The Covenanter Ships –  “Eaglewing”, “Crown”  “Rising Sun” and “Henry & Francis”  The flow of Scottish migrants to the Province of Ulster who came in search of land and religious freedom was significant in the Plantation of Ireland. Yet, in a short space of 20 years there was a change in the relationships with the […]

The Restoration – a new Scottish Parliament approved. The Diary of John Nicoll (1660-1667) is a contemporaneous record that throws an insight upon the trials and tribulations of the time. There can be little doubt that the people were minded to accept change by 1660 and were over optimistic at what that might be. Some […]

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? – Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles […]

Covenanter sites and monuments. April 2002 seems to have been a fruitful month for the discovery of Covenanter sites and monuments.  In Gourock a spring called the Covenanter`s or White`s Well has been  discovered; and in Dumfries some original  monumental stones, almost certainly the work of Robert Paterson – `Old Mortality`, have been retrieved from […]

Rev Samuel Rutherford.  Born in 1600 in the Border village of Nisbet, Samuel Rutherford’s father was a fairly prosperous farmer who was able to give his three sons, Samuel, George and James, good educations.  Samuel Rutherford was one of the great thinkers of the Reformation and the Covenanting movement.  He was also a gifted orator […]

THE COVENANTERS’ VOW. Ho ! Watcher of the silent hill, What of the night ? What of the night The winds are hushed—the earth is still The voiceless stars are sparkling bright— From out this heathery moorland glen, By the shy wild fowl only trod, We raise our hymn, unheard of men, To thee, an […]

The Edinburgh Tolbooth aka The Heart of Midlothian Descriptions from  Exiles of the Covenant by W.D.Carslaw, and The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club vol III. The Heart of Midlothian The exact date when the Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh was erected is shrouded in the mists of time, but reference to it is made as […]

A Scottish House of Commons is born. The short lived supremacy of the Covenanter hard liners and their clerical rule from 1638-1641,   tends to be skipped over as a short lived phase in the story of the religious fanatics. It was, however, a time of great importance to the future Scotland because the opportunity was […]

The East Nisbet Conventicle. John Blackadder`s account. ( quoted in Men of the Covenant, Alexander Smellie, vol I p 260-2.)   But more remarkable and more beautiful than the ordinary conventicle was a Communion in the fields. John Blackader will describe to us one of these, which he, in company with ” Mr. Welsh and […]

. The heartland of resistance by the Covenanters was in Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and the south western counties of Dumfries and Galloway. But there were also pockets of staunch Presbyterians in Stirling, Fife and the Border counties of Roxburghshire and Berwickshire. It was in all these places that the likes of John Welch, Samuel Arnot, […]

Proclamation of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, Edinburgh 4 May 1654. Extract: Diary of John Nicoll 1650-1667. Reproduced in The Book of Old Edinburgh Club Vol VI p 40. (For large image click on thumbnail. )

Covenanter Prisons.  The Covenanter story is very much about imprisonment whether of the many ministers cast into prison for their beliefs and resistance to episcopacy; or the people who took up armed resistance and their life in their hands to attend conventicles. There was also the invidious open imprisonment of banishment to remote places within […]

Tolbooth Regulations 1579 and Prisons Act 1597 Extract from The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, Vol IV p 95/6,104 [For large view click on thumbnail] Tolbooth Regulations 1579. Prisons Act 19 December 1597. The forerunner of the Town Guard and the High Constables of Edinburgh,  followed from an order of the Privy Council. On […]

Cromwell in Scotland. The supremacy of Cromwell brought Scotland an unaccustomed experience of general peace. For eight years the Scots had been demanding ecclesiastical harmony of the English but in retaliation the Cromwellian regime enforced political cooperation and ecclesiastical tolerance. With and from this flowed a firm and impartial government that was relatively honest, even […]