What did it mean to be a Covenanter?

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

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

During the Scottish Revolution (1637-1651), royalists and Covenanters appealed to Scottish law, custom and traditional views on kingship to debate the limits of King Charles I's authority. But they also engaged with the political ideas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic intellectuals beyond the British Isles. This book explores the under-examined European context for Scottish political thought by analysing how royalists and Covenanters adapted Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic political ideas to their own debates about church and state. In doing so, it argues that Scots advanced languages of political legitimacy to help solve a crisis about the doctrines, ceremonies and polity of their national church. It therefore reinserts the importance of ecclesiology to the development of early modern political theory.

A nuanced approach to the role played by clerics at a turbulent time for religious affairs.

This book investigates emotion in early modern Scotland, and provides the first exploration of a Scottish individual’s life and writing in light of the recent major advances in the study of emotion. It does this through the example of James Melville, a minister in the Reformed Protestant Church, whose autobiographical writing provides one of the earliest and fullest opportunities to explore the emotional world and range of experiences of an individual, offering the chance for a more rounded analysis of emotional experiences and language than has ever been offered for Scotland at the time. This book contributes a crucial new geographical and cultural context to the expanding world of the history of emotions in the early modern period.

The 1st duke of Hamilton played an important role in the politics and life of Britain in the first half of the seventeenth century. Born in 1606 into the Scottish ancient noble family of Hamilton, who enjoyed a blood connection with the royal Stuarts, he was well placed to take full advantage of the union of the crowns in 1603 which opened up substantial opportunities in England and Ireland. The centre of that new world was the recently established Stuart court in London. Following his father, Hamilton entered that courtly world in 1620 at the age of fourteen and was executed on a scaffold outside Whitehall Palace in March 1649. During that period, he was involved in some of the most momentous events in British history, the wars of the three kingdoms and the collapse of the Stuart monarchy. His story casts a distinctive light on the period and allows a fresh account of the slowly unfolding crisis that saw an anointed king put on trial and publicly executed. The book is structured in three parts. Part one is a cluster of five studies concentrating on events in Scotland, England, Ireland and mainland Europe prior to 1638. Part two presents three chapters on Hamilton’s role in the three kingdom crisis between 1637-1643. Part three covers the remarkable final phase in Hamilton’s life detailing the Engagement, defeat at Preston and his execution in London. This biography of the 1st duke cuts a unique and distinctive path through one of the most heavily researched periods in the history of Britain. In a period of kingly personal rule, Hamilton stood at the shoulder of the king, cajoling, persuading and ultimately failing to steer him away from civil war in his kingdoms. The main source for this account is the Hamilton Papers brought into the public domain in the last few decades and used extensively for the first time.

Provides for a historical perspective of Scotland's interaction with the world beyond its borders. As one of the most prolific historians of his generation, Allan I. Macinnes, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Strathclyde, has been foremost in promoting an international rather than insular approach to the study of Scotland. In a distinguished career he has written extensively on the Scottish Highlands, the British revolutions, the formation of the United Kingdom, the Jacobite movement, and Scottish involvement in the British Empire. The chapters collected here reflect the extent of these interests and a commitment to understanding Scotland - or indeed, other territorial units - in an international or global context. Covering a period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, essays examine the complex interaction of the peoples of the British and Irish isles; they consider Scottish participation in Britannic and European conflict; and they explore Scottish involvement in business networks, political unions, and maritime empires. From intellectual and cultural exchange to political and military upheaval, Scotland and the Wider World will be key reading for anyone interested in the antecedents to Scotland's current international standing.

An exploration of the diverse lived experiences of marginality in Scottish society from the sixteen to the eighteenth century. Throughout the early modern period, Scottish society was constructed around an expectation of social conformity: people were required to operate within a relatively narrow range of acceptable identities and behaviours. Those who did not conform to this idealised standard, or who were in some fundamental way different from the prescribed norm, were met with suspicion. Such individuals often attracted both criticism and discrimination, forcing them to live confirmed to the social margins. Focusing on a range of marginalised groups, including the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, indentured workers and women, the contributors to this book explore what it was like to live at the boundaries of social acceptability, what mechanisms were involved in policing the divide between "mainstream" and "marginal", and what opportunities existed for personal or collective fulfilment. The result is a fresh perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the stories of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers a deeper understanding of the ordering assumptions of society more generally. Specific topics addressed range from the marginalisation of people with disabilities in the domestic sphere to female sex workers, and the place of executioners in society.

Examines relations between centre and localities in seventeenth century England by looking at early Stuart government through the lens of provincial towns.This book investigates relations between centre and localities in seventeenth century England by looking at early Stuart government through the lens of provincial towns. Focusing particularly on incorporated boroughs, it emphasises the distinctive circumstances that shaped governance in provincial towns and the ways towns contributed to the state. Royal charters of incorporation legally defined patterns of self-government and local liberties in corporate boroughs, but they also created a powerful bond to the crown. The book argues that a dynamic tension between local autonomy and connection to the centre drove relations between towns and the crown in this period, as borough governments actively sought strong ties with central authority while also attempting to preserve their chartered liberties. It also argues that the 1620s and 1630s ushered in new patterns in the crown's relations with incorporated boroughs, as Charles I's regime hardened policies towards urban localities. Based on extensive original research in both central government records and the archives of a wide range of provincial towns, the book covers critical aspects of interaction between towns and the crown, including incorporation and charters, governance and political order, social regulation, trade, financial and military exactions, and religion.s in the crown's relations with incorporated boroughs, as Charles I's regime hardened policies towards urban localities. Based on extensive original research in both central government records and the archives of a wide range of provincial towns, the book covers critical aspects of interaction between towns and the crown, including incorporation and charters, governance and political order, social regulation, trade, financial and military exactions, and religion.s in the crown's relations with incorporated boroughs, as Charles I's regime hardened policies towards urban localities. Based on extensive original research in both central government records and the archives of a wide range of provincial towns, the book covers critical aspects of interaction between towns and the crown, including incorporation and charters, governance and political order, social regulation, trade, financial and military exactions, and religion.s in the crown's relations with incorporated boroughs, as Charles I's regime hardened policies towards urban localities. Based on extensive original research in both central government records and the archives of a wide range of provincial towns, the book covers critical aspects of interaction between towns and the crown, including incorporation and charters, governance and political order, social regulation, trade, financial and military exactions, and religion.