Covenanter History Tour, Day 2: Edinburgh

Now Playing: Guess what? "Stealing Second", by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Ah, Spring!" Yes, yes, my only excuse for listening to this over and over is the fact that it reminds me so strongly of home before I left. Clear blue sky, green oak trees, the sword-blade grey kite, Mandy stalking through the zinnia sprouts, pulling weeds with my mother, going leaf-hunting with Laura, bike riding with Stephen....

This morning, as usual, I helped Rachel with breakfast--setting the table, clearing up odds and ends of dishes from last night, etc. The hall was painfully cold. Rachel turned on a Toby Keith CD. The singer blared out, drawling familiar Texas names. "Now you've made me homesick, too," I growled with a grin at Rachel, and she giggled.

Today we went to Edinburgh on the Covenanter Tour. Carla and Connor Quigley were going to come with us, but there wasn't enough room in the bus. Lucas's wife, Melissa, arrived yesterday, and both Lucas and Melissa were coming along with us, as was Sarah. So our trip got off to a dismal start as Pastor Quigley had to ask them to go home.

It was raining again this morning as we drove to Edinburgh. A day of scattered heavy rain, with blue sky between the thick clouds. We drove around behind the castle and up into Grassmarket. Pastor Quigley first took us inside St. Giles's Cathedral. The wind blew cruelly cold from the east. Inside, the cathedral was crowded with people and with pews, displays, and other furniture, so we never really got a chance to look around (I still think my favorite part of the whole trip was going to Glasgow Cathedral). The cathedral seemed smaller than Glasgow Cathedral. Some of the windows had historic scenes on them: John Knox, the Earl of Murray, etc. Ragged banners hung above the windows, below the clerestory. As Pastor Quigley took us around the cathedral, a choir was practicing, filling the cathedral with ringing music. The clear echoes shivered like bells from every arch and windowpane so that it was hard to hear Pastor Quigley's soft voice.

Moving around the cathedral, Pastor Quigley took us to important spots: Archibald Campbell's burial place, the sepulchre of the Earl of Murray, and the National Covenant. Campbell was beheaded by Charles II outside St. Giles in 1661. The Earl of Murray was the first national leader in the world to be assasinated with firearms. He was a Protestant, and during his time Scotland had peace. John Knox was very influential under the Earl of Murray, and Knox died two years after the Earl. It was in St. Giles that Jenny Geddes threw a footstool at a prelate who presumed to read the Book of Common Prayer. Her action sparked an uprising against the Episcopal system.

Leading us out through a side door, Pastor Quigley took us over to the parking lot beside St. Giles. As we left the church, the sun came out briefly, and the gilded cock on the top of the crown spire of St. Giles flashed. (St. Giles has a tower shaped like the golden arms that hold up the velvet of a crown.) In this parking lot, in slot 23, John Knox is buried. Only a yellow brick marks his burial spot. Pastor Quigley's voice grew soft and harsh with angry intensity. "Look over there. That's a statue of Charles II," he said, pointing to a grand bronze statue of a man on horseback. "And all they can give John Knox, one of the most influential men in Scottish history, is a grave without even his name on it." Even as we turned away, a van backed into the spot, covering John Knox's grave.

Next we went into the Scottish High Court, which is right beside the cathedral, its tall grey buildings forming a half-moon courtyard against the cathedral's straight wall. We had to go through security for a brief peep into the High Courtroom. The courtroom is hung with age-dulled paintings. Dark wooden beams, interlaced with many downward-pointing spires, like stalactites with gold bosses on their tips, supported the roof. A British chap in a business suit rattled away on a cellphone, and people in gowns hurried in and out. "This is where the National Covenant was drawn up. It shows that there was a legally binding aspect to the Covenant. It wasn't just something made by religious fanatics--it was created by the government of the people, to bind the nation of Scotland to God," Pastor Quigley said. "It is my personal conviction that subsequent generations were blessed by the Covenant. If you look at the history of many industries after the 1600s, Scotsmen are prominent. And it is my conviction that Scotland's hardened, darkened state today is God's judgment on the land for not keeping the Covenant."

