ON Saturday, 20th June, over 25,000 people assembled at Bothwell Bridge to witness the unveiling of a monument to the Covenanters who fell in battle at that place 124 years ago. The speech of the day was delivered by Lord Overton, who gave a stirring historical account of the battle and its surrounding events. The following is part of his lordship’s peroration:—
We have heard, and our forefathers have told us, of the cruel oppression of the Romish Church. In this favoured land Roman Catholics as well as others are by law protected in the observance of their religion, but it must ever be remembered that Roman Catholicism is not only a religion but a system which aims at universal supremacy over Church, State, and conscience, and has ever been a deadly foe to civil and religious liberty, and if our religious freedom is to be preserved it is necessary that only a Protestant shall wear the British Crown. You know that in these days repeated efforts have been made to relax and remove these safeguards of our freedom. Are we alive to our responsibility in this matter? The Episcopacy of the Covenanters’ time was practically Roman Catholicism. We trust our neighbours across the border are awaking, and will not allow the Church of England to be undermined by Ritualism, Sacerdotalism, Confessional, and the Mass; but we in Scotland have no less a task incumbent on us to keep the true gospel in the forefront, and not lower the old blue banner of Christ’s Crown and Covenant.
We are glad so many as 25,000 Scotchmen could be got to interest themselves in such a matter. No doubt the greater number of these spectators are far degenerated from the pure Scriptural faith of their fathers. Not by such as these will the battle of civil and religious liberty be fought when the agony again returns. However, the monument thus inaugurated constitutes a wholesome eyesore to Romanists and ill-affected persons, and we hope the granite and what is written on it will stand for many generations.