The Killing Time

Rev. James Guthrie, executed in 1661 for criticising Charles II's reintroduction of episcopacy

Date	c. 1680 – 1688
Location	Kingdom of Scotland (predominantly southwest)
Result	Presbyterianism accepted in 1690 Act of Settlement

Belligerents

Covenanters (Presbyterians)

Privy Council (Episcopalians and Monarchy)

Commanders and leaders

James VII (King of Scotland, 1685–88)
Charles II (King of Scotland until 1685)
The Earl of Perth (Lord Chancellor, 1684–89)
The Earl of Aberdeen (Lord Chancellor, 1682–84)
The Duke of Rothes (Lord Chancellor, 1664–81)
George Mackenzie (Lord Advocate, 1677–87)
Viscount Dundee

Casualties and losses

c.100 executions

The Killing Time was a period of conflict in Scottish history between the Presbyterian Covenanter movement, based largely in the south west of the country, and the government forces of Kings Charles II and James VII. The period, roughly from 1680 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was subsequently called The Killing Time by Robert Wodrow in his The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, published in 1721–22. It is an important episode in the martyrology of the Church of Scotland.

In the century following the Reformation Parliament of 1560, the question of church government had been one of growing tension between popular opinion and the Monarch. While the Church of Scotland was Presbyterian in its legal status according to various acts of Parliament,King James VI had developed a compromise which tended towards an Episcopalian church government, but Calvinist theology.

When King Charles I acceded the throne in 1625, his policy increasingly antagonised the nation by imposing High Church Anglicanism and Erastian state control over spiritual matters of the church. This culminated in the 1638 National Covenant which was a widespread popular expression of the nation's protest at the King's policy. Ultimately the Bishops' Wars resulted in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. On the 5th February 1649, six days after the English Parliament executed the King, the Covenanter Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland" at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, but refused to allow him to enter Scotland unless he accepted Presbyterianism throughout Britain and Ireland.

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