The National Covenant of 1638, to which most Scots subscribed to oppose the religious policies of Charles i, and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, or the military alliance between the English Parliament and Scotland to extend Presbyterian church government to England and Ireland, have long been regarded as formative documents in British history. Both documents have recently been subjected to fresh scholarly insights by historians such as Laura Stewart and Edward Vallance who have demonstrated how the covenants facilitated an unprecedented level of public engagement and were subject to different interpretations by the people who subscribed them. James Walters's book builds on these recent historiographical advances by investigating how the covenants were perceived in the decades after the Restoration of the Charles ii in 1660 when both documents were proscribed.
Walters's primary argument is that in the decades after 1660 the covenants were relieved of their initial religious objectives and ultimately provided an alternative model of constitutional thinking that contributed to a pluralistic vision of Protestantism by the end of the seventeenth century. In short, the covenants came to represent a model of civil religion. To demonstrate this the book contains six chapters excluding the introduction and conclusion. After Walters sets out his argument in the introduction, the first chapter contextualises the covenants. Chapter ii focuses on the religious ambiguities that surrounded the Restoration, and how the supporters of the covenants initially hoped for a settlement that accommodated their views. The implications of the Act of Uniformity of 1662, which required ministers to renounce the covenants and assent to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, along with the mass ejections that followed this, are addressed in chapter iii. Chapter iv focuses on how the supporters of the covenants negotiated the conflicting attitudes of persecution and toleration that were promoted by the authorities in the 1660s. The role of the covenants during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–81 are investigated in chapter v. Chapter vi focuses on how the ideas within the covenants became part of the constitutional mainstream after the revolution of 1688–9. Finally, the conclusion makes a further pitch to demonstrate why the covenants represented a form of civil religion and why their legacy should not be overlooked by historians.
There is a lot to be admired in Walters's approach. He has provided some welcome insights into the role of the covenants after 1660 and has shifted the focus away from Scotland, where most of the historiography tends to be focused. However, there are issues in the book that hinder the author's argument and could perplex readers. The primary issue is Walters's contention that the covenants came to represent a form of civil religion, or the appropriation of religion by politics to serve a more civic-minded and pluralistic vision of Protestantism. Walters makes this case in the introduction, but he does not carry it throughout the book. Furthermore, when the author does come to discuss the relationship between civil religion and the Covenants it frequently reads as though he has grafted a concept on to a source base that does not support it. Walters acknowledges that the covenants were not understood by contemporaries as civil religion, but often makes ambiguous claims to demonstrate how the ‘civil religion aspect’ might be present in the documents (p. 51). The analysis he uses to support this contention often comes across as vague and is not adequately supported by the sources.
The author's claim that the covenants came to represent a form of civil religion is further hindered by the book's suggestions that the covenants played a bigger part in English and Scottish life after 1660 than they did. Most Scots remained committed to the covenants after 1660 and only a militant fringe, which the author acknowledges, took up arms against them. In England only a small proportion of the dissenting ministers who were ejected after 1662 were actively committed to the covenants and their numbers declined in subsequent decades. The author is often unclear on who, exactly, were the groups that promoted the covenants after 1660 and he often suggests that the covenants formed part of the mainstream of constitutional and religious opposition to the administrations of Charles ii and James ii & vii. This is not to deny the importance of the covenants, as they did provide the authorities with an example of what a coordinated religious opposition could achieve, but the author does not adequately situate them within other theories of government and religion that were articulated by contemporaries such as Algernon Sidney and John Locke.
The book's structure allows the author to provide some beneficial insights on key historical moments, but certain events are absent. It would have been useful, for example, to have had some discussion on the covenants and the ‘Tory Reaction’ of the early 1680s. Furthermore, as the work of Edward Legon has shown, memories of the covenants were a significant factor in Restoration discourse, but this does not come across in the author's analysis. The book could have also benefitted from a wider source base. The author relies on key printed texts to carry his argument throughout each chapter; it is unusual that a study of this nature did not consult relevant material in the main repositories in London and Edinburgh. Some of the author's analysis could have been sharper and less sweeping. Certain parts of the book, such as chapter i, contain a lot of summaries of the sources and the writing style within the book appears colloquial at times.
Overall, this is a useful study that provides some valuable insights on the role of the covenants after 1660. The connections that the book makes between the covenants and civil religion could be more clearly defined, but it does leave the door open for future research on this area.