Leaving the courtyard between St. Giles and the High Court, we walked down the street to the Scottish National History Museum. The museum is fairly new, state-of-the-art. Pastor Quigley strode ahead determinedly, and we straggled behind. I lingered for a moment, with a quick glance of delight as we passed the Monymusk Reliquary--a little gold-and-silver box which was carried into the Battle of Bannockburn.

Pastor Quigley took us to the Middle Ages church history display. We looked at elaborate croisers, crosses, chalices, broken cathedral corbels, fragments of pews and painted ceilings, and other relics. Then he led us into the Reformation display. "What was missing from the Middle Ages displays?" he asked us. "The Bible," Missy said. As soon as we stepped through the doorway into the Reformation, we saw a Bible, and a Psalter. "Why did the Scottish Reformers focus on the Psalter?" Pastor Quigley asked. "Because it got people singing God's Word. You remember what you sing," I offered. He pointed out the simplicity of the communion cups and Bibles. We walked past a pulpit, and under frayed Covenanter banners. Pastor Quigley pointed out the brown velvet suit that Andrew Henderson had worn, and the eerie mask that Alexander Peden wore to disguise himself when he was preaching in conventicles in the late 1600s.

Our next stop was up the street: Greyfriars Kirk. Pastor Quigley led us briskly up the street, through the narrow gate between two buildings, and into the kirkyard. He took us inside the Kirk and showed us where preaching had been given before the signing of the Covenant. A simple church, for the most part. Its windows are elaborate geometric designs, beautiful as illuminations from the Lindisfarne Gospels. Pastor Quigley took us outside to the Covenanters' Prison. In 1660, Charles II was restored to the Scottish throne. He burned the National Covenant, which he had signed. In May 1679, Archbishop Sharp, Charles II's henchman, was knifed by the Covenanters. On June 1, 1679, a Covenanter conventicle at Drumclog was attacked by Charles II's soldiers. The Covenanters defended themselves skillfully. However, on June 22, 1679, the Covenanters foolishly engaged the king's men in battle at Bothwell Brig. Here many Covenanters were captured. They were put into the Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars kirkyard during the winter of 1679. The Covenanters' Prison is an open alley in the graveyard. It's shut off from the rest of the graveyard by a high stone wall with an iron gate, but there's no shelter inside the prison--only open tombs and monuments. Across from the Covenanters' Prison, on a flat stone table, the National Covenant was signed. Charles II was essentially taunting the prisoners: he let them see the place where the great spiritual and secular victory of the National Covenant had been won, and flaunted before them the question as to whether that Covenant was worth dying for. In the spring of 1680, these Covenanters were put on board ship for Barbados, to become slaves. But the ship foundered near the Orkneys. The sailors battened down the hatches so that the Covenanters could not escape, and the ship sank with all the Covenanter prisoners on board.

Though the sky over the graveyard was clear, rain spat down over the Covenanter Prison, staining the tombstones and the iron gate with silver water.

Pastor Quigley led us down to the low stone slab where the National Covenant was signed. If you see pictures from this time of the signing of the Covenant, it's this spot you'll see: a row of tombs along the high wall, thick elm trees standing in the background, and this low, flat tombstone, where the Covenant was signed. Next we walked down to the Covenanter corner, where the corpses and ashes of many Covenanters were tossed as refuse with the corpses of common criminals. A monument on the stone wall above the corner stands to commemorate the Covenanters, to remind us that we belong to Christ. We cannot negotiate our lives, for we were bought with the price of Christ's blood, and Christ's commands to us are non-negotiable. Pastor Quigley told us that some scholars from Glasgow came to try to persuade the Covenanters to compromise. The Covenanters stood firm with Scripture proofs to back up their arguments. They refused to compromise, and the scholars were amazed by their erudition and steadfastness. As Pastor Quigley stood and talked to us about these things, the one o'clock canon boomed from the castle on the hill.

We bowed our heads in prayer beside the monument. Pastor Quigley asked God to give us the strength to live for Christ, for we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him.

Pastor Quigley had to go and feed the parking meter, so we waited in the graveyard. It began to rain heavily. Michaela, Rachel, Virginia, and I sheltered under a maple tree. Rain rustled on the lush leaves, but the thick branches kept us fairly dry. It was freezing cold, though, and we huddled together.

