The Killing Time

The Killing Time is the colloquial name given by historian Robert Wodrow to a period of conflict in Scottish history between 1680 and 1688. The conflict was between the Presbyterian Covenanter movement, based largely in the south of the country and the government forces of King Charles II and King James VII.

Soon after the Restoration, episcopacy was reintroduced into the Church of Scotland, returning the situation to that existing prior to the expulsion of the bishops by the Glasgow General Assembly in 1638, and overthrowing the Presbyterian establishment favoured by the Covenanters. Church ministers were confronted with a stark choice: accept the new situation or lose their livings. Although most conformed, up to a third of the ministry refused, many abandoning their own parishes rather than waiting to be forced out by the government. Most of these vacancies were in the south-west of Scotland, an area particularly strong in its Covenanting sympathies. Some of the ministers also took to preaching in the open fields in conventicles, often attracting thousands of worshipers.

In the years that followed, the Stuart regime, worried about the possibility of disorder and rebellion and resentful of the Covenanters' having made their fighting for Charles II during the civil wars conditional upon the maintenance of Scottish Presbyterianism, attempted to stamp this movement out, with varying degrees of success. Fines were levied upon those who failed to attend government-approved churches, the death penalty was imposed for preaching at field conventicles, torture of suspects with the boot and thumbscrews became a tactic of first resort, thousands of highlanders (the 'Highland Host')were invited to plunder the Covenanting shires and in one case a 68 year old woman was tied to a stake on the shoreline so that she was slowly drowned as the tide came in. These policies provoked armed rebellions in 1666 and 1679, which were quickly suppressed. This led to further dissent, such as the 1680 Sanquhar Declaration, read in Sanquhar by Reverend Richard Cameron, renouncing all alliegance to the crown.

In response to this new element of outright political sedition the Scottish Privy Council authorized extra-judicial field executions of those caught in arms, or who refused to swear loyalty to the king. John Brown was summarily executed for this kind of offence. This period was subsequently called the Killing Time by Robert Wodrow in The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution which he published in 1721-1722. It is an important part of the martyrology of the Church of Scotland.

Bibliography

• Raymond Campbell Patterson, 'A Land Afflicted: Scotland & the Covenanter Wars, 1638-90' (1998)
• Ian Cowan, 'The Scottish Covenanters, 1660-1688' (London, 1976)
• Tim Harris, 'Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660–1685' (London, 2005)
• Tim Harris, 'Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720' (London, 2006)