Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scotland, 1644-51

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scotland, 1644-51
Author: David Stevenson
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2003-09-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1788853881

In 1644 a massive Scottish army of Scottish Covenanters moved over the border into England, claiming they were not invading their neighbour but acting to save its liberties, by helping ensure that the absolutist King Charles I did not win the civil war he was fighting with the English parliament. It was a daring move but the Covenanters believed it a necessary for defensive reasons, for if Charles triumphed over parliament in England he would then attempt to overthrow the Covenanters' regime. More positive ambitions were also involved. Having won the English civil war, the Scots then planned to impose a settlement that protected Scotland's political position under the union of the crowns, and force on England and Ireland Scotland's Presbyterian church. The Covenanters proved over-ambitious and over-confident, driven by their conviction that God would being them triumph. They did play a decisive role in parliament's victory, but not in the sensational way they had hoped, and the English were reluctant to give them credit - or to accept the Scottish vision of a Scottish-dominated, Presbyterian Britain. Moreover, invading England provoked a major Royalist rebellion in Scotland, led by the Marquis of Montrose. Disillusioned by the English parliament, some sought a compromise with the king, but a new invasion of England in 1648 led to disaster. Extremist covenanters then seized power in Scotland, and sought to impose radical policies, but they were forced by a growing royalist revival to again fall back on monarchy, provoking English invasion led by Oliver Cromwell. This volume continues the story begun in The Scottish Revolution of the Covenanters' sudden rise to power, but how their soaring ambitions and religious zeal in the end led Scotland to an unparalleled disaster. Scotland had long boasted of being 'the never conquered nation.' The legacy of the Covenanters was that Scotland could never make that boast again. It is a book that will appeal to scholars and students of the civil wars, as well as to all those with an interest in this fascinating and turbulent period in Scottish - and indeed British - history.

Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates

Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates
Author: David Stevenson
Publisher: Ulster Historical Foundation
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2005-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781903688465

The New Scots, the men of the army the Scottish covenanters sent to Ireland, were the most formidable opponents of the Irish confederates for several crucial years in the 1640s, preventing them conquering all Ireland and destroying the Protestant plantation in Ulster. The greatest challenge to the power of the covenanters in Scotland at a time when they seemed invincible came from a largely Irish army, sent to Scotland by the confederates and commanded by the royalist marquis of Montrose. Thus the relations of Scotland and Ireland are clearly of great importance in understanding the complex 'War of the Three Kingdoms' and the interactions of the civil wars and revolutions of England, Scotland and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century. But though historians have studied Anglo-Scottish and Anglo-Irish relations extensively, Scottish-Irish relations have been largely neglected. Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates attempts to fill this gap, and in doing so provides the first comprehensive study of the Scottish Army in Ireland.

The State of the Union

The State of the Union
Author: Jørgen Sevaldsen
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788763507028

This special issue of ANGLES marks the three hundredth anniversary of the Union of the two kingdoms of Scotland and England under the name of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

The Scottish Book Trade, 1500-1720

The Scottish Book Trade, 1500-1720
Author: Alastair J. Mann
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2000-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1788854195

This volume examines the Scottish book trade from c.1500 to c.1720, looking at booksellers, bookbinders, stationers and printers and their relationship to the forces of authority. The scale of the Scottish book trade in this period was surprisingly large, consisting of over 150 printers and over 400 booksellers, but its rate of growth was not constant as it was buffeted by the winds of economic and political circumstances. It is the public, not private world of book dissemination that is examined. Emphsis is placed more on supply than on demand. It is shown that the unique qualities of the printed book, with its blend of commerce and technology on the one hand, and intellect and ideology on the other, ensured that authority - burghs, church, governemt (crown and executive) and law courts - reacted with a complex response of liberty and prohibition. So it was for all nations experiencing the arrival of printing, but Scotland had its own particular range of dynamics, a distinct Scottish tradition.

