Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553-1682 Book

From the reign of Mary I to the Exclusion crisis, Protestant writers argued that England was a nation in covenant with God and urged that the country should renew its contract with the Lord through taking solemn oaths. In so doing, they radically modified understandings of monarchy, political allegiance and the royal succession. During the civil war, the tendering of oaths of allegiance, the Protestation of 1641 and the Vow and Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 (all described as embodiments of England's national covenant) also extended the boundaries of the political nation. The poor and illiterate, women as well as men, all subscribed to these tests of loyalty. The rhetoric of covenanting divines, which stressed the secular as well as religious benefits of these oaths, encouraged the Levellers and Diggers to present these documents as social contracts between the Parliament and the people. The Solemn League and Covenant continued to provoke political controversy after 1649 and into the 1690s many English Presbyterians still viewed themselves as bound by its terms. The book concludes by arguing that the oaths and covenants of the 1640s had a significant, and until now unrecognised, influence on 'politics-out-of-doors' in the eighteenth century.Read More