Royal Proclamation from Oxford forbidding the Covenant (Oct. 9) only
increasing the zeal for it. From Sept. 1643, onwards for some years, the
test of being a Parliamentarian in England was "Have you signed the
Covenant?" and the test of willingness to _become_ a Parliamentarian, and
of fitness to be forgiven for past malignancy or lukewarmness, was "Will
you _now_ sign the Covenant?" Such was the strange fortune of the hurried
paper drawn up by Henderson's pen in some room in the High Street of
Edinburgh.--In Scotland, it need hardly be said, the Covenant was sworn
to with alacrity. As the document was, in its very nature, a pact between
the two kingdoms, proposed by the Scots, it was useless for them to swear
until they had seen whether the English would accept the pact. But, as
soon as it was known in Scotland that the Covenant had been adopted by
the English and that the swearing in England had begun, the Scots did
their part. There was some little grumbling at first over the verbal
changes that had been made by the English in the text of the Covenant;
but this ceased, and it was even agreed that the changes were for the
better. Accordingly, on the 13th of October, 1643, most of the Scottish
nobles in Edinburgh, including 18 of the Privy Council, swore solemnly to
the Covenant in one of the city churches; and from that day on, for weeks
and months, there was a general swearing to the Covenant by the whole
people of Scotland, as by the Parliamentarians in England, district by
district, and parish by parish. Thus the Scots came now to have two
Covenants. There was their own _National Scottish Covenant_, peculiar to
themselves; and there was the _Solemn League and Covenant_, in which they
were joined with the English Parliamentarians. [Footnote: Lightfoot,
XIII. 10-16; Baillie, II. 98, 99, and 102; Neal, III. 65-70; Stevenson,
515, 516; Parl. Hist. III. 172-174; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I.
137, 138.]

And what was this _Solemn League and Covenant_, the device of