COVENANTERS. — This name derives from covenant (pact), and refers to the pact by which the Presbyterians of Scotland united for the patriotic-religious purpose of maintaining the Calvinist religion in Scotland. Drawn up in 1580 and confirmed in 1581 and 1596, it acquired special significance in 1638. The efforts of the Stuarts, James I and above all Charles I, to introduce or rather impose episcopacy and Anglican doctrine upon Scotland inflamed the national and religious spirit of those tenacious partisans of Knox and Calvin, uncompromising enemies of every hierarchy and especially of Anglican episcopacy. Amid riots and scenes of violence, the Anglican bishops were expelled in 1638, and the new “National Covenant” was signed at Glasgow by nobles and commoners alike.
In 1643, certain 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 defence of religion, etc.” was unanimously approved, with the aim of extirpating popery, hierarchy, superstition, heresy, schism, etc. After King Charles I was defeated by Cromwell and beheaded in 1649, his son Charles II was recognized as king by the Scots, but was obliged to sign the covenant. However, having ascended the throne in 1660, he forgot everything and sought to restore episcopacy in Scotland. The persecution lasted twenty-eight years, until the revolution of 1688; the Church of Scotland yielded on certain points, and cameronians (v.), whose leader lost his life there. These C., tenacious in their purposes, separated from the Church of Scotland, which they claimed 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. The latter finally reunited with the original Church of Scotland in 1929.