The Covenant Idea as a Revolutionary Symbol: Scotland, 1596–1637

Abstract

I should like to call attention once again to the old home truth that ideas, while they may not be completely independent of their environment, are still possessed of a heredity of their own that can and often does transform the material circumstances of man and affect the course of history. the course of history. I have chosen for purposes of illustration the covenant or federal theological conception, which worked a powerful influence in Scottish society during the early decades of the seventeenth century and which, in turn, was peculiarly influenced and reshaped by that society until it evolved into a symbol for the revolution which terminated in the overthrow of the monarchy of Charles I. In brief, it is my conviction that this rebellion against Charles and his government was primarily and mainly, though not solely, the result of a religious ferment that had been brewing for forty years.