Published: Thursday, 7th February, 2008 12:30
Blood on the Moors
By Jamie Cossar
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The memorial to the pinning of the Sanquhar Declaration in the Main Street
Pic by: Douglas Skelton
IT’S amazing to think that the introduction of a simple religious book could have led to one of the bloodiest periods of Scottish history.
Yet that’s exactly what happened in 1637 when King Charles I tried to overturn years of Scottish Presbyterianism by decreeing that the Book of Common Prayer should be used in Kirk services.
The reaction to this attack on the population’s freedom of worship led to a movement which became known as the Covenanters and led to half a century of murder, brutality and repression - with Ayrshire at its epicentre.
Anyone who passes through towns and villages in Cumnock and Doon Valley, or walks in the empty moorland hills and countryside, will inevitably come across monuments to the people who defied their king and state for their religious beliefs.
So what were the roots of the struggle and what were the consequences for those who took up arms and prayer against their King?
Historians believe it can be traced back to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI succeeded to the English throne on the death of Queen Elizabeth.
King James planned a ‘Union of Great Britain’, which proved to be so unpopular that it was abandoned. However, when his son, Charles I, came to the throne, he revived the idea and saw the church as a way to bring the two countries more under the Crown’s control.
Charles I regarded himself as the ‘Godly Prince’, a divinely-appointed leader of society who could reign supreme. This was diametrically opposed to the Kirk’s belief that Christ, not the King, was the head of the church.
Charles wanted to bring the Scottish Kirk into conformity with England by using his Scots bishops to run Scotland for him - known as Episcopalianism.
His use of bishops to run the country also managed to alienate the Scottish nobility who believed that this undermined their role.
When the Book of Common Prayer was ordered to be read at St Giles’ in Edinburgh in July 1637 it sparked riots and revolution which eventually led to the signing of the National Covenant at Greyfriar’s Kirk on the last day of February in 1638.
The Covenant demanded a free Scottish Parliament and a free General Assembly, devoid of interference by the King.
It also demanded the abolition of bishops who served the King in matters of Kirk and State, all of which limited the power of the monarch.
For the thousands who signed the Covenant it was a declaration of freedom from interference from the King - for Charles, it was a direct challenge to his authority.
In 1643 Charles was ousted from the throne during the bloody Civil War with the Covenanters siding with Oliver Cromwell.
Charles I was executed, horrifying the Scots, but the English Parliament agreed to adopt Presbyterianism as the national religion. Nevertheless, the Scots turned against Cromwell who promptly mobilised his forces against them. The Covenanter army was defeated at Dunbar and Cromwell reigned supreme.
Cromwell died in 1658 and in 1660 Charles I’s son, Charles II was restored to the throne, leading to the bloodiest phase of the Covenanters’ history.
Charles II soon passed an act to force people to recognise him as the supreme authority of both Church and State.
The Church of Scotland rejected this claim, triggering 28 years of bloody persecution of those who refused to acknowledge Charles II’s claims. This became known as the Killing Times.
The Covenant was torn up by Charles, who appointed Bishops and curates to govern the churches in Scotland and 400 ministers who refused Charles’ orders were ejected from their parishes.
However, the ministers continued to preach in the open-air and huge groups of parishioners refused to attend the government-appointed Episcopalian services.
The government tried to control these outside ‘conventicles’ but by 1670 they were so popular that attendance was treated as treasonable and anyone who preached at them would be hanged.
Thousands of people were persecuted by soldiers who had been given the names of people who didn’t go the Episcopalian services by the curates.
The first full-scale rebellion took place in 1666 but this was defeated by a government army at Rullion Green near Edinburgh.
This didn’t deter the Covenanters and there are records of conventicles which saw thousands of people listening to preachers in the open air throughout the South West of Scotland.
By 1678 the government was desperate and deployed thousands of Highlanders from the mainly Catholic north, with Ayrshire one of the main targets.
There was no let-up in the persecution, with people executed, fined and sent to penal colonies as slaves.
In 1680, a small group of people rode into Sanquhar with the Rev Richard Cameron, where they read out their ‘Sanquhar Declaration’ denouncing Charles II. Within a month he and seven others were dead, having been captured at Aird’s Moss, near Muirkirk.
The years of persecution could have gone on indefinitely had not James II succeeded his brother and turned to Catholicism. The English worm finally turned in 1688 when he ordered his Declaration of Indulgence to be read from every Anglican pulpit in the country.
This decree suspended the penal laws against Catholics and, with the christening of James’s son into the Catholic faith, it prompted English peers to invite James’s son-in-law, William of Orange, to come to the country to ‘defend the liberties of England’.
When William’s army arrived at Torbay in November 1688 James’s support collapsed and he fled first to France and then Ireland. William moved quickly to establish a provisional government and in January 1689 Parliament declared that the throne was vacant.
In February of that year William and his wife, Mary, who was the daughter of King James, jointly acceded the throne and in the following year, 1690, the Scottish Parliament met and passed an act which re-established Presbyterianism in Scotland.
This act finally ended 52 years of turmoil, persecution and killings in Upper Nithsdale and the Cumnock and Doon Valley area as well as throughout the South of Scotland.
Further Details
Local author tells history of Sorn