On 28 February 1638, a group of Scots gathered at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh to sign one of the most revolutionary documents in their kingdom’s history: the National Covenant. Those who subscribed registered their opposition to the series of unpopular ecclesiastical reforms imposed by King Charles I (1600–1649) and Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645)that aligned the kirk more closely with the Church of England.These reforms included the Book of Canons (1636), a set of controversial church laws which stipulated that clergy and laity who denied the king’s supremacy over all ecclesiastical matters would be excommunicated.Ministers also had to recite (rather than extemporise) prayers from the new Book of Common Prayer (1637) that Charles imposed through hisroyal prerogative,often against the wishes of Scottish ministers. On 23 July 1637, hostility to the prayer book erupted into popular riots, oneswhich reportedly began at St Giles’ Cathedral but which soon engulfed other areas of the kingdom.The drafting of the National Covenant thus reflected gradually increasing tensions regardingthe king’s intervention in the kirk and his attempts to align its worship practices with those of the English church.However, the Covenant equally represented opposition to Charles’s apparently arbitrary rule through the royal prerogative, forcing Scots to confront challenging political questions about the purpose of the commonwealth, constitutional limits on the king’s sovereignty,and the legitimacy of resistance to magistrates as they entered a decade of violent, devastating warfare.

Scholars have long recognised the revolutionary nature of the Covenanting movement, especially the ways in which it altered Scotland’s religious and political landscape after 1638. To appeal to as many Scots as possible, the Covenanting leadership strategically fashioned the Covenant as an ambiguous document, enabling its supporters to ascribe their own personal meanings and motivations to the act of subscription.