behave as though he had.
53:49They decided, too, that this wasn't an invasion.
53:52This would be the glorious revolution.
53:55They had invited William of Orange.
53:57Do come and take a kingdom.
54:00Dress military. RSVP.
54:05In May of 1689,
54:07William of Orange and his wife Mary
54:09accepted a joint monarchy
54:11of England, Scotland and Ireland.
54:14A monarchy with strings attached.
54:17The crown could no longer suspend laws,
54:19levy taxes
54:21or maintain a standing army in peacetime
54:23without Parliament's permission.
54:25The monarchy was forced to give in
54:27and the Crown was forced to give in.
54:29The Crown was forced to give in
54:31and the Crown was forced to give in.
54:33Without Parliament's permission.
54:38Here at last was the new world.
54:4050 years after the Covenanters had first asked for it.
54:4350 years after Charles I said no.
54:51In England, the Stuarts were kings no longer,
54:54with hardly a shot fired.
54:57The glorious revolution would acquire another adjective.
55:00Bloodless.
55:02But in Scotland, there was blood aplenty.
55:05Several northern nobles remained faithful to James.
55:09One of these Jacobites was John Graham of Claverhouse,
55:13now the Viscount Dundee.
55:17Claverhouse went north, formed an army,
55:20won a decisive victory at Killiecrankie
55:22and died of his wounds on the battlefield.
55:25The first Jacobite rebellion died with him,
55:28but its body twitched for some time after.
55:31It took several months to crush the Jacobite garrison
55:34in Edinburgh Castle,
55:36but the garrison here held out longest of all.
55:39So it was on the Bass Rock that the Stuart dynasty
55:42finally lost its grip on power.
55:56At last there was a kind of peace.
55:59The moderate remnants of the Presbyterians
56:01reached a compromise with King William.
56:04Bishops were abolished,
56:06and the Presbyterians resumed control of the Church of Scotland.
56:10But they were deceiving themselves.
56:12They were the Church of Southern Scotland.
56:15Because in the north,
56:16loyalty to the older kind of God-anointed king
56:19remained in force.
56:21The split in the Kirk was a split in the country,
56:24an unhealed wound.
56:27And the Stuarts, of course, were far from dead.
56:30They were only in exile in France,
56:33a long swim across the English Channel.
56:37A dynastic time bomb.
56:42For 50 years, the Covenanters had been almost the only voice
56:46that constantly resisted the rule of the Stuarts,
56:49stood against absolute monarchy,
56:51insisted that the soul of every human weighed the same.
56:56We can almost see them as martyrs
56:58in the cause of civil liberty.
57:00From a distance of several hundred years,
57:03the Covenanters seem almost benign.
57:06But come closer.
57:08The Covenanters knew very little of mercy.
57:11They knew nothing at all of moderation.
57:14The only government they could ever have approved
57:16was the rule of the Presbyterian Kirk
57:18with a covenanted king.
57:20One nation under God and bound for glory.
57:23Sermons once a day and twice on Sunday.
57:26The freedoms they sought
57:28were freedoms for covenanting Presbyterians
57:30and no-one else at all.
57:32Anyone of another faith could, and certainly would,
57:35go straight to hell.
57:37Once, this was God's country.
57:39It's not any more.
57:41Thank God for that.
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