Settlement to Covenant Plandáil

People who migrated from Scotland to the north of Ireland

in the 1690s were actually famine victims.

The harvests of 1606 and 1607 had stocked the people with grain.

For the land had never been more productive since that time,

except for where no plough had gone.

They would sell this grain to the succeeding, newcoming planters,

who came the more in number and faster

because they could sell their grain at a greater price back in Scotland.

"Conditions to be observed by the undertakers

"of the escheated lands in Ulster, consisting in three principal points.

"1 - What the British undertakers shall have of His Majesty's gift.

"2 - What the said undertakers shall, for their part, perform.

"3 - In what manner the same performance shall be."

"From Scotland came many, and from England, not a few.

"Yet all of them generally the scum of both nations."

CONGREGATION SINGS

In a Scottish context, since the late 16th century onwards,

James had been involved in a battle with the Church of Scotland

over the issue of who runs the Church.

So for Presbyterians, the head of the Church was Jesus Christ,

and that the monarch should have

little or no jurisdiction in the Church.

You had a Reformation in England from the top down, from the Crown.

And Henry VIII made himself the head of the Church of England.

Whereas in Scotland,

what you had was a Reformation that was very different in character.

You had a Reformation led by preachers and nobles, not the Crown.

And in that context there developed this idea of Christ alone

being the head of the Church,

of rejecting royal authority over the Church.

James I of England and Scotland, he was trying to bring it

more in conformity with the Church of England.

So, for example, in 1610,

he reintroduced bishops into the Scottish church.

So you had a Presbyterian system there,

but you also had an Episcopalian system of bishops on top of it.

So things were still quite fluid.

The Ulster bishops have a problem - vacant churches.

They have a real problem.

They have a Protestant population -

very few shepherds for the sheep, if you like.

In Scotland, there's a surplus of Christian ministers.

They're being sacked, deposed,

because they will not go for the prelacy,

they will not bow to a bishop.

In the 1610s, 1620s, it's more important

from the point of view of the Crown

or the bishops that you have got Protestants present,

leading congregations, preaching to congregations,

than necessarily that these are clergymen who are fully signed up

to every single regulation within the Church.

The theology is very similar, it's very Calvinistic. No problems there.

They're university educated.

It's fellow Scotsmen who are the bishops in Ulster,

and so the accommodation is obvious, and so the invitation goes out

and Scottish Christian ministers come to Ulster

and take up residency in the vacant Church of Ireland parish.

..agreeable to the word of God and the laws of this church.

The bishop's report on such services would say

that he is a bishop ordained -

"the Reverend So-and-so into such a parish".

'The Presbyterian account would say "the bishops was present,

'"but just as one of the presbyters,"

'so it's a presbytery ordination.

'The service was plastic enough that each could mould it

'to their interpretation and live with that accommodation.'

-Amen.

-Amen.

'And so we enter this very interesting period

'where we have a functioning Church of Ireland where perhaps

'the majority of the ministers are Presbyterian.'

At Oldstone, God used Glendinning to awaken

the consciences of the lewd, insecure people thereabouts.

He preached to them nothing but law, wrath and the terrors of God for sin.

They fell into such anxiety and terrors of conscience

that they looked on themselves as altogether lost and damned.

Multitudes were brought to understand their way.

They cried out, "What shall we do to be saved?"

People cry out for mercy in the middle of church services,

people swoon, people faint,

because they're overcome with guilt or overcome by the Holy Spirit.

It was Glendinning who was the minister who started it.

In many ways, he's a sad character.

The preaching is entirely in the Old Testament mould of condemnation,

and he was unable to give any word of consolation or forgiveness

or salvation in Jesus Christ,

and it was the other ministers coming in

on the back of the interest

that Glendinning engendered with his preaching.

Thousands came to the Antrim area to hear this preaching,

and he other ministers come in, and that, in effect,

helped the Presbyterianisation of that movement

and was one of the things that sparked the confrontation

with the bishops and the authorities.

This mass movement, it's breaking the norms.

It doesn't sit easily with the steady Anglicanisation

of the Plantation area,

and this is a sudden rocking of the boat, shall we say.

The Dean of Down, Henry Leslie,

talks to Bishop Echlin of Down and says,

"These people should not be ministering

"in the Church of Ireland.

"We need to get rid of them. They're causing problems.

"They are overturning Royal authority

"and uniformity of religion."

As a consequence of that, Robert Blair

and John Livingstone are suspended, and other ministers as well.

So, yes, sections of the leadership of the Church of Ireland

are not happy with what's going on.

The religious policy is conformity.

The land policy is to make as much money as possible,

so he's investigating everyone's terms

of which they've got their grant in the Plantation,

and if he finds any anomalies there, there are fines.

People are threatened by this on all levels

and deeply unsettled right across the society.

"I see plainly that so long as this kingdom continues Popish,

"they are not a people for the Crown of England to be confident of."

"If he neglect to hear the Church,

"let him be unto Thee as a heathen man and a publican."

Mr Hamilton, perpetual silence within the diocese.

Seas came in over the roundhouse and broke a plank or two on deck,

and wet all those that were between decks.

Mr Blair was much of the time sickly. I was sometimes sick.

An aged person and one child died, and were buried at sea.

That which grieved us most

was that we were like to be made a mocking

to the wicked on our return.

In the very same year, in Glasgow, a General Assembly is set up,

which says that the Church of Scotland will not have

the Book Of Common Prayer, will not have kneeling at Communion,

it will not have the paraphernalia associated with

the Church of England and Anglicanism.

So 1638's very important in terms of bringing to a head

the discontent that has been bubbling under the surface,

and you have Scottish Presbyterians and others joining together

to sign something known as the National Covenant.

The idea of a Covenant is really engrained in that Presbyterianism

from Old Testament covenants and the Covenant Of Grace In Jesus Christ.

It's a pledge that binds a community together in their beliefs

and their determination to see through and stand together on this issue.

60,000 people signing on the first day,

promising to protect and honour the King,

but in this one vital area of conscience on how to worship God, by freedom of conscience,

they would not conform to what the Government and the King desired.

The National Covenant is seen as something

that could be dangerous in Irish terms.

So the State in Dublin moves rapidly

to try and impose an oath on Scottish people in Ireland

to prevent them, in a sense, following that Covenanting agenda.

So the idea is to prevent the spread of this infection.

Many of the people of Scottish extraction

are keen to sign the National Covenant, and did sign.

So the entry just says "the Black Oath", as we call it.

All of Scottish extraction, 16 years and above,

are to take this oath,

where they swear full allegiance to the King.

And many, many of the Presbyterians just refuse to do it.

They went back to Scotland or they left into the hills.

That year, the harvest,

there were a lot of farms sitting with no workers, no tenants, no-one able to take this.

People imposing the Black Oath,

it's the Church of Ireland providing the numbers and tally lists.

So that sours relations as well.