The republication of this early twentieth-century survey of Covenanting history is to be heartily welcomed, especially as it is an edition of high quality and more easily handled. Originally published in 1908, Dr James King Hewison (1853-1941) provides a comprehensive work bringing together an abundance of historical evidence into a highly readable narrative. He presents to readers a treasury of detail and many insightful summaries of events in this most important period of Scottish Church history – especially events involving the men and women now recognised as “the Covenanters”. He does this “in such a way that the student of history may calmly judge them [the Covenanters] and be assured at the same time that in making his judgement he has before him the available relevant facts”. From the preface, vol 1, p ix. Other page references appear in the text in the form: 1:ix. The work remains, since its first publication, a standard text for students of the period. With an abundance of well-researched footnotes, references and citations, this new typesetting of the second edition should fill gaps in knowledge among historians as well as interested readers of religious history. An especially helpful feature is the reproduction of the original marginal notes identifying the topic discussed on each page.
It will be of interest to our readers that Rev Donald Beaton, who was an able historian himself, used Hewison’s work as a textbook for teaching Scottish Church history as Tutor in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It has been unavailable except second-hand, in large, expensive volumes, since the revised edition of 1913; so many will not be familiar with this work. It is highly commended by many notable writers of the time of publication, including Rev Dr Alexander Smellie and the renowned historian of the Scottish Reformation, Dr D Hay Fleming, from whom the author received help in his research. Deliberately blending civil and political affairs into the narrative, the writer succeeds in presenting a comprehensive view of Scottish Church affairs through a tumultuous period of warfare, strife and contention. What may not be given sufficient emphasis is that, amidst such revolutionary events, the Church attained its highest expression of orthodoxy and its purest form of worship and government. Nor is the true worth of the godly participants in these events given sufficient credit.
Volume 1.
Hewison opens his first volume with an account of the background of the Reformation and the origin of covenants and covenanting. The “Bands” entered into before and at the Reformation, up to the famous King’s Confession of 1581, formed the basis of The National Covenant of 1638. The bond of allegiance to the truths and principles contained in these Covenants is now more completely expressed in ordination vows. It must be said that these early chapters should not be closely relied on for a historical appraisal of the work of John Knox, the Melvilles and their contemporaries. Hewison betrays some of his bias against the claims of the dissenting Scottish Churches of his own time when he focuses on the relation of Church and state during this era. This, together with an undue use of emotive and frequently sarcastic language, detracts from the work to some extent. Indeed, the style of language is often difficult to pass over without irritation and there are several occasions when the reader is unsure whether the author is being serious or mischievous.
An example of this biased kind of interjection, which should caution readers against accepting his analysis uncritically, is found when Hewison is discussing the Montgomery case of 1580. He claims that the relation between Church and state agreed to under James VI required “the consent of the other party in the contract”. While this may be true with important qualifications, his application to later times is an error. His characterisation of the Disruption worthies in 1843 as “irascible, headstrong ecclesiastics,” who ignored the “time-honoured maxim of jurisprudence” (1:107) that “no-one can change his counsel when it results in harm to someone else” is problematic.
Like Andrew Melville and George Gillespie and their well-informed contemporaries, the Disruption fathers of the Free Church saw clearly that the Church did not depend for its exercise of free jurisdiction on the agreement of the state, however useful that agreement was. While Scottish Presbyterians benefited from recognition and establishment by the civil ruler, the loss of these “for conscience sake” did not alter the constitution of the Church and the exercise of its sacred rights and liberties. Hewison, as a minister of the compromised Established Church, is not prepared to endorse the claims of the 1843 Free Church nor its deliberate identification with the testimony of the Covenants, whose history he charts.
The remaining chapters of the first volume cover the reigns of James VI and Charles I, especially as they impacted Scotland. They plainly, and indeed minutely, display the irreconcilable Erastianism. Erastianism is “to place the Churches of Christ, and the affairs necessarily and peculiarly belonging to them as such, under the laws or the administration of the civil magistrate”. (Catechism on the Principles and Constitution of the Free Church of Scotland, second edition 1847, Ans 225). The term is derived from Erastus, a German physician, who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and was the first publicly to broach the opinion that the functions of spiritual government and discipline belonged to the civil magistrate. Majoring on the events before and after the famous signing of the National Covenant in 1638 and the Glasgow Assembly which established Presbyterianism, these chapters also discuss the two Bishops’ Wars and the Westminster Assembly.
The way in which the writer views the Solemn League and Covenant, and those who afterwards suffered for it, again at times betrays his bias. The author attributes the brutal and lawless opposition to the Covenanter government in the 1640s to the arrangements of the Solemn League, and to the resolve to achieve uniformity. These opponents to the government began a campaign of violence in support of the Royalist cause. They were headed by John Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, and were afterwards identified as the “Malignant party”, which was at the root of the serious division in the Church that followed. In his analysis of events, Hewison constantly hints at his lack of sympathy with the biblical ideal of uniformity in worship and with the divine right of Presbyterian church government which the Scottish Covenants espoused.
