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Summary:
Esko Nevalainen, Using Liberty and Reformation for Understanding Change: The Example of the Scottish Covenanters
British identity has been considered as having developed through an
ongoing quest for freedom and a defence of liberty. This representation
sheds light on the Scottish Covenanters’ contribution to that
process by examining a short, but crucial, time period. It is also
possible to discuss this dichotomy of freedom and tyranny from a
British and American perspective, with some modifications. Examples are
Protestant freedom vs. ‘Popish’ tyranny in the early modern
age, a Parliamentary system vs. an absolute monarchy, democracy vs.
totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism, and finally, in the 21st
century, Western democracy and human rights vs. Islamist terrorism. It
is also agreeable to say that the pre-modern times conflict of the
Protestants with the Roman Catholic Church was, from the Protestant
point of view at least and one that the Scottish Covenanters expressed,
very much defined as being a defense of freedom against tyranny. Yet,
this struggle was mainly stated in religious language using religious
concepts. The cause of the Reformation was connected succinctly to the
cause of freedom or liberty. This cause joined Protestantism and
national identity together. One must remember as well that the Scottish
Covenant of 1638 was defined succinctly as a national one. However we
should also bear in mind that same kind of interconnection between
Protestantism and national identity was also detected in other
Protestant countries, particularly in England from the age of Elizabeth
I onwards.
The Scottish Covenanters clearly expressed a language of freedom. They
significantly and continually identified with freedom, both in terms of
the religious and civil relations. Religion and liberty were frequently
mentioned together, but in that order. The Covenanters certainly could
not identify with the royal authority of the Church and episcopacy, to
which the King was so devoted. When both sides remained adamant, a
conflict was unavoidable. There is abundant evidence that freedom as a
political term, as the Covenanters perceived it, was continuously
connected to religion or to Christian liberty. Religion and liberty
were often mentioned together as a singular phrase and interrelated;
however, they were still differing terms. These findings lend credence
to those studies that have emphasized the politico-religious aspects of
political terminology, and the conceptual change that occurred from the
seventeenth century to the eighteenth century. These politico-religious
aspects connected religious discourse and the emerging discourse on
political pluralism on a macro-level. It is additionally essential to
note, as William Haller has, that those who participated in the debate
over these ideas desired “liberty in some sense” as their
aim. The disagreement lay in the extent and nature of this liberty and
the means to use to attain it. Haller has claimed that for the Scots
the prime organ to establish liberty was the Kirk, and the Church
should have been free to do its job. According to this interpretation,
the Covenanters regarded the Independents as attacking and weakening
the church. The findings of my studies are in line with this
interpretation. However it should be noted that for the Scots, liberty
meant freedom from the threat of Catholicism and enforcing the
Reformation. In 1639, 1640 and 1643, it also meant freedom to undertake
even military operations due to the threat to the Scottish nation and
Church.
There is also reason to consider the revolutionary perspective of
Covenanters’ thoughts in regards to the concept of a Scottish or
British revolution. Their primary aims appear to have been to preserve,
defend, renew and restore the Presbyterian system of their church.
However, the problem with concepts such as conservative, revolutionary
or radical is their relativity. I conclude that in the revolution in
the British Isles, the Covenanters were indeed the protagonists of the
parliaments, defending their liberties, but they were clearly not
anti-monarchists. They were not revolutionaries, but they triggered a
political change in the British Isles, and in the end a revolution that
they did not aspire for.
Some historians have emphasized the political disputes in the history
of key concepts of European Parliamentarism. I would like to maintain
that, right from the beginning of the activities of Martin Luther,
Reformation has been a continuous history of heated debates and
disputes. And the themes of these disputes were very much also in the
origins of the political debates in the British Civil War period. It
has been said that the Protestant Reformation started in 1517, but it
certainly did not end during the sixteenth century, as it proceeded in
opposition to the Counter-Reformation well into the seventeenth
century. All in all, the Covenanters’ quest for freedom and
further reformation have often been underestimated or overlooked. One
reason for the small amount of attention given to Scottish ideas
regarding the struggle for freedom must be the obvious fact that they
were the losers in this historical struggle. The Covenanters were, in
the end, defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s English army in 1651, and
thus political historiography has paid relatively little attention to
their ideas and aspirations or to put it more broadly to their
collective identity. The cause of liberty seems to have been much more
associated to Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliamentarians than to
the Scottish Covenanters, though they struggled for it at the same time
and through many years together.
For the Covenanters, the bells of reformation were tolling the chimes
of liberty, particularly of freedom from a ‘prelatical’ and
‘popish tyranny’, represented by episcopacy. They
identified themselves with their Covenant, as providential instruments
in a renewal of the Protestant Reformation. It is also appropriate to
say that the fight for further Reformation and against the
‘popish’ arch-enemy invigorated the discussion on freedom
and quest for further political liberties. This quest led to resistance
to the king’s policies, aspirations for a reformed British union
with England, and ultimately, to revolutionary turmoil in the British
Isles. When the Scottish Covenanters’ religio-national identity
was threatened, reactive actions and traditional beliefs
unintentionally led to a great number of political changes and even to
revolutionary results.
Takaisin
Studia Historica Septentrionalia 80
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