The Church had remained through most of the Middle Ages the
central focus of people's lives. Not only promoting the Christian
faith, it also supported the poor and punished wrongdoers. By the
start of the fifteenth century however it had become corrupt,
taking bribes to cover up misdeeds or to confer powerful
ecclesiastical positions upon members of already powerful
families.
These abuses deepened until Martin Luther, a German Augustinian
monk, nailed a 'Protest' to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517.
This was the start of the Protestant movement which rapidly spread
across Europe and would in 1560 be declared the official religion
of Scotland. Its main aims were to return the Church to its core
values, to distance it from the greed and degradation that it had
become known for and to allow ordinary people to read the Bible and
attend services in their own language rather than in Latin. Within
Scotland there was still tremendous resistance from some quarters
towards the new religion. People started taking sides; Mary of
Guise, the Scottish regent, along with her supporters were Catholic
and still held true to the 'Auld Alliance' and looked towards
France for support. The Protestants reluctantly tried to counter
this by allying themselves with Scotland's 'Auld Enemy' - England -
and seeking the support of Henry VIII who had no love for the
Pope.
Enter John Knox, a Protestant preacher. John Knox became a
skilled speaker, promoting the reformation doctrines of the new
faith. He had studied in Geneva under the French reformer John
Calvin and offered a church administered by courts instead of being
ruled by often corrupt Bishops. He became a focus for Protestants
and viciously defended their beliefs against Mary Queen of
Scots who tried to enforce her Catholic faith in Scotland when
she returned from France in 1561. What followed were several
troubled periods as religious differences were contested between
the monarchy and its people until 1610, when Presbyterian rule was
brought to an end by James VI. James had inherited both the Crown
of Scotland and that of England and established Episcopacy as the
religion across both countries. James, 'The Wisest Fool in
Christendom', was yet clever enough not to enforce this too
strictly and for a time people were able to worship, more or less,
whatever way they liked
James VI died in 1625 and his son, Charles I, did not have the
tact of his father nor did he understand the Scottish people,
having grown up in England. Charles tried to rigidly enforce the
change to Episcopacy and promoted many Catholics to positions of
high status. The Scots people now feared a return to the abuses of
the Catholic Church and in 1638 the King's attempt to introduce a
new Prayer Book was the last straw. Many Scots, rich and poor,
gathered in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh to sign a 'National
Covenant' and to swear to 'Defend the true religion and recover the
purity and liberty of the Gospel'. These 'Covenanters' gathered
strength and a few months later at a General Assembly in Glasgow,
they deposed the Bishops appointed by the crown and swept away
Episcopacy.
The Scottish Covenanters, in 1643, also signed the 'Solemn
League and Covenant', promising to send an army into England to aid
the Parliamentary forces against the King. The Parliament, for
their part in the bargain, promised to establish the Presbyterian
Church, not only in Scotland, but throughout England and Ireland as
well. It was the Scottish army which Charles I surrendered to and
which was ultimately responsible for handing him over to Cromwell,
who had him executed. Cromwell's Parliament did not keep their
promise to the Covenanters, who were later to defy him by restoring
the late King's heir, Charles II, to the throne.
Despite this, Charles II also had no intention of observing the
Covenant. He removed the right of Scottish congregations to appoint
their own ministers and restored the hated Bishops. Many ministers
(most of whom were from south-west Scotland), rather than give in,
chose to leave their parishes and assume the role of outlaws,
preaching where they could and holding illegal meetings called
'conventicles', in the hills under constant threat of fines and
attack by Government Dragoons. This caused them to take up arms in
defiance and resulted in some of the bloodiest events in Scottish
history; it came to be referred to as 'The Killing Time'.
In 1665 General Thomas Dalziel of Binns was despatched by the
King to suppress the unrest in south-west Scotland and he did so
with breathtaking brutality. He based himself for a while
at Dean Castle and the area suffered several atrocities.
In 1666, thirty Covenanters were hanged and hundreds more were
deported to Barbados to work as slave labour on the sugar
plantations. The brutal 'pacification' of the Covenanters
continued, but in 1679 they still managed to win a victory over
Government forces at Drumclog, near Loudoun Hill, and hold Glasgow
for a few days before being completely defeated at the Battle of
Bothwell Brig by the Duke of Monmouth. Several men captured at
Bothwell Brig were held for a while in the dungeon at Dean Castle
before being deported; their ship sank drowning all but one of
them. Also captured after the battle was John Nisbet of Loudoun;
after his arrest he was put on trial in Kilmarnock and sentenced to
death. Instead of executing him in Edinburgh, it was decided to
hang him in front of the local townspeople as an example. As
always, this type of spectacle which was meant to sap the will out
of would-be rebels had the opposite effect. He was buried in the
Laigh Kirkyard, but his body was dug up and moved to the criminals'
graveyard at Gallows Knowe. It was removed the same night by
furious locals, who reburied it in its original grave in the Laigh
Kirkyard, leaving the grave under armed guard in case the
authorities tried to move it again. Their resistance continued. In
1680, another local man, Richard Cameron, defied Charles by
delivering a proclamation in Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire - declaring
war on the King. He was killed by a division of Dragoons at a
skirmish at Airds Moss, near Cumnock.
James VII, brother of Charles II who succeeded him in 1685,
declared this continued opposition to the Church and attending
conventicles treasonable. Another Covenanter uprising led by the
Earl of Argyll failed completely. Things changed, however, in 1688
with the arrival of the Protestant William III (William of Orange)
in Britain. His army forced James II to flee the country; he
restored the Presbyterian Church and ended the persecution of the
Scottish rebels. One of the Scottish regiments which fought for
William III was the Cameronians who had taken their name from the
fallen Covenanter hero, Richard Cameron.