Nevertheless, he provides all the relevant facts and weaves events into a highly readable narrative, which should at least inform the reader of the issues involved. Particularly attractive is his account of Alexander Henderson and his closing days (1:427). He does not accept uncritically the frequently cited charge that the Scots sold their king (Charles I) to the English for money (1:430), and he succeeds in painting the complex and contradictory likeness of the Parliamentary General, Oliver Cromwell, as the true author of many of the Covenanter’s troubles.
But Hewison is at his best when detailing the Great Civil War: The Struggle for Liberty of Parliament and Freedom of Conscience (chapter 16) and is both fair and objective in his discussion of The Engagement and the Fall of Charles I and of Montrose (chapter 17). His account of why and how the Scottish Covenanter, almost universally opposed regicide, goes far to explaining the setting for the years of conflict that followed, which are charted in the second volume. Hewison is, in our judgement, too much in awe of the military genius of Montrose. While trying to recover Montrose’s reputation (1:454,455), Hewison does not correctly portray the harm done by this entrenched Royalist. Montrose was, tragically, one of the first of a large number of men with civil and military power in that century who were determined and blood-guilty enemies of the civil and religious liberties of the Scottish Church and nation.
Volume 1 is greatly enhanced with numerous illustrations and important appendices which include original documents and sources. One appendix provides information on the ownership of extant copies of the National Covenant (much of this information will no longer be accurate after 100 years).
Volume 2.
The second volume is in some respects the more difficult to read, in that it deals with the severe persecution of the more consistent Covenanter and the defection and compromise of their faint-hearted brethren under the repression of Charles II and James II. The course of events from the execution of Charles I in 1649 – surely a series of disastrous mistakes by the ruling party in Scotland – are charted in detail. Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland, and the ignominious defeat of the Scots at Dunbar in September 1650 (in which Hewison corrects the slander of Bishop Burnet regarding the advice given by the Scottish ministers) opens to view a sad decade of dispute and division in the Covenanter movement.
The coronation of Charles was followed by the repeal of the Act of Classes in June 1651. This Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1646, ratified in 1649, gave security to the Church that the “Malignant party” would not be given power in the Parliament or offices of the state without manifesting repentance. The Public Resolutions, entered into at the behest of the King and the Royalist party in Scotland to oppose Cromwell, sought to unite the diverse parties in Church and State by removing the impediments created by the Act. Hewison comments that “the Covenanter have often been severely criticised for their intolerant suppression of the Malignant faction at this juncture. But extant records prove that Scotland was being threatened with a repetition of that moral decadence which a hundred years before . . . ruined the Church” (2:6). and the invasion of England which ended in disaster at Worcester in the September of that year. The narrative takes up the political events and the deceit of Charles II resulting in his Restoration in 1660, and the spiritual history of the Scottish Church in the 1650s is sadly somewhat obscured. However, the three opening chapters (chapters 18-20) are essential reading for a fuller understanding of the Protesor and Resolutioner conflict in the Church. This sad division carried over into the time of persecution.
These opening chapters are followed by a summary of the Condition of the Country in the Seventeenth Century. This chapter aims to explode “the bitterest indictment ever penned against the Presbyterian system” (2:97) – that of Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862, reputed the “father of scientific history”) in his unfinished History of Civilisation in England. The slander, coming from one who viewed predestination (and consequently the doctrine of a supernatural providence) as a “barren hypothesis beyond the province of knowledge” and espoused a humanistic approach to historical events, is suggestive of modern historical bias. Rejecting as unscientific what is in reality the work of God in the Church throughout history, the power of divine grace in the lives of believers as agents in history is not given its rightful place in explaining events.
For this reason, Hewison’s defence of Scottish Presbyterianism during this era, even with its limitations, is useful and provides an excellent counter to such as scorn the elevated learning, culture and religion of the Covenants in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs. Many of the agents involved were men and women of eminent piety. While the chapter fails to represent the Presbyterian worship and standard of discipline in a biblical light, the conclusion of Hewison’s detailed pen-portraits of the leading figures is accurate and telling: “The Presbyterian ministers, by their honest ministries, pure lives, and creditable writings, form a contrast to other leaders of the epoch, and these attainments rightly gained for them the esteem in which the populace generally held them” (2:123)
Having introduced the leading participants in the tragic events that followed, the work proceeds at a careful and steady pace to detail the melancholy consequences of the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Chapters on The Reconstruction of the Church, following Middleton’s “drunken Parliament” and The Rule of Rothes and The Rising of Rullion Green, are accurate and painful portrayals of events which brought Scotland and the Scottish Church as close to destruction as it has perhaps ever reached before the present century. Hewison’s picture is eminently sympathetic to the Covenants of the 1660s and 1670s, and rightly exposes the lawless wickedness of the chief government agents, including familiar names such as Sharp, Turner, Dalyell, Rothes, Middleton and Lauderdale. Lauderdale, along with Charles himself and Sir George Mackenzie, was to cause untold mischief and misery in the subsequent decade. The extended account of the Pentland Rising in 1666 is worth careful study.
