The Treaty Against a King: The 1643 Solemn League and Covenant

What was the document, signed on 25 September 1643, that brought two nations together in arms against their shared king?

The Solemn League and Covenant was an agreement between Parliament and the Scots to unite in opposition to King Charles I during the First English Civil War, but it had begun life much earlier and in a different guise.

Originally drawn up in February 1638, The Scottish National Covenant was a political bombshell. Copies were distributed throughout Scotland and were signed by everyone from noblemen to gentry and the clergy to thousands upon thousands of common men.

Although it stressed their allegiance to the King, by signing the document ‘The Covenanters’, as they were known, undertook to protect the Scottish church against what they claimed was the introduction of Roman Catholic modes of worship by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, who was trying to impose a new, single liturgy and prayer book across England and Scotland.

The document – and the popular movement behind it – sparked the two Bishops’ Wars in 1639 and 1640 between England and the Scottish Covenanters. These wars, and the urgent financial imperative they created, forced King Charles to call his first Parliament in 11 years. But when he did so, he found that many MPs now felt they had more in common with the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk, which had been instrumental in the opposition to Charles’ reforms and underpinned the Covenanter movement, than they did the English church, its leadership, and even its King. With the King’s finances worsening and with increasingly bitter opposition from Parliamentary leader John Pym and his allies, the situation began to spiral out of control and, in 1642, both sides began to prepare for war.

Unfortunately for the King, Parliament’s ties with the Covenanters had only grown stronger and, thanks to pressure from Pym and an English Presbyterian noble junto at the heart of Parliament, negotiations began in earnest for an alliance between Parliament and the Covenanters.

But it wasn’t until 25^thSeptember 1643, when the war was going badly for Parliament, that the deal was finally agreed, and both houses of Parliament and commissioners from Scotland signed the Solemn League and Covenant. In return for Scottish troops and support, Parliament promised to preserve the Church of Scotland and to reform the churches of England and Ireland along Presbyterian lines.

While Parliament viewed this as a military alliance and one of necessity, the Scots saw it as a religious one. They hoped to unify the churches of Scotland and England under Presbyterianism, a stricter style of church government that rejected the top-down structure of bishops and archbishops, in favour of churches run locally by ministers and elected elders. However, although Parliament promised to uphold the Protestant religion and root out any trace of ‘Popery’, the clauses regarding enforcing Presbyterianism on England, Wales and Ireland were vague at best and provided Parliament with plenty of space to later renege on its commitments.

The agreement had an immediate effect – in January 1644, the Scottish Army of the Covenant marched into England and, after tying up Royalist forces in the north of England and besieging York, their numbers proved decisive at the Battle of Marston Moor on 2^nd July 1644. The defeat of Prince Rupert’s army by the combined armies of the Covenanters and Parliament’s Northern Army and Eastern Association saw the King lose control of the north, dashing any hope he had of linking up with his forces in Scotland.

Although the alliance would eventually fracture as the Independent faction in Parliament came to prominence, leading to the Scots making a disastrous alliance with King Charles and later his son Charles II in the Second and Third English Civil Wars, the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant was instrumental in bringing about the defeat of the King’s cause.