The Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms and the Cromwellian Union, 1643-1663 by Kirsteen M. Mackenzie

Author:Kirsteen M. Mackenzie [Mackenzie, Kirsteen M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367878962
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Political integration versus acceptance: the tender of incorporation

Regardless of its divisions, the Scottish Presbyterian ministry did not like the Tender of Incorporation, which was an oath designed to integrate the Scottish shires and burghs into the political framework of the Commonwealth. Robert Blair, a Resolutioner, thought Scotland would lose its own identity and therefore ‘will be as when the poor bird is embodied into the hawk that hath eaten it up’.42 The Resolutioners responded to the Tender by organising a meeting at St Andrews on the first Tuesday of April 1652 and resolved to send letters to all parts of the kingdom advising against taking the Tender.43 Ministers in Fife refused to read the summons in the pulpit.44 Wariston, a Protester, likewise and after some thought, believed that the Tender was ‘contrary to our deuty and the Lord’s will in relation to his inflicted judgement, to our prayers and His promises to delyvery out of our captivetye’.45 The Protesters, in their Declaration as to English Actings, stated that the Tender disregarded the Covenant and its principles of federative union. God would pour his wrath on the English because:

He is a jealous God, a great and terrible God, that keepeth the Covenant; and his desire and command is that we should also keep the Covenant. And how dreadfull are these things which He threatened and brought upon His owne people Israell because they did not keep covenant, but dealt falslie therein!46

An unpublished paper, reputedly written by Archibald Johnston of Wariston, called ‘Consideration before our own choice or consent unto the Incorporation or Engagement’, argued the incorporation could not overrule the laws of Scotland and the Covenant. Scotland was still a Covenanted nation, and the incorporation challenged ‘natural law’ because submission to another country could only take place with the free consent of the nation, consent that was denied to Scotland and contravened biblical law. Like the Resolutioners, the Protesters declared that the Tender was not consistent with an equal union between both nations as envisaged in the Covenant, and therefore, the English were usurpers and conquest was nothing but violent oppression.47

The Tender consisted of three proposals. Firstly, that Scotland should be incorporated into and made one with the Commonwealth of England, thereby acknowledging a government established in England without a king and a House of Lords. Secondly, a promise to live peaceably under the Commonwealth and giving due obedience to the authority of the English Parliament. Thirdly, that the burghs and shires offer concise ‘desires’ for bringing to the effect the said union with speed and satisfaction for Scotland. Answers were to be given by 18 March 1652. From the English point of view, they were to be an acceptance of Parliament’s ‘A Declaration of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England concerning the Settlement of Scotland’.48 Whitelocke commented that the burgh representatives were asked to sign two different ‘Tenders’: ‘one signed to appease ministers, that nothing would be done which would be prejudicial to the Covenant; the other, full and ample, to do all things conductible for the settling of the nation’.

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