The following chapter (24) discusses the various attempts to impose conformity, leading up to the resistance of the Covenanters at Drumclog in June 1679 and the disaster that followed at Bothwell Bridge. These famous events in Covenanting history (somewhat accidental though they were), alongside the assassination of Archbishop Sharp, are to be understood in the context of an ever-increasing Erastian repression of a free and Presbyterian Church by the civil authorities. The three chapters covering the period of increased persecution – The Rise of Claverhouse, The Remnant and The Policy of Rope and Gun – give full and often graphic accounts of what led to the Killing Times. The proclamations against the rebels issued by the Privy Council effectively stopped the larger and previously-tolerated conventicles. A storm of persecution with particular ferocity came over Scotland – alongside dangerous indulgences and tests, which were used to ensnare and coerce an increasingly weary people – and drained the Church of its strength. Every student of seventeenth-century Scottish Church history would benefit from reading these summaries, and it is hoped that the present generation of young people will be encouraged to acquaint themselves with the heroic men, women and children of those days of Scotland’s largely forgotten history.
In chapter 29 – The Advent of Renwick: Claverhouse and the Killing Times – we have a sympathetic portrait of James Renwick, the godly young minister who held aloft the banner of the Covenant alone after the death of Richard Cameron and Donald Cargill. Present-day readers are greatly advantaged to have Maurice Grant’s well-researched and well-written biographies of these three Scottish worthies. Their reputation was and remains in need of being rescued from many slanders over the centuries. Hewison is not at his best when he tries to characterise the motivation and spirituality of mind in these men and their gracious followers and fellow-sufferers. However, it is to be heartily noted that in each case, he does bring forward abundant evidence to vindicate their stand in the circumstances they were in.
It has become common to hear or read that few today would endorse everything these bolder Covenanters said and did. While doubtless true, this approach has often served to excuse or hide a more serious modern rejection of their more fundamental testimony against compliance with Erastian control of the Church. Hewison’s rhetoric at times detracts from his insightful conclusions that their cause was exactly what the entire nation took up at the Revolution. Richard Cameron’s position that theirs was “a standard that shall overthrow the throne of Britain” is identified as plainly justifying his activities in the main: “If there was no justification for this unprecedented act of a wandering preacher and a band of insignificant guerrillas, there was none eight years afterwards, when, using the identical arguments of the Cameronians, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons of England with the Estates of Scotland, ousted King James, and established William and Mary on the British throne” (2:324).
The final two chapters – The Inlet of Popery and The Revolution – detail the short reign of terror of James II, an open Romanist, and his removal and the end of the Stuart dynasty. The sufferings of the period are fully documented, as are the attempts to resist James, including that of the Earl of Argyle in 1685 and the faithful contending of James Renwick until his death in February 1688. An extensive selection is made from the abundant evidence of the brutality perpetrated in these Killing Times. Fuller accounts of the martyrdom of John Brown of Priesthill and the two Margarets and the sufferings of the prisoners at Dunnottar Castle make harrowing reading. Hewison plainly states that these and the less well-known accounts are no exaggeration, as some may think, and even endorses the estimate of Daniel Defoe – who personally interviewed contemporary witnesses – that “the Scottish persecution was worse than that of the Roman emperors and Popish inquisitors” (2:446). Most if not all the persons identified in Howie’s Scots Worthies, and many others from Robert Wodrow, Patrick Walker and Privy Council records, are mentioned by name. The character and conduct of the persecutors is also detailed. The second volume is similarly enhanced by numerous illustrations, useful appendices and an extensive 37-page index. The set is beautifully bound, with attractive dust jackets.
Conclusion.
No true estimate of the significance of the Reformation in the sixteenth century and of the Revolution at the end of the seventeenth century, which together represent the abiding constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom to the present day, is possible without a careful account being taken of the Scottish Covenanters. Often misrepresented as extremists and frequently forgotten by writers on sixteenth-century English Puritanism, their Presbyterian convictions and principled commitment to the doctrine, worship and government taught by the earlier Reformers of Scotland and enshrined in the Westminster Standards, is brought to light in this study. Moreover, the Covenanters were, notwithstanding periods of sad defection, through a period of wonderful spiritual revival, instrumental in securing civil and religious liberties to the nation.
It is to be hoped that by setting the events and people of Covenanter history in their political and wider historical context, the spiritual history of the Scottish Church in this period, which we rightly associate with great personal sufferings, will be better understood and more intelligently defended. Their legacy, now exceedingly fragile, continues to the present day in Scotland and far beyond. Holding fast their testimony to divine truth and seeking earnestly to have it shared with others will be the true evidence of a sincere thankfulness for, and sympathy with, these precious witnesses of the past. On that note, however, we would have to agree with the comment of the publishers that “the book is the work of a historian more than an advocate, since for the latter role Dr Hewison was not entirely fitted”. This set should be purchased and read by every Presbyterian who wishes to understand Scotland’s debt to the Covenanters.
Note: This article reviews The Covenanters, by J K Hewison, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 2 volumes, 518 and 616 pages, £40.00; available from the F P Bookroom.