The National Covenant drawn up and renewed

Drawing it up

On Friday 23 February 1638, the Earl of Rothes records, “they thought upon the renewing of the Covenant, and to that effect Mr Alexander Henderson, minister, and Mr Archibald Johnston, advocate, were appointed to draw up the Confession of Faith, with such additions as the change of times and the present occasion required” [spelling modernised]. Henderson was then minister of Leuchars, in Fife.¹

Johnston wrote the same day in his diary that “the insupportable burden of drawing up the Band [bond], whereby all should be linked together after subscribing of the Confession of Faith, was laid upon my weak shoulders” [spelling modernised]. “Thereafter Mr Alexander Henderson, having said a pithy short prayer for God’s direction, and I fell to the Band, whereof we scrolled [drafted] the narrative” [spelling modernised].²

On Saturday 24 February “Rothes, Loudoun and Balmerino were appointed to revise what Mr Henderson and Mr Johnston had done” [spelling modernised]. That morning Johnston “fell to the drawing out the main points out of the Acts of Parliament to be put in the Band” [spelling modernised], which the revisers told him to “compendize [summarise]”. Sunday 25 February was kept “as a fast and humiliation for our former breaches of the covenant” [spelling modernised].³

By Monday 26 February Johnston had “all digested in three heads, which was approved by the Committee appointed to review them” [spelling modernised]. On Tuesday 27 February Rothes and Loudoun showed the draft to the ministers met at Tailors’ Hall, and, Johnston writes, “after two other alterations and a discussion of all objections, we got it approved first by the Commissioners, then by the whole ministry except one non liquet [one undecided]” [spelling modernised].⁴

Its three parts

Hetherington describes the Covenant as having “three parts; the first, the Old Covenant of 1581, exactly as at first prepared; the second, the acts of Parliament condemning Popery, and confirming and ratifying the acts of the General Assembly,—this was written by Johnston; and the third, the special application of the whole to present circumstances,—this was the production of Henderson”. Cunningham and Kerr divide it the same way.⁵

The third part begins: “In obedience to the commandment of God, conform to the practice of the godly in former times, and according to the laudable example of our worthy and religious Progenitors” [spelling modernised].⁶

Greyfriars, 28 February 1638

Rothes writes that the barons were to “meet in the Greyfriars Kirk by two hours in the afternoon” [spelling modernised]. After “prayer said by Mr Alexander Henderson very powerfully” [spelling modernised], Johnston read the Covenant “out of a fair parchment above an ell [about a yard] in square” [spelling modernised]. “The noblemen came thither at four hours and subscribed. The barons subscribed after them, so many as could subscribe that night, while [until] it was near eight” [spelling modernised].⁷

Johnston called it “that glorious marriage day of the Kingdom with God” [spelling modernised]. “After a divine prayer most fit for the time and present purpose made by Mr Alexander Henderson, The Covenant was subscribed first by the noblemen and barons all that night till 8 at night” [spelling modernised].⁸

The day, 28 February, is given by both these eyewitnesses and by Kerr, Peterkin, Hetherington, Cunningham, MacPherson and Aiton. M’Crie gives 1 March. Peterkin notes that some earlier writers said 1 March, “but Rothes’ Relation, and the minutes of the subsequent Assembly, shew [show] that it was in February.”⁹

On Thursday 1 March Rothes, Lindsay and Loudoun went to Tailors’ Hall, where the ministers met, “so that towards three hundred ministers subscribed that night. That day the commissioners of burghs subscribed also” [spelling modernised]. Johnston records that on the Friday it was read in the College Kirk “before the people of Edinburgh, who presently [at once] fell to the subscribing of it all that day and the morrow” [spelling modernised].¹⁰

Kerr writes that “The covenant was transcribed into hundreds of copies, carried throughout the country from north to south and east to west, and subscribed everywhere.” MacPherson adds that “Aberdeen was the only place of note in which it was not well received.”¹¹

The General Assembly of that December declared that “the renewing of that national Covenant and oath of this Kirk and kingdom, in February 1638, was most necessary, likeas [even as] the Lord hath blessed the same from heaven with a wonderful success” [spelling modernised].¹²