Talk:Covenanter

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[edit] Myth

I know that it is virtually impossible to knock down a myth once it is up and running, but the money the Scots received from the English Parliament in 1647 was not for the person of the king but for the services of their army. The fact that the two transactions came at the same time-payment and handover-has created a lasting confusion. The position laid out in this article is simply wrong. Rcpaterson 23:44, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scotland, The Civil War, and Wikipedia

Information on Scotland during the English civil war is extremely difficult to find on Wikipedia. Many articles dealing with the English Civil War and the Interregnum have only throwaway comments or allusions to the situation in Scotland. The succession boxes go from Charles I to the Commonwealth of England, and the information on the situation in Scotland on the Commonwealth's page is so near to being non-existent that one might think everyone in Scotland was just taking a nap from 1649-1660. To remedy this, I am branching the Scottish portion of the succession through the Covenanter article, in the hopes that this might make it easier to find information on Scotland, and in the hopes that this article will be fleshed out and expanded. Reveilled 21:20, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Improvements welcome, but did you notice the links to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Scottish Civil War? ..dave souza, talk 11:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC) Having said that, these succession links now look good. ta. ..dave souza, talk 11:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Killing Times

I've expanded and modified this section to make the overall position a liitle clearer, including a reference to the 1666 Pentland Rising, which only appears in passing (as a date alone)in the previous version. The real point of my editing, however, was to correct the all to common misconception about the nature of the so-called 'Killing Time'. The term itself is a ninteenth-century invention, first appearing in Robert Wodrow's monumental The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution. It refers, in fact, to the period from the 1680s onwards, in which the government resorted to extraordinary methods to deal with political sedition, rather than religious dissent as such. It is important to bear in mind-though no reference is made to it in the article-that some attempt was made by the authorities from 1669 onwards to accommodate the more moderate shades of Presbyterian opinion by a series of Indulgences. By 1680 the extreme Covenaters-a tiny minority-had pushed beyond all compromise, embracing outright sedition in manifestos like the Sanquhar Declaration and the Apologetic Declaration. It was in pursuit of these political extremists that the government resorted to the extra-judicial methods that were to be a feature of the Killing Time. But the number actually killed by Claverhouse and others is now reckoned to be far less than Wodrow and his school claimed. Rcpaterson 00:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that interesting clarification of a splendidly gory name that puzzled me when a superficial look didn't show much killing. I've added some links to other articles and mentioned the part the Cameronians played in the Revolution, and have also removed the description of Jenny Geddes as a fishwife: she's generally described as a street market woman, from memory selling vegetables, and while the thought of her crying "caller herrin" is nice, it's not a description I've seen. Any source for this would be welcome.

Note that the link to the National Covenant just redirected back to Covenanter: anyone want to do a new page? ..dave souza, talk 10:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Final Paragraph

"The Covenanters have a martyrology of their own, and an artificial halo of romance has been cast around their exploits and their sufferings. It is important to remember that in its latter stages, especially in its Cameronian metamorphosis, the Covenanter movement had little interest in religious freedom for its own sake. The aim, rather, was to deny freedom to everyone else. Their story, however, especially during the time of their political predominance, is part of the general History of Scotland."

Definitely POV and patently false. Timotheus4 03:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Revised, new section added. ..dave souza, talk 12:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Covenater-Religious Radicals and Political Innovators.

I would just like to announce to all who have an interest in this topic that I intend to begin a fairly radical rewrite/reorganisation in the very near future. The whole piece needs to be better paced and structured: most of the information is already there, but relevance and context needs to be explained a little better. Above all, I intend to bring out some of the political-as opposed to the religious-dimensions of the movement, with particular reference to the development of the Scottish parliament. By its very nature it may take more than one session to complete: so please excuse the scaffolding (road cones?)while the work is in progress.Rcpaterson 01:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Work now complete. Rcpaterson 05:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. I'm going through and correcting punctuation when I have time. I'm not as familiar with what is allowed in British punctuation, so forgive me if I correct something that didn't need correcting. --S Roper 17:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

I would like to add that the whole article is too long and overblown. While it may certainly be the labour of love of someone that personally finds the topic very interesting, I would suggest that it is in fact WAY too boring for most people to read. Why no put in some pictures, or references to modern celebrities and how the issue has affected them?

"Indeed, it is truly said: the eye sees in a subject what the eye has means of seeing." Thomas Carlyle

[edit] National Covenant

Wouldn't it be a good idea to give the National Covenant its own page? (and perhaps to split up other parts of this article, as well--it is rather long). Surely the hisotry and provisions of the document cannot be adequately described in an article that's about the Covenaters quite broadly.

[edit] Pictures

The suggestion for pictures is appropriate; I am trying to think how to rearrange the article so the first few paragraphs are an introduction and the remaining text is in-depth like what is already here. Regarding the picture of James VI, someone with a better grasp of this page's content should modify the caption. --Matthew K 17:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rhyme

I saw someone doing several copy edits in this article and got inspired. When I saw 'uplified' in that rhyme, I decided to look for it. The only other copies of the rhyme (that aren't direct copies of this article) use uplifted. For example, the citation (which could, admittedly have been corrected) by Stevenson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/373 (Stevenson, Lay Morals chapter 4)... (see also http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/towns/townhistory265.html) If someone with access to a more authoritative source could check this, it would be well; for now it seems acceptable to imagine this was merely a mistake when the text was placed in the article.

I admit I'm rather fond of the American English spellings I have always used and therefore '-our' and 'centre' and some words with 'll' surprise me; I tried to leave all of the correct ones alone and maintain the intuitive British English standard for this article. If I 'fixed' something that wasn't broken, feel free to change it back ;) --Matthew K 02:21, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] no measured?

From the second paragraph of the first section: "it denounced the Pope and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in no measured terms." I can't guess what this means. "Measured terms" are careful and precise. So the opposite might be extravagant, or might be vague. It is hard to imagine that the terms of the king's covenant were both extravagant and vague. I hope that someone informed about the king's covenant will change this phrase to something more intelligible. Maproom (talk) 23:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)