When Pastor Quigley returned, we walked back to Grassmarket, to the Covenanter monument in Grassmarket: a simple, low stone platform with an X on it to mark where the stake stood to which Covenanters were roped and burned. Behind the platform is a stone wall, with a ledge and a plaque dedicated by the Church of Scotland and the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The sun came out, a pale, luminous sunshine. Everyone sat around on the stone platform and pulled out their lunches. I perched on the ledge of the stone wall--it seemed disrespectful, somehow, to eat lunch on the spot where so many faithful men and women had given up their lives. As we sat and ate, a girl with flaming pink hair walked past. "E--'s hair is naturally that color, but she dyes it," Lucas jokingly told Melissa. I wrinkled my nose at him.

After lunch, we stood and sang Psalms around the stone platform: 84B, 98A, 67, 116A, 73C, 72C. People stopped and stared at us. Voices and sunshine poured out like clear oil on the place where the martyrs were burned. "On hilltops sown a little grain, like Lebanon with fruit shall bend. New life the city shall attain. She shall like grass grow and extend...." We sang the last verse of 72C as we climbed onto the minibus.

Pastor Quigley drove around through the shops and back alleys of downtown Edinburgh for awhile, trying to find the Covenanter barracks, I think, but he never did succeed, so finally we started back toward Airdrie. The luminous sunshine was covered with heavy clouds again, and it began to rain hard. I drowsed, listening to the "Chronicles of Narnia" soundtrack. I woke up as the minibus jolted down a narrow back road on the edge of Airdrie. It was raining very hard again. Grey mud splashed up over the minibus as we turned down a dirt track. The track ran through a young firwood and out onto the open slope of a moor. Sheep bounded away from the track, white haunches leaping and heaving in the rain. A cluster of shaggy brown cattle stood by a gate and eyed us hungrily. Pastor Quigley pulled up in the field at the end of the track and turned the minibus around. "I'm almost sure that it's out there somewhere," he said. He told us that out on the moorside there was a monument on the spot where Alexander Peden had preached. After 1672, the Covenanter ministers were thrown out of their pulpits. So they roamed around the countryside, hiding in friends' houses and in the fields. They held their worship services in open fields, on the moors, and Covenanters would gather from miles around.
I stared out at the tall grass bowing under the cold wind and the rain. Bleak hills sloped down and up again, endlessly, crested in places with small, low-growing groves of fir and spruce and pine. The cold wind shook the minibus, and rain rattled like gunshot against the glass windows. I shivered. Our warm breath fogged the windows so that I could only see a blur of green and grey outside. The moorside rippled with lush grass, and I remembered Psalm 72, "On hilltops sown a little grain...." It is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Gospel. Here we are, centuries later, and this is our heritage: "For Christ's Crown and Covenant".

We drove back to the church, reaching it at about four o'clock. Rachel, John, and Emily started to fix supper. Missy French-braided Brenda's hair, and they played cards. Lucas and Melissa played basketball with one of the little plastic balls lying around the room. Rachel's Toby Keith CD blared out from the kitchen until Lucas put on some sort of soft rap.

Rachel, John, and Emily fixed creamy potato soup for supper. After supper, Lucas led team time on the second half of Hebrews 11. Then the Hannas, Missy, and Rachel went to the grocery store. I washed the dishes, and Aaron and Emily dried them and put away the food. We had a brief prayer time, in which we lifted up Calvin F, who's been seriously ill, and the F family, and also Alisha and Tara, who are going on a missions trip to South Africa. It was still raining hard outside.

Now people are just fooling around. They've cleared the hall and are playing some sort of sport in it--hockey or basketball, I think. (The hall has two stand-alone plastic basketball goals.) There's a lot of clattering, thumping, and shouting. Virginia is sitting in our room, tuning her harp. While we were in Edinburgh today, after lunch, she exchanged the harp she'd bought on Saturday for a new one since the one she'd bought on Saturday had a serious crack in it. She's been playing sweet, simple tunes on it--Christmas carols, hymns, medieval tunes that make me think of "Greensleeves".