The Killing Time
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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. This was bad enough, but what made it worse was that 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 authorities, worried about the possibility of disorder and rebellion, attempted to stamp this movement out, with varying degrees of success. Attempts by the government to deal with the problem provoked armed rebellions in 1666 and 1679, which were quickly supressed. By 1680, under the influence of the Reverend Richard Cameron some of the dissidents adopted a more extreme attitude, which found expression in manifestos like the Sanquhar Declaration, 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. 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, although the actual number who died as a result of official action is now reckoned to be far less than traditionally argued. It is, nevertheless, an important part of the martyrology of the Church of Scotland.
