COVENANTERS. — This name comes from covenant, and refers to the covenant by which the Presbyterians of Scotland united for the patriotic-religious purpose of maintaining Calvinist religion in Scotland. Drafted in 1580, confirmed in 1581 and 1596, it acquired special significance in 1638. The efforts of the Stuarts, James I and especially Charles I, to introduce or rather to impose episcopacy and Anglican doctrine in Scotland inflamed the national and religious spirit of those tenacious partisans of Knox and Calvin, implacable enemies of every hierarchy and especially of Anglican episcopacy. Amid scenes of violence, the Anglican bishops were driven out in 1638, and at Glasgow nobles and commoners signed the new “National Covenant.”
In 1643 some representatives of this covenant were summoned by the English Parliament, then at war with the king, and the “Solemn League and Covenant for the reformation and defense of religion, etc.” was unanimously approved, with the aim of uprooting popery, hierarchy, superstition, heresy, schism, etc. After Cromwell defeated and beheaded King Charles I in 1649, his son Charles II was acknowledged as king by the Covenanters, but he had to sign the covenant. However, upon ascending the throne in 1660, he forgot everything and sought to re-establish episcopacy in Scotland. The persecution lasted 28 years until the Revolution of 1688; the Church of Scotland yielded in some points, and resistance concentrated in the Cameronians (v.), whose leader lost his life. These Covenanters, steadfast in their purposes, separated from the Church of Scotland, which they said had deviated from the original covenant, and their descendants in Scotland and the United States continued under the name of Reformed Presbyterian Church, which only in 1876 united with the Free Church of Scotland. This in 1929 finally reunited with the original Church of Scotland.