i'm bruce fumi
positives and negatives
acids and alkalis ranger celtic yin yang
jedi seth lord
jacobites and covenanters
they're all kind of opposites aren't
they and some should never be mixed
which may seem a strange thing to say
given that jacobites didn't arrive until
covenanters had all but disappear
but we'll come back to that later today
i'm going to show you two places in
edinburgh that are inextricably linked
by a five-minute walk as i tell you
about the anti-jacobites
the covenanters
if you're interested in the people
places and events and scottish history
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let me tell you a story
scotland in august too hot for a hoodie
if an american writer produced a series
of books in which a time-traveling
english woman goes back to me a dashing
hero of a people persecuted forced to
swear allegiance to a king that he could
never in their hearts support imprisoned
until they dead or deported massacred or
sent bravely to the scaffold proclaiming
their loyalty to a higher cause
the books would probably sell better if
the hero wore a kill
ladies love a man and a kill somber
sensible clothes
not so much
but whilst covenanters and jacobites
were opposite sides of a political
religious coin
some of the parallels are striking
the jacobite story was sparked by a
tinderbox when the catholic james vii of
scotland and the second of england was
delivered of a sun
seven english parliamentarians invited
william of orange to come and guarantee
the protestant religion
were their fears justified
over the next 60 years supporters of
james were forced to swear allegiance to
this new king or face the consequences
the massacre of glencoe jacobite
resistance hangings drawings quarterings
and a battlefield loss at culloden that
was followed by summary execution
starvation and
deportation now the birth of baby james
might have been the spark but the tinder
had been drying out in preparation for
some time
you see 51 years before the ocean of
james the seventh in the start of the
jacobite cause his father charles the
first sparked the tinderbox of the
covenanter story when he insisted that
the english prayer book be read in
scottish churches
on the 23rd july 1637
here in singles cathedral jenny garris
threw a stool at the minister causing a
riot
now that may have been the spark
but the tinder box had been drying out
in preparation for some time
ever since the reformation back in 1560
there had been a struggle to decide who
was the ultimate authority in scotland
the presbyterian church
or the monarch
the fact that for a large part of that
time he was also the monarch in england
made things even more complicated
a year before the stool was thrown
causing the to hit the fan
charles the first had won a victory with
a new book of canons which said that
anyone denying the king's supremacy
would be excommunicated
pressure had been building
so when jenny guinness threw her stool
it was because she couldn't hold it in
any longer
look that's two crappy jokes and
we need to go on a later event so
come on
for the next six months the protestant
people of scotland started to organise
an edinburgh solicitor and a five
minister drew up a document which would
become the national covenant
and so on the 28th of february 1638
people
lined up here in greyfriar's churchyard
to sign a document that said that
presbyterianism was the national church
and it was a community under god and not
the crown
that was the authority in that church
copies of the covenant were sent all
over the country many signed willingly
some signed in their own blood
some sign under duress you see signing
this document was tantamount to signing
up for military service
if you want to know what happened next
then i've got a playlist called the war
of three kingdoms english civil war
you'll find two videos in that playlist
that are relevant how the scots started
the english civil war and who killed
charles the first
watch them
but i want to jump to the period after
charles the first has been executed
you see the scots may think that the
king can never be above the church but
they are appalled at the idea that he
should be executed
they invite his son charles to be
crowned charles ii but only in condition
that he
sign the covenant accepting that he's
not above the church
now when charles eventually did become
king of england scotland in ireland he
conveniently forgot what he'd signed up
to
within a year the recessionary act was
passed in scotland overturning all the
legislation of covenant of parliaments
placing the king
over the church and state
and the bishops
in between the next year all the
churches other than the national church
was banned and any office bearer in the
church was required to renounce that
covenant
around a third
refused
now the later jacobites who fought for
james tended to be concentrated in the
north these covenanters who stood
against his brother
were most concentrated in the south and
west
thrown out of their churches they would
meet in open air conventionals thousands
of people would turn up to stand and
field and mirror in scottish weather to
listen to a presbyterian minister the
very act of which
was seditious
law breaking
in 1670 parliament issued the act
against conventicals any minister who
organized an open air church meeting was
liable to execution
if somebody captured or handed them in
they received 500 merks if somebody
killed them
the killer was indemnified
whatever commitments charles had made
before
whatever bloodshed and atrocities had
been visited during the war of the three
kingdoms
it was the years after the war that
became known as the killing times
can you imagine a time when a farmer
called arthur ingalls of netherton was
shot dead whilst looking after his
cattle
the justification given by the troops
was that he was alone in a field with a
bible in his hand
he must have been up to no good
this
was scotland
in the 1670s
in the run-up to that let's be honest
murder of arthur ingalls covenanter
started to post centuries at
conventicals some started to defend
themselves
on the first of june 1679 john graham of
clever house the persecutor of cavanaugh
are so hated that he was known as bloody
clavers was out looking for conventicles
and he found one at drumclog
but a century had fired a warning shot
to the worshippers
as the service came to a close the
preacher thomas douglas said you've got
the theory
now
for the practice
thus warned by the time bloody cleavers
arrived in the scene the men were lined
up for violence
short skirmish in advances got bigger
and bolder until the government troops
turned and fled with heavy losses
needless to say this buoyed the
amateurish covenanters and worried the
government
a bit like the battle of preston pans in
1745
the covenanters advanced in glasgow
but lightly armed and amateur made no
headway and so they retreated south
crossed the clyde camped in the moon
north of hamilton
and waited
the government issued a proclamation
saying that if they didn't give
themselves up within 24 hours they'd be
treated as traitors to whom no pardon
was allowed
they were starting to take this ragtag
mob seriously
on the morning of sunday the 22nd of
june
the lord's day
two forces of five to six thousand stood
on either side of bothwell bridge
one a poorly equipped group of amateurs
who were racked with division but sure
god was on their side the other
properly equipped government troops it
reads like a jacobite tale
and yet it's not
after stout initial resistance the
covenanters broke up in panic
hundreds of prisoners were taken after
the battle
two of them were ministers who were
brought to edinburgh and hung
but twelve hundred covenanters
surrendered that day and they were
brought here as the hunt began for
anyone else involved
now edinburgh didn't have accommodation
for this many prisoners so many of them
were placed in here
some of this has been built on and used
for graves and monuments since at the
time
it was just a free space enclosed by
walls
leaving the men out in the open from
june
to a scottish november
with almost enough rations to survive
some were tried and executed
some died here as they waited
some were made to sign a bond of loyalty
to the crown before being freed
and many were transported
by november there were 270 remaining and
well
that's a story for another time
i often see our transatlantic cousins
comment on how their ancestors were
shipped abroad or fled persecution as
jacobites
i don't tend to hear them talk about
those that were shipped as covenanters
now in one way that's strange because
covenant and protestants seem to have
been more prominent than jacobites in
the american revolution
and another way is to be expected
because for some reason i think we here
too
get more caught up in the romanticism of
the swashbuckling kilted highland rebel
than his door presbyterian lowland
equivalent
and yet
there are two sides of the same coin
it's just that when william of orange
replaced james vi
in 1688
the coin
flipped
this memorial commemorates 18 000
covenanters martyred
that's a lot
that's more than the number of jacobites
that started the battles of preston pans
folkert muir and colloden combined
maybe presbyterian and puritan
protestants did have something to worry
about
in the coming days i'll be telling more
covenant entails i'll also tell more
jack about tales
because teams
switch sides at half time
until then i'll leave a video on how
these covenant and scots started the
english civil war
one another will be coming up on screen
now in the meantime
i mean doc is going to be lama alive
cheerio