The Solemn League and Covenant

Background

By summer 1643 the parliamentary side in the English Civil War was in serious trouble. Royalist forces had taken Bristol and much of the West Country; the parliamentary army was reduced and discouraged. The Long Parliament needed Scottish military support, which the Scottish Convention of Estates and General Assembly would only give on religious terms. Alexander Henderson, Archibald Johnston of Wariston, Sir Henry Vane the Younger, and Philip Nye negotiated the terms in Edinburgh in August 1643.

The Assembly’s handling

The Solemn League and Covenant was sworn by the Westminster Assembly and the Long Parliament on 25 September 1643 at St Margaret's, Westminster. Its six articles committed the three kingdoms (England, Scotland, Ireland) to: the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland; the reformation of religion in England and Ireland according to the Word of God and the example of the best reformed churches; the extirpation of popery, prelacy, heresy, schism, profaneness; the preservation of parliamentary rights and royal authority; mutual defence and assistance; and personal reformation. The phrase 'according to the Word of God and the example of the best reformed churches' was a deliberate ambiguity — the Scots read it as binding to Presbyterian uniformity, the Independents read it as binding only to scriptural reform. The Covenant brought a Scottish army into England (January 1644) and brought the Scottish Commissioners (Henderson, Rutherford, Gillespie, Baillie + the lay commissioners) into the Assembly.