Dr Michelle Brock: Covenant and Community: Religious Life in Seventeenth-Century Scotland
The men and women of mid-seventeenth century Scotland witnessed, and to varying degrees participated in, mass subscription to two pivotal documents: the National Covenant in 1638, and the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643. Together, the Covenants became the centerpiece of Scottish politics and kirk policy and would arguably remain so until the final decades of the seventeenth century. Yet for all the recent and excellent scholarship on the Covenants and the individuals who became known as “covenanters,” a thorough understanding of communal, localized experiences of covenanting throughout the seventeenth century remains elusive.
This talk explores the communal dynamics of covenanting in the Scottish port city of Ayr during two dramatic episodes: the plague of 1647 and the occupation of the town by Oliver Cromwell’s forces in the 1650s. Captured in the town’s voluminous church court records, these episodes together provide a snapshot of the lived experience of covenanting in an area often characterized as a hotbed of radical Presbyterianism. This talk, drawn from a larger book project, will offer some tentative thoughts about the flexibility of covenanter identity in times of turmoil and suggest how covenanting itself might be better understood as a fundamentally local process set against a backdrop of national politics.