ABSTRACT
This chapter explores local responses to Charles I's ecclesiastical policies and suggest that a breach between the Crown and its Scottish subjects. In a proclamation dated 28 June 1638, the Crown insists that it is never its intention to force a religious settlement upon Scotland 'neyther intende innovation in Religion or Laws'. The Covenant splits into three sections that reaffirm the 1581 Confession of Faith, and repeat acts of Parliament establishing Reformed Protestantism in Scotland and a third that connected the current problems of the Kirk with this historical background. The National Covenant's raison d'etre protects the unique breadth of religious practices and the peculiarities of their management found in Scotland. Liturgy in Scotland prevents the Kirk from haemorrhaging and then moves from religious practices in England. The spectrum of thought within the Kirk in 1638 remains wide with a huge number of differing interpretations of why the Covenant was either important or dangerous and what it meant to parishes.