Scotland's Long Reformation

Scotland's Long Reformation
Author: John McCallum
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2016-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004323945

Exploring processes of religious change in early-modern Scotland, this collection of essays takes a long-term perspective to consider developments in belief, identity, church structures and the social context of religion from the late-fifteenth century through to the mid-seventeenth century. The volume examines the ways in which tensions and conflicts with origins in the mid-sixteenth century continued to impact upon Scotland in the often violent seventeenth century, while also tracing deep continuities in Scotland's religious, cultural and intellectual life. The essays, the fruits of new research in the field, are united by a concern to appreciate fully the ambiguity of religious identity in post-Reformation Scotland, and to move beyond simplistic notions of a straightforward and unidirectional transition from Catholicism to Protestantism.

Accidental Pluralism

Accidental Pluralism
Author: Evan Haefeli
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2021-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 022674275X

The United States has long been defined by its religious diversity and recurrent public debates over the religious and political values that define it. In Accidental Pluralism, Evan Haefeli argues that America did not begin as a religiously diverse and tolerant society. It became so only because England’s religious unity collapsed just as America was being colonized. By tying the emergence of American religious toleration to global events, Haefeli creates a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing how the relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the beginning of the colonial era and produced a society that no one had anticipated. Accidental Pluralism is an ambitious and comprehensive new account of the origins of American religious life that compels us to refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values and their distinct relationship to religion and politics.

The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550–1651

The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550–1651
Author: Alan R. MacDonald
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2016-03-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317039696

Existing studies of early modern Scotland tend to focus on the crown, the nobility and the church. Yet, from the sixteenth century, a unique national representative assembly of the towns, the Convention of Burghs, provides an insight into the activities of another key group in society. Meeting at least once a year, the Convention consisted of representatives from every parliamentary burgh, and was responsible for apportioning taxation, settling disputes between members, regulating weights and measures, negotiating with the crown on issues of concern to the merchant community. The Convention's role in relation to parliament was particularly significant, for it regulated urban representation, admitted new burghs to parliament, and co-ordinated and oversaw the conduct of the burgess estate in parliament. In this, the first full-length study of the burghs and parliament in Scotland, the influence of this institution is fully analysed over a one hundred year period. Drawing extensively on local and national sources, this book sheds new light upon the way in which parliament acted as a point of contact, a place where legislative business was done, relationships formed and status affirmed. The interactions between centre and localities, and between urban and rural elites are prominent themes, as is Edinburgh's position as the leading burgh and the host of parliament. The study builds upon existing scholarship to place Scotland within the wider British and European context and argues that the Scottish parliament was a distinctive and effective institution which was responsive to the needs of the burghs both collectively and individually.

John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse

John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse
Author: Martyn Calvin Cowan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2017-07-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351615572

Using Owen’s sermons from this period, this book studies how his apocalyptic interpretation of contemporary events led to him making public calls for radical societal change. It combines his theological lineage with the historical context in which he preaches, and so represents part of a new historical turn in Owen Studies.

Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland

Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland
Author: David George Mullan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317090373

Drawing on a rich, yet untapped, source of Scottish autobiographical writing, this book provides a fascinating insight into the nature and extent of early-modern religious narratives. Over 80 such personal documents, including diaries and autobiographies, manuscript and published, clerical and lay, feminine and masculine, are examined and placed both within the context of seventeenth-century Scotland, and also early-modern narratives produced elsewhere. In addition to the focus on narrative, the study also revolves around the notion of conversion, which, while a concept known in many times and places, is not universal in its meaning, but must be understood within the peculiarities of a specific context and the needs of writers located in a specific tradition, here, Puritanism and evangelical Presbyterianism. These conversions and the narratives which provide a means of articulation draw deeply from the Bible, including the Psalms and the Song of Solomon. The context must also include an appreciation of the political history, especially during the religious persecutions under Charles II and James VII, and later the changing and unstable conditions experienced after the arrival of William and Mary on her father's throne. Another crucial context in shaping these narratives was the form of religious discourse manifested in sermons and other works of divinity and the work seeks to investigate relations between ministers and their listeners. Through careful analysis of these narratives, viewing them both as individual documents and as part of a wider genre, a fuller picture of seventeenth-century life can be drawn, especially in the context of the family and personal development. Thus the book may be of interest to students in a variety of areas of study, including literary, historical, and theological contexts. It provides for a greater understanding of the motivations behind such personal expressions of early-modern religious faith, whose echoes can still be heard today.