ABSTRACT
The Bonnie Hoose o’ Airlie THE MEANING OF THE Covenant that so many of the Scots had subscribed is worth a little attention. On the one hand it was a generalized form of the old rebellious Band which Scottish nobles were accustomed to form when they planned a stroke for power. But it also incorporated a device developed by the Kirk as a form of moral pressure on its members, the inclusion of God. By keeping it the Scots would emulate the Jews as a chosen people. A generation of men and women reared on biblical story, in which God had safeguarded and preserved his people against enormous odds, could easily grow to see the Covenant as a means by which something special lay in store for them. From this came two of the characteristics of the later Covenanters, a narrow national conceit and a belief that the normal needs of support for a movement-political backing and military strength-could be ignored. God would secure the victory of his own in his own cause against all odds; the cause would be made known by those who claimed to have direct authority and guidance; the generals and the politicians must do what ministers and mystics decreed. But this was still in the future. At first what the Covenant meant to many was rebellion; rebellion led by the aristocracy and therefore more against the civil than the religious establishment. The Scottish aristocracy was reared in habits of war, even if not always efficiently. Within a month of the making of the Covenant it was raising funds-in the form of a Voluntary’ tax on rents. This was to be paid by supporters, but not all who took the Covenant were real supporters. In many areas it was unsafe to stand out. The concept of a
compulsory and binding promise to God was incompatible with freedom of conscience, but so long as the Covenant was interpreted in its literal sense it was compatible with a reverence for episcopacy and so could be accepted by those who did not want Presbyterianism. Even so the north was resistant, and the doctors of Aberdeen refused to subscribe without royal authority. The young Earl of Montrose and various leading Covenanting ministers were sent north in July to persuade the resistant city. Aberdeen had just seen the ceremonies of bravery at the funeral of Lady Huntly, a lying in state, an enormous procession, the shooting off of the town’s ‘haill ordinance for ane good night’, after which the Marquis had taken his vast household and ten children back to the country ‘in high melancholie’. After such a display of the old attachments and way of life the city was in no mood for the new ideas. Wine and sweetmeats offered to the embassy were spurned so long as the Covenant was unsigned, so the provost and baillies, offended, gave the banquet to the poor. It was an unsuccessful visit. The issue of the adherence of the north was not to be settled by preaching but by force, and neither side was ready for this yet.
