Illustration

The Solemn League and Covenant.

This was an agreement between the English Parliament and the Scottish covenanting government, made in September 1643. The Scots agreed to send an army to assist Parliament in the civil war with the king; the English agreed to impose presbyterian church government on a Scottish model throughout England and Ireland.

The Solemn League and Covenant brought Scotland into a closer and sometimes more confrontational relationship with England, and confirmed the covenanters' religious radicalism. The issues it raised would echo through the rest of the seventeenth century.

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